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Changes

by Calulu

By now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve started doing some of the posting of articles and am an admin on the NLQ message board.

Why? Change is in the wind and change can be a good thing. As an artist I try to embrace change. We’ve all been through some heavy duty changes or we wouldn’t even be on this site. To change is to grow.

Recently I hurt my back, been suffering the aches of sciatica up and down both of my legs and in my back. Now in my old drinking the koolaid part-fundamental part-evangelical life I would have gone to my church’s prayer warriors and they would have told me what they always told me when I got a terrible backache. They would tell me I needed to forgive someone because it was obvious to them that I was holding only pain, bitterness and unforgiveness in my back.

This time I went to the best back doctor in the area, I’ve had medical tests that show nerve impingement, not bitterness and hatred, causing the pain. I’m going to physical therapy, making the life changes I need to make and I’m swallowing a Flexeril and Vicodin cocktail to keep the pain at a dull roar. Even thinking about taking prescriptions back in those days would have been not possible. Right now I’m thanking any deity I can think of for these wonderful medications that keep me from screaming when I put on my shoes. A good change.

One of the good things that happens with the changes in posting is that this will free up Vyckie to do more writing for NLQ as well as other tasks. She’s the heart and soul of this site and will always be. Just think of me as the site’s combination funny bone/right hand.

Speaking of Vyckie, she deserves a big old shout out and thank you for the years she’s run this site through health problems, child rearing, mud, flood, hell and high water. She’s one tough lady. What she’s been through would have killed a lesser person.

Now I’m going to plead and beg. If you look closely I’m down on my old creaky knees. Oh my back! We need writers, or non-writers, people to tell their stories, their true life stories as to how you’ve come to leave, stay, or expounding your thoughts upon patriarchal or fundamentalist type societal or religious structures. And I’m not just talking about abusive forms of Christianity. We’d love to post a series by someone from any perspective. I’m working on getting a series from a young woman in Pakistan who’s recently rejected her family’s religion of many generations. She’s a former Muslim.

If you want to talk to me about this or anything or just to tell me I’m a pathetic clown please feel free to email me at CaluluNLQ@gmail.com.

Discuss this post on the NLQ Forum. Comments are also open below.

Calulu lives near Washington DC , was raised Catholic in South Louisiana before falling in with a bunch of fallen Catholics whom had formed their own part Fundamentalist, part Evangelical church. After fifteen uncomfortable years drinking that Koolaid she left nearly 6 years ago.  Her blog is Calulu – Roadkill on the Internet Superhighway

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by Libby Anne

Yes yes, I know I said it’s about the daughters, but it’s actually about the sons too, and here’s why: Christian Patriarchy may say its about creating the perfect godly family, but, at its heart, it’s about control. Yes, that sounds kind of harsh! Let me explain.

In Christian Patriarchy, parents don’t let their children grow up and leave and make their own decisions. Instead, parents seek to control their adult children. The system only works if everyone stays in their place and does as told. The moment there is an independent thought or contrary life goal, it all falls apart.

Where do the sons come into this? It’s simple. I have brothers, and while things have been much smoother for them than they were for me or my sister, it hasn’t all been fun and games. My mother disapproves of my oldest brother because he didn’t join the military. It says something about his character, apparently. This is small hat compared to the emotional manipulation another of my brothers has experienced because my parents don’t approve of his plans for his life. Why? Because he wants to join military the wrong type of military.

This is the point I am trying to make here: the sons of patriarchy, just like the daughters, will only be smiled on so long as they believe what their parents believe and do what their parents want them to do. As soon as they have an independent thought or a contrary life plan, it’s all over.

I do have one brother who is my parents’ golden boy. Why? Because he is doing everything my parents want, and leading exactly the life they want for him, down to his chosen career path and which college he is attending. I used to be like that, basking in the glow of my parents’ approval. And then I began changing my mind on doctrinal points they considered critical and told them “no” when they told me to break up with a young man they had decided was a bad influence. I went from golden girl to outcast in one single day.

The real irony here is that both of my parents broke with their parents when they began homeschooling us. Neither set of grandparents approved, but my parents said too bad. My parents weren’t raised this way, but rather left the beliefs of their parents and started out on their own. This is actually fairly common among the parents of Christian Patriarchy. Why, then, do they refuse to let their children think and act for themselves?

Because the parents of Christian Patriarchy think they have found the perfect formula to life. They think they know everything, that they have it figured out completely. They think they hold the copyright for the definition of the word “Christian.” If you stay inside their box, you’re all right; if you step outside of it, you’re damned. It’s all about control, about keeping you on the way they think you should go.

As I watch my brother try to navigate the most trying years of a young person’s life on his own, I can’t help but shed a tear for all the sons of patriarchy. If you are one of them, let me assure you, there is nothing that will make your parents happy except doing exactly what they want. So don’t even try. Make your own life, your own way, your own decisions, your own hopes and dreams, and leave the box your parents built for you. The world is a much bigger and richer place outside.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!  Comments are also open below.

Libby Anne lives with her husband and toddler somewhere in the U.S. She has left patriarchy for feminism and has found freedom. She is a graduate student with big plans for her life. You can read her blog at Love, Joy, Feminism.

Read all posts by Libby Anne!

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by Sierra

Leaving quiverfull/patriarchal Christianity means losing approval. It means your parents, children, or spouse may reject you – or worse, implicitly disapprove while claiming to maintain a loving bond. That means that every time you talk, there’s another dagger through your heart – the feeling that you’ll never again have their respect (if you ever did in the first place) or be a whole person in their eyes (if you ever were).

