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by Incongruous Circumspection

I was born in Minneapolis as a boy.  Mama took one look at me and exclaimed, “I thought he was going to be Rebecca!”  Needless to say, I was scarred for life.  In those days, getting an ultrasound to determine the sex of a baby wasn’t a bygone decision and people essentially relied on the doctors and midwives to make educated guesses based on measurements, heart rates, and old wives tales.

Yes, I was born in a hospital.  My mother birthed all seven of us children before she entered the world of Bill Gothard (Billy Boy G.), i.e. no home births.   Thus, there were no complications when she had to have an emergency C-section with my younger sister (though she constantly attributed that sister’s rebellion to not being squeezed through the birth canal).

I was the middle child of seven.  I had an older sister, two older twin brothers, two younger sisters, and my baby bro.  We were all within 7.5 years in age, allowing us to be very close as we tried to navigate the hell that was to be our childhood and young adult years.

My father tells the story that he knew something was wrong with Mama when my older sister (I’ll call her Marie) was beaten at the ripe old age of six months – for crying.  This practice helped Mama fit in to her new-found faith once she found Billy Boy G in 1987, 10 years later.  Marie was beaten until she escaped at 25 years old, a fact you might remember from my previous installments.

The only memory I have of being beaten during my “little years” was when we were being babysat by an aunt.  The aunt was a good woman and allowed kids to be kids.  I climbed up on the dresser in the boys’ bedroom and knocked a bunch of clothes off of it.  As a young whippersnapper, I never cleaned up my messes – unless I was beaten.  Children tend to learn things like that quickly.  Mama came home and found the mess and lit into me.  I have no recollection of the beating –just the narrative.  And she never let me forget. Years later, she still used that incident as proof that I was a disobedient, evil, louse.

I saw very little of my dad and have almost no memories of him from when I was younger.  He was going to night school to finish his law and accounting degrees while working full time as an accountant to feed his burgeoning family.  As far as I can remember, not one good word ever came out of Mama’s mouth about him.

“Your father is lazy.”  “Papa can’t hold a job down.”  “You are not allowed to play with Papa when he comes home because he allows you to do disobedient things.”  So much for such little minds to take in.  And guess what…we believed every word of it.  After all, Mama was with us twenty-four hours a day.  She fed, clothed, and beat us.  Why wouldn’t we believe every word?  Our livelihood depended on it.

I learned to hate my father.  This would prove to be a feeling that would take years to reverse.  Even today, I love him dearly and yet still find it difficult to form a close bond.  I missed so much during those years as a brainwashed little boy.

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I am a 30 something husband of one and father of 6 dynamic and loud children. My wife and I are still madly in love – at least in my view. My world is exciting, tense, and full of life. I love to write and hope to one day, do it full time. – Incongruous Circumspection

Read all posts by Incongruous Circumspection!

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Anthony and I maintained a long-distance courtship until shortly before I turned 18, whereupon he moved to where I was safely ensconced at a conservative Catholic university. Our arguments grew in number when we spent more time together, but I pretended nothing was wrong. After all, I should feel guilty. He was trying to encourage me to grow spiritually when I wasn’t willing to take chances and trust in God. Still, I loved him, and even though I hated how he told me what to do at times, I knew it was in my best interest.

That spring, he drove me home from school, where my parents were waiting. Unexpectedly, they called us in to discuss the state of our relationship. Having only received encouragement from them throughout the year, we were a little startled at this, but went willingly. They confronted us with concerns brought to them by a family we attended church with; we were not emotionally or spiritually mature enough, and our relationship was moving too quickly, especially physically.

My first reaction was anger and hurt that they would suggest I had broken my vows of purity (which I had not). The next concern was what was meant by too fast? We were courting, and as far as I was led to understand, that meant we were involved in a serious relationship with marriage as the goal. I was certain I wanted to marry him. Physically, we kissed on the cheek and hugged and held hands. Spiritually, I pointed out to my parents that he was challenging and encouraging me in my walk.

Undaunted by our arguments and defenses, my parents decreed that they did not feel we were ready for this relationship. To illustrate this point, and help us grow as respective individuals, they were instituting a one year moratorium on our relationship. We were not breaking up, but merely putting a pause on the way things were. During this time, we were to have absolutely no contact with each other, whatsoever. Flabbergasted, we had no choice but to accept.

