Devout – Megan Ziegele
August 1, 2025
Day 1 – September 22, 2022
The room is filled with bright neon lights, illuminating the fog pouring out from either side of the stage. Hundreds of sweaty high-schoolers pack the auditorium, fanning out in a tapered semi-circle around the main stage. Five musicians — two guitarists, two vocalists, one drummer — take the stage, inviting the crowd to stand and sing along with them in song service. The crowd stands, and I reluctantly bandwagon. Everyone is moving to the music, arms outstretched, palms open as if they’re joyously feeling rain fall off their fingertips.
I feel foreign, even if I look just like these kids who came from church schools just like mine, who all worship the same God we’ve been taught to praise. What am I supposed to do with my arms? I settle on grasping the laminated lanyard on my neck that holds our itinerary. We’ve just gotten off a school bus after an impossibly long trip to arrive at a family camp in Antelope, Oregon. The camp looks out of place, a dot of civilization in a landscape of dry hills. Our schedule is structured around seven General Sessions spread over the course of four days. Today is Thursday, and it’s the least eventful of the four — made up of Session One, supper, activities, and cabin inspection. I can’t wait for this Session to end.
The long-winded song service concludes, and the head youth pastor of the program — a bald thirty-something dressed in clothes that make him look as if he raided the wardrobe of any one of the students here — comes on stage. He starts with prayer, begging us to open our hearts to Jesus during these next few days. He begins to preach, and I feel myself detach, like my body and my mind are slowly drifting apart, no longer connected to each other. I try to focus on his words, but nothing sticks.
—
Since I was a child, I’ve dreaded communion, because I knew of what would follow — footwashing in the fellowship hall. My mom, my dad, my older sister, Hannah, and I would be assigned to the family room, in the center standing towers of basins and vats of warm water, a stack of perpetually-damp white towels to the side. Usually, I’d end up washing my dad’s feet, pouring water from my cupped hands. While we dried each other’s feet, we prayed over them, blessing them and showering them in gratitude. I never knew what to say.
Prayer has always been difficult for me, only ever something I would do when on a plane ride with turbulence, crying up a plea of safety, and occasionally when I was asked to bless our meals at home. So, I learned to stick to a script to make the task seem less daunting.
Dear Jesus — thank you for this day, and thank you for this meal. May it nourish and strengthen our bodies. Amen.
The best part of communion was always the grape juice and unleavened bread — never wafers, only ever thumbnail-sized squares of brown bread. I would collect the small plastic shot glasses the sweet liquid was served in as a little trinket.
Day 2 – September 23, 2022
The next morning, we’re invited to go on a Morning Manna run across the facility. It’s optional, so I don’t go, preferring to stay cocooned in my bottom-bunk bed. Breakfast at the dining hall is cold, and there’s no hot coffee to warm me up. Serving caffeine is taboo in Adventist circles, most members adopting the Adventist pseudo-prophet — Ellen White’s — message on health. When our bus on the way to camp made a pit stop at a gas station across from a Fred Meyer’s, I bought a four-pack of watermelon Red Bull in lieu of coffee. I put the box in my storage cubby by the foot of my bed, hidden behind my toiletry bags. I’m sixteen, I’m allowed to rebel, even if nobody knows.
From breakfast, we go straight into Session Two, the same team leading in praise, establishing that “Firm Foundation (He Won’t)” is our retreat’s theme song. This time, the youth pastor delivers his testimony, a long-winded reminder that even in our darkest moments when we feel there’s no hope, God has a plan for us, that our sinful life on Earth is just one page in the book He has made for us. I don’t understand the phenomena of youth pastors humble bragging about their lives before Christ, like they expect us to legitimize their authority by first showing us the credentials of their drug and sex addled lives.
—
Rain came and wind blew
But my house was built on You
—
After the Session, we’re left to partake in some of the many activities in the facility — basketball or volleyball in the sprawling gymnasium, zip-lining into a body of water so small it’s no longer deserving of the title of pond, swimming in an alarmingly warm outdoor pool, go-karting, or taking a perilous drop from a giant swing. I choose to zip-line along with my school’s youth pastor. After our block of activities, it’s time to prepare for the Sabbath with Session Three. This time, song service features a mirror disco ball, its specks of light spinning around the dark room while “So Will I (100 Billion X)” plays in the background. The pastor talks about repentance and the importance of keeping the Seventh Day Holy.
