by Latebloomer

From hanging around with people such as Scott Lively in my fundamentalist Christian homeschooling community, I understood the danger that America was facing from the gay agenda. I believed that the gay lifestyle was depraved and corrupt and a sign of rebellion against God. I believed that God expected me to use political activism to stand up for righteousness and his design for the family. I believed that my “pro-family-values” activism was actually me being loving to the deceived people around me, people who were just taking the easy way out by accepting every type of lifestyle.

Then one day I accidentally met a gay person.

It was at my first real job, when I was 23 years old. My favorite manager, Chris, called the store one day while he was off-duty. He chatted with the on-duty manager Katie for a few minutes; when she hung up, she remarked to me, “He’s so funny! Why did he call me from a gay bar? haha!”

I was extremely confused. “Yeah, that’s weird,” I said, trying to process the information, “Why would he be at a gay bar?” Her jaw dropped, and she stared at me for a minute. Then she said slowly, “Um…..because he’s gay. Didn’t you know that?”

It was a huge moment for me, but a million panicked thoughts flooded my mind at once. How was it that I hadn’t noticed anything “different” about him? He seemed so normal and sweet, not at all detrimental to society! He had always been so thoughtful to me, even from the first day I walked in the store in my awkward unstylish clothes and shyly handed him my resume. He was the first guy to tell me that I was pretty, that I looked like his favorite childhood actress Molly Ringwald (he couldn’t believe that I had never heard of her). But he was gay?? What was I supposed to do now??

I started to feel a huge spiritual burden for him, the feeling that I had a responsibility to help him get out of that damaging lifestyle somehow. But how should I approach that topic with him? Should I try to talk to him about turning away from that lifestyle and starting to follow Christ? Or should I just invite him to church and let God speak to him through the sermons and the pastor? I couldn’t really see either scenario playing out very well, so I waited and thought and prayed.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had no idea what was inherently wrong with gay sex and gay love! Why was it not equally valid? It started to seem a very arbitrary thing to forbid, and reality didn’t match what I had been taught about it in Christian culture. In some ways, I felt like my gay boss was a better example of love than many of the Christian people that I knew. After all, he had hired me willingly, even though he knew that I was a very conservative homeschooler and very likely to be strongly anti-gay. I knew he would not have gotten the same treatment from many conservative Christian employers. Cautiously, I started to think to myself, “Maybe homosexuality is ok after all.”

And that was just one of many cracks that formed as my Christian worldview hit reality. For the first time in my life, I was hearing about other worldviews directly from their source, instead of a filtered, watered-down version presented merely to strengthen my own worldview. And, for the first time in my life, I realized it was possible to hold different opinions from my own without being “blind”, “deceived,” or “in rebellion against God”–my worldview was not so obvious, and “unsaved” people were not so bad after all.

But what were the implications for the Bible? I had always tried to approach it simply, ready to believe the literal interpretation even when it required personal sacrifice. To me, it was a timeless book, orchestrated by God, without contradiction, the only reliable source of truth. But as cracks formed in my carefully-constructed Biblical worldview, in the end I had to decide what I thought about the Bible. I had always avoided my natural curiosity about how the Bible came to us in its current state–it certainly didn’t fall from the sky in its present form! Acknowledging my questions about it was terrifying, but ultimately necessary. If it were really from God, and if I really genuinely wanted to know the truth about it, I shouldn’t have anything to fear. So, very gradually, I looked at my beliefs and asked the hard questions.

My worldview said, “The Bible is the source for morality!” –But then why does it condone things like genocide, and call men “godly” when they offer their daughters to be gang raped, and advocate forced marriages between a girl and her raper? Why doesn’t it condemn slavery and child sacrifice and polygamy with child brides? My worldview said, “The Bible is written by eyewitnesses, and their accounts don’t contradict each other!” –Then why was I afraid to look at the supposed contradictions? They are there, after all, and just saying they don’t exist isn’t a valid argument. The Bible has internal contradictions on theology and history, and there are significant variations between historic manuscripts. Also, many of the books have unknown authors and were first written hundreds of years after the events took place. In its present form, the collection of books we call the Bible doesn’t have even more contradictions because those other books were thrown out as “uninspired” simply because they contradicted too much. My worldview said, “The Bible is the source of truth about salvation through Jesus!” –Then why are there over 2,000 language groups in the world today that have no way to access that truth? Why have billions upon billions of people lived and died without ever having a chance to hear it?

I was rooting for my Biblical worldview to win, I really was. It was comfortable because it was all I knew, and I really don’t like change. However, in the end, it didn’t hold up very well against reality. In the end, there were too many cracks, and my worldview shattered. And when it shattered, I finally saw what a tiny box I had been living in, and what a huge, beautiful, and interesting world was out there to discover.