I was hurt and angry and broken on the inside. I felt like they didn’t trust me anymore, and I didn’t understand. I was mature enough to go to college, and to start a relationship, but now they had to put it on hold, citing that I wasn’t mature enough to continue it… but wouldn’t break it off altogether. That summer I made the decision to move out, transferring to a college near some friends, and I moved in with them.

I had multiple opportunities to enter into contact with Anthony, but I didn’t want be so willfully disobedient. I had honour thy parents hanging over my head, despite the aching of my heart. I avoided conversations with him on my blog, on forums we were both on, and tried instead to concentrate on prayer, fasting, and spiritual growth. Inwardly, I was crying to the Theotokos and asking her what I had done wrong to deserve this.

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by Sierra

“When I was your age, my parents wouldn’t send me to college,” my mother was telling me. “I had to work my way through on my own. I don’t want you to have to stop. I will do everything I can to help you keep going to school. Your education is the most important thing to me.”

We stood in the kitchen, a printed letter lying on the counter between us. It was not good news.

I glanced up at my mother with a strained smile. I knew that if wishes could be cashed at the bank, I’d be writing my admissions essay to an ivy-coated castle. Instead, I was trying to find a way to pay the bill from my last semester of community college in time to register for fall classes. It was already August.

My work at Wal-Mart paid eight-fifty an hour: better than all the other work options for teenagers in the area. My schedule was already as close to full-time as it could be without requiring the company to offer me benefits. My hands were tied: I could take another part-time job, but when would I go to school? It was all I could do to keep our car paid for and insured while my mother handled the rent and utilities. College tuition had slipped between more pressing matters like food and transportation, and dragging it back to current status again would not be easy.

Still, I was grateful to have a mother who dared to disagree with the life track laid out before me. A Catholic turned evangelical, my mother was a radical believer in forging new paths. She had, after all, followed her heart out of her family’s religion when I was still a toddler. Going to college was my chance to discover what God had in store for me as an individual, she thought. I knew already that beliefs like these made my mother an outsider, a liberal and a radical in my church of stay-at-home daughters and unremitting parental supervision. What I did not yet know was how short and how tight the bonds were that held my friends.

“Why don’t you fill out your FAFSA?” my mother suggested. “Maybe you can get grants or student loans. They might offer you more if you apply to a four-year school. Let’s drive around and look for a college where you can transfer your credits.

I loved Rowling College on sight. The sprawling green lawn, ancient shady oaks and dark grey stone of its oldest building washed over me in a wave of color and charm. “It looks like a little Harvard,” I told my mother breathlessly. A more culturally adept young woman might have said it looked like Hogwarts.

The admissions counselor radiated warmth and hope. She beamed at my community college transcripts. No, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have SATs, she said. My grades proved that I could handle introductory classes. I felt a bubble of excitement rising in my throat, and firmly swallowed it. I would assume that this all was beyond my grasp, I decided. If it proved true, I would be pleasantly surprised. If it didn’t, I would not allow myself to feel the disappointment. I can go back to college later, I reasoned. There is a manager position opening at my store.

I was only half fooling myself. As I sipped the coffee and marveled at the expensive upholstery in the admissions office, I imagined myself striding up the long path to the college’s double doors, each step declaring, “I belong here.”

“What are your career goals?” the admissions counselor asked me.

“I want to go to graduate school and become a writer,” I said. Then, daringly, “I want to go to Harvard.” Saying it aloud sounded absurd, but there it was. The story of the homeless girl who had walked through its gates gave me not only the dream, but the audacity to name it.

The counselor smiled. “We’ll get you to Harvard.” Rowling had sent students there before. Other students had sat in this chair and then gone on to great things. Why indeed couldn’t I?

The next two weeks were spent working and trying not to think about whether or not my application would be approved. My retired friend Jim, the store greeter, welcomed my news and bolstered my hopes. “That’s good,” he told me. “You should go to college. You’re smart. Get the hell out of here while you’re young.” I grinned, and told him I intended to do so. I could still hear my community college teacher’s words in the back of my mind. You could be a writer. You could go to grad school. Graduate school seemed like the most glamorous place in the world.