It almost certainly means your community evaporates like a holographic illusion. You walk away, and it’s like you left behind a burning village with only ghosts pacing the streets. Sometimes they haunt you – follow you into your new life, reminding you at every false step that you’re on the wrong path, that they know what you really need, that you need to stop this foolish stubborn sinful willfulness and surrender to God. He loves you – the ghosts remind you when your heart is crushed – and there you went and walked away from him. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. But if you’re penitent enough, he’ll take you back, they say. Except there is no going back. There are no living things left in the village.

You are accused. Suddenly you’re worse than your abusers – sometimes the abused person you tried to defend tells you it’s all your fault. Sometimes your children curse your face. When you finally drop leaden umbrella of protection under which you were staggering, others accuse you of exposing them to the elements. Their pain is your fault, they say. Shame, shame, shame.

Your heart starts to feel like an empty steel drum. You’re “not nice.” You have a “bad attitude/heart/character/spirit/mind/soul.” You become the villain. The burning village belches smoke. Intoxicating, poisonous, cancerous. You realize you’re being suffocated with what used to be your home. You are the problem – this time it sounds like the truth, because you’re thinking it yourself now, without anybody around to tell you what they think. You have a hard heart – you say to yourself – that’s exactly what they told you would happen. How can you say you know better than they do when you’re so weary, lonely and stiff?

My village died when I was nineteen. The bodies of those I left are still there, still wearing their denim skirts and smiling their sincere but cold sympathies to the poor little lost girl they can’t admit is a woman. “We are perfect and always happy,” says their image. “You aren’t. Surely that means we have the truth and you are in denial.” I could go to see them, but their voices would be smoke and rattling chains to me now – not words, not comprehensible. I am not sure whether they or I am in the afterlife. The chasm sits there, inexplicable and unquestionable. There was a fire, and the village died.

Stories about valor and courage never tell you that the hero feels like the villain most of the time. There is no doublespeak in heroic tales. Heroes don’t feel like if they’d sit down, shut up, cover up, hide, give birth, nod, smile, listen, clean, serve, serve, serve, obey, worship, then none of this would have happened. Valorous persons never feel like they’re the ingrateful, hard-hearted, demon-possessed, selfish, bitter, angry, defensive ones, right?

Don’t they? What dishonest stories.

Nobody applauds the one who walks away from the burning village alive. What makes you so special? they ask. Why do you deserve to live? Why couldn’t you save anyone else? What made you so stupid as to live in that village, anyway? You should have known it would burn. They don’t know that you love the ghosts that send their tendrils to catch you and pull you back into the embers and debris. They can’t see if you lost limbs trying to pull your children to safety, or if your eyes are blind because you stared through the smoke looking for your spouse. The dirt on your arms means they can’t see the shackles you had to break to escape a crumbling house. All they see is a slaughtered village and a survivor – how suspicious, they think. Perhaps, how selfish.

Is it heartless to spurn the ghosts and seek out an uncharred home? Is it selfish to want to breathe clean air? Living with disapproval means only those who have left burning buildings themselves, or those who come to love their newfound survivor, will admire the resolve it took to survive. Sometimes accepting their praise feels dishonest – what did you do? You left; you quit; you changed your number/address/clothes/hair/face/life/heart. That’s not heroic – it’s not like you pulled anyone out of a fire, right? Living with disapproval means the heart must stop bleeding and form a hard, thick scab in order to keep beating. The ghosts will never forgive you – their hearts run with spirit, not blood, and they need no walls to protect their vital organs. They can run right through you with accusations, day after night after day, and never tire. But you tire, because you’re still alive.

Living with disapproval means pushing off the collapsing roof, deafening your ears, blinkering your eyes and insisting (not demanding, asking, pleading, begging, or praying) that you will live. And you will live outside your dead village for the rest of your days. The ghosts won’t praise you for it – but disapproval isn’t death.

Discuss this post on the NLQ Forum. Comments are also open below.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Unspoken Words: A Non-Prophet Message.

Read all posts by Sierra!

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by Jo @ Woman Reclaimed

We’re rapidly approaching the anniversary of when I lost my life as I knew it. I’m finally to a point where I feel strong enough to boldly face where we went, what went wrong and what we messed up so very badly. We fell down the rabbit hole of Patriarchal matrimony. We didn’t necessarily mean to do so. Certainly, we never thought we were down so far as we truly were. We thought we didn’t fully believe in wife-only submission. We thought we never believed that the wife’s salvation is based upon the Husband’s favor. In more ways than I ever understood until the journey of this last year, we did fall into the trap.

Just in case anyone is wondering what my opinion on Patriarchal marriage is now, let me make it VERY clear what my opinion is and why.

Patriarchal marriage is dangerous. First, there is NO accountability to the husband. If the husband is ungodly or inappropriate, then you are to wait for God to deal with him. So basically, a husband can tell his wife to do ANYTHING he wants. The potential to abuse this authority with NO consequences is massive and scary. Only a very few men would not become abusive in some manner or another. There is no safety for a wife if her husband becomes abusive. There is no real accountability for men.

Patriarchal leaders are very open that a wife should never, ever concern herself with what accountability or oversight might exist for a husband, because that would be dishonoring his godhead in her life to do so.

Now, that was not the aspect we accepted. Even at our most consistent with Patriarchy, we were a poor example because we rejected that my salvation came through my husband. It was easy for me to see the fallacy and danger in this concept from the start. However, we did believe it was the husband’s job to provide for his family at all costs, and the wife’s job to maintain the home and support the husband at all costs. In embracing this, we not only lost accountability for both of us, but we diverged and lived parallel lives rather than being truly joined as one.

