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by Vyckie

For the past couple of weeks, I have been going through each and every post at No Longer Quivering – editing categories, tags, graphics, meta, etc., in preparation for updating this website’s layout and theme.

Yes – it’s a lot of tedious work, but it will be worth the trouble when NLQ’s navigation is greatly improved.  All of the NLQ Story posts which I have finished editing are listed on this page.  The latest batch of related posts that I have been going through is the NLQ Frequently Asked Questions.  As I’ve been re-reading and editing, I’m thinking, “Hey, this is actually some pretty good stuff!”

So I thought I’d draw new readers’ attention to this valuable resource of Quiverfull information.  If you haven’t yet read the FAQs – here’s an invitation to do so.  I have opened the comment section on most of these posts to give QFers and those readers who choose not to join the NLQ forum an opportunity to discuss and provide feedback on these important issues.

NLQ Frequently Asked Questions:

• What is Quiverfull?
• Are Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar “Quiverfull??
• How can I help my “Quiverfull” friend?
• Does Patriarchy Glorify God?
• Quiverfull and the Bible
• The Bible & Birth Control
• The Bible and the Nature of Woman
• The Bible and Male Headship – Part 1
• The Bible and Male Headship – Part 2
• The Bible and Male Headship – Part 3
• Should There Be a “You” in Quivering?
• Why Do You Call Quiverfull Legalistic?
• Why Do You Dwell in the Past ~ Why Don’t You Just Forgive and Move On?
• Is No Longer Quivering an Atheist Website?
• How did you get yourself into this mess?
• Custody Issues for ex-Quiverfull Parents

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by Whisper Rain

Whisper was taken under the wing of some of the godly people at her new church. They taught her how to sew, and how to cook the way they did… which was very different from what she was used to. She felt like there was so much she needed to learn and re-learn to be a truly godly woman, but she was willing to do it! Where would she be if she hadn’t met these people? Not living the way God expected her to, that was for sure! She was so thankful God had led her to a group of people who really understood what he wanted- people who were serious about God, and who would do anything he told them to. Looking around at the average, “professing christians” living such “lukewarm” lives, it was very clear how few people were willing to go all out for God.

All her life, Whisper had made friends easily and naturally. Until now. As her social life started to revolve more and more around people from church, Whisper felt her status as an outsider keenly. Many of the young people in the youth group had been born and raised in “The Community” or a similar one, and they didn’t seem to notice that they formed a very exclusive core group… or that the only way to be a part of it was to be born (or marry) into one of their solidly established, reputable families. Little things that were natural to them (like having been brought up speaking Dutch or German- or being proud descendants from well known Amish or Mennonite communities) quickly showed who was “in” and who was “out.” Either you naturally fit, or you didn’t. Whisper didn’t.

As far as the adults were concerned, Whisper’s drastic change (or “conversion experience,” as it came to be known), kind of gave her a pass. She acted on almost all of the teaching she received… Whisper was the ideal convert. An almost-perfect example of someone becoming a “new creation.”

Having not been brought up in The Community, Whisper began to find out that she was a bit of a bull in a china shop there. There were certain unspoken rules that were understood by everyone who had been there long… and Whisper started learning them slowly and painfully. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a “concerned person” would take it upon themselves to inform Whisper (or her mother) what people were saying about her latest faux pas. The original offended party was usually well hidden.

Whisper came to realize that no matter how hard she tried to fit and blend in… she still didn’t. These “godly people” found something to be scandalized about even in her best efforts…

She wore a necklace in public! Has no one ever taught that girl that outward adornment is sinful?? Did she have the second button of her blouse unbuttoned AGAIN too?

She refuses to wear her hair up under a white head covering, even though she WAS in church when it was mentioned that white symbolized purity, and we are the PURE bride of christ, are we not? And whoever heard of a woman getting headaches from wearing her hair up- poor girl, if only her mother knew how to guide her properly…

She had a conversation with THAT boy? When? Where? For how long? *gasp* Alone? Outside the church building? And she was laughing? Well it’s obvious what kind of girl she is…

The constant behind-her-back commentary left Whisper more confused than hurt. She didn’t understand why people would act like that… and for once she couldn’t think of any way to gloss over the ugliness of their actions. The only part of it that truly made her angry was the fact that, in all of the gossip going around about her, much of it implied some sort of wrongdoing or neglect on her parents’ part. Whisper was indignant at the idea… ever since her conversion, NONE of what she did was because of pressure from her parents. In her zeal, Whisper had become the driving force, pulling her family along in this direction. Her parents came along without complaint, but the reins of her life were once again very firmly in her own hands.

Whisper had no idea that she was about to lose them again… and this time they would be much harder to get back.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

Read all posts by Whisper Rain!

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by Vyckie Garrison

“Does God Hate Women?” author, Ophelia Benson recently shared a note which was posted on Reddit written by a young patriarch describing his “biblical marriage.”

 As Bible-believing Baptists who hold to reformed theology, X and I believe that God is sovereign in choosing who will or will not believe in him, having chosen his people before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), and that his selection is unbreakable and irresistible. If marriage is to mirror this principle, we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man and marriage is to be an unbreakable arrangement between the man and her father. Based on this reasoning, we have shunned a standard proposal and wedding ceremony, because if I had asked her to marry me (which I did not) then I would have given her the decision to marry me rather than selecting her and taking her myself. Furthermore, if we had exchanged conventional marriage vows, our union would have been based on X’s will and consent, which are not Biblical factors for marriage or salvation. Instead, I asked X’s father for his blessing in taking her hand in marriage. When he gave his blessing, X and I considered ourselves to be unbreakably betrothed in the sight of God. While we had initially intended to consummate our marriage after today’s symbolic ceremony, we instead did so secretly after private scripture reading, prayer, and mutual foot-washing.

