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by Erika

If you remember from one of my earlier installments, right before we started our first year of homeschooling, I had spent the summer in Uganda on a missions trip with Teen Missions International. It was an amazing summer and everything had seemed normal in my family before I left. I was promised that things wouldn’t change much even though we’d be homeschooling. Of course, reading back through my story, you know that things DID change. I enjoyed that summer away so much. I had amazing experiences and the travel bug had officially hit. More than the travel bug, though, I enjoyed the satisfaction of helping others and telling people about my relationship with God. Hearing the stories of missionaries that went through the churches of my childhood came alive when I was finally able to have stories of my own to tell from the mission field. As soon as I got home from that trip with TMI, I was ready to sign up for another one. I truly had the heart of missions within me. I was excited to go to another country and help more people the next summer.

When the summer trip catalog arrived in the mail, I poured over it and marked off the different teams that I was interested in until I narrowed it down to the one I really wanted to go on. Nicaragua. It was a new team for TMI. They had never been there with a team before and one of the girls that was on the Uganda team with me was planning to go there. We got along really well while on our trip together and I thought it would be fun that we could be on the same team.

I knew that things were changing in our family. We had left the church that had helped to support my trip to Uganda. We were now going to a church that didn’t believe in youth groups or Sunday school or that children and teens shouldn’t be going off in groups to socialize without parents present because “fools love the company of fools.” Peer grouping and age segregation was not allowed as it was fertile ground for the devil to sow his seeds of evil. After all, that’s what all the big names in patriarchy said. That’s “what the bible said.” There was a part of me that was worried my parents would said no to the proposition of going on another trip with TMI. But there was that other part of me that thought perhaps they would say yes because they were so excited about my first trip which I had only come home from just 4 months earlier. They said they believed in missions so why would they deny me the opportunity to minister and for further growth in Christ.

I went to them with my summer trip catalog and approached them with the idea. I was immediately shot down. The reasons I was given were:

• It’s not right for young people to go off alone without their parents’ presence.
• Peer groups and age segregation are bad.
• Remember that “fools love the company of fools?”
• They don’t hold to the same standards that we do.
• Short term missions are a waste of time and money because indigenous missions is what’s biblical. Send that money to people that are already ministering to their own kind.
• Missions trips for teenagers just breeds independence in girls and that’s wrong.
• Those kids are just looking for a summer vacation and can’t possibly all be interested in God and sharing His love with other people.

To make it worse, they used the case that one of the families at the new church we had started going to had a daughter that went on a TMI missions trip and she had left in the middle of the night to run off with a guy who was married and also the head of the youth group at a church they used to go to. SCANDAL! See? This could happen to you, too. It didn’t matter that there were three other young people at the church that had also gone with TMI with their former churches but were still living at home and doing what their parents wanted. Rather than looking at the three young people that were living “godly” lives, the one negative story was brought to the forefront as the golden standard of what happens when you go off on missions trips as a young person with 25 other young people. “A fool in the company of fools.”

I was heartbroken. I was trying to wrap my head around how my parents could be so supportive of my trip that ended just 4 months earlier, but now, everything about the concept, the organization, the ministry, the people, etc. was all wrong. It was all bad. Here was my family, supposedly getting serious about God. Removing us from public school. Going to a “godly” church with “godly” families and “godly” young people. Trying to be a shining light for Jesus, but the concept of going out and sharing my light and my love for Jesus in the context of a TMI missions trip was horrible and WRONG.I remember crying about this in front of my parents and not understanding and being told that not allowing me to go was the right and godly thing to do.

I cried myself to sleep that night. I remember that being a turning point for my heart at that moment. Having that rejection to go on another missions trip and the reaction and reasons my parents gave me killed a big part of my zeal for my faith that day. It squelched the fire that I had within my heart for missions. I didn’t tell my parents the effect their decision had on me because I knew it would only cause hours and hours of bible reading and lectures from them. It was better for me to stuff and cram the hurt down than to voice it out loud because it would be worse for me if I told how I really felt. Nothing I thought or said was going to change their decision. In fact, if I told them how they had killed that desire in my heart, it would only fuel their belief that they had made the right choice and that the way I felt was a direct result of the peer grouping, the age segregation and the “company of fools” that I had been in during the summer on the missions trip to Uganda. It was years until I got that fire back. And it wasn’t the last time that TMI became an issue of contention. Years later, it would be back to haunt me.

Looking back, I think this rejection, more than any other time in my life, is what made me really see that this lifestyle of living more “godly,” with the rules and regulations and extremes, was a systematic formula. It had more to do with checking off the boxes on a list given to them by a man and making sure they did things according to the formula than to reach out for the sake of reaching out, as well as not thinking how the formula wasn’t working for their family and how it was affecting their kids. There was so much devotion to the formula. I’m sure they fully believed that they were devoted to God through all of this, but that’s exactly how the formula works. It’s wrapped up in a shiny package with God all over it yet underneath, it’s devotion to the formula. Not to God. Not to family. The formula ruled above all.

I remember reading somewhere just recently about how parents in the P/QF lifestyle preach so much to their kids about guarding their hearts and giving their hearts to their father so that they can protect it. The father is supposed to hold onto their hearts to keep them from being broken. This way, they can present a whole and pure heart to their spouse when they get married. What happens instead, though, is that long before a potential spouse is introduced or a crush happens, the parents are the ones that have broken their child’s heart for the first time with all their rules, their legalism, with the forumla. This resonated so much with me.

This is exactly how I felt and it’s exactly what happened to me. The first time my heart was broken, it wasn’t because of a boy. It was at the hands of my parents. The same people that were following all the rules of the formula to keep my heart from being broken….they were the ones that broke my heart as a result of the formula.

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NLQ recommended reading:

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

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'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

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by Erika

During that first year of homeschooling, my sister took Driver’s Ed at the public school. I would go with her in the hopes of being able to spend some time outside the school hanging out with some of my friends. Because my sister had taken to wearing really frumpy jumpers that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie, some of the guys had started calling her the “Virgin Mary.”

A conversation started outside after Driver’s Ed about Jesus and Mary. Someone asked how it could be possible that Jesus was born to a virgin. I made the mistake of saying, right in front of my sister, “Perhaps Mary was artificially inseminated.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I knew I’d be in big trouble at home as soon as my sister told my parents what I’d said. Everyone laughed but my sister. I didn’t realize it was as funny as everyone thought it was. My sister and I walked home in silence but the first thing she did when she walked in the door was squeal on me to my parents first about who I had been hanging out with and secondly, what I had said. If there was anything I could count on from my sister back then, it was that anything I said and did, if she was in earshot and eyesight, it would make its way back to my parents. There were times when I was watchful of what I did and said around her, but other times, I just thought, “To hell with it.” And those were the times that I just didn’t care what the consequences would be.

Sure enough, there were consequences to what I’d said about the virgin Mary. My father pulled me aside and gave me a stern lecture that lasted around a half hour. I was told how bad the company was that I was hanging out with and how blasphemous I was. My punishment was to do a 6 page essay on the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ, complete with scripture verses to back it all up.

Since I was the more outspoken child of the four of us, it seemed that I got most of the attention, whether it was good or bad. Most of it seemed to be bad because nothing I did seemed to be right. It never quite measured up with what I was supposed to be doing. I began to feel like a “project” to my parents. Like I was the “challenge child.” The one that they were trying to mold to what they wanted me to be, rather than allowing me to evolve into what I was meant to be.

My sister, on the other hand, always seemed to be trying to please everyone and during that time, it usually came at my expense. I started to realize back then that if she tattled on me for every little thing, she not only got the attention she craved, but she was also pleasing my parents. Though it was angering at times, I felt more pity for her than anything. Her mind was so trapped so quickly. It was apparent that she’d lost the ability to think for herself. It was mind boggling to me to see how docile, submissive and mind-washed my parents and siblings had become in so little time. The “church” down in southern Vermont (Grace Bible Fellowship) had such a hold on all of them.