I carried the full burden of the household. I maintained all of the schooling, all of the care for the medical needs, all of the behavioral issues, all of the feeding and cleaning, and maintenance of a large, special needs family. It was a lonely and stressful world. And, the babies kept coming, knocking my ability to manage everything off at the feet yet again. But, the final blow was the Autistic, Bipolar, VIOLENT Cystic Fibrosis child who nearly KILLED me in the last pregnancy.

For his part, my husband was expected to shoulder the full financial burden of this ever-growing, special needs family. When he had jobs that were unhealthy environments, he was not free to leave them. When finances were struggling, he was responsible for it. He had no one to help with this burden, no one to talk to, and no one who began to understand. Isolated and feeling like he could fail his family at any moment, his burdens combined with his mental health issues and his childhood abuse led him down a path where he medicated his stress and fears with an addiction. That addiction nearly destroyed our family and our marriage.

There never should have been a “his” versus “hers” in the marriage. His happiness should not have been my burden. The selfishness and isolation of Patriarchy should have never existed for him. However, he also should have been able to carry worth in the family beyond his paycheck. He was a lonely and forgotten monarch. I was a beaten down and exhausted serf. Ultimately, because Patriarchy told me to put a smile on it, and never burden him with MY failings, there was no checks and balances for either of us to truly love the other unconditionally and freely. There was no opportunity for either of us to truly support and love the other as we should have been able to do.

I was the PERFECT wife. I put his needs before mine always. I hide the challenges and struggles of actually providing for the emotional needs of this family far away from him. I structured the family around his career. I sacrificed myself in every way I was told to do so. I was the picture perfect wife. And, the world called me blessed.

If my husband had gone the normal route, he would have been abusive, or simply dismissive, an almost guarantee with this marriage outlook. He was fundamentally a decent man and went down the road of self-destruction and addiction in his own efforts to control what this dynamic brought to him.

Neither of us was more valuable than the other. Neither of us should have sacrificed permanently, nor carried an expectation that we could do whatever we wanted. We should have been fully partnered, fully accountable and fully joined with each other in all things. We should have both put each other as the priority of our lives and honored and respected the other while also holding onto our own person hood as just as valuable.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below.

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About a month ago, I came across this article:  How To Keep Someone With You Foreverfrom Issendai’s Superhero Training Journal.  The message has been haunting me ever since because I believe it is so true of abusive, patriarchal relationships ~ and it was certainly the case in my own marriage.

Quick summary:

You create a sick system.

A sick system has four basic rules:

Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think.

Rule 2: Keep them tired.

Rule 3: Keep them emotionally involved.

Rule 4: Reward intermittently.

Wow, huh?

I would love to post the entire article here as the author goes on to explain exactly how to set up such a system ~ and so much of it sounded all too familiar to me.

For example:

Keep the crises rolling.

Things will be better when…

Establish one small semi-occasional success.

Etc. ~ you get the idea.

In the time since I first read it, this article has “gone viral” ~ and for good reason.  I hope you’ll take a few minutes to follow the link and read the article in its entirety.  If a QF/P leader were looking for a step-by-step instruction manual in how to entice, capture and trap women and their families in their own sick system ~ it’s all spelled out here in simple-to-follow detail.

Ugh!

I know we discussed this already on the NLQ forum ~ but I can’t find the link, so I’ve started a new one.  Comments are also open here below.

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How I was called to give up that which I did not have..

by Arietty

In the years before the internet I relied on printed publications to nurture and sustain my life as a quiverfull homeschooling mom. It was within these publications that I found my own community in the Christian world, something which had eluded me before that.

I read Family LIfe, Above Rubies, The Teaching Home,  Gentle Spirit and a variety of photocopied newsletters from families who had ministries of sending out newsletters. It was often frustrating to me that 3 weeks would go by with no new reading material in my mail box and then BOOM it would all arrive at once. I needed this Christian reading material. It was the friends I had coffee with, the counsel I turned to, even the gossip that passed (in prayer) along the homeschooling grapevine.

I had real life contacts with homeschoolers in my city and would and attend their monthly meetings but the contortions I would have to go through to make this acceptable to my husband made it a source of stress rather than solace. He resented greatly that I should wish to spend 2 hours once a month discussing the teaching of phonics with other women and leave him at home with the sleeping children.. and I paid for my forays every single time with moods and rages and sometimes worse. I tried to go to these meetings with my homeschooling friend but her husband reacted in the same manner so our plans were often set aside for next month. In contrast to this my magazines were always there and when my husband was at work I could read them to my heart’s content.

What attracted me always was the leading to give up yourself in place of God. I loved to find testimonies where this was the driving revelation. I loved to read books where a person’s whole life was given over to doing God’s work, such as biographies of Amy Carmichael. In Family Life I saw the daily death to self of Mennonite life and I threw  myself into housekeeping with renewed promises that I would find joy in every washed dish as a service to the Lord. In Above Rubies the living sacrifice was more than scrubbing floors when tired, it was submitting to your husband as the head of the house and opening your womb for God to bless with the children he had ready for you. It seemed that always, always there was another step closer to God and further away from self one could take and I wanted very much to rid myself of any and all discontents and selfish interests and pursue God alone.

The most stirring testimony I ever read was in a little magazine called Voice. It consisted only of testimonies from a wide range of people and was published by the Full Gospel Business Mens Fellowship. I found one of them in a thrift store and took it home to read. Among tales of redemption from drugs and sin there was a heartfelt story by a Catholic priest who had been kidnapped and held hostage in Lebanon for several years, around the time that Terry Waite was also incarcerated. His life was very awful, kept locked in filthy cells, bound in chains, often blind folded and beaten. His captors moved him every few weeks to keep him from being found. He wrote sparsely of these horrors, he did not have to elaborate for the suffering to be clear. Always he prayed. When his captors moved him they did so by trussing him up tight and tying him underneath a car, often driving like that for hours.

