NLQ Stories

Unwrapping the Onion: Part 3: A Growing Up Story

May 4, 2012
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by Permission to Live

Before I go any further I just want to make it clear that my spouse has participated in the writing and editing of this series, and has given their full support and approval of it’s publication.

This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.

Over the next number of months it seemed that we talked about transgender questions and issues constantly. My spouse had been unable to talk about this for so long and now it was like a floodgate had opened. He told me about how he had always felt different, that even as a small child he wished he could play with some of the girls’ toys and wondered why he couldn’t have long hair like his sisters. He remembered feeling sad when he figured out that he wouldn’t ever be a mother. But he learned early on to behave in the manner expected of him and he didn’t have a name to put to the feelings he had.

As a little Christian homeschooled boy, there wasn’t much available information on LGBTQ people, but one day at about 11 years of age, he was reading a large illustrated history of the 20th century when a small paragraph near the bottom of the page caught his eye. The title of the section was “Man becomes Woman” and reading it with his heart thumping wildly, he realized that there were other people like him. The short story was about one of the first transsexual women who went public with their story, her name was Christine Jorgensen and she had transitioned back in the 1950s. Several times a week he would pull the heavy book from the shelf and open to the page with the story, to read again and again about Christine. He was not alone.

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Forming Boundaries Late in Life

May 3, 2012
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by Latebloomer

Do any of these sound like you?

I have to always say yes to others, or else I am selfish.
I have to always hide my hurt, or else I am unloving.
I have to treat other people as faultless, or else I am holding a grudge.
I have to keep my wants and needs to myself, or else I am a burden to others.

People who experienced authoritarian parents tend to turn into adults with poor boundaries. They were trained for it their whole lives and can’t imagine another way of doing things. However, it’s an extremely unsatisfying and unsustainable way to live, don’t you think? But most importantly, it’s actually not what a loving person is like! For me, when I was in that mindset, my “loving” actions were actually motivated by obligation or guilt because I thought I didn’t really have a choice; I was just an actor.

Besides hindering me from showing real love based on real choice, this mindset also prevented me from ever feeling loved. My buried wants and needs were still there; I just expected any true friend to be hyper-vigilant to my emotional state and correctly guess my unexpressed wants/needs. I felt that anyone who didn’t put in that monumental effort didn’t really care about me. And when people hurt me, I didn’t give them a chance to repair the damage to the relationship; I either lied to myself and them by saying that I wasn’t hurt, or I expected them to realize the problem and fix it without being told. Obviously, it was really hard for anyone to break through those defenses to form a real and lasting connection with me, even if they wanted to.

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Unwrapping the Onion: Part 2: Research 101

May 2, 2012
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by Permission to Live

This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.

The next day started out the same as pretty much any other day. We had breakfast, and my Hunnie went out to the office. But unlike an average weekday, as soon as he left, I put in a movie for the kids, plunked the baby into the bouncer and rushed to the computer. I hardly knew where to start; it was all so unknown to me. I typed in “what is transsexual?” and sat there staring at the screen. My gut reaction to new things was to learn as much as I could, and I had a lot to figure out. In fact, I spent the next few weeks doing constant research; it was pretty much all I could think about. My kids watched far more TV than usual as I spent hours reading whatever I could find on the subject. When my spouse was home I asked him question after question about his experience, and he tried to answer every question as honestly as he could.

For starters, I learned that “transsexual” was just one of the terms used in reference to people who did not feel that their gender matched their bodies. And since “transsexual” seemed to be used more often in reference to people who were living life in the opposite gender they had been assigned at birth, I started using the more encompassing term “transgender” instead.

The old term “transvestite” that I had heard my parents use was actually a name of a sexual fetish that comprised of crossdressing to get a sexual thrill of some kind. I had never seen my spouse crossdressed, but as soon as he came home for lunch I asked him if he ever did. He admitted that he had been crossdressing in private since he was young, but said that it didn’t do anything for him sexually. Back to the drawing board.

I learned about men who considered themselves “crossdressers” meaning that they dressed up as women sometimes for the fun of it, or to express their feminine side. I learned about gender dysphoria, the name for the persistent subconscious understanding that you were somehow the opposite gender than you had been assigned at birth, and in discovering that, I found that there were people who had been born physically female who had this condition as well. I read about transgendered people who had felt that life was better for them living as the opposite gender, and I read about transgendered people who had decided to get medical treatments to make their bodies feel more in tune with their minds.

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Debunking the Fourteen Basic Needs of a Marriage: Part 2a

May 1, 2012
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by Incongruous Circumspection

Make sure to familiarize yourself with the first Basic Need of a Husband, according to Bill Gothard – A man needs a wife who is loyal and supportive. You can read my response to this nonsense here:

Introduction
Part 1a
Part 1b: Women? Goals? Who are YOU Kidding?!
Part 1c: Men are Fragile and Women are Manipulative Fools
Part 1d: Husbands are Omniscient and Wives Must Give Sex

Now, let’s move on to the next Basic Need of a Husband.

[#2. A man needs a wife who honors his leadership.]