Our weekdays became days full of school work, helping with my parents’ bakery, doing things around the house and it became very lonely for me. I took to reading a lot, even though my books were censored. It felt like I could escape for a little while from the world I was being forced to live in when I opened a book. I enjoyed Tuesdays because those were the days that we drove the 15 min. away to go to the big library in the next town over. They had three floors of books and they also had music tapes. Every now and then, I was able to sneak a couple rock tapes (Elton John, Michael Jackson, etc.) to the desk and the librarians would check them out quickly for me before my mom could see what I was doing. They never asked questions but I could tell by the look on their faces that they knew they were doing me a huge favor. I would tuck them into my bag and listen to them at night on my walkman that I hid under my bed.

I would spend hours reading autobiographies, biographies, non fiction, anything I could get my hands on that would pass the censor list. Reading about the lives of other people made me feel like, even for just a little while, I wasn’t trapped in my own life. I was living vicariously through others, even people who had died years before I was born. I often felt like it was all I had as a link to the outside world. What the conservative Christian world called the “narrow way” had become the very “narrow minded way.” It was preached to us that the Christian life is often a lonely one, but I had a hard time believing that this was how God wanted us to live. To purposefully put ourselves in so small of a box. To segregate ourselves from everyone and everything.

I started reading books about the Native American culture, history and heritage. There was a small amount on my grandmother’s side and it was that miniscule amount that I latched onto in an effort to feel like a part of something outside our lonely little legalistic world. Of course, I had to make it sound like something that could be incorporated into the area of learning. It became a passion for me. I was actually surprised that I was being allowed to delve into it all, but I was frequently warned against getting into the spiritual part of the Native American culture because, after all, they were “heathens.” I started making my own moccasins, doing beadwork, I even started chopping down long, skinny trees to make a tipi of my own.

I remember my parents telling me that I needed something to keep me busy once they made me quit the basketball team and FHA. They knew that I liked needle art so my mom took me to a craft store over the state line and got me the materials to do cross stitch on a piece of linen. It was a picture of the musical staff and words to Amazing Grace, adorned with roses around it. It definitely did keep me busy, but it didn’t help to quell the lonely and empty feeling I had settling deep inside of me.

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• Read All Posts by Erika!

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'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich

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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?

“Those were my initial thoughts. I remember then thinking perhaps Kerri would go along with your parents requests, but they had another thing coming with you – you would fight. I can only imagine how daunting a task that must have been and you eventually “gave in” in body but not in mind as is evident by your strong voice and words.

“Every time I would go for a walk and we happened by your house I would look over, wondering what was going on. Then I heard (through the rumor mill) that you would not or were not allowed to talk to me because I was “a tease”. Again, I could not understand.

“I always wondered what had happened. It was not until I read your piece that I could put it together. I think given the year we are in and the cultural advances that have been made I still couldn’t totally grasp hold of the idea that this was truly what had happened.”

A lot of people ask me how my parents could change so quickly. Or if it was a gradual leaning toward the movement and then grew. No, it was a very quick change. Even people in town noticed it. One month, we were finishing out the school year and two months later, we weren’t in public school when it started in session again. Just months later, we were in dresses and skirts only, I was made to quit all school activities that I was involved with and friends, books, music, etc. were being censored and controlled.

Yes, it really did happen that quickly. The quickness with which it all happened is what put me into a tailspin. To be living a fairly mainstream life and then have things change so quickly and so drastically, it all came as a shock. Emotionally, mentally and even culturally. Maybe not for my siblings, who didn’t mind being homeschooled and who weren’t socially active like I was, but for me, it was traumatic.

One of my other friends lived right down the street from me and it was even harder being kept from her as we shared a passion for basketball, we both played trumpet in the band and practiced together. We were in the same grade and often walked to and from school together. I recently got the chance to ask her what she thought was going on from her view. Here’s what she wrote me:

“I just remember mostly how confused and scared I was for you. I wanted to hide you in the barn like you requested, it just didn’t seem like a plausible alternative. Your parents loved you despite their beliefs, and they honestly wanted to take care of you. They never would have let you live in my barn, and I didn’t believe we would get away with it.

“I was struggling with my parents belief in the church as well, so I understood on some minor level your anger and frustration. When your father presented some religious material to me, and you told me that he thought I was a whore, I was furious. At that point I had not even slept with anyone. I was terrified at first that if I drove too fast when I passed your home that he wouldn’t let you hang out with me. I quickly began to realize that it didn’t matter how I behaved, I was no longer accepted as a human being with freedoms. I was now the bad influence next door, just like any other prejudice that you hear of.

“I think being isolated from your family is a very dangerous thing, because socially they are your true loyalists. I know that I made some very poor choices because I felt alone, not accepted by any group, not even my family. My parents loved me, attempted to keep an open mind, and they continue to do a wonderful job of taking care of me. Yet every Sunday I was dragged to church and told what a horrible human I was because I had normal and irrefutable desires to be loved and accepted by my peers.

“So I waited for you to convince me that I had to help you run away. I thought of how I would sneak food to you and get you supplies. I wondered if you would be able to finish school. Would we have to get you a GED? Would we have to get you a job? an apartment? I wondered if your father was right. Perhaps I was a bad influence making bad choices, maybe I was a whore. Maybe you were better off trying to live that life, and be safe. That’s when the fear sunk into my bones. What if I tried to help you and instead hurt you?”

It’s heartbreaking to me to realize how far reaching this movement becomes to even those that aren’t entrenched in it. It hurts not only those in the movement, but those that are outside of it. It alienates people, pushes friends and loved ones away. It isolates those inside of the movement so that there is nowhere left to turn most times when they need help. It confuses people on both sides of the fence. That’s definitely evident by the email I received from my friend.

This was just the beginning of the isolation to come.

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

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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.

One of the teachers at the public school was excited to hear about my trip to Africa and wanted me to share with her elementary classroom about my adventures. I immediately agreed to do it and got my stuff together so that I could do my presentation. A few days later, I left my homeschool work on my desk at home and walked down to the school with my backpack, packed with all sorts of trinkets and treasures that I had picked up on my travels. I shared the cultural and huminatarian aspect of my trip with the children, as I wasn’t allowed to share the spiritual part of my trip with them. I had two of the kids dress up in the outfits I had brought home and let the boys bang on the little goat skin drum. I showed slides and part of some home video that one of my team leaders had taken while there.

After my presentation was done, so was the school day. That enabled me to walk into town with the new boyfriend and my other friends. I would take the long way to the boyfriend’s appartment since the front door happened to be RIGHT across the street from my parents’ bakery and that would not have gone over well. I hopped off the end of the bridge and scooted behind some other buildings, crossed the main road where I couldn’t be seen and then backtracked behind some other buildings to head in the backdoor of the apartment building. The boyfriend and I weren’t alone all the time and there were three or four of us that would hang out together and I would help my friends with their homework.

OF course, there were times that we were alone and those were spent listening to classic rock music, talking and make-out sessions. Nothing incredibly heavy, as his mom and step-dad were right on the other side of the door in the kitchen (we were in the living room). Because I had to have a reason for every time I walked out of the door at my family’s house, I couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’m going over to my boyfriend’s house,” so there were times that I had to settle for phone calls. I would use the phone out in the garage and hope that no one picked up on the other line inside the house. No one ever did.