Meanwhile, my friends at a sister church were catching the education fever. I learned of their ambitions in a phone call with their ambassador: Jennifer. A tall, active, tomboyish young woman, Jennifer had gone out of her way to befriend me on the basis of our shared connection with my best friend Sven. Despite the fact that her church was in Connecticut and mine in Pennsylvania, she kept in touch via the internet and periodically came to visit. Demographically, our churches seemed destined to be a match: her youth group was comprised mainly of girls, whereas mine was overwhelmingly slanted toward the boys. That spring, I’d been invited to spend a week at Jennifer’s house, where I’d met her circle of friends and found myself in the strange position of what felt like the ambassador from Land of Raining Men. It appeared that my church had been sighted as a hunting ground for husbands. Knowing that we were expected not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, I suppressed my disgust with the contrivance of it all and dutifully related the names and ages of the potential suitors that I knew, possessively avoiding Sven’s. A decade had taught me that he was safe: passive and uncontrolling. A girl who had no intentions of obedience had first to ensure that she’d never be ordered to do anything.

As I told Jennifer about my nascent college plans, she burst out in excitement: “We’re going too! A bunch of us are applying to Bob Jones University.”

Bob Jones? I’d heard that name before. Other homeschooling families in my church used Bob Jones textbooks. My mother had discarded them as dull and political, opting for the more flexible and artistic Sonlight curriculum instead. I had no idea that Bob Jones had founded a university, nor (as I was just realizing) did I have any idea who Bob Jones really was.

“I told my dad that it would be okay since we won’t be going alone,” Jennifer continued. “We’ll watch out for each other. It’s a Christian college. We won’t have to worry about drinking or partying or any of that. You should come with us!”

I froze. Rowling College’s wrought-iron lampposts and immaculate lawn flashed in front of my eyes. I want to go to a real school, came the unstoppable silent protest. I was immediately wracked with guilt. What do you have against Bob Jones? I asked myself furiously. How do you know it’s not a “real” school? But the steely voice in my head would not be silenced. I don’t care if this makes me a terrible, judgmental person. I want to go to a real school, and that does not include Bob Jones.

“Maybe,” I answered finally, failing to muster any enthusiasm. I told my mother nothing, fearful that she would think it was a good idea and my Rowling plans would evaporate before my eyes.

I slept fitfully that night. I pictured myself bursting through the chains that had held me in one place for too long, only to find myself swept away into a dreary black-and-white encampment. I saw the dull stone halls filled with good Christian husbands, all grey and lifeless. I saw the parade of unthreatening ideas, the inevitable fight against the Trinity but the ultimate surety of everything else. A silent scream welled up inside me. Away in the distance there stood the gates of Rowling, vibrant with promise, a dark channel separating me from them. I wanted to jump, to take the greatest risk, to grapple with the edges of the chasm and yank myself up. I feared the abyss not because I would be striking something unknown, but because I was afraid that I’d never know anything else. Bob Jones University, that good Christian college, in its very safety and certainty struck me with terror. I could not go where Jennifer went, even if it meant giving up everything.

Later that week, as I finished a shift at Wal-Mart and returned my tray to the manager, I heard my mother call my name. I turned to see her striding rapidly toward me, waving an envelope.

She couldn’t hold it in. “You were accepted!” she cried.

I scrambled for the letter and held it up before my eyes in shock. My frantic eyes struggled to focus. Rowling had taken me in. I was in! I was a real college student. With scholarships. The store spun and danced around me. I was dimly aware of my Wal-Mart managers grinning and patting me on the back. All I could see was the small black print: “Congratulations!”

As I studied my admissions package that night, I learned that I would be starting classes in a week. My first semester was paid for. I would only have to cover my books. I would even be moving onto campus! Since my room and board were covered under my scholarship package, it would cost more to commute. Apprehensively, I filled out my roommate survey. “Likes to read,” I wrote. “Very quiet. Early riser.” The excitement outweighed my nervousness. I would get to live on campus! I would get to eat in the cafeteria and study in the library. It was all so overwhelmingly new.

I was giddy as I called Jennifer to tell her the good news. When she answered, however, I knew that mine was a solitary joy. The tide had shifted. The sisterhood of Bob Jones would never be.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The elders of my church had a special meeting,” she sighed. “They decided that it wasn’t right for young women to go away together and live on their own. They said we would be too far away from our fathers’ headship.”

I hung up the phone with tears of rage stinging my eyes. Just like that, my friends’ futures had been sealed, their hopes crushed, their homes transformed into prisons. The doors of opportunity had slammed shut, and I stood alone on the outside. A cold fear settled on my shoulders, Frantically, I began packing my belongings, looking ahead to my move-in date with trepidation. If I could just move onto campus, I would be safe then. I would never come back, never be caught, never be caged. I thanked God for my faithless father, knowing now that only the “headless” state of my family permitted my escape. As I stuffed t-shirt after modest t-shirt into my luggage, I wept for my friends. There was nothing godly about this, nothing loving, nothing just. The girls had done everything right, but it was not enough. No amount of prayer or planning would be enough to let mere women follow their dreams, unsupervised.