PZ Meyers commented on Pharyngula, “It made my skin crawl.”  Yeah – mine too.

As Quiverfull Believers dig ever-deeper into their Bibles in search of the truly “biblical model” for godly marriage, ideas about courtship and “betrothal” are becoming increasingly savage and brutish.  It would seem unlikely that Courtship standards could get even more oppressive considering that Christian notions of “biblical match-making” have already been taken to outrageous extremes.

Josh Harris started a back-to-bible-living revolution among Christian young people when he advocated the courtship model in his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. What – no dating for teens? Now that’s a radical concept! As “bible believers” jumped on the bandwagon of father-led pairing of qualified young men and women in serious pursuit of marriage, popular Quiverfull patriarchs took biblical courtship to a new level of paternal domination as they pointed to Old Testament examples of “betrothal” as the very best way to ensure the future success of Christian marriage.

Jonathan Lindvall, teaching “God’s Design for Youthful Romance,” cited the betrothal of Matthew and Maranatha Chapman as an ideal example of a “true romantic betrothal.”  Lindvall describes the crazy-making process by which Maranatha’s father, Stan Owen, orchestrated a year-long betrothal which was to be a “demonstration of Christ’s coming for His bride” based on the parable of the Ten Virgins.

Mr. Owen still faithfully directed both Matthew and Maranatha to avoid physical affection until their wedding. He particularly cautioned them to guard against impatience. Especially since Maranatha was rather young, their wedding might be quite a long way off yet. Though they hoped that the time would be soon, they nevertheless resigned themselves to the real possibility that the wedding could be a matter of years down the road, much like Jacob’s seven year betrothal to Rachel (Gen. 29:18-20). Yet they were both naturally quite motivated and energetically prepared in every way they could, as quickly as they could, just in case the wedding should suddenly be announced.

Not to be outdone in the “biblical examples of courtship and marriage” department, Michael Pearl counseled his daughter, Shoshanna, to forego a state-issued marriage license:

None of my daughters or their husbands asked the state of Tennessee for permission to marry. They did not yoke themselves to government. It was a personal, private covenant, binding them together forever—until death. So when the sodomites have come to share in the state marriage licenses, which will eventually be the law, James and Shoshanna will not be in league with those perverts. And, while I am on the subject, there will come a time when faithful Christians will either revoke their state marriage licenses and establish an exclusively one man-one woman covenant of marriage, or, they will forfeit the sanctity of their covenant by being unequally yoked together with perverts. The sooner there is such a movement, the sooner we will have a voice in government. Some of you attorneys and statesmen reading this should get together and come up with an approach that will have credibility and help to impact the political process.

Yeah … that’s “bible-believing” extremism for you – and it’s not enough to practice these ideals for themselves and their children, “biblical family values” must become the law of the land.

As a former Quiverfull believer, I used to get excited at the prospect of searching the Word and discovering greater “truths” and biblical principles – the implementation of which would bring my family increasingly closer to a truly God-honoring model of marriage and Christian home life.  At the same time, I secretly dreaded what the Lord might reveal to me next through Lindvall’s Bold Christian Living, Pearl’s No Greater Joy, and other “biblical family living” ministries.  Already I was obediently and faithfully having baby after baby to the obvious detriment of my health, submitting to my abusive husband, homeschooling, homebirthing, home churching, foregoing all government assistance including potentially life-saving health insurance and food stamps, cutting off all outside relationships with family and friends who were not like-minded Quiverfull Believers …. honestly, the regimentation and isolation made for a harsh and demanding life.

“What’s next?” I frequently wondered to myself … ‘cuz my practice of Quiverfull was not “peculiar” enough already, I guess.

I am so grateful that I got out before I had a chance to “discover” the biblical principle of a man selecting and taking a wife for himself.  I am afraid, since the idea comes straight from scripture, I very well may have gone along with my daughters’ father coming to an “unbreakable arrangement” for a “godly” young man to “take them” in marriage.

Ugh.  It is a trap – a life-sucking quagmire – to attempt to order one’s family life according to a worldview which teaches that whatever is in the bible is necessarily “biblical” and normative for all times and all cultures.  I dread the thought that today’s Quiverfull daughters are now being taught that a young Christian woman “has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man” and given no decision in the convenant agreement between her father and the man who will be taking her.

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

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by Calulu

Don’t know about anyone else but one of the biggest regrets I have is that I raised my kids in the madness that was my old cult church. They didn’t ask to be part of that. We, Jim and I, drug them into it with all the best intentions. My two kids ended up being hostages to fortune during our years at Possum Creek Christian Fellowship. We started attending when Laura was 4 years old and Andy was 7 and left when they were 15 and 18 years old. A long stretch of young impressionable years.

Since it’s been about five years since we left Andy and Laura have finally felt safe enough, distant enough from the dysfunction to share with me what happened to them, how they feel about religion and our old church and how it impacts them today. All of which leaves me tearful and guilty, because, you know, as their mom I’m supposed to protect them from the bad stuff out there. Who knew a great deal of the bad stuff was going to be wrapped up in religion and the Bible?

I’ve apologized profusely to each of them, more than once and I’ve done my fair share of worrying about what the future holds for them. I worry for Andy, now 23 and doing his film project to finish up his degree in film making. His subject is an evil zombie minister. You cannot tell me this is not due to the years at PCCF and the hurt. He’s working out his issues in his art.

Laura makes me worry but she’s a much stronger individual than her brother in terms of emotion life. She has had to be because of her illnesses. But this morning she dropped a bomb on me. As I was busy brewing up a pot of coffee so we could start our day she opened up about her years with the missions organization Teen Mania. It was bad, it was ugly. She’d stayed awake most of the night looking at a website named My Teen Mania Experience, chronicling the experiences that Teen Mania doesn’t want you know to know about including the Honor Academy’s ESOAL Training.