In the fall of that year (1991), my parents decided that my sister and I were no longer allowed to wear pants. Of course, this also went for my mom, as well. Pants just weren’t proper for godly, young Christian women to wear. They were male attire and took away from our femininity. This crushed me. It wasn’t so much that I hated dresses and skirts, it was the fact that I was being told what I could and couldn’t wear. I loved wearing pants. It’s what I felt most comfortable in. I was told that if I wanted to continue wearing pants, I would have to wear them under a dress or skirt, which seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. I hated feeling so exposed under those dresses and skirts. I felt naked and COLD. It always seemed to me that it would make more sense for a woman to wear pants so as not to be so “accessible,” if you know what I mean. I always wondered if that’s why these men wanted their women to be in skirts and dresses. If they had some sort of secret agenda. Not that I ever thought that of my dad because he was certainly not of that mindset….but I wondered that about whoever decided that about women’s attire in the first place.

I took to wearing leggings and shorts under my dresses and skirts because I hated the feeling of exposure. I also hated crossing my legs when I sat in a chair and I loved climbing trees, being outdoors, skiing and sprawling out on the floor and didn’t want everyone to see my “business” when I sat down.

Being made to wear dresses and skirts constantly felt demeaning. It made me feel like someone was trying to control every aspect of my life, including my clothes. It was utterly degrading. Even to this day, whenever I see a woman in a skirt or dress that looks even slightly conservative, I feel that invisible legalistic noose tightening around my neck. And to this day, I don’t wear dresses or skirts to church or anywhere else for that matter (unless it’s to a wedding and I happen to be part of the bridal party).

Because we were going to the “new” ultra-conservative “church” in southern Vermont, it was expected of us to dress like everyone else did. I had a few funky skirts but not enough where I wasn’t wearing them out every other day. We were a family of 6 and didn’t have a lot of money, so out came the sewing machines. My mom and sister are wonderful seamstresses so they started making jumpers, skirts and dresses from the bargain fabric shelves. I always thought it was such a shame that their amazing talents went to waste on such frumpy and doudy clothing. Their work was always well done, but the patterns and fabric left much to be desired. My sister made the biggest attempt to look like every other girl in the “church” and pretty soon, her wardrobe was filled with denim and calico jumpers and blouses with big collars. My mom’s wardrobe was quickly filling up with the same.

I was looked at like the outcase and rebellious one by everyone in the church, as I would show up with mis-matched patterns, funky designs and my high-top sneakers with the bright red laces. Everyone pretended to humor me on the outside, but I heard the whispers and saw the sneers. Families would never let their girls get very close to me, as if I had some sort of rebellious inducing disease. Any time I was let close, there was always a parent around to make sure I wasn’t heathenizing their daughters. It got to the point that I wasn’t even allowed to play in the pick-up basketball games with the guys during family weekends because it just wasn’t proper. All that grabbing of the basketball and those physical fouls that might stir up emotions and other such horse crap that these families could come up with just to keep me out of the games.

I found sanity back with my “heathen” friends that I hung out with back home and felt like every Sunday, I was stepping into another world, a bizarre world of shackles, rules, regulations, hypocrisy, void of grace and compassion and full of legalism. My world of friends back home seemed normal and sane, yet those were the things that I was being told were wrong, evil and dark.

I have found, over the years, that the world that the “Grace Bible Fellowship” existed in was actually the one that was wrong, evil and dark. There was no good, right or light there. The darkness had only just started to descend on me.

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

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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.

When my parents informed us that we wouldn’t be going back to the public school, I had 2 weeks left of my freshman year. I begged and pleaded with my parents to allow me to go to the school. After all, I wasn’t the one that was being bullied like my brother was. I wasn’t the one wanting to be homeschooled like my sister wanted. I wasn’t my 6 year old brother that was excited just at the prospect of being able to play for more hours than his peers that went to school. I was the social butterfly. I liked everyone (well, almost everyone) and was pretty well liked at school. I was in FHA. I was on the yearbook committee. I was FINALLY going to be on the varsity basketball team. I was in band. I had just finished my freshman year as class president.My parents told me it was all or nothing and I didn’t have a choice. I was told that I could continue to be in FHA and on the basketball team but that was it.

When the school year started, I was right in there for the FHA meetings. I was so excited when the basketball season started to approach. I looked forward to being on the team and being with my friends again. I looked forward to getting out of the house and feeling somewhat normal.

I went to the first basketball practice and actually felt like a real teenager again. I felt like I belonged to something. I remember our coach giving us the speech most coaches give every year. He explained that by us being on the team, we’re making a commitment to our team mates to be at the practices, be at the games, to give it our all, to take this commitment seriously and that if we decided that we couldn’t honor that commitment, that was the time to walk out. I was bound and determined to see through my commitment, just like I had every year on the basketball team since I started playing in 4th grade.

That weekend, the head elder at the church in southern Vermont came to visit my family. While he was there, my parents gave him the tour of the house. He didn’t care too much for my room. It was the posters of basketball players all over my walls that unnerved him. I think the lifesize poster of Michael Jordan really freaked him out. I had paid $15 for that poster and it was my favorite in the room.

At the age of 14, I wasn’t really interested in boys. I was a tom-boy. I loved basketball, history, creating things with my hands, being outside, skiing, etc. I wasn’t in to make-up, girlish type of clothes, making sure my hair was impressive or into jewelry. The posters on my walls were not the typical posters a girl of my age might have. I didn’t have the boy bands on my wall, the cut outs from the heart-throb magazines on my ceilings, etc. I had sports legends and sports heroes. None of it was of a sexual nature. However, John Thompson didn’t think it was appropriate.

The next day, I realized that this John Thompson fellow had a lot more control over my parents than they would have liked to admit.

My father sat me down and told me that I would have to take all my posters down in my room because Mr. Thompson didn’t think it was appropriate for a young girl to have pictures of men all over her walls. I tried explaining to my father that it wasn’t a sexual thing, but that I loved basketball and I admired these players for their athletic ability. That wasn’t good enough, though. Mr. Thompson was looked up to by my parents and if he said they had to go, then they had to go. There was no way I was throwing them out, though. I refused to do that. I rolled them and folded them up and put them in my closet. I actually found them last year when we were cleaning out boxes and storage to move into our new house. I finally tossed them out, 17 years later.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, what my father filled me in on next felt like the biggest blow to me. I was told that I would have to quit the basketball team. I cried, begged, pleaded to no avail. I was told that it wasn’t befitting a young girl to take part in a sport with shorts on, as well as being grouped with a bunch of kids my own age. Mr. Thompson claimed that peer grouping was bad and that it was like putting a bunch of fools together. A bunch of fools together just act foolish.

I told my father that I had made a commitment to the team and that if he was going to make me quit against my wishes, then he would have to be the one to tell the coach and not me. It wasn’t my decision. I didn’t want to leave the team, therefore, he would have to break the news that he was making me break my commitment. When it came time for the next practice, I had my father drive me to the school and made him go in first to talk with the coach. I know the coach didn’t understand my father at all and it made no sense to him, just like it made no sense to me. After my father was done talking to the coach, I went in alone and talked to the coach. It tore at my heart to see my teammates throwing balls in to the hoops, warming up for practice. There I was, tears coming down my cheeks and the girls on the team looked over. I know that they truly didn’t understand what was going on, as all sorts of rumors had been passing through town about the things that my parents were getting my family into. I do know that they felt bad for me and the coach also had sympathy for me, as well. I told him that I didn’t want to quit, that I had no choice and that my dad was making me do it. That I didn’t want to break the commitment that I made to the team. He understood my anger, frustration and disappointment and told me that it was okay. That he knew it wasn’t something I was willingly breaking. Part of me wanted to scream out, “Take me away from all of this,” but I didn’t.

By this time, my sister had fallen for the whole submissive daughter thing and had written the FHA state organization that she felt she needed to drop out of her title and leave the group because it wasn’t God’s will for her to be in it. She also told them that she felt the “Future Homemakers of America” was a feminist organization that will soon ruin marriages and families and that she couldn’t have a part in it. She disgreed with their stance on women being independent and finding careers that could help them make a living and supporting a family. I didn’t agree with my sister’s views on it, so I stayed in for a little while longer until my father made me quit FHA, as well.