If I make it to college, I promised God, I will work with all my might. I will take every opportunity in sight. I will not squander this gift.

For the next six days, I waited for the hammer to fall.

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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by Incongruous Circumspection

I will begin this series with a look into the childhood of my Mama.  In fact, let’s go even further back to how her parents met.  This look into my mother’s growing up years will give the reader some sense of why she did what she did.

Grandpa fought in the Atlantic Theater in World War II.  Grandma was the secretary to the Secretary of State. She had a small side-job for the government – meeting the young men who came back from war, as a dancer.  Yes, the government would provide women to dance with the young lads on leave. It was at one of these functions that Grandpa met Grandma and they fell in love.  They were married shortly thereafter.  Both were devout Catholics, and made that clear, by having a total of nine children.  My mother popped out as the second oldest.

Grandpa was many things.  He bought the family a horse ranch in Big Lake, Minnesota.  That ranch was the source of many, maybe all, of my mother’s fond childhood memories.  When the family lost the ranch,  my mother was crushed.  She loved her horses and the “getting away” that the ranch provided. Grandpa was also a devout Republican and yet, he had many friends in high places in both major political parties.  He was good friends with George McGovern,  had an excellent friendship with Hubert H. Humphrey, knew Nixon, and loved Ronald Reagan.  He was friends with the family of Amy Klobuchar and watched her grow up.

His connections led him to start a newspaper that would rival the other large Minneapolis rags, which, at the time, were both on strike.  The paper went well for a while and then the other two papers merged, which caused the strike to end.  Grandpa’s partners pulled their money, and he was left broke and weeping.  Until his death, Grandpa ran a few daily circulars or weekly newsletters to support the family.  When money ran short, he would spin off to Las Vegas to increase his monetary footprint or even send one of his children to “make some money”. Once, he handed my mother $40 and sent her to the City of Sin.  She went with no clue how to gamble and ended up winning $400.  She did the math and realized that that was a pretty decent haul and went right back home, much to the consternation of Grandpa.  He was of the mindset that, if things were going well, they would keep going well.  Thus, if you won $400 from $40, you would easily haul away $4000 from $400.

Grandpa also had a dark side.  He had numerous extra-marital affairs.  It was rumored that he fathered a child by one of his secretaries. Half the family fled to California in disgust and anger.  My mother was one of them.  His sexual abuse was also both documented and rumored.  You will see, later in my story, how this translated to how my mother raised her own children.  Through all of this tumultuous life, Grandpa stuck with Grandma and they loved each other very much.  He died in her arms.

At 19 years old, my mother was in charge of her father’s newsroom and directed the editing of the paper.  She was, and is, very intelligent and knows what she is doing at every juncture in her life.  She lived precariously, but never drank an ounce of liquor, did any drugs, nor did she ever smoke.  Once she went out with a police officer who took her on a ride-along while sipping from a flask of whiskey on a necklace.  He flipped the squad car and Mama broke her neck, collarbone, and arm.  She bears the scars of surgery to this day and can predict the weather with the subsequent aches and pains. After she left the paper, she  became a cab driver.  The cab company went on strike and Mama became a scab.  She caught the eye of my dad, the company dispatcher. They were married not long after he proposed to her, over the dispatch radio.

And that was her life before us.

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

I am a 30 something husband of one and father of 6 dynamic and loud children. My wife and I are still madly in love – at least in my view. My world is exciting, tense, and full of life. I love to write and hope to one day, do it full time. – Incongruous Circumspection

Read all posts by Incongruous Circumspection!

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My name is Incongruous Circumspection.

You can call me Circ, for short, as long as it doesn’t make you think of circumcision.  Then again, if you are at all familiar with Christianity, circumcision and the analogies of circumcision are all too familiar and you will feel more than comfortable calling me Circ.  In fact, being Circ, you may view me as a sort of King David, being that he circ-ed hundreds of dudes for some chicks big time dad to let him marry his daughter.  After all, I love women as much and more than David ever did.  I just don’t peep from rooftops.

Ok, enough of that rabbit trail.  Let me further introduce myself.