It was all she could talk about this morning. She’d been on two Teen Mania mission trips and we’d known tons of kids from PCCF that had spent a couple of years as an Intern with Teen Mania living and studying at the Spring Valley, Texas campus. But I’d not known what they put these kids through. She showed me the news reports of the kids slogging through the mud, rolling through mounds of their classmates vomit and other questionable activities all the while Teen Mania defended it as ‘Boot Camp’ We’re a military family and I can guarentee you that Boot Camp does not make you eat a can of cat food, roll through vomit or suffer unnecessary sleep deprivation in a soaking wet sleeping bag.

My big question about this all was this. How does suffering a 90 hour torture session bring you closer to the Lord and deepen your faith? It can’t.

It can emotionally beat you into submission, take away your desire to do anything beyond survive the ordeal. You will say and do anything to get past that type of abuse, to feel like part of the group, to feel like a winner. That’s the other thing they do, heap verbal abuse on the interns during ESOAL, including calling the ones struggling ‘losers’ and ‘failures’ Some Christian love huh.

After we looked at the website and the video of ESOAL Laura and I sat down and she opened up about her Teen Mania mission experiences, good and a lot of bad.

Our church got involved with Teen Mania the usual route, by taking a group of teens over to a nearby “Acquire The Fire” event. It’s a concert with popular Christian rock bands run by the interns of Teen Mania. The emphasis is on buying their products and making a commitment to go on a Teen Mania trip as well as the usual “Rah Rah 4 Jesus” I read recently that Teen Mania clears about a cool million from each one of these events, something I was unaware at the time.

After attending an ATF event Laura felt called to go on a mission trip to Romania. We checked into it, talked to the Teen Mania people and she signed up. We had to raise what seemed like an astronomical sum of six thousand dollars for the trip. But we did it.

We put Laura on a flight to Dallas Texas to start her 6 week Romanian adventure and that’s where everything started to go haywire. She called me in tears from the Teen Mania campus a few days later. At the time her complaints seemed petty to me, complaints about housing, the heat of the place with no air conditioning, no privacy, you name it, she complained about it. I wasn’t surprised, this was the first time she’d left the cushy nest of our solidly middle class existence and I thought it would do her a world of good to spend a large chunk of her summer in a very poor country.

That summer she called every few days in tears, once she wanted to come home, complaining it was ‘too hard’ Each time I tried to sooth over her complaints and tell her to hang in there, it wasn’t for forever.

Now she’s telling me in detail things I was unaware of. While I knew they weren’t living in the Hilton I did expect safety and basic comforts. Silly me.

The campus description Laura gave me this morning sounds more like something you’d put people in to punish them. Dirty and decrepit campus. They were housed in a huge un air conditioned Quonset hut under the blazing sun of a Texas summer. There were only 6 shower stalls and toilets for hundreds of girls. One night they were woken up by a thunderstorm and told to pile all their luggage up onto of makeshift benches before going back to sleep because the hut was flooding. Flooding and they sent the kids back to sleep? But they only had a stay at the campus a few days so it could have been worse.

But this is how the interns live while they are at Teen Mania, paying to intern at this place that isn’t accredited by any school system in the US. What you can tolerate for a day or so seems abusive to put someone in for a year or more.

Once they got to Romania they were housed in an old school that had bullet holes in the walls. Again, not surprising it wasn’t the Hilton. That doesn’t bother me, what does is Laura’s descriptions of the ineptitude of the leaders, things said and done in those weeks. She said they accomplished exactly nothing on that trip. Most of the trip they sang or did a dramatic skit in a nearby park. What was so horrible for Laura on this trip she says was the unrelenting pressure to conform, that they were constantly hectored, lectured, pushed and pressured by the leadership. It was non stop and there was no down time. She said it was like cult indoctrination.

But the two biggest incidents that stand out to her and frightened me were how sickness was handled. Laura has the same inherited immune system disorders as I do and we made sure to let Teen Mania know that if Laura had a flare up she had medication with her and she would need to take the medicine and rest until the flareup passed, a day or two perhaps. Laura had a flare up, went to her intern team leader to say she needed to stay back and rest. Her team leader refused, telling her to ‘adjust your attitude’, accusing her of trying to shirk her responsibilities with a lame excuse. Laura took her meds and soldiered on and told me nothing about this until now.

The second scary incident took place when the rented bus they were traveling in had a breakdown and started putting out thick black smoke. The smoke poured into the bus over the course of about a block and a half. Kids fainted, people coughed and the asthmatics in the group reached for their inhalers. They finally got off the bus and the Teen Mania leaders took 6 of the kids to a nearby hospital. One of the girls that fainted and had not recovered they refused to take to the hospital, citing the reason as “She’s an anorexic”. Interns had to literally carry her to her room and lay her on her bed.

Two months later Laura became extremely ill. The doctors could not figure out why she was having lung troubles and respiratory infections that didn’t respond to the medication. In retrospect of what happen with the bus I have to say that it must have been damage from the smoke exposure. I cannot tell you how sick inside and guilty I feel over this. Again, I feel like I failed to protect my precious child.

The next year Laura went back to Teen Mania and over to Germany and Poland. It was a great experience with none of what happened in Romania. I asked her why she thought this was. Turns out on that trip they partnered with Jesus Revolution and it sounds like Teen Mania packed away all of their abusive corrosive behaviors. Sort of like those folks that are holier than thou at church yet morph into something quite different behind closed doors.

For Laura it seems that finding the My Teen Mania Experience website is a part of her healing and that can only be good. I hope her healing is swift.

I wish I had checked out Teen Mania with an unbiased eye back then.

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

Read all posts by Calulu!

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by Sierra

Turning eighteen was magical. Suddenly, all the job applications I seemed to be throwing down an empty chute were bounced back with interest. Sven had already landed a job at Wal-Mart in his town. Now it was my turn. I nervously sat through my job interview, not daring to hope that I might actually be on my way to earning money. When they called back with an offer, I could hardly contain my excitement.