During this time he had on his person a leather button. It had come from his overcoat which had long ago been taken from him. It was emotionally important to him because it was all he had of home, of his old life in America with his parish and family and normality. No matter how often he was moved he always had that button. Then one day, while tied under a car he let the button go.. “Here God, you can have the button.” I cried my eyes out when I read this story. Here was a man with nothing giving up his last emotional tie to the world. His life was so much more horrible than mine and I was determined to look at every thought, every desire, every piece of wishful thinking and let it go for God.

I am certainly not meaning to criticize this man whose circumstances were extreme. If that gesture gave him comfort and helped him survive his ordeal I am happy for him. But the application of this thinking was nothing if not destructive in my own life. What was I giving up? My self. My thoughts. My personality which  often seemed too spiky and abrasive for what God wanted of Christian women. My selfish desire to spend some time alone (my husband hated this) or to tell the truth when asked “how are you?” after church.

I once read a blog by a young homeschooling girl who described a horrendous home life. Her father clearly had severe mental health issues and her mother struggled with the idea of submission in this context. The poor girl lamented that her father would soon forbid her from speaking to her friends and from blogging as he had forbidden her mother from all contact outside the home and she feared she would not know how to obey him as she should. There were a flurry of replies from her friends and they were shocking.. all encouraged her to be brave! Stand firm in the Lord! You can obey your father and God will bless you! And, the ultimate encouragement, Christians had been imprisoned in communist countries for years and never wavered in their faith, cut off from the outside world as she was facing. If they could survive, so could she. 

I want to say, my dear child.. the family is not supposed to be a prison. The home is not supposed to be a place that needs to be survived. God is not calling you to give everything up to live in chains, there is no freedom there.

Martyrdom serves to make us increasingly comfortable with suffering. It does not empower us to make changes in our lives and circumstances and it does not help anyone. Unlike the priest whose story so moved me I did have options in my life. My abusive captor could be left (as the priest would have done immediately if he had had this opportunity!)

My prison could be made into a home for my children rather than a place they would grow up and seek to escape from. I was attracted to the idea of surviving hardship and being martyred because I felt absolutely bound to my life and I did not believe God had any options for me other than what I lived with. Some of the stories that inspired me were about people who really did have no options, such as the priest. Other stories were about people like me, who had come to believe that giving up their self was the only way to allow God to anoint their impoverishment because they truly did not see that that they had any choices.

After 18 months of captivity the Catholic priest was released following successful hostage negotiations and he returned home.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!

More from Arietty:

• Looking Back: My Family 10 Years on From Fundamentalism
• From the Library of Martyrdom ~ Part 1: How I was called to give up that which I did not have..
• Where are the Instructions?
• Things I Loved and Why I Really Loved Them
• My Secret Desires: Lust Behind the Modest Denim Curtain
• No-Win Scenario #2 ~ If you stay you lose, if you leave you lose ~ No Winning Allowed!

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How I was called to give up that which I did not have..

by Arietty

I began my journey into fundamentalism and a radical understanding of what it meant to be a mother via Above Rubies magazines. I was young, with an infant and toddler  and my life was very lonely and isolated, made more so by my increasingly hostile husband.

One day my family and a few of my husband’s friends took a long drive to the docks to see a visiting missionary ship. This ship sailed all over the world handing out free Christian literature and putting on evangelical presentations wherever it docked.   We had gone on a ship tour and I remember how the life on board seemed very appealing. The people living and working on the ship had a great sense of purpose, they had community and all kinds of interesting things happened to them. The bunks reminded me of youth group camps with all their intense camaraderie and no distractions from the dullness of day to day life,  just plenty of opportunity for deep emotional connections. There were children on the ship and they did their lessons by correspondence. Their world was a safe and happy one, surrounded by caring Christian adults. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful I thought if my husband felt a calling to this ministry? We could set sail into uncharted waters of the mission field. We would be protected from all the stresses that made him so angry. I would be free from the feeling that I was doing nothing with my life. And surely here, on this ship that was a family, I would find my place in the Christian world. I had had my children young and often felt dismissed by Christians my own age at church who were still in college and unmarried. “Just a mom”, I knew that is how they saw me as they got law degrees and talked of working for World Vision or Tear Fund. They weren’t my husband’s kind of people any way so even if they had welcomed me into their little groups friendships would not have worked out. But here on this ship people of all ages and backgrounds were thrown together and I was sure my husband would  succeed at being friends with diverse people if God called him to this mission.

Pausing from the tour our group was ushered into a small waiting room until it was time to watch a presentation about the ship’s history and mission work. The men launched into a heated discussion about what was wrong with the theology behind the mission group running the ship (no doubt their view of Revelation was flawed). Their wives talked excitedly about how laundry would be done on the ship, something our enthusiastic tour guide had not revealed. With nothing to say I started picking up the Christian magazines on display. And there was Above Rubies with a sticker on it saying “FREE, please take home”. Flipping through it I saw testimonies, families, recipes and a lot of cheerfulness. I had never seen this magazine before and I carefully put the three different issues available in my diaper bag.