I will be writing my story from beginning to end (though it hardly has an end, at this point) and will occasionally write commentary on current events that I find troubling, guffaw-ready, or even celebratory – advancing the power of women and men together.

I am a husband of one woman.  She is so smokin’ hot I have trouble concentrating at work, play, and even while sleeping.  We have been married for over ten years and have been growing closer as the days go by.  We have six children.  They are aged 9, 8, 6, 4, 2, and 1.

While I love children and hate them at the same time, we are done for good.  I got snipped as a Christmas present to my wife last December and our sex life has never been better.

I grew up in a matriarchal home (single mom) with patriarchal ideals.  We churched in a commune sort of church and socialized with only those people that agreed with us and swallowed Billy G. (Gothard) whole.

We learned about sex being evil, women being inferior, men being the spiritual leader of the home and always expected to be perfect, the Bible being inerrant and infallible, the Republican Party being configured to usher in the second coming of Christ, the idea that all liberals were the spawn of Satan, children were supposed to be beaten into submission, shirts were to be buttoned to the neck, shorts were evil, women were to wear dresses, skirts, and jumpers at all times (even while swimming), the idea that bunches of children that you couldn’t support made you more holy in the sight of God, the evils of public school, and much more.

I rejected most of this on the surface of my life when I “ran away” at the age of 19.  But, I still lived with the guilt and the foundational principles of red-blooded ultraconservative Christianity.  I took it into my marriage and made the first six years a living hell at times, with many a bright spot in between.

Eighteen months ago, we finally cast off the last piece of the baloney sausage and moved into a life of freedom and happiness.  I became an agnostic and my wife became a questioning Christian.

My story will hit on many of the juicy details of my growing up years.  The abuse of my mother.  The physical, emotional, and borderline sexual abuse.  The spanking of my sisters until they were 25 years of age.  Being accused of having two affairs because I left a church.  Learning to swear intelligently and then overusing the talent.  It will all be mixed in with my sorry attempt at humor.

I hope to keep your attention and learn you a thing or two about patriarchal and quiverful life from the perspective of a man who would rather be submissive to a woman (or many women) so I don’t have to go through the tiring pretense of trying to be perfect.

I look forward to it.

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

I am a 30 something husband of one and father of 6 dynamic and loud children. My wife and I are still madly in love – at least in my view. My world is exciting, tense, and full of life. I love to write and hope to one day, do it full time. – Incongruous Circumspection

Read all posts by Incongruous Circumspection!

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by Calulu

Aretha Franklin - “You better think about the consequences of your actions.”

Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy – “ Oh shut up woman!”

(Loving borrowed from the movie “The Blues Brothers”)

A few months ago I lent out a book by a newer young minister to a friend of mine named Georgia. Georgia has recently made it out of the mess Possum Creek Christian Fellowship devolved into. We’d been talking about new teachings we’d encountered and I’d explained that I liked this guy’s style, I steered my friend Georgia to his teachings on You Tube and lend her that book. Minister X actually has a new book out but I lent her one of the older books first.

Georgia is one of those ladies I had remained friends with even after she stayed and I skedaddled out of PCCF. She’s one of the more relaxed ones and I thought maybe she’d enjoy looking at faith from a different angle. I guess I was sorely mistaken.

Today I got the book back, sent through someone else we both knew. It was shoved down in a bag underneath a thick sheath of clippings from many magazines, newspapers, computer printed papers, several tracts and pamphlets. On top of those were plastic bags for me to recycle craft, my two compartment crudites serving bowl, a baggie of cooked squash and a few late fall vegetables from her garden. I was confused by this, particularly as I unpacked the bag, realizing that the book and accompanying papers were wrapped in brown paper and garden twine like some sort of trash or porn, something disgraceful and yuck. Something you’d bury to keep others from seeing.

When I unwrapped that bundle I knew this just wasn’t any kind of a good sign. I’d hit a nerve or something so I was relieved the paper didn’t contain white powder or nuclear waste. As I read through the clippings, print outs, tracts and other nonsense I finally got to Georgia’s long handwritten screed. She admitted she’d only read a few pages of the book, not many at all, but that Reverend So-N-So on TV Station Y, Pastor Jinks on Radio WJDG, Teacher Itchy-Man at Look At Me Ministries, ad infinitum just didn’t approve of ANY of Minister X’s writings. X was going to Double H E Hockey Sticks for his various writings.