Everything that I had been involved with outside the home was quickly being stripped from me. I had no choices of my own. Decisions were made for me and at almost 15 years old, I didn’t see a whole lot of options out there for me. I figured I would just try to ride it out as best I could until I turned 18 and then I could bolt. I had no idea how much worse it would get over the next few years.

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

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by Erika

The morning that I left for my missions trip Boot Camp. I’m pictured with my pastor and his wife.

A newspaper story that was done before I left for my missions trip.

When I left for Africa in the summer of 1991, I was excited about my trip and the things that I would see but I was also disappointed to know that I would be coming home to my sophomore year as a homeschooler. I was crushed by my parents’ decision and begged them to let me stay in school. After all, I wasn’t the one that wanted to be taken out and I wasn’t the one that had the problems in school. My parents told me that it was all or nothing. If they were taking out one kid, they were taking us all out. If my 3 siblings, who didn’t mind the situation at all, were going to be homeschooled, then so was I. Besides, my mother had told the school that NONE of her children would be back the next year and she didn’t want to go back on her word. Even more importantly, she didn’t want to appear as though she’d compromised by sending one of us and keeping the others home.

While I was away, I had time to reflect on the upcoming changes that would be happening when I got home. Being disconnected from it all and not being around my friends for the summer made it a little easier to come to terms with the fact that I would not be going back to school in the fall. I think some of this also had to do with being on an emotional and experiential high with being in a foreign country and on a missions trip.

A crazy photo booth picture taken while in Switzerland with two of the boys from my team.

I received a letter from my parents while I was in Switzerland at the end of that summer (my team spent a week in Switzerland as a debriefing session.) The letter told of a church that they had visited a couple times. They had heard about the church at the convention because one of the church elders spoke at the homeschooling convention they had gone to over the summer. My parents were intrigued and encouraged by what he had said and spoke to him afterward. My mother assured me in her letter that we would not be changing churches, but thought it would be nice to visit this church every now and then because there were a lot of kids our ages that we could make friends with. They all homeschooled so we would have a lot more in common than the kids that went to our local church and the friends we had at home. I was glad to hear this because I loved our church and the people in it and didn’t want to leave.

I actually still have those letters that came to me while I was away. I pulled them out of storage tonight to re-read some of them. The one I received while in Switzerland said, “Sunday morning, Daddy and I will be all alone! We are going down to Bellows Falls to visit another church. The Elder’s name is John Thompson. We are NOT thinking of changing churches. It’s 1 1/2 hours away from us, but Dad did tell Pastor Bob we were going on a fact finding mission! Hopefully we can come back armed with some ideas to get our church out of its rut.”

I was glad they weren’t thinking of leaving, but it also concerned me at the same time. That concern, I found later, was not unfounded. That “fact finding mission” proved to me that when you go looking for something “extra,” for the “perfect church,” to try to fix other people….you usually get what you’re looking for and it’s not the thing you need.

A school friend and I after I returned home from Africa and had started homeschooling.

When I came home from Africa, things at home seemed pretty normal other than the fact that we didn’t go to the public school. My parents had assured me that I would still be able to participate in extra curricular activities. I would still be able to be in contact with friends. This made me feel like some things had still stayed the same.

On the first day of school, I walked with the other girls on my street to the schoolyard. I stood around and talked with them about my trip and caught up as quickly as I could with what had happened over their summer until the school bell rang. They all walked into the school and I had to turn around and go home. I remember feeling a “snap” in my heart as I walked home. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but it wasn’t a good feeling. Like something had broken. I felt lonely and sad. I wanted so badly to walk into that school with them and to see all of my teachers again. I wanted a locker of my own to put my books in. I wanted to sit at our “regular” table in the cafeteria with my friends. I didn’t want to go home to do school.

At the end of the school day, I walked back down to the school and waited until the bell rang. I hung around talking to some of my friends and then walked home again. I did this for a few more weeks until things started to change at home.

In the meantime, my parents took us to the church in Bellows Falls (in southern Vermont) for a visit. All the girls had long hair and looked like they’d just walked out of a “Little House on the Prairie” book. Many of the families were large. There was no Sunday school and no nursery. There was a room for the nursing moms to go into to nurse or change diapers, but other than that, everyone was in the main room of a rented town hall.

There was a communion service first that lasted about an hour. This happened every Sunday. The men in the church were encouraged to come prepared to read a passage out of the Bible, to lead hymns, to pray or to share their thoughts on the work of Christ on the cross. Women were expected to stay silent throughout the service. If there was a hymn that a wife or daughter wanted sung, a husband, father or brother would need to voice the request.

There was a break after the service and after about 15 minutes, the main service took place. That lasted about an hour and a half. One of the 3 elders would get up to speak. Like I said in my first guest post, the church was supposed to have a “plurality of leadership.” No particular person was supposed to be in charge. This was supposed to keep the men accountable to each other. Even after that first visit to the church, I could tell who was in charge. The same man that had spoken at the conference my parents had attended over the summer. It was quite clear. There was no mistaking it.

Something didn’t sit quite right with me on that first visit. The other girls were nice enough and came up to say hello, but they were a little wary of me, it seemed. There was one girl, however, that didn’t seem afraid of me at all. Her name was Sara and we hit it off right from the start. We exchanged addresses and started to write to each other.

We continued to attend the local church right down the road from us. Not long after I came back from my trip overseas, I shared a slide show about my trip and talked about my experiences. I could sense an undercurrent going on, though.My parents were frustrated with the church and my father became a bit more vocal about things he thought should change.

Pictured with my brother (on the left) and my third cousin from Germany.

The fact that we were homeschooling offended some of the people in the church. They felt that if my parents were unhappy with the school system and that they were homeschooling us, there must be something wrong with people that still sent their kids to the school. People also felt sorry for us as children…that we were missing out on the socialization but my parents assured them that we were getting all kinds of socialization between being out in the community, going to the library, visiting with our neighbors, etc. I remember one family was even concerned that we would get a proper sex education teaching. My father continued to talk to the head elder in southern VT and he would bring these “odd ideas” back to the church in town and they weren’t met with much enthusiasm. At 14 years old, I could tell that my parents were pulling away from the church in town, that the people there were pulling away from us.

Right before I had left on my trip, I had met a boy. He wasn’t a Christian, but he was fascinating to me. He was older (17) and he seemed to like me. When I came home, I found out that he had moved into town and was going to be attending school and would live with his mother, right across the street from my parents’ bakery. He was introduced to me by one of my best friends from school. It was over Memorial Day weekend of 1991 and I spent the weekend hanging out with my friend and this new guy and his brother. We talked about all sorts of things, played basketball, walked all over town. It was the weekend of the Lilac Festival in town.

At the end of the last evening, I walked back to the apartment building that my friend’s mom lived in. This boy lived right down the hall. My friend ended up going home and I was left to talk in the hallway with this boy. He said he was going back down south to the bottom of the state and that he liked me because I was different. He wasn’t sure when he was going to come back but wanted to stay in touch with me.

I was surprised when he put his arms around my waist and pulled me in for a kiss. It was my first kiss. I never expected that I would be 14 and my first kiss would be with a boy that was almost 18, but I was intoxicated by it. There was a part of me that felt really guilty, considering that I was standing there kissing a boy that was so much older than I was (hey, when you’re 14, an 18 year old boy DOES seem a lot older) and he wasn’t a Christian and I was heading off on a missions trip. My emotions were torn, especially because he had told me that he had a girlfriend back where he lived. (That should have been a warning about the future but I didn’t heed it back then.)

I didn’t want to leave, but I knew that it was best for me to go home. I played those moments in my mind over and over and didn’t tell anyone what had happened, even my best friend (because I knew she had been interested in him at one time and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings). I couldn’t tell my sister, even though we were very close. I certainly couldn’t tell my parents because they would have been furious. So, I kept it to myself and decided that it wasn’t such a big deal and eventually, I wondered if it had all really happened. It seemed like a dream. And so I went off to Africa.