Reading them at home I was taken aback by the anti-feminist stance, I had never been presented with this before. The church we were in at the time fancied itself left wing and would not have talked against feminism, though in fact like most churches of that era it was ruled by men and the woman’s role was to cook and wash up for important male dominated ministries. Reading the word feminism as a bad word went against everything I had embraced before I’d become a Christian and yet I kept reading these three magazines over and over.

There was one testimony that I particularly loved, by a woman who had four children. She had a part time job she enjoyed as well as playing tennis and socializing with her friends but her life was very hectic trying to fit four children into her schedule. One day when the chaos overwhelmed her she cried out to God and he answered her.. her true calling was to be a Mother for if she was not called to be a Mother why would God have blessed her with these four children? She was guilty of putting her own selfish interests (enjoyment of work, friends and hobbies) ahead of her little ones and she fell to her knees and repented, embracing her role as a Mother. Since then her life was filled with joys and she had peace at last. It was a very well written testimony and I returned to it again and again.

Why was I so inspired by this story? I had small children at home but unlike the mom in the testimony I did not work outside the home. I did not have any hobbies. I did not leave the house without children in tow and I certainly didn’t have lunch or coffee with friends. I didn’t do any of these things because to do them would have been deeply difficult. Oh I did try, try to have hobbies, try to cultivate friends.. but my husband made it very clear that I would pay with his moods and disapproval any time my involvement in such activities came to his attention. For a while I had raised rabbits but had to give that up when he refused to pay for any food for them. I tried my hand at crafts but would have to hide the results because my husband sneered at anything I made and would randomly destroy things. I could not cultivate friendships easily, I had to hope to that I would find some common ground with the wives of men he was friends with. Anyone outside this circle was suspect.

In the  few years following our visit to the mission ship I would have a third child and my life would become increasingly constrained. I continued to read my favorite testimony. I had not been able to acquire any more Above Rubies magazines because though they were free they did suggest you send in a donation. I could not ask my husband for a donation as he would never send money to what he perceived as a “woman’s magazine” (he had expressed disgust at Above Rubies because it was written by women and for women) and I could not bring myself to ask them to send it at their own cost. Some days it seemed the only kind words I heard were in the pages of those magazines.. “you’re doing a good job, being a mother is important, God loves you and values you..” I had no mother myself and I thought that if Nancy Campbell were there she would embrace me and make me feel like a worthy, good person.

Then came the day when the next stage in my journey into “radical mothering” was put in my hands: Mary Pride’s book, The Way Home. I read it. I loved it. I was convicted by this call to motherhood. Like the woman in Above Rubies I knelt down and repented of my selfish interests and promised to give up everything that deterred me from my calling.. not that there was actually anything in my life that came between me and being a mother as I had long had it all taken from me. But now.. NOW.. my impoverishment was anointed by God as a blessing. And suddenly it was not quite so unbearable.

As I stepped into the quiverfull homeschooling world I felt we were sailing into uncharted waters, that we were now called to a great purpose. I felt I had community and I was protected from the distractions of the world and my own desires. My family was going to be safe in our bunks, surrounded by those who shared our vision and isolated from evils, called by God to great things. I sent away for Above Rubies, boldly asking for several copies of each issue so I could distribute them, not worrying about the money. I would put them to good use and they would sustain and nourish me in my calling to Motherhood. I had my mission, I had charted my course and at last I felt I had something like community.

Some years later I read about the mission ship we had visited in the newspaper. It had sunk off the coast of South America. Everyone was rescued but the ship was never recovered. Its rusted hulk can still be seen jutting from the waters.

Operation Mobilizations Logos, wrecked off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, Chile.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum!

More from Arietty:

• Looking Back: My Family 10 Years on From Fundamentalism
• From the Library of Martyrdom ~ Part 2: How I was called to give up that which I did not have..
• Where are the Instructions?
• Things I Loved and Why I Really Loved Them
• My Secret Desires: Lust Behind the Modest Denim Curtain
• No-Win Scenario #2 ~ If you stay you lose, if you leave you lose ~ No Winning Allowed!

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by Vyckie

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

For the past week and a half, NLQ has been presenting the excellent material in Tapati’s Body Image Workshop.  As I’ve read through the posts and all the related comments on the NLQ forum, I’ve been thinking about how the Body Image issue is incredibly relevant to No Longer Quivering and the stories here of women who’ve left the Quiverfull philosophy and lifestyle.

In theory, virtuous Quivefull moms do not have body image issues.  I say this because, of course, there is no “you” in qivering ~ in other words, QF women are taught not to think about ourselves, our bodies, our issues.

About 10 years ago, I attended an Above Rubies retreat in California taught by Nancy Campbell.  The theme verse for the weekend was Romans 12:1, which Nancy had us memorize ~ with special emphasis on ”that ye present your bodies.” 

While acknowledging that moms of many face some special challenges physically, Nancy encouraged us not to regard our bodies as our own personal property:  our bodies belong to Jesus ~ He paid a very dear price to redeem us from eternal destruction ~ and in so doing, the Lord set an example of the sort of self-sacrificial love which we were to have towards God, our dear husbands, and our precious children: a Christ-like ”in the flesh” sort of self-sacrificial love.

Presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice was our “reasonable service.”  In giving over our reproductive lives to His service, we could not claim to be extraordinary Christians ~ no, we were only doing our duty ~ our reasonable service. 

So that’s the theory.

In practice, it’s a little more complicated because, try as we may (and QF moms do try harder perhaps than any other Christians) to take up our cross ~ to remain on the cross and not shrink back from a life of self-sacrificial love ~ we cannot escape the fact that bearing all the pregnancies and deliveries which the Lord sends our way is extremely hard on our bodies. 

