Word Over the World: Scene Three

Project in process...
To read Scene One, click here.
~*~

In August 1978, at nineteen years old, I was "commissioned" as a Word Over the World Ambassador, one of about 1000 volunteers that year. Before going WOW, I made the commitment to enter The Way's leadership training program, the Way Corps. My WOW year would serve as my first year of Corps training known as the apprenticeship year. WOW was a one-year commitment; the Way Corps was for life.

I was sent to Milwaukee and was designated a WOW Family Coordinator. Along with overseeing the WOW family, I oversaw our Twig Fellowship. There were four WOWs in my family, all of us barely adults -- myself, Mary, Tom, and Luke. Our family was assigned with six other WOW families which made up a WOW Branch. David, an 8th Way Corps trainee on his interim year assignment, was our WOW Branch Leader.

The first task for WOWs was to secure jobs, housing, and furnishings. Our family found a small, dingy, lower-level dwelling (one of two, stacked) located on an alleyway off Bartlett Avenue on the East Side near the University of Wisconsin. We did our best to brighten it up. Through the year I worked part-time jobs as an office girl, a bus girl at a restaurant, and an ice cream cart driver selling frozen treats at Lake Michigan and around the East Side.

During my first few months on the field, I had lots of doubts and was tempted to leave. I doubted if I was good enough to be WOW or Way Corps, or sometimes even a believer. I'd repeat scriptures over and over in my mind to counter and suppress the doubts. I talked multiple times to Cindy, one of our Limb Leaders, about my doubts and temptation to leave. At our last Carol's-self-doubt-not-good-enough talk, she responded sternly questioning if I really believed Jesus Christ had died for me. I determined then that I had to stay. I couldn't break my commitment; I loved God and believed Jesus Christ was my Lord and Savior. Plus, if I broke my WOW commitment, I'd also be breaking my Way Corps commitment. To break either was shameful, a moral and spiritual failing.

Luke, one of my WOW brothers, was my boyfriend. We had met at the end of Summer Outreach in North Carolina a few weeks before the Rock; it was love at first sight. We sat together through WOW training at the Rock knowing we would be separated for the upcoming year, never imagining that we would be assigned to the same WOW family. It was unhear if for any WOWs to know each other before being assigned together in a WOW family.

We were stunned when we opened our assignment envelopes. How could we serve God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength while living together with teenage love hormones coursing through our loins? Luke was 18; I was 19. I thought that surely God would take care of this and allow a reassignment.

Shortly after all us WOWs had opened our envelopes, we gathered with our WOW Families and Branches in designated sections on the tarmac under the giant big top so we could meet each other for the first time. I privately told David, our WOW Branch Leader, that Luke and I couldn't be in the same family; we were in love.

David took my concern up the Way Tree to higher leadership. The verdict came back. All WOW assignments were by revelation from God. Luke and I were to stay together.

Being in love with Luke and living together made the first months even harder. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. I grappled with how to love God when I loved Luke so much. These struggles only contributed to my self-doubts and feelings of not being good enough, not being able to live up to the standards.

Unlike mainstream Christian doctrine, The Way didn't teach that sexual intercourse before marriage was sinful, but neither did it teach that it wasn't. It was an ambiguous subject, one of those standards that depended upon circumstances and "needs" in the given situation. According to The Way, the word "fornication" in the Bible referred mainly to "spiritual fornication" (loving and worshipping other gods), rather than sexual fornication. 

During WOW training sex was addressed. After all, a bunch of mostly young single people were being put together in mixed genders to live in family units. I don't recall anything from those sex talks at WOW training, other than Wierwille stating something like, "No unbeliever's penis has any business being in a believer's vagina." In other words, keep it in the family.

I was pregnant by October. I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, where our Limb Leaders lived, to get an abortion. My mom paid for it.

I stayed in the Limb Home for a few days after the procedure. The Limb Leaders were kind, but to my recollection we did not discuss the abortion. I spent a lot of time alone in a guest bedroom, crying and bleeding. Other than Luke and David no one else in the WOW Branch knew, at least that I was aware of. The other WOWs thought I made the trip to the Limb Home for something to do with my apprenticeship Corps training. After my few-days-stay, I returned to my WOW family like nothing had happened. At that time in The Way, abortion was considered as nothing more than removing a splinter; except, you could talk about a splinter.

At Christmas, Luke was reassigned to a different WOW family in the Branch.

All that heartache could have been avoided, if not for "revelation."

The year moved forward and was deemed a success. Our WOW family had built a Twig Fellowship. We were taking new believers to the Rock that year; a few were even going WOW and later would go into the Way Corps. Through the year there were times aplenty of laughter, tenderness, and fellowship; times when I had to call the police due to a couple of assaults; times when we didn't have enough money for food, but God always came through.

I was proud I'd made it through the year without deserting my post; proof that I wasn't a spiritual failure. But neither was I genuinely confident.

I was now twenty years old.

~*~

Click here for Scene Four.