As I said, when I came home, I was surprised to find out that he had moved into his mom’s apartment and would be going to school for his senior year in our town. To say that my sophomore and junior year were interesting is an understatement.

Changes of all kinds started heaping on top of me…..

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

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by Erika

My sister and I in a photo booth. I think we were 12 & 13. She’s older than I am.

My childhood from the time I was born to the age of 14 was pretty much normal and mainstream. I grew up in a Christian home, going to church every Sunday, taking part in VBS in the summers, going to public school (though I went a few years to a Christian private school when I first started school), playing with the neighbor kids, watching cartoons in the morning….all the things that kids did in a normal family and neighborhood setting.I was born in Rhode Island at the end of 1976. I became a Christian at the age of 7. I remember sitting on the bed in my Oma and Opa’s house (my grandparents lived upstairs from us) and my Oma walking me through the prayer that I desperately wanted to pray. My Oma was always very serious about what this step meant and as a young child, I found myself praying that prayer every night just in case I got it wrong the first time…or the second time…or the third time…..or…. I remember telling my father about this and he assured me that I didn’t have to do it over and over again. That one time was enough and no matter how I did it, God heard it and it was good with Him. That set my mind at ease. In all honestly, I used to wish that my father or mother had walked me through that as my Oma tended to be too serious about these sorts of things and wanted it to be done right (in other words: her way) and in general, scared the crap out of us kids when it came to heaven and hell. At that age, I felt that my parents presented a much more loving God that my Oma did, which turned out to be quite ironic years later. The tables turned quite dramatically…but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

When I was 8 years old, we moved to New Hampshire. We moved into a large 3-story colonial house in a small town with about 1500 residents. The school we attended housed 300 kids in grades K-12 and that was with 3 towns combined. We were in the mountains and living in a rural area and the neighborhood was like a large playground to us. We lived on the side of a small mountain and behind our house was nothing but woods and the old fashioned rope tow that was used for skiing in the winter. There were other kids in the neighborhood and even though we were the new kids, we eased ourselves in to the school and the neighborhood without any trouble.

My sister and I in 4th and 5th grade and on the Biddy Basketball team for school.

As we were driving the moving van up the hill to our house, we passed by a big white church. Not long after we pulled into the driveway of our “new” house, cars started pulling in behind us. The people at the church were having a clean-up day around the church grounds and saw us driving past and followed us to help us unload. We didn’t know any one there, but quickly made friends and the next Sunday, we were sitting in the pew at church. This became our church home for the next 7 years.

It was a non-denominational church and everyone was loving, caring, warm, open and friendly. I have so many wonderful memories of the time we spent there. My parents taught Sunday school, we employed some of the church people in my parents’ bakery, we took part in church events, as I got older, I helped in the church nursery and even took on the job of cleaning the church once a week for $10 each week. There was a change of pastors a few years after we moved into town and the new pastor and his wife were like another set of grandparents. I still feel that way about them to this day. The pastor’s wife took time out of her day to bake with us in her kitchen and tell stories of where she grew up, the pastor helped us kids make beautiful kites in his wood shop and when I was older, I bartered house cleaning services in return for the pastor making me a lovely wooden dulcimer that I learned to play under his tutelage. The church felt like home.

This pic is when I was in 9th grade. It’s our church’s youth group trip to Maine for a hockey game. I was 14. I’m the one at the bottom left.

When I was 14 1/2, I had just finished up my freshman year of high school. I was president of my class, involved in band, FHA and was looking forward to my sophomore year and finally going from JV to Varsity basketball. I got along with pretty much everyone in school. I didn’t have any enemies and was a social butterfly. I enjoyed learning and considered my teachers as friends. I looked up to them and tried to apply myself as best as I could. I chose good friends, I hadn’t yet kissed a boy, I didn’t even have a boyfriend yet, I soaked up the knowledge my teachers fed me, I was active in my church, I got good grades, I was polite and well mannered….all around, I was a good kid. I didn’t look for trouble.

This last pic was when I was in 8th grade. I was 13. I’m in the middle.

Sophomore year was not to happen in the public school, though. A couple weeks before my freshman year ended, my mother announced to the vice principal and guidance counselor that we would not be attending the next year.We didn’t realize that my brother was being picked on in the lunch line. My brother would sit with my sister during lunch time and stopped buying school lunch. My sister was concerned about it and told my mother. My mother asked him why he wasn’t eating. He said it was because he was saving his money for something. Like most any parent would, my mom told my brother that whatever it was he wanted, he didn’t need to use his lunch money for it and that she expected him to be in the lunch line the next day and she also expected my sister to make sure this happened.

The next day, my sister and brother stood in the lunch line together. Another boy inched his way up the line and started picking on my brother. My brother was in 7th grade at the time…this other boy was in 8th grade. He was incessant. Relentless. Finally, the other boy hauled off and kicked my brother. My sister, being the protective older sibling, kicked the kid in the shin. All of this happened right in front of the teacher’s table. The teachers sat there and didn’t say a word until my sister defended my brother. That was when my sister, brother and the other boy were all sent to the principal’s office and all were given detention. The only two that showed up were my sister and brother.

My mother was livid when she found out about this. My brother was a shy and quiet kid. He didn’t have a lot of friends because he didn’t really feel the need for them. He studied hard and got good grades. He didn’t cause trouble and respected his teachers. The only crime that he had committed was that he was a good kid. And that was just enough for a bully to zone in on him. It pissed my mom off that my sister and brother were given detention over something like this, especially because nothing had been done UNTIL she had defended him. It made her even more angry that the other boy didn’t show up and the school did nothing about it. It was all just another realization that small town politics were in play. Many of the students were somehow related to faculty and staff members and a blind eye was often turned when things like this happened. We weren’t natives, we were outsiders.

This all just fueled the fire that had started with my parents about their disappointment in the school system in general and that was enough for my mom to lash out and tell the school that we wouldn’t be coming back the next year. She pulled my brother out of school right then and there and he completed his final exams for the year at home.

Our pastor’s daughter and son-in-law and family had moved into town from the midwest. They homeschooled their children, but their kids were in no way sheltered. They took part in things at church and were happy children. The pastor’s son-in-law took over the youth group and he was someone I admired as a teenager. His wife taught Sunday school and was a lot of fun to be around. A good role model for a young girl. My parents started questioning them about homeschooling and as they saw some of the benefits in it, the wheels in their heads started to turn. It was during this time, they started imagining all kinds of scenarios of what would happen to their kids if they left them in the public school. They let that fear overtake them and when the incident happened with my brother in the lunch line, it was all my mom needed to justify her reasons for homeschooling.

When my mom came home and told the rest of us that we wouldn’t be going back, I was crushed. They assured me that the only thing that would change would be actually going to the school. We could still take part in extra curricular activities like we always had and we’d still be able to see our friends. I took comfort in that, even though I was saddened that I wouldn’t be sitting with my friends in the classroom each day.

The school year ended a couple weeks later and I got packed up and headed off for a 2 month mission trip to Uganda, East Africa. The year was 1991. During those two months away, I felt a freedom unlike any I had ever felt. I felt that my parents trusted me and I felt inspired to make the world a better place. I connected with people from all over the country that were on my team and connected with the people and experiences that I encountered during my time away. There was an independence that invigorated me. While in Africa, my parents had written about a church they had visited that had all homeschooling families in it. It was a bit far away and they said they weren’t switching churches, but thought that it might be nice to have people to get together with every now and then for fun. During that time, I also came to grips with what I thought I would be coming home to. I accepted the situation and decided to deal with it as best I could. After all, I was assured that things would stay the same otherwise.

Or so I thought.

I came home from my trip and shortly after that, my life started to crumble underneath me.