No matter how faithfully the husbands carry out their part of the patriarchy deal ~ loving their wives as Christ loved the church ~ caring for her as he does his own body, no matter efficiently QF couples train their older daughters to serve Christ by serving their families ~ thereby working mother ”out of a job,” no matter how carefully QF moms follow a healthy diet and supplementation program, the repeated wear and tear of half a dozen or more pregnancies does eventually take a heavy toll on the bodies of QF women.

Here’s the really shitty part which has been bugging me lately as I’ve been considering Tapati’s body image ideas:

It seems that QF women who’ve presented their bodies as living sacrifices to God ought to have an incredibly positive body image.  These women have lovingly served their Lord, their husbands, their children ~ the very Kingdom of Heaven ~ with their bodies: and they have the stretch marks, saggy breasts, flabby bellies, and c-section scars to prove it. 

I mean, there’ve been songs written about the scars on Jesus’ hands and feet ~ visible evidence of Christ’s love which He reportedly still bears even in His resurrected body.

At the very least, QF moms’ bodies are worthy of respect and adoration on par with the Lord’s pierced hands.

So it really pains me when QF women disparage their grand-multipara bodies with comments similar to what Wendy Jeub expressed on the Secret Lives of Women, Born to Breed episode:

“Here my brother shows up for a surprise visit, and I look completely out of shape, and overweight.  And I did not like that at all.”

Okay ~ what the hell is going on in the mind of a woman who has given birth to 15 children and then feels embarrassed and miserable because she’s gained 50 pounds? 

In some religions, they’d erect a statue of Wendy Jeub in all her plump naked glory and worship this hardy woman’s staggering fertility.

The thing is ~ QF women cannot really say, Yes ~ this is screwing up my body and is slowly killing me.  Such an admission would be very poor PR for the Quiverfull message that babies are a blessing ~ because along with the blessing of abundant children comes the implied (and often, frankly stated) consequent blessing of health and prosperity.  You trust the Lord in this area of your life ~ joyfully receiving all the children He chooses to bless you with ~ and then watch and see how faithful He is to supply adequate provision for your ever-growing family.  After all, “I have never seen a righteous man forsaken nor his children begging for bread.” 

The idea is that if the Lord has deemed a couple worthy of His special blessing of children, He can also be counted on to ensure the health of the mother ~ He did say, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”  So ~ if a woman accepts the Quiverfull conviction, and subsequently suffers ill health, is that not a sign that her practice of Quiverfull is legalistic and works based?  She’s doing it in her own strength, obviously.

And so, QF women grin and “bear it.”

Quiverfull moms present their bodies, they sacrifice their bodies, they crucify their bodies, they buffet their bodies, … but they cannot love their bodies ~ in any sense of the word “love” that you care to use.

After ditching the Quiverful martyr-mentality and leaving the lifestyle, I have thought quite a lot about the body which I’d surrendered to the Lord, but now have chosen to reclaim as my own.  This body of mine has been through 10 pregnancies and delivered 7 living beings ~ 5 of them via c-section.  So, yeah ~ it’s “out of shape” (actually, it is in shape ~ the shape of a prolific mother) and in pain and I feel old and decrepit. 

BUT ~ considering everything ~ I have to admit that my body is pretty amazing.  I have a strong, powerful, resilient body ~ a survivor body which has served me admirably even though I (or rather the Lord, whose body it was) pushed it well beyond reasonable limits.

Yes ~ this is me!

About a year after leaving, I did a boudoir photo shoot as a way of reclaiming my body for me.  I had gone from denying my body, to hating it ~ eventually, I learned to accept it (this was much easier once the chronic pain disappeared) ~ and now, I want to embrace my body and even love it for the way it has so faithfully carried me through my life when it so obviously could have given up on me years ago.

I’m so jealous of Tapati’s wonderful nude image in which her big Gaia belly is the whole earth.  I try to imagine my own belly ~ which has been repeatedly stretched out and then shriveled and now flabbly hangs over my too-tight, perpetually itchy cesarean scar ~ not as a humiliatingly ugly thing which disgusts me ~ but rather, I picture it as a cultivated field which, over the years, has been ploughed under, seeded, fertilized, and has produced abundant harvests which have enriched its owner (that’d be ME ~ sorry, God ~ too bad, Warren) sevenfold.

Here’s the image of my post-QF belly which I’m carrying in my head these days.  Thank you, body ~ for all you’ve been through with me ~ and for the wonderful children you’ve produced.  I honor you.

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by Vyckie

OMG ~ I am in such horrible pain!

I guess part of what’s got me feeling so cranky lately is that the pain which is focused in my hip and radiates over the whole left side of my body ~ from my fingers down to my ankle (oh ~ my elbow!) ~ is back.

I used to live with this pain night and day for years and years, but not long after the divorce, when things started settling down for me so that I was no longer chronically stressed, it went away completely ~ and I finally felt good for the first time in over a decade.

It’s amazing how quickly I got used to feeling good ~ and after a year or more of not aching constantly ~ I am to the point that I actually EXPECT to feel good.

So now, I’ve turned into a total wimp. The pain is back and rather than suck it up and ignore the pain and just go on with my life ~ I want to curl up in my bed and cry, “Ouch ~ I hurt!”

Like a fricken baby. You know, the way some men act when they’re sick ~ like, Oh poor me ~ I’m going to die. And the women just roll their eyes and think ~ Whatever, dude.

It used to be that I seriously could not understand what everyone was whining about when they got a little cold or pulled a muscle or other minor injury ~ and they’re acting like they’re experiencing the fires of hell or something ~ I always wanted to say, “What are you bitching about? So you don’t feel good ~ get over it.” I couldn’t understand why these people couldn’t just ignore their discomfort and go about their business like I did.