I mean, I found this all very confusing because the book I loaned out was basically about how if you going to be a Christian you needed to be very naturally that way, that your relationship with the Divine should not be like an old coat that stays in the back your closet you put on only when you feel like. It’s not too different than teachings at conferences we’d attended in the past. You’d think he’d written the Evangelical Anarchist Cookbook with directions on how to get high on communion wine and wafers. Or sticking a banana in the tailpipe of your least favorite pastor’s car. Or overthrowing polite society for fun. Or Halloween, don’t get me started about Halloween.

It wasn’t hard to see that everyone Georgia was citing that was condemning young X was all for his latest book, one where he suggests that God loves us. It’s one of his main themes. Apparently everyone in imaginary authority over religious hordes in that sea of papers hailed from the Evangelical to the Fundamental. They railed and thundered because this newest book contained not one reference to sin, guilt, punishment, repentance or burning in hell.

The reason I haven’t named the author or the book is because it really wasn’t about Minister X and his book. It was about new notions, thinking about Christianity in differing ways. The fear of the unknown, something new or different … oooooh, boogieman hiding under the bed scary!!

What is it that is so damned frightening to the Fundi-Evangi-whatever crowd about critical thinking and analysis, with new ideas? They are all so sure they and only they have the truth, all the while busily quashing any semblance of using the old brain and fighting over turf with each other. They sometimes remind me a pack of wild dogs, growling, barking, tussling over the last greasy steak bone. I believe they are probably all that selfish too.

Life is all about change and if you aren’t open to change you sure aren’t going to grow as a person. You’re going to stay the same, safe and stagnant, missing out on the great things, missing out on wonder, joy and new vistas. Just think of all you’d miss out on. It would be tragic. You’re too busy hiding under the bed with that boogie man.

Tomorrow I’m going to write a card out to Georgia telling her how sorry I am she didn’t enjoy the book. Plus that I wasn’t wholeheartedly endorsing every word from the book, I just thought the book contained some unusual ideas and everyone is certainly entitled to an opinion.

Opinions are frightening to those who pretend to be sure about everything but secretly struggle to believe. It’s just too threatening to them.

I can’t understand that fear any longer. I guess after 5 years of Koolaid detox there’s not enough left in my system to make new ideas scary. I’m so glad. For bonus points her triggering merely puzzled me, didn’t trigger my old feelings of rejection and hurt.

Georgia did do me one service. It’s winter and I can use all the kindling I can get for the wood stove. That pile of nonsense rolled up nicely to start the fire this evening. That is the best consequence of her papers since it wouldn’t behoove me to say to her ‘Oh shut up woman!’

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

Read all posts by Calulu!

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Growing up, I read books like The King’s Daughter, Dear Princess, Beautiful Girlhood, Waiting for Her Isaac, and The Courtship of Sarah MacLean over and over. I would plan out having twenty six children, so I could use every letter of the alphabet when I named them. I would try to devise my own homeschool curriculum based on the ones I had used, and what I liked and didn’t like about them. On top of all that, I was writing my own Proverbs 31 devotional.

And yet, somewhere in all of this, I was still punching things into a ”computer” on a tree, and yelling for everyone to get out and climb the Jeffries Tubes because of a warp core breach. Rather than make a hoop skirt, I made a Confederate general’s uniform for the end of unit celebration. I was almost fifteen, the homeschool convention was happening over my birthday, and I wanted two things: a Vision Forum pop gun, and a purity ring from Generations of Virtue.

I got both.

They probably assumed the pop-gun would do little harm, after all, I had seven brothers and probably wanted to use it on them, until I tired of it and returned to my books and daydreams. The people at the Vision Forum booth looked a little more wary when they saw my dad hand the pop-gun over to me, but I didn’t care. After all, I’d grown up fashioning blasters out of Legos with my brothers, so we could play at Star Wars or Star Trek. Now I just had a gun that actually made noise when you shot it!

I spent hours trying to decide on a purity ring. I wanted one with meaning, and I wanted it to be pretty. Besides, the more time I spent there, the more likely I was to convince my parents that I really wanted the newest Ludy book. After we picked up the purity ring, my dad and I had a talk about what it meant. I told him what I wanted, and I promised to remain pure until marriage.

Looking back, I wonder why I was promising things at 14 that were so far in the future. I was blissfully ignorant of the concept of ideas and people changing, and in my naivete, I assumed that what I thought on that day would still hold true in 5 years. Even if it didn’t, I had the guilt of breaking promises hanging over my head.

