by Erika
My friend was waiting for me to convince her to help me run away.
As my freshman year of high school plodded on, things at home became more and more constrictive and conservative. My friends from school started to drift away as my parents pulled the reigns in at home tighter and tighter. The few friends that stuck around were the ones that were known mostly as the “outsiders” at the public school, so they were of a rebellious and non-conformist attitude anyway.
I always felt that my other friends had moved on from me, but I’ve found out recently that it wasn’t that they moved on from me, but they had felt that my parents had pushed them away and that they were no longer welcome around my family. Just this past year, I was able to reconnect with a couple of girls that I was friends with in school and when I asked them about their perspective on what was going on at my house, I was really surprised to find out that they hadn’t forgotten me but felt just as confused as I did.
During the NLQ Carnival Days, I shared a note that I had gotten from a school friend, but I also have another one that I didn’t share. Below are the two emails that I got…I think it speaks volumes as to how the “outside world” processed what was going on in our family.
“I was upset with your parents for you (because I didn’t understand) for making you give up your “wants” – basketball, friends, school. I could not understand then how they could change so much so very quickly. I thought that church ‘up on the hill’ must be a very strange place indeed. I don’t think I even knew you went to a mission somewhere – or, if I did I have forgotten.
“I remember Kerri’s birthday parties or get togethers at your house before everything changed and we had such fun. The next thing I knew, you [and Kerri] were no longer attending school but you could still play ball with us. I enjoyed that. Then I remember the day you came to tell us you were not allowed to do that anymore either. That was a very disheartening day – I could not understand (it was before we had had the opportunity to learn about oppression, to read about it and truly discuss it and emotionally, I am not sure I was truly ready to understand it). I considered myself an intelligent person and I could not wrap my head or heart around it. I also considered your dad and mom to be intelligent persons, so how could they make such a decision? Continue reading »
by Erika
Me and my youngest brother, 1991
After being made to quit the basketball team and the FHA group, I was trying to find any way that I possibly could to stay close to my friends. I called them when I could, I would wait outside on my porch after school ended so that I could talk to my classmates that lived on my street as they walked home each afternoon, I would try to get down to the school or a friend’s house when the chance came available. In the meantime, my parents were withdrawing us from as much as they could to be able to cut off as much outside influence and friendship as possible.
I remember Mr. Thompson feeding my father the line, “Take away everything that is important to your children and eventually, you’ll be the only thing left that’s important to them and they’ll cling to you.” My father gobbled up every bite that Mr. Thompson fed him, as Mr. Thompson supposedly had a perfect family. As my father and mother were being “fed” by Mr. Thompson’s horrid beliefs, I felt like I was dying a starvation of the soul.
As I look back at myself as a soon-to-be 15 year old girl, I see now that the depression that was to rear its ugly head at the age of 19 had taken seed in me when my life started to unravel at 14 years old. I only realized the climax of that depression when it hit later on, but in hindsight, I can see so clearly that it was a long process of eating away at my spirit over those long years.
I wrote in Part 3 about the first boy I had kissed. It wasn’t long until he was my boyfriend. I kept it from my family because I knew I would be under a sort of “house arrest” if I were to be found out. I tried to be around him as much as I could, but with an older sister who found it her duty to always be watching me, simply so that she could tattle on me, I had to become evasive, elusive and secretive. It was quickly an art that I had mastered…..for a while.
Continue reading »
by Erika
My sister and I in the winter of 1991-1992, the year we started homeschooling
It wasn’t long before my parents got really frustrated with the church in town and wanted something different. My father told the pastor that we would be going down to the church in Bellows Falls (run by John Thompson) but would still come to services here and there at the church in town. The pastor felt frustrated at the time, too, so he gave my parents his blessing to attend this other church.
I remember when the people at church found out that we wouldn’t be attending regularly there anymore. Many were upset and felt offended. Quite a few voiced accusations that my parents only stayed long enough for everyone to help support my missions trip to Africa and then chose to leave. This was entirely untrue and my parents were afraid that this might have been the case with some people’s thinking, but there really wasn’t anything they could say or do to have those people believe otherwise. Many felt hurt and confused by the very open and public stance that my parents took with the church.
As a teenager, I loved the church we were part of and it crushed me to leave. It felt like family there. In my mind, you didn’t just walk away from family, you worked through things. The only thing that I understood from all of this was that my parents were slowly changing over to a strict, conservative mindset and the church didn’t fit within that mindset. Since the church wasn’t going to change for my parents, they decided to change churches to something that fit within their mindset. Or was it that my parents were changing to fit into someone else’s mindset? In any case, the changes were all becoming to be too much for a 14 year old to handle. Especially one that had only entered puberty the year before.
All in the course of 4 months, I had been told that I wasn’t going back to the public school for my sophomore year, I was told that I was going to be homeschooled, I went on a 2 month missions trip where I tasted independence and freedom, I was told that we were changing churches…..
But the changes that happened in those 4 months were only the beginning. Continue reading »