Not only did I have a job, I had a real driver’s license. No longer did I need the supervision of an adult driver. I could take myself anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted. The freedom was intoxicating, and I found myself driving everywhere at the slightest excuse.

Now that I was mobile, my mother decided it was time to do something about the sorry state of my academic life. Homeschooling had ceased somewhere around age 15. I had been completely off the record in New Jersey, where strict homeschooling regulations would have required testing and proof of progress. Now, we were ready to move back to Pennsylvania, where the lax state laws meant I technically only needed one more year of credits. My mother decided that the best way to accomplish this would be to enroll me in community college classes, a strategy pursued by some of the boys in my church. They had used it to get a jump-start on college; at the very least, I could get a diploma out of it.

My first classroom experience since kindergarten was a twice-weekly evening class in one of the trailers behind the community college. It was a remedial math course, intended to catch me up on the untouched two-thirds of my Algebra II book, which had been only a guilt-emitting paperweight in my bedroom for the past year. I was nervous, but I also felt a sudden rush of power as I studied that remedial algebra. Although I was at a severe disadvantage, I knew that, with enough work, I could probably pass this class. I would never be like our church’s star students, both male, one working on his MBA at the esteemed Delaware Valley College. The latter’s mother lost no opportunity to remind me of that fact. And yet, the math was comfortingly rational. If I practiced enough, it came out right.

To my amazement, my tests began to come back with positive results. Not just positive results, in fact, but straight As! What is this? My mind reeled. I quickly rationalized it. This must be easy math. Anyone can do this. My whole class must be doing this well. I still might not make it in real college courses. Then I learned that the class average was something resembling a B-. I hid my starred exams under my notebooks, afraid that the other students would hate me as I quietly pondered what this meant.

Until that moment, I’d never had an opportunity to measure my own intelligence. I was terrified to learn: where were the limits of my powers? Could I make it in community college? In four-year school? In the workplace? After a lifetime of hearing that I was smart only from my parents, of getting meaningless As in a classroom of one, I threw myself into community college work with the fear ever lurking in the back of my mind, “What if I work as hard as I can and find out I’m not that smart? What then?” I resolved to work so hard that I didn’t have to find out just yet. I would tackle the challenge of this class, but not look beyond. One thing at a time.

I knew my future hinged on this. If I could make it in school, if I could make it in work, I wouldn’t be trapped in the Message of the Hour, doomed to a lifetime of incessant childbearing and submission. As I pulled into the parking lot of my community college for the last time, I noticed a promotional billboard hanging above the trailer where my class was held. Its message stunned me. I stopped the car and stared up through the windshield.

“From Homeless to Harvard,” the sign read, with a picture of a well-dressed woman beaming beside the bright red letters. It was a graduation photo. It was a picture of success, of triumph. As I got out of my mother’s car and stood gaping at the sign, an unfamiliar hope lodged in my throat like a piece of grit, nearly choking me. I, too, had lost my home – lodging, unwanted, in my grandparents’ cellar. I, too, was not expected to amount to anything – indeed, I was forbidden. William Branham saw working women as a threat to God’s order for the world. And yet, that smiling girl… she had gone to Harvard! Could I not, then, go somewhere? Could I not be something, too?

I turned in my final math exam with the lightest heart I’d felt since I was a little child, since before I’d ever heard of the Message or William Branham. I felt like a little girl again, with a whole future spread out before me for the taking. “I want to be an astronaut and an archaeologist,” the small child in my head whispered. “I want to write a book, travel the world and swim with dolphins. I want to do everything when I grow up.”

Weeks later, the final grade came in. I’d passed the math course with an A.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum.

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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Call me crazy, if you like, for suggesting this possibility… but it seems to me more likely that it is a woman’s “indiscriminate subservience” to a man which gelds him over time, rather than her spirited, loving, challenge of him.

Authoritarian patriarchy mass-produces nutless weakling men… bitter, abused women… and scarred, emotionally-deformed children, and ought be abandoned as the utter, perverse failure that it is known to be.

~comment by “Pj” on Alternet article, How I Escaped the “Biblical Family Values” Nightmare That Drives Perry, Bachmann, and Tea Party Politics

Discuss on the NLQ forum.  Comments are also open below. Feel free to post any good snippets you come across here too.

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by LivingForEternity

The other day my husband came to me and confessed that sharing our story was just very painful for him to the point of tears. Out of love and respect for him I am submitting by not continuing to tell what we have been through. He did not ask me not to, but the last thing I want to do is hurt someone that I love so much. However, I would like to share where we are now, as how we got here really doesn’t matter. We choose to live from today and not let our past dictate who we are.

We no longer have an identity created by our marriage or our children. His identity is not bound to whether or not he is a perfect “leader” of his home. Mine is not tied to being the “perfect” wife and mother. We can never be those things. We could never achieve the perfection put forth by the Pearls, Doug Phillips, or any other mortal man. We were like beautiful tombs, but were dead inside. Our identity comes from trusting in the sacrifice of our Lord. The life I live is in faith, not faith in men, but faith in God. If my husband leaves I stand, if he stays I stand. We are who we are because It is finished, the work is done on our behalf.

This had given us freedom that we never knew. Before, we thought we had to be something or do something before our lives would be perfect. We had all these ideas from men, but when these ideas did not work out the way they promised we had to turn somewhere else. This compelled us to our answer, which was our faith. Is it perfect? No. We still stumble and misunderstand, but we have a peace now that was missing. We discovered through much study and prayer how we were supposed to treat each other. Not how some man said we should treat each other. We were in roles that were not intended for us to be in.