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Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Tess Willoughby

September 11, 2001. This dark day united all Americans in horror, in terror, and in pain.

With at least one exception: Nate Willoughby.

I found out that our country had been attacked using our own commercial aircraft when my mother called me from town and said, “Turn on the news.” Her tone of voice suggested the worst of the worst of the worst: so awful that you didn’t ask “what channel?” because it didn’t matter what channel. The president had been assassinated. There was some horrific, unthinkable natural disaster, probably in Virginia. Something so bad she couldn’t say it.

I hung up, turned on the TV and watched the Twin Towers burn, holding the phone in my hand.

The phone rang. I hit the answer button. Nate lit into me about how I needed to come back to him and I was in rebellion against God and would probably go to hell.

I swallowed and sat on the floor and said, “Are you aware that terrorists have attacked New York City? The World Trade Center is burning!”

Nate said, “Who cares. We’re talking about my life.”

I hung up on him and sobbed and choked in front of the TV until I didn’t have any more strength to cry. How mean and insane was my husband? How would I ever get away from this vindictive bastard without being destroyed? Was Nate even human? Was my country’s government about to fall? How many more planes had been hijacked, and what would blow up next? It felt as though my own personal hell had unleashed national horrors and worldwide chaos. The lid had blown off life itself and nothing venerable, nothing precious, nothing good could stand. My own personal, religious zealot terrorist had gone global somehow and the world was burning and crumbling to the ground; nothing and nobody was safe from crazy men with extreme religious agendas.

Post-traumatic stress does funky things with your brain. That September, I believed that I had landed in a world without personal boundaries, without national security: a world of merciless anarchy where freedom was not only impossible but a joke and and an illusion. A world where terrorists could strike anywhere and nightmarish, ruinously expensive court hearings never ended, but God was silent. I believed that I could lose absolutely everything, even my nation. If not for my parents, I would have lost my sanity.

My divorce lawyer had been worn down by Nate’s bullying to the breaking point. She was pushing me to agree to a no-fault divorce with all legal issues reserved for later. She would do nothing to get me any permanent alimony, nothing to get me any property, nothing to get me permanent custody of my children, nothing to help me with the personal injury suit, nothing at all except to sign a no-fault divorce decree now that the year-long waiting period was over.  She made it clear that I had no choice in this—in order to continue to represent me, she would have to hire additional staff to keep up with Nate, who had her completely buried in paperwork.

My lawyer was quitting, and she hated to bring it up but. . .I owed her $30,000.00. When my dad and I couldn’t pay any more, she put me on a payment plan. When we couldn’t make the payments, she turned me over to a collection agency. That collection agency, Chase and Citibank (Nate had credit cards in my name, remember?) called me every day.

Nate paid no child support, of course. He had a child support matter filed in court (the first of six), and was appealing the alimony, so would not be sending a dime while a decision or appeal was pending. Because the children and I were on public assistance, I got Legal Aid in Virginia Beach, but they would only help with the equitable distribution matter because of limited resources. On the custody/alimony/ child support matter, and the personal injury matter, I was on my own; I would have to drive six hours and represent myself.  Another lawyer in Virginia Beach was unaffordable.

Why so many matters? Why so many cases? you may be wondering. The judges found it more economical for the court to farm out the matters to multiple judges rather than one judge hearing the whole mess, since Nate files multiple motions per hearing and rants and raves for hours. Every separate matter in turn quickly became a legal swamp with its own morass of motions to respond to, discovery to answer, and subpoenas to move to quash. Litigating with Nate has always been like fighting the Hydra. You lop off one hearing but that hearing spawns three more hearings; answer one motion and get three more in the mail; quash one subpoena and get notice of three more. In Virginia, a lawyer can file his own subpoenas without going through any court, so Nate subpoenaed everything and everybody he could think of for every hearing. He quickly overwhelmed the whole judicial population of the Virginia Beach Circuit Court. The first judge, who returned Moriah to me after her dad kidnapped her out of school, stepped down after Nate filed a writ of mandamus against her with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Legal Aid got me nothing in equitable distribution except the stuff I ran away with. The judge ruled that I kept what I had in my possession and Nate kept what he had in his possession. Nate had taken out a second mortgage on our house without my knowledge, plus run up the debut on the credit cards, and so Nate persuaded the judge that in order to split the property 50/50, it was only fair that the marital debt also be divided 50/50. The judge bought this argument, and I got nothing. Not even the children’s toys.