In my opinion, Bill is padding the numbers to get to God’s “perfect number” of seven. Honoring the husband’s leadership is only slightly different than the first basic need of a husband which was, a wife must be loyal and supportive. But, let’s give Gothard the benefit of the doubt and assume he sees it differently.

[Scripture instructs a wife to reverence her husband (emphasis Bill's). (See Ephesians 5:33.) What does that mean? To reverence a husband means “to respect, defer to, revere him; to honor, esteem, appreciate, prize, and in the human sense, to adore him, that is, to admire, praise, be devoted to, deeply love, and enjoy him.”]

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Unwrapping the Onion: Part 1: A Secret Revealed

April 30, 2012
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by Permission to Live

This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.

As many of you know, my spouse and I got married young after a short parent-supervised courtship. We began our marriage “the right way” according to everything we believed. We had obeyed our parents and stayed pure from emotional relationships or sexual activity, so when we got married neither of us had ever been intimate with any other person. We were wholeheartedly committed to our Christian beliefs at that time, feeling certain that birth control was wrong in almost any circumstance and that men should be the family leaders and women should be submissive. My husband was in seminary to be a Christian minister and I was a stay-at-home wife. We worked together to start a church for homeschool families with a strong emphasis on faith practices in the home and we used our experience growing up in conservative homeschool families to encourage them. We talked about how homeschooling had protected us from the world, and how well courtship worked to keep young people pure and got them into solid god-honouring marriage. We prayed together, read our bibles together, and sought to follow God’s will in everything.

But none of this changed the secret that we never really spoke of.

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Quiverfull and the Introvert: Where Do You Get Your Energy?

April 29, 2012
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by Barbie Getzreal

“Where do you get your energy?!”

This is a question which is frequently asked of Quiverfull moms by amazed and admiring onlookers who cannot imagine being able to keep up with the exponential demands of “biblical womanhood” including: perpetual pregnancy, child-bearing, adopting sibling groups, breastfeeding, baby wearing, chronic sleep deprivation, raising half a dozen or more closely-spaced, “stair-step” children, homeschooling – year round through chronic illness, child-training, character training, tomato-staking, discipling children, homemaking, penny-pinching, organic gardening, baking from scratch, once-a-month cooking, homesteading, sewing modest clothing, showing hospitality, operating a “cottage” business, staying trim, fit and healthy, and of course, serving as loving helpmeet … all without the modern woman’s “village” of helpers: daycare, preschool, play dates, public school, the boob-tube babysitter, pre-packaged and frozen foods, day spas, “me time,” credit cards, government assistance, “allopathic” medicine, Sunday School, youth group, therapists, Ritalin for the kids, or Xanax for mom.

Even a cursory perusal of the above-linked Quiverfull blogs will leave a woman feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. “Where do you get your energy?” is the obvious and unavoidable question.

The most flippant, unprofitable, guilt-inducing, and insincere responses often sound the most spiritual:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

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Karma Will Run Over Your Dogma & Squash It

April 27, 2012
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by Calulu

(Editorial note: What follows below is my own personal thoughts on this, no one elses, I’m not speaking for the group, just me. I cannot stay silent to this. If you’re offended or triggered I’m so sorry. Warning if you are triggered by scriptures or the like.)

This morning several of us at NLQ were directed to look at “Women’s Prayer Group Praying That the Women at MRFF All Get Incurable Breast Cancer” posting on Free Thought Blogs.

Apparently there is a group of ladies calling themselves Christians who’ve decided to make praying for the death of anyone connected with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation their number one priority. And why is that? Perhaps because the MRFF is a watchdog organization that keeps the the Dominionist evangelical Christians in the military from discriminating, harassing or intimidating people that believe or don’t believe differently than them. Yes, the MRFF protects the religious FREEDOM our country was founded upon. Oh how very evil!

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Answering the Quiverfull Party Line #1: If We’re Not Trusting God, We Are Playing God

April 27, 2012
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As a counter-cultural movement, the Quiverfull philosophy and lifestyle are frequently subject to substantial criticism from outsiders (friends, neighbors, random strangers in grocery store check-out lines) – and, given the life-altering ramifications of embracing the Quiverfull ideal, even the firmly-convinced often ask tough questions with respect to the practicality and wisdom of “trusting the Lord with our family planning.” “Answering the Quiverfull Party Line” examines the Quiverfull apologia.

by Barbie Getzreal

The Quiverfull Party Line: If We’re Not Trusting God, We Are Playing God

Are We Pro-Choice or Pro-Life? Most Christians would answer Pro-Life. By this they mean that they are against terminating a life that has already been conceived through abortion. But are they really Pro-Life? What if God should so desire to bless them with another family member? Usually not. The majority of the church has openly embraced birth control, even though it’s very name clearly implies that someone else is in control other than God. Their bodies, destiny, family size, timing and structure have never been turned over. God’s creed has always been conception, birth and life. The world’s creed has always been birth control, sterilization and abortion. It all accomplishes the same purpose. Life has been stopped. Whose side are we on? (excerpted from Who Is In Control?)

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