My body becomes alien again. Sounds are muffled, my feet numb, my mind feeling guilty for not being able to feel more. Every memory of every sin I’ve ever committed runs in an endless loop through my head. I need to repent. I need to become clean again. Why don’t I feel moved? Why don’t I feel loved?
—
I was dedicated in the church as a baby, my Opa — my paternal grandfather, a retired pastor — holding and praying over me in front of our church in Illinois. From birth, I was raised to be a Good Christian Girl — keep the Sabbath day Holy, live by the Bible, be a devout follower of Christ.
Acting the part made me believe I was made for the role. I can’t pinpoint the day I realized I wasn’t cut out for it. Maybe I always knew. I had always been a quiet girl, never the one to raise my hand with excitement during children’s story — the part of church service where the children would be called from their upholstered pews to gallivant around the sanctuary, collecting dollars from the congregation before dumping them into a donation box in front of the pulpit, sitting down on the stairs to listen to a story. If I was lucky, the stories were short, sometimes a narration of a misbehaving boy or an ungrateful girl who ultimately learned a lesson — God is Good, God is always watching over Us, we should always be Grateful.
—
In between our final Session of the day and night check, I sneak back into the cabin, finding one of the girls from our school already in bed. I came back with the intention to decompress, to find comfort in my own company, but when I see her I start rambling.
“Do you believe in God?” I ask her.
“Kind of.”
“Have you been baptized?”
“As a kid, yeah.” she replies.
“I’m going to talk to Pastor Brandon tomorrow. I’m gonna ask him if we can have private Bible studies.”
“Oh” she says, rolling back on her side, facing the wall. She doesn’t want to talk to me. I feel like I’m cosplaying Christianity, like someone will find out I’m faking it at any moment, that they’ll pull away the curtain and find nothing but a scared little girl.
I’m a sinner. I need to repent.
—
I was baptized at thirteen after a Bible study course in middle school compelled me to surrender my life to God, to be born again through water. The study ended with a Revelation-style reminder of just how deeply entrenched we are in sin, how little we are able to grasp about the gravity of our situation. I remember how it felt, how I couldn’t see without my glasses on, how my hair stuck to my face, how the damp washcloth over my nose felt like being suffocated, how incredibly numb I was when I was raised from the water.
The robe was white and made of a material that reminded me of the windbreaker I wore when we visited family in Washington. It smelled like chlorine, which I thought was odd. Is there chlorine in baptismal water? I stepped into the robe, finding leg holes that I’m assuming were there so I didn’t turn a sacred moment into a submerged Marilyn Monroe-esque fashion faux pas. Two church elders opened the door to my backstage room next to the tub I would soon be submerged in. The two of them — one a bald-headed man and the other a middle-aged woman — placed their hands on my shoulders and prayed. Their words floated over me and enveloped me in a sense of dread. They prayed that I live a life transformed, free from all sin. They prayed that I walk in the way of God. They prayed that I become one of Them, that God saves me a seat in Heaven. The woman handed me a Bible bound in slick brown leather. She told me she knew God had a big plan in store for me.
Day 3 – September 24, 2022
Sabbath comes. After Session Five — more testimonies from youth pastors sitting on precariously balanced wooden barstools — I try to muster up the courage to talk to Pastor Brandon. I’ve rehearsed my lines, but I can’t bring myself to say them. It feels fake, pretending to be moved, pantomiming a soul touched by God. I don’t talk to him. Not yet. If I talk to him, if I can be baptized again, maybe I’ll be better. Maybe I’ll feel different, changed. Maybe it will work this time. I’ll be saved.
Session Six is the most emotional of the retreat — a cry for repentance, begging for us to take a hard, long look into our grimy, sinful lives. We’re sinners. We don’t deserve God. We don’t deserve His Grace. We don’t deserve Heaven. But we must Believe.