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

Where Vyckie and Laura’s stories come from a wife and mother’s perspective, my story comes from the perspective of a daughter living under the patriarchy culture. It is my hope that by telling my story publicly, there will be young women that have come out of the patriarchal way of life who will find some healing by reading my story. That there will be young girls that are still in chains to this way of life that will find courage to reclaim their freedom. That there will mothers still enslaved in this way of life that will realize what this is doing to their families, especially their daughters, and will find the strength to stand up for what is right and equal for their gender.Discuss this post on the NLQ forums!

Read All Posts by Erika!

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by Erika

Here in the US, we celebrated our nation’s independence and freedom this past Saturday, the 4th of July. This particular holiday always makes me think of my own Independence Day.

We had a BBQ with family and friends this past Saturday and while we were sitting inside to stay out of the rain, I was telling my friends about the jumper that my sister had made for herself back when she was 18. I had recently posted the picture of our family on my Facebook account and one of my friends asked, “Does your sister really have a cow on her jumper?”

Yes, she did.

In fact, she had the whole farm SCENE. The field, the red barn, the fruit trees, the cows, etc. My mom, sisters and I all worked together in our custom sewing business. We made modest apparel for other ultra-conservative families. The farm fabric was bought in a huge bolt so that we could make little dresses, pinafores and aprons for young girls, but at 18 years old, my sister made herself a jumper out of the fabric. By choice. Her white head covering and hair in a bun completed the look. I took the album out so that I could prove to my friends that we really DID wear the frumpy “modest” clothing, along with the horrible head coverings.

Taking that one album out resulted in taking more albums out and we spent the rest of the evening looking at pictures from days gone by and pouring over my kids’ scrapbook albums. I remember my friend, Nancy, asking if I’d be making my daughter dress like that as she got older. I looked at her and laughed, then asked what in the world would make her think that I would make my daughter dress like that. There’s no chance in hell or heaven that I would put my child through something like that. I told my friend, “If there’s one thing I learned in how my parents raised me through those years, it’s that I will NOT raise my children how they raised me through those years.”

While there are certain aspects of the way my parents raised me that I’m grateful for, the years between 14 and 20 don’t include many, if any at all, that I’m grateful for. The thing I AM grateful for is for actually making it through those years alive and with my sanity and faith intact.

Like Vyckie and Laura, there is so much of my story to tell, but it’s hard to do that in just one post, so I’ve chosen to share my Independence Day with you, seeing that it was very timely with the recent holiday. I’ll be doing some more guest posts here, so I’ll share other glimpses of my life in the world of patriarchy as time goes on.

I was 20 years old when I got married. Getting to that point was not only fast, but it was one of the most difficult and courageous things I’ve ever done. I have never felt as free as I did the day I got married.

You see, when I was 14, my parents pulled myself and my 3 siblings out of public school to homeschool us. Granted, the school system we were in at the time really wasn’t top notch. High school drop-outs were sometimes used as substitute teachers, the work wasn’t challenging and it seemed as though their motto was, “We don’t go any faster than the slowest child in class.” I really did get a better education at home, but there were a lot of forced sacrifices because of it.

When my parents decided to homeschool us, we were going to a mainstream non-denominational Christian church. My parents owned a wholesale bakery in the small town we lived in. I had just finished my freshman year of high school and had been the class president. I was involved in FHA, yearbook, band and going into my sophomore year, I was going to be on the varsity basketball team. That was something that I had been working toward since 4th grade. My mother informed the school that we would not be coming back about 2 weeks before my freshman year ended.

It was 1991 and I was heading off for 2 months to Uganda, Africa on a missions trip. When I left, I was assured that I could still take part in the extra-cirricular activities at the school. During those 2 months away, a lot had started changing in my family and it wasn’t something I was happy to discover when I got home.

My parents had started visiting a church an hour and a half away in southern Vermont (we were living in northern New Hampshire at the time). The families at this church all homeschooled, all the girls wore dresses and skirts ALL the time, many of the families had a lot of children, but the thing that stood out the most was that the husbands/fathers were considered the lord of the family. The head. The authority. What he said went. No asking questions, no questioning authority.

The church claimed they had a “plurality of leadership,” but even at 14 years old, I could tell that one guy was in charge. It sounded nice in concept, but everyone was afraid of him and in awe of him at the same time. Not me, though. I would sit in my chair every Sunday with my middle fingers (yes, both hands) flipped at him in my pockets. In many ways, I hold this man accountable for brain-washing my parents and effectively stealing 6 years of my life and soul during those horrible patriarchy-soaked years.

It wasn’t long before my parents made us go to this church every Sunday. 3 hours round trip every week for a year and a half…until our car finally couldn’t take any more (after that, my parents found other ultra-conservative families in the area to segregate themselves with and home church until we moved to PA in 1993). And it wasn’t long before I was no longer allowed to participate in the extra-cirricular activities at school. My friends, books, music, letters, phone calls…all were censored. When the school year started, I would walk to school with the neighbor girls and hang out in the school yard with them until the first bell rang and then I would walk home. That had to stop, too. Eventually, the church convinced my parents that we just weren’t living according to the Bible if we were wearing pants. We were made to give up our pants and shorts.

I remember when one of the families that we home churched with started wearing head coverings. My parents thought they had gone too far (not realizing that all the things they were making our family do at the time was also too far). Less than a year later, we had moved to PA and my father made us start wearing them, too. The clothes we had to wear got frumpier and more insanely “modest.” I found it bizarre that even the Mennonites in the area thought we were weird and they were the ones dressing in cape dresses and mesh head coverings.

We spent 2 3/4 years in PA and my parents took our family out of the frying pan and into the fire. My father was so heavily steeped in the world of patriarchy and my mom followed right behind. I have to say, though, that after talking with my mom over the past years, I realized that her heart just wasn’t in it, but she also didn’t have the will to fight it either.

By the time early 1996 came, we were getting ready to leave PA and move to Vermont. We missed the clean air (don’t let people fool you when they tell you Amish country is clean living….there’s a ton of pollution there) and most of all, we missed the mountains. Looking back, I laugh at my parents feeling like there was too much religious oppression in Lancaster County, PA. The Amish and especially the Mennonites, had such a legalistic way of life and my parents found that stifling, as it was every where we turned. Ironic, considering that my parents just had a different brand of legalism. It was just as bad, but of a different flavor. I suppose they felt their legalism was better than the other kind of legalism….but isn’t that how those groups usually work? They all take pride in their “humility” and their righteousness is better than everyone else’s.

Right before we moved, my mom and I stopped wearing our headcoverings here and there. We would leave them home when we went out into town. We would leave them off longer in the mornings. At first, my dad would get upset about it and ask why we didn’t have them on. Eventually, I think he got tired of pressing the issue with my mom and I. Maybe he felt like we were too strong together.

I was 19 years old when we were getting packed up to move. I wasn’t in the market for a husband, partially because I didn’t want to end up with some jackass that would treat me like a sub-par human being and would put me in another set of spiritual and emotional set of shackles. I didn’t want to be traded from one owner to the next.

My family had an in home bakery and we dealt with a lot of commercial accounts and my father also did a delivery day to all the professional offices. Kind of like the old-fashioned milk man, but with breads, pies, cakes, pastries, etc. He would go to the work places of women since they were no longer home-keepers and had professional careers. That always puzzled me, as well. My father told us that women weren’t meant to work outside the home, but were meant to get married, raise babies (as many as God would give them), homeschool them and completely sacrifice themselves to their husband and children. Yet….my family depended on these professional women to purchase our goods so our family could be provided for. It always seemed like a double standard to me, but God forbid that I question any of this.

My father met my future brother-in-law at one of the places he delivered to weekly. He would buy pastries and bread and then bring them home. My future mother-in-law loved our baked goods and called my parents to place an order for some upcoming company they had coming. My mom informed her that we’d soon be moving and that if she wanted to order extra, everything would freeze well.