One thing we discovered is that we desire to be praised and worshiped. For me it was praise and honor that my marriage was intact and my kids well-behaved. Serving my family was not an act of love, but one of gaining praise for myself. A patriarchal dad is the center of his home or “kingdom”. He is worshiped by absolute obedience and getting his every desire. When our son began to rebel, and I was so unhappy in my marriage I was shattered. Everything I had worked for was not turning out the way I wanted. My husband was really unhappy trying to strive for this worship, because he was not created to be worshiped. He was created to worship.

We both felt condemned, because our life was not the perfect rosy picture of happiness religious men had told us it should be. We were condemned because our older children weren’t the picture of obedience, condemned because I worked out of the home, condemned for the music we listened to, and on and on. This unhappiness led us to the discovery of Romans 8:1-2. We had read it many times before but it never spoke to us. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit has set me free from the law of sin and death. We had bound ourselves to the laws of men’s interpretation. So now we will stand in the knowledge that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We will stand firm, then, and not let ourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.

We realized that Phillips and the Pearls really have a narrow vision that can’t be applicable universally. We believe God is universal and cross-cultural. We had separated ourselves from the “bad” influences of the world. We wanted to keep our family “protected”. We lived in fear, which was wrong, because perfect love casts away fear. When Jesus walked the earth many of his friends were whores and thieves. He loved these people. The “religious” people on the other hand were constantly subject to His wrath. We were the “religious.”  This was hard for us to accept about ourselves. We had scorned the very people that Jesus loved. Since then we have opened our lives to many more people, and have been greatly blessed. We are confident that He who began a good work will complete it no matter who is in our lives.

One of the most important things we have learned is not to take ourselves too seriously. This can lead to hurt feelings, resentment, and bitterness. So we consider each other and look not only to our own interest, but to the interest of each other. Bitterness can destroy a person, so we have been gifted with the ability to let things go that have happened to us or things that we really can’t control. We bear with each other and forgive because we have been forgiven.

Notice that I say we. This has been a journey that we have taken mutually, and for that we are grateful. Neither of us could have done it without the other, nor would we be where we are today without the other being on this journey. Do we have the perfect, rosy marriage? No, but our vision is much clearer. This allows us to walk together in love and unity. If the unity is broken we have the tools to fix it. We had no one but each other on this journey, and that was good. We have been to many marriage seminars in the past, but they never helped like just being with each other through our trials. We are so very cautious now about the advice of men. It is always filtered through each other, prayer, and scripture.

The hardest thing we had to deal with was being totally open and honest with each other. That is naked and unashamed. I am not talking about being physically clothed or not, but about who we truly are and how we truly feel. We were guilty of putting conditions on our love, both with each other and our children.  In the past we were afraid to share our true selves, because of the possible condemnation. Finally being able to do this with each other has been the best part of this journey. The comfort we feel around each other has made a powerful difference in our lives. I am truly a better person, because of my husband and his unconditional love.

This is simply our story, and is not meant for advice to anyone. We have had enough advice to last us for eternity. It is our wish that it be an encouragement.

I would like to thank Vyckie for her courage in starting this website. Krwordgazer you have filled in so many gaps in my understanding. You have been blessed with a wonderful gift. Journey, Africaturtle, Dragonfly, Mamaloo, Calalu you have encouraged me with your courage and determination. Keep it up. Tess, I so want your story to have a happy ending. We are survivors.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below ~ please feel free to add your well-wishes to LivingForEternity and her family.

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Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Tess Willoughby

Part Two: The Legal Aftermath

I fled to the farm where I grew up and spent several weeks just trying to get the fuzz out of my head. I went to the doctor, who diagnosed Abi with failure to thrive. I supplemented her with formula but continued to breastfeed, because for once I had the luxury of breastfeeding by my own lights, and I intended to enjoy it. I moved six kids, 9 years old and under, in with my mom and dad, who were absolute angels about it.  I do not remember either of them complaining even once.

What were Tess’s long-term plans? Did I want separation? Divorce? Neither? Was God angry with me? Could I ever go back? I just stumbled through the days, utterly numb. I could not feel the presence of God, which struck terror into my heart. I could not pray, and opening a Bible freaked me out. Where had my faith gone? What did I believe? My thoughts were like muddy water that must be filtered through normality until the water runs clear. It took a long time to get clear, and in the meantime, I made a very costly mistake.

I filed for legal separation but then withdrew my action. Here is how this went down:

Nate called four or five times a day. He also sent multiple long emails every day. A few highlights:

• “I will counter-sue for divorce on fault-grounds of desertion.”
• “Venue (where the divorce will be held) is where the marital home is. You will have to travel back and forth repeatedly.”
• “I will avail myself in good faith of every legal procedure available. This means massive expense to your father. I will appeal any and all negative decisions.”
• “As I am living in the marital home, you will lose the [custody] fight. And of course, if I have the kids you will be paying me child support.”

In every email and phone call, Nate demanded that I come home immediately. In one email he made a condition: “Because of your hart [sic] heartedness and manifold sins against me, I will require that you sign an oath before God that you will submit to my authority completely, without question or dissention, and joyfully.”

Nate sent me the van in “good faith” to “work toward reconciliation,” but when reconciliation did not happen within his two-day deadline, he demanded the van back: his children’s sole transportation which was titled in his name. He threatened to prosecute me for possession of stolen property. He sued for divorce, alleging desertion and mental cruelty. He also sued as the children’s “next friend” against me for the “severe injuries” all six of them had suffered in the wreck (one child had a tiny cut above the eye). He sent my attorney dozens of faxes and called her office many times a day to run up my legal expenses. He mailed me the credit card bills which were in my name. He negotiated with my most prized possessions, using wedding gifts from my grandparents as bargaining chips. He demanded to talk to the children on the phone so that he could manipulate them into telling me to “come home.” They got off the phone and cried, saying, “Daddy is so lonely. Why did we leave him?”