This is going to sound idiotic but I’m going to say it anyway: even though I’m moderate now and voted for Barack Obama and probably will vote for him again, I can’t hate George W. Bush like so many of my good friends do. I detest the Patriot Act and hate the war even more, but I was on welfare with six little kids when the terrorists attacked and about to lose everything I owned in the courts. After 9/11, it was the president who gave me the reassurance that I might lose everything else—all my belongings and even eventually my children—but I wouldn’t lose my country. I’d still be American, and Americans have always been bullheaded enough to hang onto the faith that they can get free. No matter who or what is standing in the way.

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by Calulu

Last week Josie and I did something we would have never dared do back in our card-carrying super-fundie bread-making frumper-wearing days. We went into that darkened den of iniquity…*cue the music* dumm-dumm-dummmmm… The Movie Theater.

Back when we both were at PCCF, movies were frowned upon except things like “Ben Hur” or “Veggie Tales” or that Mel Gibson’s Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. Most were branded purposely anti-Christian. We still sometimes slunk off to see things like “March of the Penguins” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” hoping that no one in leadership from PCCF church was lurking about the town’s only movie theater in the downtown of our small city.

We went to see “The Help”. We’d been talking about it for weeks. Josie spent a large dose of time as a military brat living in Georgia in the early sixties and the promos for the movie struck a sweet nostalgic chord in her. I wanted to see it because the way the lives of the white women lived in the book was my childhood. I grew up in a very well to do family in South Louisiana. We had a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny, gardener and my father had a driver. All were African Americans.

The first real unconditional love I experienced was from my nanny, just like most of the white characters in “The Help.” My mother was busy with her ladies that liquid lunch friends and when she was home she would spend literal days locked in her boudoir drinking whiskey, reading romance novels and eating bon bons. We had very little time together and almost no bond. The people that raised me, parented me and loved me until I was 13 were our servants and my father. So I really wanted to see this movie from the side of those that raised others children and did the real work of parenthood in those times and that strata of society.

Josie and I sat in the middle of the mostly deserted theater and giggled, whispered, cried and laughed over this film. Behind us we could hear our own age African American counterparts doing the same thing. After the movie Josie and I were standing in the parking lot as the other duo of ladies emerged from the building and walked up to us. We all started talking about those times, even if we were all small children back in the early sixties. We laughed, we cried, we shared our hopes for the future and for history to not be forgotten. An hour later we exchanged hugs and phone numbers after deciding we were going to start having lunch together a couple times a month.

That would have never happened if either Josie or I were still at PCCF because both of us would have been mentally spouting scriptures about being ‘unequally yoked’ knowing that spontaneous friendship with others not affiliated with PCCF would be out of the question.

After I got home and thought more about what I’d seen I realized that it was a pretty accurate picture of being a submissive servant in the Fundamentalism movement. Especially if you were a woman trying to be totally surrendered to your husband/leadership head/lord and master. The constant work without acknowledgment, putting your own deepest needs aside for others, biting your tongue when you feel strongly about something going down but realizing you are ultimately powerless, and being controlled by another that rarely had your best interest at heart.

The difference between the movie and what the Quiverful Patriarchal movement shows to the world is that “The Help” portrayed being in bondage to another as it genuinely is while the QP shows a false picture of blissful happiness, perfect families and Godliness. All unpleasant truths swept aside, like right under the rug where no one but the sweeper knows it exists. That’s the real danger of people like the Duggars. They show this pretty picture that’s nothing like the truth, making the world believe that this type of life is so wonderful when it’s a type of slavery that wounds and grinds you down.

That pretty picture is what drew me in. I was not your typical Quiverful mom. I had a career I enjoyed, had been raised in an entirely different way than any of my friends at church and I’d been an Atheist and a ‘gasp’ feminist for years before we joined. I struggled with the rules of my new life, I choked on the requirements that went against everything I’d been raised to believe. But I did it, very imperfectly, submitting myself to that type of servitude. It was the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life and I praise God every day that I managed to escape mostly intact.

Making sure that the world gets to hear another side to that perfect picture has helped me forgive myself and move past the anger and bitterness. When someone from my former life tries to lure me back in and uses pretty phrases like how ‘content’ they are I know that the subtext is actually how they’ve given up on being happy and settled for their situation while trying to make me fit the same mold. Not me. I’ve chosen freedom and I’d love to help erase that fake stupid picture.

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