One stray tear rolls down my left cheek, hitting my glasses and sliding into the crevice of my mouth. I can taste the salt. I look around the cramped auditorium, faces illuminated by glow-sticks handed out during song service. The once rowdy crowd is now somber, expressionless and cold. It strikes me now — how we’ve been lured in by song, dance, drums, only to be hooked with a call for repentance, a cold reminder to us of how undeserving we are.
My feet carry my body to Pastor Brandon. My mouth tells him how deeply I was moved, how I want to recommit my life to Christ again. It feels like I’m living in a pirated movie streamed from a lagging browser — you can see lips moving off-beat, disconnected from actual speech, as if the two could never possibly match, never meant to be — but to anyone else watching, the film plays back with perfect cadence.
Day 4 – September 25, 2022
In the morning, we have one last Session, this time a highlight reel made up of videos and photos the staff had captured across the retreat. One minute, a clip from the diving competition, the next, an image of a tear-filled student lifting her arms up in praise.
The head of the praise team speaks into the microphone, promoting his merch stand outside the auditorium, hoodies and shirts marked by words used these past four days — you are a Miracle and don’t let anyone tell you different, and make Heaven crowded. I text my mom to ask her to transfer forty bucks to my account for the hoodie. I wonder where they’re made. It’s absurd to me. A hoodie branded with salvation and made by the hands of child labor.
—
Growing up with a father working in hospital finance, my family made cross-state moves every five or so years, my education spanned across four school changes. In the too-small realm of private Adventist education, nearly every student has been conjoined at the hip since birth, a tight-knit community I quickly learned was not conducive to my attachment. School to school, I tried to break in, banging at doors, throwing rocks at windows — only to find they’ve been preemptively barricaded. Even when I decided to flatten myself just thin enough to slip through the metal grates of friendship, I couldn’t make it. I would perpetually be an outsider, craving attention, craving love, craving to be seen. I realized I didn’t belong.
I have always been driven by the crippling need to be liked — by my peers, my teachers, my family. I’ve changed shapes and sizes, donned new personas, erected new walls around me so thick that I no longer recognize what lies beneath the insulation. But this feels different. This is permanent. This feels final. If I can make Him like me, if I can be the kind of person He likes, then I’d have succeeded.
Afterword
Two years post-Bible Camp, my Opa passes away after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease the year prior. At his funeral, a video message plays — pre recorded before he lost his ability to speak. I hear his voice, and I sob.
“Recently, I was visiting with Megan , my youngest granddaughter. Megan loves books and bookstores, and I believe that our love of books is genetic. I ask her, ‘Megan, do you always read the preface, just the preface?’ You see, the preface is not the book. The book God has planned for you and for me is eternal life. Don’t mistake this life — the preface — for the real thing, eternal life, that God has in mind for us. I am eager to greet you on the first morning of eternity by God’s Grace.”
What happens if I don’t believe there’s a book at all? What happens if my life is nearing its completion, beyond the scope of a preface? What if there is a book and my life is just a preface? What comes after that?
—
If the stars were made to worship, so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made
—
I stare at the light-polluted sky, overwhelmed with the feeling of being free. It’s the third day of freshman orientation, and I’ve tagged along with my roommate to a stargazing event put on by her professor. On the rooftop of one of the science buildings, we take turns peeking through a telescope to see Venus and the moon. Having Adventist schooling has forever altered the way I see the world, something I’m now reminded of every time I see the sky. How could I look at Creation without seeing The Creator?
Earlier in the day, we ate at the dining hall, and I felt guilty for not blessing my meal. When I curse while talking to my friends, I convince myself I’m surely going to Hell. When I say goodbye and hang up the phone on my parents, I dread it will be the last time I speak to them before Judgement Day. It’s muscle memory. I live my life in constant fear that I don’t meet the standards of Heaven. Do I even want to live in somebody else’s version of Heaven?
I don’t know what I believe — and that terrifies me. My whole life, I’ve been trained to pray, to repent, to dedicate my soul to a God who I feel abandoned by. I want to believe. I want to be pure. I want to be loved by Him. I want that connection I saw hundreds of high-schoolers so effortlessly have. I want to be known.