But ~ now that I’ve enjoyed the privilege of having a pain-free body for an extended period of time ~ all of the sudden now, I cannot ignore the pain in my left side. I’m taking Tylenol, and I’ve got the heating pad out, I’m soaking in hot baths ~ just totally babying myself. I even called up Mimi and whined to her ~ knowing that she already has her own problems to deal with and really doesn’t need me adding my complaints to her list of stuff to bring her down. Ugh ~ how could I do that to her?

I am just freaking myself out with my inability to handle this pain. Now that I know what it’s like to feel good ~ I WANT TO FEEL GOOD.

Oh ~ and hurting like I am keeps me from sleeping well so is affecting my ability to think too ~ so if what I’ve written here makes no sense and doesn’t actually have anything to do with male privilege or whatever point I was going to make ~ well, sorry. I’ll do better some other time.

Ugh.

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by Laura

When I was growing up, my moms worked craft shows to support us kids. They often worked right through Christmas Eve and so we never celebrated Christmas actually on Dec. 25. We would usually have our Christmas celebration in the second week of January. That way my moms could take advantage of the awesome after Christmas sales available back then. It took the pressure off and I always felt like someone special when I told my friends that WE were celebrating Christmas on January 10th or what ever it was. The date was not important . The presents were! My moms always went all out. I remember going to bed and there would be nothing at all under the tree and then when I awoke…lo and behold…the living room floor was covered with gifts! It was a most wonderful experience every year. Now, my moms have told me that they didn’t really go all out. They just waited until Christmas to get us the things we needed and a few extras. It just seemed like a lot, they’d tell me. And every year my mom got me a new ornament. I loved that tradition. When I got old enough, she would let me pick it and I often chose a baby Jesus even though we never had any type of Christian celebration for Christmas. My mom would say I became her little Jesus Freak at Christmas time.

When Dale and I were first married, we had a Christmas tree. Nothing too fancy, just your average tree. But I loved it. I had my Christmas ornaments from my childhood and I proudly hung them on the fragrant branches. I loved the smell of the evergreen needles and the fun of decorating it and the beauty of it all lit up in the evenings, lights playfully blinking. We’d exchange gifts on Christmas with Dale’s family. We would also get together with my family, in the earliest part of our marriage, and do the same thing. After we moved from California to the farm, we still had a tree for a few years. Usually we got one for free from the grocery store just before they’d close on Christmas Eve. We’d take it home and I would enjoy decorating it with my little ones. Same wonderful evergreen scent, same joy at decorating and the same beauty of the twinkling ,colored lights.

Then Dale decided that he didn’t want a tree. I am not sure why but I think he felt it wasn’t honoring to God somehow. I had carried on the tradition of getting a new ornament each year for each child and I wanted to display them and enjoy them at Christmas time. A friend in our home church said that he also had gotten rid of the Christmas tree but had let his wife hang some lights in the house and she hung the ornaments on the light strings. Dale figured this would be acceptable so I was allowed to do that. I put up a small bit of resistance about not having a tree but it was really fruitless. Dale was the head of our home and as such, he had the final say whether I liked it or not. I submitted my wants and desires to him because I believed that was what was required of me by my faith and my God. I made the best of it. I was thankful that I was allowed to at least have the lights. The house still seemed somewhat festive with the twinkling lights strung all about the living room. The children’s ever growing number of ornaments were proudly displayed and enjoyed by all.

But what about the gifts? We certainly couldn’t have them under a tree since we were no longer allowed to have one. Dale didn’t want the gifts to be related in any way to the Christmas celebration. He would say “We are celebrating Jesus’ birthday. You don’t give me a gift on our son’s birthday. Why should we give each other gifts on Jesus birthday. The gifts should be for Him only. Those gifts are our loving, grateful and obedient hearts”. So no gifts on Christmas…and no tree. I asked if we could do a gift exchange on New Year’s Day instead. I told him how it was such a fond memory for me of the mornings I woke up on our Christmas to find the living room floor covered with gifts. I wanted my children to enjoy the same delight. And I wanted to enjoy their faces when they came down the stairs and saw the pile we had for them. Of course they would know it was us because Santa Claus was out of the question. Absolutely NO Santa. And NO stockings. For some reason, Dale was against them. Maybe it was because Santa was related to stockings in his mind. I never understood it but I went along. I was young and infatuated with my “godly, mature” husband and if he said “no stockings” then no stockings it was.

When Dale was growing up, his father just loved Santa. He had a Santa collection and he always made a big deal about Santa for his kids at Christmas time. He got great joy out of it and the kids did as well. Dale was raised in the Catholic Church and his family was very involved. Catholic school and the whole nine yards. It was a very big part of his growing up years. When he was still young, maybe nine or ten, he found out that Santa was not real. His parents had “lied” to him and he was devastated. Santa was a man you could not see yet he was supposed to be real. God also was someone you could not see but you were supposed to believe the He was real as well. When it became clear to Dale that Santa was a myth, he had a crisis of faith! If Santa was a fake, was God a fake too?? He didn’t want his children to go through the same doubting that he did and so he said absolutely NO Santa. The children actually grew up to be somewhat hostile toward the whole Santa thing. I remember driving through town and seeing one of those giant blow up Santas on someone’s lawn and my 6 year old piped up, “Look…it’s the big fat lie!!” We all congratulated him and agreed that yes, Santa was a big fat lie. We’d say, “Did you know that if you change the position of just two letters, Santa becomes Satan?”