Finally, Nate went bawling into the office of a pastor (not our pastor, of course) and got Rev. So-and-So to email me. Rev. So-and-So sent me the following proposition. We would declare a legal cease-fire and he would counsel with Nate. It was a terrible thing, Rev. So-and-So thought, to break up a family. He quoted the Bible on that score. He assured me that Nate was really repentant and seeking change. I did not want to even see Nate again, much less sleep with him, but I was still very deferential toward pastors and desperately wanted that legal cease-fire. I was not capable of traveling six hours to Virginia Beach for litigation. I was still very weak and confused and had six little kids to care for all summer. I felt guilty about the burden on my parents, which guilt Nate manipulated. My mother would have to take care of six kids so I could come to court and my father would have to pay the legal bills. I didn’t believe my lawyer when she said she could get a protective order that would keep Nate away from me and the kids, or that we would win the venue fight and I could go to court downtown, or that I would win the van in a lawsuit. Besides I had gotten a little foretaste of what even a winning legal battle with Nate would cost in time, money, and aggravation. Nate did nothing, it seemed, but sit at the computer churning out emails, letters, and legal papers around the clock. Some of the emails were composed at 2:00 a.m.

I dropped the legal separation and Nate dropped the divorce and the personal injury suit. The threatening emails became relentless, saccharine declarations of undying, “unconditional” love (Pastor So-and-So must have thought the submission oath was a bad idea).

This lasted for about a week, until Nate stormed into Pastor So-and-So’s office in a rabid froth about his marital rights. Pastor So-and-So emailed me, bewildered at the dramatic change in his penitent, who not only refused to continue the counseling, but damned Pastor So-and-So to hell for refusing to help exercise spiritual discipline over his wayward wife. Pastor So-and-So warned me not to come home.

Does it sound as though I had been gone at least a year or more, given the sheer number of tactics, schemes, scams, and coercions I’d suffered through to this point?

Guess again. Nate had done all this in just shy of six weeks.

I emailed Nate and told him I wasn’t coming back. Then I braced myself. Turns out I didn’t brace myself quite hard enough for what was coming, or how quickly.

Nate showed up at 3:00 a.m. the next morning and demanded the keys to the van or he would have us all arrested. My father gave him the keys and told him to get off his property or he’d be arrested for trespassing. I was crying over the loss of the van the next day when I got word that Nate had been at the children’s school and demanded to see his children. The principal brought them to the gym for a meeting, and Nate picked up little Moriah and ran, with the principal chasing him. The principal called me and the police, and I followed my former family van out of town in my mom’s car while having a panic attack. The police pulled Nate over but then let him go, because I had no custody papers.

The police had to pick me up out of a muddy ditch where I had collapsed, weeping, as my little girl was legally abducted. In Virginia, even if you have custody (which I didn’t), any parent who has visitation rights can abduct a child from anywhere at any time, and they are guilty of, at the most, a second-degree misdemeanor. Parental kidnappers are never subject to arrest in Virginia unless they cross state lines. It is believed that most of our missing children are missing because they were abducted by non-custodial parents. When your child is abducted by a parent who has any parental rights at all, your only recourse is to file a show cause and go to court. I would have to regain custody in Virginia Beach.

I got a lawyer in Virginia Beach and filed for divorce and custody. My attorney bills went into the stratosphere within a month. As with my former lawyer, phone calls and faxes were unceasing. One Sunday afternoon my lawyer received a 52-page fax from Nate. The personal injury suit was scheduled for trial as well.

I would not see my little girl again for nine weeks.

I had landed in the hall of mirrors commonly known as the juvenile justice system, and its machinations were limited only by the time and energy of a man possessed, a man running on sheer rage. Only with me, it would never stop with juvenile court. In fact—and I’m thankful I did not know this in 2000—it would never stop at all. When Nate said he would avail himself of every legal procedure available, and appeal every negative decision all the way up, he was making the only promises to me that he’s ever kept.

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On fundamentalist counterculture & juvenile black market adoption fantasies …

by Vyckie Garrison @ No Longer Quivering

Do you remember when it first dawned on you that your relatives are all a bunch of crackpots and weirdos?  Seems like I was around 8 or 9 — my mother worked all night in the casinos and slept most of the day, leaving me alone to protect my naïve older sister from the depraved advances of Mom’s alcoholic boyfriends and worry about my big brother’s drug addiction. I couldn’t count on my grandparents to help — they were too preoccupied with their own divorce, dating, and remarriage dramas.

“Holy sugar,” I thought to myself, “these people are seriously messed up!”

That’s about the time the fantasies began.  My home, I imagined, was a three-ring circus — and my relatives were the freaks and the clowns.  In my daydreams, I was not really one of them.  No — surely, I was of aristocratic origin.  My REAL family were royalty in a faraway Kingdom and I was born a beloved Princess in a fancy castle with many servants and my own Fairy Godmother.  Somehow, I’d been separated from my blood kin as an infant — I was captured by gypsies and sold in a black market adoption — that’s how I ended up being raised by this group of crazies!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ABC’s Primetime Nightline recently aired a segment featuring the Gil & Kelly Bates family — a conservative, Evangelical mega-family of twenty.  The Bates, who are close friends of JimBob & Michelle Duggar of TLC’s “19 and Counting” fame, hold to the extreme fundamentalist ideals of the growing “Quiverfull movement.”

During the one-hour special, Gil, Kelly, and their children explained the family’s lifestyle which, to all modern appearances, represents a throw back to the imaginary 60′s-style “Leave It to Beaver” family combined with strict, Victorian Era sexual mores and the atavistic gender roles of ancient goat-herders. The Bates eschew all forms of birth control and adhere to the marriage model of the biblical Patriarchs — with Gil as family leader and Kelly as submissive “help meet.”  Kelly and the girls adorn themselves in modest, hand-sewn dresses, while Gil and his clean-cut sons teach bible study and participate in local Tea Party politics.