Since much of my personal growth happened while I was in college, some have said that my changing opinions were the result of “liberal college brainwashing”. To those people, I doubt that I could say anything to change their opinion about that. However, the fact is that at no time during my education at community college or Christian university were my opinions mocked or belittled. At no time did anyone tell me what to believe or not to believe.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the fundamentalist Christian homeschooling environment. That is where you are told what to believe. That is where other opinions are belittled. That is where even questions are dangerous. I don’t want to be part of that culture anymore. To me, a worldview is not worth keeping if it requires ignoring or twisting reality to fit the worldview, pushing down your questions and doubts, and only listening to those who already agree with you.

These thoughts took a very long time to process, and my ideas are still a work in progress today. For now, I am finding that many of my new ideas fit within a looser interpretation of the Bible, one where I don’t completely abdicate my responsibility to think about what’s right in today’s world. I see that morality was a work in progress in the Bible, and I accept that it still is today too, and that I have a role to play.

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

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture. Becoming a wife and mother has prompted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes.  Her blog Past Tense Present Progressive is her place for sorting through her thoughts.

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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.

He brought up gay or trans people up in conversations here and there with the people in his life, looking for clues as to how they felt about the issue. Having repeatedly heard the common Christian attitude on these topics, he quickly started to believe that talking about how he felt would be sure to bring rejection from those he loved most, and maybe even subjection to painful therapeutic procedures pushed by Christian ministries to “fix” him. He desperately wanted to please his relatives and his community, he prayed fervently for the misgendered feelings to go away, but they remained. He wished that it would be discovered that he was physically intersexed in some way, because if his body was somehow both male and female perhaps it would become acceptable for him to live as a girl. But puberty hit right on time, and the torment got worse. His body was maturing further into what his brain told him was the wrong gender. There was nothing he could do to change it, and waking up each day to the body he hated got more and more difficult.

He immersed himself in school, studied hard and started on a track towards becoming a minister, but the feelings were still there. Now that he was in junior college he had access to public computers and he took the chance to read anything he could on the condition he knew he had. I started to realize that despite my hours upon hours of research, I had merely scratched the surface of the extent of reading my spouse had done over the last number of years. He studied the treatments and surgeries and read about the side effects and problems. But all the while he had such shame believing that God condemned him for having those feelings. He wondered why God would give him such a heavy cross to bear, what had he done to deserve this? He knew all the “right” things to say on the LGBTQ issues if questioned, but inside he was afraid of his secret ever being discovered.

Gender dysphoria was always lurking under the surface, sometimes spiraling into bouts of depression. On dark days, wild ideas screamed through his mind, maybe he should run away from home and spare everyone the pain of having such a child in the family, maybe he could somehow cut off the source of the hormones wreaking such havoc on his body, maybe it would be better if he was ended his life and with it the possibility of his condition causing pain to those he loved. But in the end the only real option seemed to be to numb the pain as best he could. Suppressing, denying, and keeping as busy as possible. He had grown up with many of the trappings of an American childhood, the friends, the vacations, the hobbies. Yet under the surface the gender dysphoria was always there, it never went away.

He fell in love and we got married. His hopes were high that this issue was going to leave once he was safely in a god-sanctioned relationship where he would have the role of a husband and father to fill. Feelings of despair hit hard when soon after marriage he realized the gender dysphoria was still there. So many of his low periods during our marriage made more sense now that I knew what he had been struggling with.

Hearing more of the story was heartbreaking for me, and realizing how hard he had fought this his whole life made me start worry that my efforts to help him would just be a drop in the bucket. He had done his best to be “who God wanted him to be”.

He had denied himself everything,
prayed and begged God to heal him,
but he was still wrestling with it now, years later.

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

You can read more about Permission To Live at her blog – Musings of a young mom.

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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.

When I was in my late teens/early twenties, equipped with my driver’s license, I began to have more opportunities to interact with my peers. However, with my poor boundaries and repressed emotions from authoritarian parenting, and with my severe social anxiety from isolated homeschooling, I wasn’t exactly set up for success. It’s not surprising that I was able to form friendships with more dominant and outgoing people most easily at first. They were the ones who were confident enough to break through my guardedness and befriend invisible me. I had no identity and nothing to contribute, and they were the ones who could talk enough to cover for my silence. They were the ones with ideas that I could go along with. And, thankfully, they were the ones who could ask me the pushy and nosy questions on occasion that helped to break open my protective shell.

It’s also not surprising, although really sad, that many of those first friendships didn’t last through the turbulence of my mid- and late- twenties. In a way, I was really experiencing my teens and twenties simultaneously. Out on my own for college, I was trying to discover and establish my own identity for the first time in my life, and dealing with an incredible amount of childhood baggage at the same time. And just when I felt I was making real progress in replacing social anxiety with relationships, my progress in forming boundaries set me back.