So, that’s what my MIL did. When she came to pick up her order at our house, I answered the door and my future husband was standing there with my future MIL. I thought he was good looking, but didn’t think much else since I was busy packing and had other things to do. My mom and my future MIL got talking and found that our families had a lot in common. She invited our family over the next week for dinner. It was 8 days before we moved and we all showed up on their doorstep only to go for dessert since we really didn’t have time for much else.

We only meant to stay a couple of hours, but ended up being there for 7 hours and left at 1 am. Everyone hit it off really well, but there was still no romantic interest, as we didn’t think we’d ever see these people again, considering that we were moving in just 8 days.

Over the next few months, our moms talked on the phone and us older kids had 4-way phone conversations (my sister and I and the two older brothers in the other family). By May of 1996 (just 5 months after we’d met), the two older boys had approached my father to pursue my sister and I.

My father gave his blessing but put down very specific rules. No hand holding, no touching, no hugging, no kissing, no words of affection, no physical contact WHATSOEVER, no “I love yous” (as that was reserved for engagement). Everything was to go through the approval of my father. We were allowed one letter a week from each other (we lived 450 miles apart) and many of those earlier letters were read by my father, whether coming in or going out. We didn’t have email back then. We were allowed two phone calls a week, 30 min. each. At the beginning, my father would sit in on the phone calls. He even kept a timer handy and when the 30 min. were up, the phone call was deemed OVER. No more talking. Hang it up.

Over that year, we found that the church my future husband and his family went to was a cult. Not that the legalism and ultra-conservative way of life my parents were following wasn’t too far off from that. My father decided, after 9 months of “courtship” (oh, how I loathe that word and anything associated with it), that the guys “weren’t marriage material” and we were told to break off any and all contact with them.

I was 20 and my sister was 21. Old enough, mature enough and adult enough to make that decision on our own, but not the way my father saw it. In the world of patriarchy, a woman’s thoughts, emotions, body and life are not her own. They are owned by a husband or a father. Forever. Never to be held in her own hands or heart. After all, Old Testament scripture (twisted out of context) and ancient tradition proved that a girl was not in ownership of her life and that she had no say in who she married.

Through the back-up of the man who headed up the cult-like church that my parents first got involved in when they went down the path of patriarchy, my father fully believed that he, and he alone, chose who my sister and I were to marry. For a while, even after my sister and I were married, my father refused to acknowledge our marriages, stating that since he didn’t approve of them or choose our husbands and didn’t give his blessing, in the eyes of God, we were living in fornication and demanded that we come home. It boggled my mind that while we were considered old and mature enough to actually BE married, we were not mature enough to actually be trusted with the choice of WHO we would marry. And the way my father believed at the time, we NEVER would be. It was his right and his alone. We had no say and we had to accept it….or so my parents said.

My sister obeyed my father and broke things off with Jonathan. I, on the other hand, had worked too hard to get where I was and was determined to find a way to be with the one I loved. David and I found a way to keep in touch with each other, through payphones and writing our letters in code (yes, David created a code out of symbols to write in and we still have copies of those) and making sure to be the one to pick up the mail at the post office rather than my parents. My sister was sent away to North Carolina to nanny for a family as her “ministry.” While she was there, she got back together with Jonathan over the phone.

5 weeks after my sister left for NC, we all realized that we were tired of being played like pawns in my father’s game. David and I knew we wanted to be together but we also knew that my father would never allow it. We knew that we would have to take matters into our own hands. Like adults. We knew, though, that we wouldn’t be seen as adults, but as just a couple of rebellious kids who were living outside of God’s will. We were willing to take that chance, as we knew we were in the right.

5 days before David came up to propose to me, we talked on the phone and he told me that he would be coming up to get me, to pack my bags and that he had something important to ask me. I asked him if he was going to propose. He told me that he couldn’t tell me. It was a surprise. I told him, “Okay then, I wear a size 5 ring.”

In the meantime, Jonathan told my sister to get her stuff together because he would be showing up around the same time that David would be coming up here to Vermont (my sister was still in NC). We all knew that if one of us girls were to go, we both had to go. If one of us were left behind, we knew we’d be under lock and key….literally. I’d been there before when I tried to leave home earlier in the year (that’s for another story) and I certainly didn’t want to be there again.

At the time, I felt horribly guilty for leaving home. I knew it was something I was going to do, but all the drilling into us of our rightful place at home was playing mind games with me. Our family was very close, even though it was a bit cracked in the head when it came to crazy cult-ideas of patriarchy. The heart strings were being tugged and I knew that it would crush my parents and that was something I knew would haunt me for a while, but it was something that I was willing to do to claim my freedom. It was something I HAD to do to claim my freedom. I knew I couldn’t stay to make everyone else happy.

For once, I had to put my own freedom and happiness ahead of what other people wanted me to do. It wasn’t about being selfish, as many people eventually condemned me of, but about taking back what was rightfully mine and claiming it.

For a long time, people claimed that I ran away from home. I strongly disagree. A 20 year old doesn’t “run away from home.” They claim their freedom and take it back from the people that stole it from them. Minors run away from home. 20 year olds claim their freedom. Of course, in the eyes of partiarchy, a 20 year old girl is not her own and doesn’t have any rights or freedom, so to them, I did run away from home. What a twisted and miserable way to live and think.

I had always known, deep inside, that the way I was being treated, as property, was NOT the way God had intended women to live. In my heart and soul, I had led a silent rebellion (and sometimes not so silent during those years). A revolution of sorts.

Feminism was always alive and well inside but I had been looking for the right time to let it out, to let it free. (Yes, I still profess my Christianity, but I consider myself more of a liberal Christian and definitely a biblical feminist and egalitarian.)

I quietly packed what I could without anyone noticing that there was much missing. I couldn’t bring more than a few bags of clothes, my notebook, a couple CDs and the collection of letters that David had sent to me during the 10 months that we were “courting.” I had arranged to work at a farm that I had helped at off and on and stored my bags there.

David came to Vermont and we met up with some friends at the hardware store parking lot. They went into the store and let David and I sit in the car alone for a little while. He’d told me earlier that he couldn’t afford a ring, so I wasn’t expecting one. I told him that I didn’t need a ring to get married, just him. He got out of the car, went to trunk and came back to the driver’s seat. He pulled out a small brown velvet box and proposed to me, in the middle of a blizzard on March 21, 1997. I was shocked that he had a ring and asked him about being able to afford it. He told me that he couldn’t afford it when he’d talked to me those few days before since he had just bought it and had very little money left. Technically he couldn’t afford a ring at that point. Because of our situation, he wanted something left to surprise me with. Of course I said yes.

The next two days were full of nerves and stress. I couldn’t eat and even threw up a few times. We both needed so badly for all of this to work without a hitch. Two days after he proposed, we met up at the farm that I was working at. The night before, I spent over an hour writing a letter to my parents, explaining why I was leaving, why I was taking my freedom back, that I loved them and that I hoped they understood. I put the letter under my pillow the morning I left. I got up very early so that I could get to the farm by milking time. The sun was just peeping up over the horizon and I walked to the edge of the room that my 2 younger brothers shared. I blew kisses to each of them while they slept. I walked into my parents’ room and placed a kiss on each of their cheeks. It was just like any normal morning to them. They had no idea what was going to hit them later in the day. Not only would they find that one daughter had left, but that the other had also left NC and was on her way to PA….both with rings on their fingers and freedom held tightly in their fists.

I put in a morning’s work and he helped alongside me. We were waiting for word from my sister that she had been picked up by Jonathan and were on their way to PA to meet us there. As soon as we got word, we left Vermont for PA.

I called 2 hours down the highway to tell my parents that I had left the car in the parking lot at the nearby orchard with the keys under the mat. My mother answered the phone and thought I was joking at first. She was livid, told me I was a disappointment to her and made me put David on the phone. She demanded that he bring me home and scolded him for stealing me. I took back the phone and told her that I was going to PA, that I was engaged, that I loved her but there was also nothing they could do about it at that point, that I was an adult.