Aren’t they lovely?  Don’tcha wanna be just like them?

I sure did!  I left home at 15 and embarked on a quest to recreate my long-lost perfect, happy family — my REAL courtly family, where I truly belonged.  After a false start involving marriage at 16, a baby at 19, and divorce after seven years of abuse rivaling the most astonishing freak show acts Mom’s circus family had ever performed — I remarried, found a “bible-believing” church, and worked hard within the Quiverfull counterculture to implement the best of the best biblical family values into our home life.  I had six more children. I homebirthed, homeschooled, and home-churched. I submitted to my husband and joyfully sacrificed my time, energy and talents to build him up and help him to succeed.  I published a “pro-life, pro-family” Christian family newspaper to inform and encourage other Christians to defend “Traditional Family Values.”

In 2003, we were honored as Family of the Year at the Nebraska Family Council’s “Salt & Light” awards. I’d finally made it! I had built my own Magic Kingdom where my husband reigned as King and I was his Queen, the children were our loyal subjects and we could all live happily ever after …

Like the Bates family, we were the perfect picture of the “biblical family values” fantasy — an idealistic vision of big, happy families: devoted husband and wife surrounded by a passel of respectful, obedient children — we were all sweetness and smiles.  It is this mesmerizing dream world which energizes and motivates Tea Party Republicans like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann to work tirelessly to implement the “pro-family” theocratic agenda into every aspect of American society: not only in politics, but religion, family, media, education, business and entertainment.

Fundamentalist Christians are convinced that contemporary American society is the World’s Most Spectacular Display of hideously mutated, diseased and anomalous freaks.  ”Step right up folks!” the preacher yells, “and witness a grotesque parade of ho-mo-sex-uals, lesbians, Wiccans, radical feminists, godless liberals, secular humanists, and …” (congregation gasps!) “Muslim extremists!!”

Simultaneously fascinated and horrified, respectable religious parents scramble to shield their innocent children’s eyes and ears from the depravity and corruption of “The World.”  They homeschool and form special Chastity and Creation Science clubs designed to insulate and isolate their vulnerable young from the miscreants and most depraved elements of popular culture.

It’s completely understandable and normal for preteens to create imaginary worlds — their own private, safe hideout where they can dream of nobility, of rising above and doing so much better than the clowns running the Big Top’s Museum of Mutantstrosities.  The grown-ups watch in silent, knowing amusement as kids disavow their relatives as “psychos” and “bozos.”

But when otherwise responsible, Christian adults in recent years set out on a mission to create a radically distinct way of life based on “biblical family values,” the resultant countercultural movement known as “Quiverfull” has become an all-too-real Hall of Mirrors horror show.

In my own life, perpetual pregnancies destroyed my health, and my indiscriminate acquiescence to my husband’s every whim transformed him from a loving father into a tantrum-throwing tyrant. Burnout and disillusionment led to abuse, neglect, family disintegration and a particularly nasty divorce.

When the dust settled, I took a good look at myself in the mirror.  I could no longer deny the strong family resemblance — I saw my mother in my own face staring back at me.  After all those years of fighting and denial, I had to finally accept the fact that I really am one of them — I belong to these crazy people.  I, too, am a conspicuous oddity — a bizarre spectacle and an embarrassment to my own noble children.

Funny thing is … these days, I don’t mind so much being associated with my misfit clan of circus freaks.  Life experience has given me perspective and a deep appreciation for the inevitable realities and desperate circumstances which deformed and mutated Mom and the rest of us into shocking and extraordinary creatures worthy of society’s disquietude and awe.

Black market adoption fantasies and youthful idealism are important wayposts on the journey to adulthood.  Rebellion against blatant injustice, hypocrisy, moral compromise and the myriad of other common grown-up failure is a healthy manifestation of a kid’s personal power and strong moral agency.  Arrogant and annoying, yes — but in moments of truth we have to admit, the kid’s got a point.

Society sucks.  Bigotry, racism, inequity, corruption, greed, depravity, malevolence, and all manner of evil abound. Let’s just face the fact that in many ways, the contemporary American social and political scene has devolved to become the World’s Greatest Freak Show.

No wonder Tea Party Patriot families like the Bates and the Duggars escape into their own personal fantasyland.

Ironically, with maturity comes humility — along with a profound sense of connection and belonging to that wacky bunch of buffoons who share our DNA.  We see our people with new eyes.  Sure, Grandma’s got a beard and Uncle Stan is a charlatan — Aunt Betty’s such a lunatic, she may as well have two heads.  But in the end, they’re all we’ve got.  That perfect, royal family whom we imagined searched frantically for us for years and never gave up hope that one day we would return to our true home?  They’re not real.  Cousin Roger is real — never mind that he doesn’t have a lick of sense and the only thing he’s good for is shoveling elephant shit — he’s the one who truly understands you, knows all about you, and loves you anyway.

Tea Party family values are the fundamentalists’ desperate attempt to deny their own imperfections, vulnerability, and their inescapable mortality.  Sure it hurts that they look down on us regular folk — those of us who make no pretense of actually having our acts together — they avoid being seen out in public with us, they disown us, and they shrink away in fear of catching our cooties.

But take heart — perhaps they’ll grow up.

I did.  Not saying I don’t still sometimes get all starry-eyed and visionary over the possibility of influencing our society for the better — I’ve got a bit of spunk left in me and I’m doing what I can to stick it to The Man.  But I no longer think of myself as qualitatively different or “other” than all the rest of my fellow human beings — my family.  My freakish, crazy, wonderfully imperfect people.

I don’t believe in God anymore, but I still have faith.  I have hope and I trust that collectively, we’re all gonna make it — we are learning from our mistakes and growing more compassionate.  Our shared experiences make us wiser and I have confidence that better times are just ahead.