I asked my husband to provide a little outside perspective of what the process looked like, since most of it took place during our relationship. He sees it this way:

1. I realized that conflict had to be acknowledged and resolved rather than ignored in order to have a healthy relationship. That meant that it was ok to admit when someone’s behavior bothered me. However, since I had no experience at conflict management, I didn’t know when or how to go about it. I was a mess of over-reactions and under-reactions, and the whole time I was incredibly stressed and afraid of rejection.

2. Once I began to open up about my feelings, wants, and needs, a backlog of repressed emotions suddenly started to flow out. In my mind, lists of ways I had been wronged started to appear, even from all those times that I thought I was being loving and not keeping a record. So, whenever I needed to talk to someone about a conflict, they would be surprised and hurt by the size of my list of related issues.

3. I wasn’t secure enough in my boundaries, so I was hyper-sensitive to any attempts to control or manipulate me, whether it was a friend or a family member. Even just their attempt to change my opinion by sharing a different perspective was threatening to me. Figuratively speaking, if a person even dared to knock politely on my boundary wall, I would appear with a shotgun and tell them to get off my property. I had very strong ideas about how I should be treated, and it was almost impossible for people to fit in my narrow tolerances. Everything had to be on my terms; I expected anyone who cared about me to change immediately when I informed them of a problem.

4. Now I’m finally feeling more secure in my boundaries, so I’m starting to become more balanced and pick my battles more carefully. I’m getting better at differentiating between real offenses and simple mistakes, as well as determining what approach might be most effective way to manage the conflict. I’m also trying to prevent emotional build-up by dealing with things right away. And most importantly, I’m trying to take other people’s differences and imperfections into account and realize that change usually comes slowly. It’s easier to accept that when I remember that others are also being patient with me in ways I can’t fully see.

I deeply appreciate my husband’s support during this process; without him, it would have been much more difficult to work through so many issues. Even though this process has been extremely challenging and painful at times, and even though I still have a lot of progress left to make, I am so much happier than I was before. Now when I choose to help people, I have the reward of feeling happy and satisfied because I did it willingly. Now I take responsibility for my needs, wants, and feelings, so I don’t feel so helpless and dependent. Now when I choose to tolerate people’s imperfections, I feel a sense of our shared humanity rather than feeling devalued.

However, it is unfortunate that I had to go through this process so late in life. I feel like it was much more traumatic than it needed to be because it conflicted with the progress I was making in forging friendships with people for the first time in my life. If you are dealing with similar issues as an adult, I’d like to recommend two things: read the book “Boundaries” by Cloud and Townsend and find yourself a good therapist; hopefully you can find a way to establish and maintain good boundaries in a less destructive way than I did.

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

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture.  Becoming a wife and mother has prompted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes. Her blog is her place for sorting out her thoughts at Past Tense Present Progressive.

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“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.”

“With God all things are possible.”

“He will not give us more than we can handle …”

or how about this “encouraging” little pep-talk: “Just like a battery charger, the Holy Spirit dwells in us–with unlimited power and energy!” Oh joy! Christian moms of many just need to get “plugged-in” … and there is a handy dandy list provided of even more things we need to do in order to get “connected.”

Thanks. That’s really helpful.

An important aspect of energy which I have never seen discussed in Quiverfull circles has to do with how our interaction with other people affects our energy levels. Specifically, the difference between introverts and extraverts is never addressed in relation to large-family dynamics.

While an extravert is energized by frequent social involvement, an introvert gains energy through quiet, private reflection.  Being surrounded by people makes extraverts feel happy, enthusiastic, animated, and pumped full of optimism, but constant interaction drains the introvert’s energy and leaves them feeling tired, irritable, anxious and angry. It is absolutely essential to an introvert’s health and well-being to be able to get alone for significant periods of time in order to restore and recharge their own personal energy.

While it is popularly believed that introverts are shy while extraverts are out-going and sociable, there are many “social-butterfly” types who are in fact introverts because, even though they thoroughly enjoy the company of their friends and peers, when the party is over and the guests go home, the “life of the party” is wiped-out … sometimes for days afterward. Conversely, there are extraverted people who absolutely need to interact with others in order to gain energy and ward off deep depression, who unfortunately are socially awkward and have difficulty making friends.

Another important distinction is that extraverts tend to think as they talk which means that during conversations they are actually processing their thoughts, while introverts need to think everything through before they feel comfortable verbalizing their thoughts and ideas.

The difference between introverts and extroverts is not some modern psychobabble notion dreamed up by secular humanists to deter true believers from pursuing large families.