The thing I remember most about that phone call was that my mother was worried about the testimony I had marred for our family by doing this. It was then that I realized, in a whole new way, that so many of the things that my family had been doing over those 6 long years was about appearances. My parents were more concerned about how it made them look. They were concerned about how others would think of them. It was eye-opening and infuriating at the same time. That put a resolve in me that what I was doing was the right thing. I didn’t mention a word about my sister leaving. They found that out later on when they tried to call her to tell her to pray for me and found out that she, too, had left. (I’ll tell the story about our engagement and wedding in another guest post.)

Leaving home (not “running away from home”) was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Birthing my 2 kids naturally was easier than that. I felt exhilaration, sadness, freedom, anger, joy, guilt, hope, love, resolve …..all these emotions all at once. I was so happy to be engaged and on my way to being married. I was hopeful for a new life with the one I loved. I was exhilarated to be free. I was sad and angry that I had allowed someone to have control over me the way my parents did for so long. I was angry that they were disappointed in me, rather than being proud of me for making positive choices and for following my heart and what I believed to be God’s will for my life. I was angry that they wanted me to follow THEIR will, while putting it under the guise of being God’s will. I felt guilty for leaving behind my two brothers (who were 18 and 12 at the time), who I knew would be turned against me and would be taught to look down on me through twisted scripture and legalistic rules drilled into their minds. But I was resolved to stand firm in my decision and to make my marriage work.

I remember a time before David and I became a “couple.” It was early 1996 and I had gotten my license (yes, at 19 years old – that’s another subject for a future post) and a job. I adored going to work. It was the one place I could completely be me. Where I didn’t have to worry about people lecturing me. I didn’t have to be on eggshells, thinking that any moment, no matter what I did, it would incur parental wrath and I would have to be subjected to a long winded sermon tailored for an audience of one – me. I was 19 at the time.

This picture was taken right around that time. The picture makes it look like I’m happy, but inside I was dying a slow and painful death. I felt suffocated. I became obsessed with what I ate….practically starving myself. I roller-bladed 3 miles a day and biked 3 miles a day. 6 miles total. I was a skeleton but hid it well with baggy clothes. I had been suffering a silent depression. I knew that if I told my parents about it, they would tell me I had sin in my life that needed to be dealt with. I knew they would tell me that true Christians don’t get depressed. I knew that I would be locked down even more than I already was. No, I had to keep it silent.

I might have looked happy here, but it was right around this time that I would drive home from work every day and the awful feeling of repression hitting would set in, knowing that I would have to go home to a patriarchal setting, to one where I was devalued, to one where I was angry at God for giving me a vagina instead of a penis (because that’s all it seemed the patriarchal pigs thought you needed to be better than the other gender), to one where spiritual abuse was the “soup de jour,” where depression greeted me like a hungry wolf every time I walked in the door – just waiting to tear me apart and steal my soul.

It was during this time that I would try to work up the courage every time I drove home…..the courage to drive my car into a tree and just get rid of the pain I felt eating me from the inside out. The thought of going back home every day was that painful. I knew my parents loved me, but the way they showed it was just so unbiblical and hurtful. It hurt to be loved….and not in a good way. I wanted to die.

Years later, I realize it took more courage to go home every day and find a way out.And that’s exactly what I did when I walked out of the prison I called home and into freedom.

Many people said that I was getting married for all the wrong reasons. That I was just looking for a way out. I disagree. In many ways, David was (and still is) my hero. My knight in rusty, old, beat-up armor. He gave me the courage to reclaim my freedom, my independence. I honestly think that I would have been buried long ago if he hadn’t come along at just the right time. We were married on June 14, 1997 and my father (and many others that thought just like my parents) warned us that it would never last. 12 years later, we’re still here to prove them wrong. Sure, it hasn’t been easy, but what marriage is? I’m just glad I married someone that didn’t have his head up his tush and that he didn’t have a god-complex.

A new world opened up to me on March 23, 1997. I truly felt, even with the pain that I went through in leaving and being treated like a rebellious and selfish little child, like I had been relieved of a huge weight. I felt like I had chains taken off me. I felt like I had been given a new lease on life, as cliche as that sounds. I felt like I found my soul again. March 23, 1997 will always be my own personal “Independence Day.”

Since then, I have found a passion for seeing other girls and women break free from the awful chains of patriarchy. To find freedom from guilt for desiring to be themselves, for wanting their freedom in the first place, and moreso, to reach out and grab it back from those that stole it from them. As much as I hated having to go through all of that, I do know that made me a stronger person, it has given me something to leave my daughter as a legacy and has given me the courage to pursue things that I might never have had the courage to do so before.

Even still, I would rather have not gone through all of that (and there’s more to this story than just what you’re reading here – this was the “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version,” as my dad calls it), but there are things that we sometimes can’t control from happening…but we CAN control how we let it affect us and what we do with the situations that are dealt us.

I’m sure many of you are wondering where my parents are in all of this these days. I’m happy to say that my parents are no longer living this lifestyle. They, too, found spiritual freedom. It took about a year for us to come to reconciliation. Looking back, I am not sorry for leaving, I’m not sorry for standing my ground, I’m not sorry for doing what I had to do. I am sad that we were left no choice to do what we had to do, as much of it wasn’t ideal, but then, neither were the situations we were put in at the time. None of it was ideal and none of it should have happened. But….it did and if I had to go back and do it again, I wouldn’t think twice. I would do it in a heartbeat.

My parents are part of a wonderful church in RI and living their dream of living on a sailboat full time. They’ve come away from the legalistic brain-washing and have asked forgiveness for all that they put us through. I would never withhold that from them. They are two of my closest friends these days. I can have spiritual discussions with my father and actually enjoy them. He’s no longer in his “a-hole phase,” as I like to call it. He was surprised when he found out I had a name for it. I had to admit that, yes, he was indeed an a-hole back then, even though I did love him.

They freely admit that they were influenced by men and movements that wrapped up a shiny package of perfect families and godly living, while twisting scriptures out of context and adding man-made rules to the equation. I always found it ironic that these groups and movements talk about grace, but live by the law and only have grace for themselves.

I have found, over the years, that creative therapy has helped me come to terms with much of the pain I felt through those years. To face the hurt that I still feel sometimes at having the years that should have been the best years of my life (the teen years) actually turn out to be the worst. Sure, I have good memories tucked in there, but they were overshadowed for a long time by depression. I’ve also realized that in order to fully face the lingering emotions, I have to talk about it and share it. I have to put those emotions into art.

I’ve also found that by sharing my own creative therapy with others, women have learned to share their own souls in scrapbooks about themselves. I now run weekend retreats with women from all walks of life and backgrounds and encourage them to leave a lasting legacy and story of their lives. It gives them something to hand on to younger generations, but I find that it also gives them a release as they finally do something for themselves. I also run this course as an online course and the sharing, compassion and encouragement I find happening between these women is astounding. We all find a common ground as women and realize that we’re stronger than people think us to be….and even more than we think ourselves to be when we first start digging around inside ourselves. Seeing women, whether it’s in an online forum, or in a more intimate weekend retreat setting, find their voice is truly astounding.

I find a release through being creative and I’ve also realized that through this art, I can create a story for my children…the true story. I want them to know where I’ve been, what I’ve done, how I’ve become who I am today and I’m not pulling any punches.

Some day, my kids will understand how their mom claimed her freedom, as they will never know what it’s like to live in chains like I did – in a place that should have been safe and freeing for me. I vowed years ago that my children would never know spiritual abuse from their father or I. They would never have to go through what I did to gain my independence. But I DO want them to know, through my own courage, that they CAN reach for the things that are truly good and right and not be afraid to do so.

Erika’s Stampin’ Mama Blog

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