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

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by Sierra

I loved driving. I’d always known I would. As a child, I collected Hot Wheels cars until they numbered in the hundreds. When I was twelve, my mother decided to teach me to drive in case my father’s rage spilled over completely and I needed to escape. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. The car felt huge and seemed to move so much faster when my hands were on the wheel. I crowed with pride as I successfully navigated the winding roads of our rural neighborhood, passing a UPS truck with wide eyes and short breath.

As I grew older, I periodically stowed away money for a car. At my bakery job, I thought I might finally have a chance when I amassed $1,000 – a year’s savings. Anxious to get wheels, I researched motorcycles and mopeds, which were both cheaper and had a younger age restriction, but was repeatedly told that young ladies shouldn’t ride motorcycles – how could I, in a skirt? I was prepared to make it work until winter convinced me of the foolishness of that plan. I focused my energies again on hunting for cheap cars.

Time and again my savings evaporated: my father took the thousand; rent and food took the rest. I was a contributing member of the household; that meant petty savings for a teenager’s car was low on the priority list. Each time my mother’s outdated and under-maintained car ran itself into the ground and she was forced to buy or lease another, she promised that next time, I’d get to keep the old one. It never happened.

When I was sixteen, my mother and I moved to a farmhouse apartment in a rural area with only one general store within twenty miles. I applied for a summer job there, but was last in the queue of several farm kids and was never called back. My mother commuted to the bakery, an hour’s drive, and I was left to fend for myself in the house. My halfhearted attempts to master Algebra II soon dissolved, and I began to spend my days online, as I had done three years earlier. This time, I was playing a video game: Dark Age of Camelot, an online roleplaying game. All pretense of homeschooling was silently dropped. Our house was not in order; public school was not an option. And so I vanished into a game.

Sven and I played the game first together, igniting no small controversy in the church. The fantasy genre was already suspect: everyone knew that good Christian kids didn’t read Harry Potter, much less play any game resembling (God forbid) Dungeons and Dragons, where kids practiced actual incantations and learned to command the legions of the devil. (Oh, how many high schools would mysteriously burn to the ground if that were true!)

Sven and I defended our pastime vociferously: we knew no occult spells. Sure, there was “magic” in the game, but we were only pressing buttons to launch imaginary fireballs at opponents. There was no devil here. Our loudest opponent, a 26 year old, insisted that the only way to avoid witchcraft was to avoid the appearance of magic.

He was holier than we were; he only played Grand Theft Auto.

As my life dwindled to Sunday church services and fellowship, occasional trips to northern New Jersey to work at the bakery, and the closed Algebra book on my nightstand, I investigated more areas of Dark Age of Camelot, playing in zones where Sven didn’t play, and interacting with other people. Eventually, I made friends. I joined a group called “Lema en Estela,” where I found I could live in another world: one where I didn’t have to demonstrate my piety. I could be imaginative here. I could compete and win without being told that I was violating God’s order. I could make jokes without being told to be sober and serious, for the hour was late. More important, I could have long, friendly conversations with people who accepted me for who I was.

Soon I’d abandoned Sven’s realm to spend all my time with Lema en Estela. I was hiding, but I was safe there. Safe from the impending failure that was my high school education. Safe from my father’s intrusions back into my life. Safe from the judgment of the adults at my church. Safe from the false girl friends who used me to get to Sven. Lema en Estela, as ephemeral as it was, was a beautiful refuge from what otherwise was an empty time.

In between escapes to what amounted to my own digital Narnia, I emerged to find a vale of sorrows: deaths in the church, then a death in my family. My father, who’d left us blissfully alone for three years, had lost his house and his girlfriend and dragged his own small business into the gutter with an exorbitant lifestyle. He crawled back to my mother, homeless and unemployed, and was met with open arms. God didn’t recognize their divorce, my mother said, and neither did she.

Within months, my father had taken up his post as “head of the household” again, even though he still wasn’t working. As the family patriarch, he spared no opportunity to let us know how we failed to live up to him: my mother still didn’t have a “real job,” and my “attitude” was bad. Though he had no interest in my mom’s religion, he was delighted by her submission: it provided him with a punching bag. Night after night, he told her how defective she was: mentally, physically, economically. His angry outbursts only grew worse when word arrived of his young brother’s suicide. I held my breath and disappeared into the digital world, as often as possible going unseen and unheard. I ate dinner in my room when I could and wolfed my food quickly to escape on other nights. I buried my nose in the Bible and the stack of sermons by William Branham on my mother’s nightstand. I cried out every night for the Holy Spirit to save me when thunderstorms sounded just like the first bombs of the Tribulation. The world outside was rending itself to pieces; I wondered if I might go unnoticed and survive.

I hid in my tiny digital world for a year. Sven and I occasionally met online to play strategy games or chat on AIM, but only rarely did we meet in the flesh. When we did, it was determined that I needed to be watched: we brought along his younger siblings, or one or two other friends, to ensure that no monkey business went on if we were ever allowed in the car together. Sometime during the year, I learned that Sven was encouraged to drive out on errands with his friend Jenny, alone. The injustice burned; I could understand Sven’s parents’ arguments about abstaining from the “appearance of evil” and not placing ourselves in temptation, but not why I was the only girl with whom the danger of evil and temptation lurked.

Then I turned seventeen, and a crack appeared in the ceiling of my world. I received my learner’s permit to drive. I slid behind the wheel eagerly, gripping the steering wheel like a life preserver. This would be my ticket out. I could feel a rush of independence surging from the engine, to the wheel, through my arms and up to my giddy brain. Once I was on the road, I could be my own person at last. Almost.

All I needed was that most distant of possessions for a girl growing up in fundamentalism: a job, and money of my own. That most coveted dream had dipped closer, and I reached with all my might.

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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.

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