So Dale and I compromised and he let me have my big present pile on New Years Day. Things went like that for probably 15 years or more. Others heard about our gift exchange and how it took the “greed factor” out of Christmas allowing us to just focus on Jesus birthday and they began to celebrate like this too. We’d have a nice dinner with a star shaped birthday cake and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Yet, I never really was satisfied with this. I came to have a lot of negativity toward Christmas because I wanted to celebrate it the “normal way” but was not allowed to do that with my children. I began to hate the Christmas season and experienced some depression when ever it rolled around. I was always relieved when it was over. Then it was time for New Years, the presents and the squeals of joy and delight from the children.

When Dale returned from his 3 month trip to Brazil, Christmas had already passed. I had spent it at the beach in California with my children and my brother. It was wonderful but again, no presents, no tree. As Christmas drew closer the next year, Dale called a family meeting and said, “God has told me that we should not be celebrating Christmas at all. He also has told me that we should not do our family gift exchange on New Years either. When I was in Brazil, it was over New Year’s eve and I went to the beach nearby. All these pagan people were writing out their wishes and desires for the coming year on pieces of paper and putting them into little boats along with candles and small gifts. They would launch the boats into the water and they believed that this ritual would somehow get them the results they had asked for, that some pagan deity would answer them. A day or two later I was talking to a man about our family and he asked how we celebrated Christmas in the United States. I said that our family was not typical and that we did things a little differently than most. I told him about our gift exchange on New Years instead of Christmas Day and he replied ‘Oh, so you celebrate New Years like we do with gifts and such.’ ‘No !No!’ I insisted. ‘We don’t celebrate like you. We are not trying to appease or gain the favor of any other god.’ After I spoke to this man I was horrified that anyone would look at our family’s way of celebrating New Years and equate it with this awful pagan ritual I witnessed. Because of this, we are not going to celebrate New Years like that any more.”

I was dumbfounded! I was also angry. How dare he take away Christmas from us! How dare he take away New Years as well!

After making this proclamation, he went around the room asking what the kids thought. Well ,of course they all agreed with him. What ever he said was God’s truth so he could not be wrong. Well, almost all the kids agreed. My little 6 year old, the “big fat lie discoverer”, said meekly, “I still want to have presents on New Years.” I piped up, “Well, so do I , come stand over here by mommy.” Dale said he would allow us to make a really BIG deal out of each child’s birthday thus covering the bases for gift giving. “We have a birthday almost every month anyway.” he said. As if one child receiving gifts was going to make up for the other ten receiving nothing until their birthday came around. As if this would make up for his taking away this wonderful celebration that our family enjoyed together. I was so angry. And so helpless. I had no voice, no recourse, no vote. He decreed, we agreed. Case closed.

I tried to make the best of it. When the children’s birthday’s would come around, I would remind him saying, “Remember, we are making a BIG deal out of their birthdays!” And he did. We spent way more money on each child than we ever had before. We got them really nice gifts and plenty of them. And I always made sure that they had a nice big pile of presents to open on their birthday. A nice BIG pile.

But when Christmas would loom on the horizon…I would become so sad. Sad that my kids never got to enjoy the fun of Santa. Sad that they couldn’t enjoy the beauty of a glittering tree full of the special tokens of love that I had chosen for them, Sad that their special New Years Celebration was no longer waiting for them around the corner. I hated the Christmas season. A Christian made me hate it.

FAST FORWARD TO 2008
Dale and I were divorced and talking about my upcoming weekend visit with the kids. He wanted me to have them on the weekend of October 17th because he was going to be out of town. I asked where he was going and he told me he was heading to Utah to meet a woman he had been chatting with on line. They had been conversing for a few months. I was happy for him (sort of) to have the possibility of a new relationship. I had one and I am basically a merciful and compassionate person…why shouldn’t he have a new “friend” as well? I agreed to take the kids that particular weekend.

He flew out to Utah, one way , and drove this woman, Loretta, and her three little kids out to the farm to meet my kids. After a few days, he put her on a plane to visit her older son. When her week long visit with her son was over, she returned to the farm and hung out for a week or so. Then he left with her and her children again to go back to Utah to get some of her things. She moved in with him and my kids. It’s interesting to me how Dale could rationalize that it was okay for him to subject my children to living with this new woman almost immediately after the children met her. She was sleeping in my room, using the bathroom he had specially built for me. They were unmarried. We humans are very rationalizing creatures. It’s as if I was so amazingly sinful to have left and yet here he was living with another woman right in front of them She lived there for about a month or so, trying to be “mom” to my kids and a mere 6 weeks after their first face to face meeting, she married him.

My understanding was that Loretta was used to celebrating Christmas the way most people (Christian and non Christian alike) do, complete with a tree, presents and even (you guessed it!) Santa Claus. The first Christmas that she lived in my house, they had a big tree covered with the ornaments I had lovingly bought for my kids. She and Dale stayed up half the night making personalized stockings for my children (and hers as well). Then on the morning of December 25, 2008, 5 days before they actually married, they opened presents and celebrated Christmas…just like I had always wanted to. My kids got to enjoy the excitement of a “real” Christmas morning but not with their mother…with this new woman who was merely living with their dad. I cannot express the astonishment, betrayal and rage that I felt at my ex that morning as I talked with each of my precious children and listened to their excited voices telling of the stockings full of goodies, each one with their names painstakingly printed on them…

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Laura’s Story:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13

More from Laura:

• The Amazing Bosch Universal Mixer
• Three Lilacs and a Statue
• Sing, sing a song….
• When am I supposed to sleep…?
• He Preferred Crest
• Santa vs. Satan

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