Think about it for a minute. Where do YOU get your energy? Do you feel energized after a pleasant chat with friends? If even congenial conversations which you very much enjoy leave you feeling drained of energy, you are probably an introvert. It’s not that you do not welcome the company of others, it is simply that you fill up your emotional energy reserves from within rather than drawing from other people.

With this concept in mind, consider for a moment: what if a person attempting to live the Quiverfull ideal tends to be naturally introverted?

What if all the socializing required for Dad’s job leaves him wrung-out like a wet rag by the end of the work day and desperately feeling the need to relax and breathe in the quiet seclusion of his own home?

In “A Full Quiver,” Rick Hess sloughs off the valid concern of “time” with this pious admonishment:

Worried if you will be able to stand the sacrifice of giving up your time? As one who has been there, let me reassure you that you will be rewarded many times over for giving more and more of yourself to your children.

Already sucked dry? Not a problem! All you need to do is give more and more of yourself …

What about moms like Michelle Duggar who, “spend more time together than the average family that may have two or three children just because we’re home day in and day out homeschooling and doing all our things that go along with that”? If Mom’s an introvert, how does she not go crazy from all of the non-stop interaction with her quiver full of children?

To these overextended women, Nancy Campbell offers a simple solution:

To be an encourager, you have to stop thinking about yourself and give some room in your mind and heart for others. I will never forget some words God spoke to me years ago. .”Nancy,” He said, “how can I reveal to you the needs of others if you are always thinking about yourself?” Oh how true this is.

As troublesome a problem as introversion is for Quiverfull parents, at least Mom and Dad have chosen this lifestyle. They are grown-ups with access to a broad range of coping strategies.

But what happens to the introverted children in Quiverfull homes?

This is not simply a large-family issue, it is specifically a Quiverfull problem because not all large families are as excessively family-centered and discipline-oriented as homeschooling, homesteading, family-integrated, “dare-to-shelter” – type Quiverfull families. I spent a whole day digging through pro-Quiverfull books, publications, websites, and family blogs; all of which poo-pooed the idea that children might actually need their own space and prolonged alone time.

Amy at Raising Arrows acknowledges that having their own space is important for everyone, including children in large families, though she insists that her 13-year-old son likes sharing a room with his two little brothers, and by “giving them space” she means lock boxes for older children, personal shelves, several short “brain breaks” throughout the day for children afflicted with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), headphones, and random one-on-one time with Mom and Dad.

“However,” writes Amy, “we do not allow insurmountable amounts of time spent “alone.”

Children left to themselves are problematic. (Prov 29:15)  Minds left to wander without boundaries and guidelines tend to gravitate toward foolish pursuits (Prov 22:15).  And often there can become a craving for escape.  They want more and more and more time alone, and pretty soon you find they are totally disconnected from the family.

I first learned about introversion from my daughter’s speech therapist.  As it turns out, her speech impediment was a symptom of the frustration and extreme vexation she was feeling as a result of not getting adequate space from her siblings in order to recoup all the energy she expended on interacting with them day in and day out for weeks and months and years at a time.  A simple explanation of her need for ample alone time was all her dad and I needed to motivate us to address the problem. We arranged for our daughter to “chill out” by herself and almost overnight, she was transformed as if by magic into a much more pleasant person.  Her speech improved dramatically. She became more cooperative and personable.  Her concentration and study skills improved. She developed a refreshingly positive outlook on life.

And it occurred to me that I am an introvert too.  An introvert who was constantly surrounded by my extraverted husband and a passel of children and a martyr’s mentality which rejected and disdained the very concept of “me time.”  No wonder I felt utterly frazzled, bone-weary, spiritless and despondent.  When I felt it would be impossible to squeeze out one more drop of energy from my bankrupt inner being, I was “encouraged” by the Titus 2 women to persevere even while I was bed-ridden.

Given that those individuals who are prone to careful contemplation and thoughtful deliberation, as well as a significant majority of “gifted” persons, generally tend toward the introverted end of the extravert-introvert spectrum, it’s a sure bet that introverts actually predominate in Quiverfull homes. This may be a key reason why, when dynamic, industrious, enterprising, indefatigable Quiverfull believers finally snap, they crash and burn in the most spectacular manifestation of downright mania.  Men abandon their families. Mothers drown their children. Kids cut themselves and attempt suicide.  How much misery and destruction could be avoided if individual family members were simply allowed an adequate amount of personal solitude?

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

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by Sierra

Libby Anne has begun a series on Emotional Incest at Love, Joy, Feminism. In her latest post, she also links Hugo Schwyzer’s striking analysis of the problems with the “Daddy’s Girl” myth and princess culture. The following is my attempt to confirm and add more perspectives to the issue they are bringing to light.

As a child of a believer and a nonbeliever, I walked a confusing and sometimes torturous line between the prescriptions of my church and the realities of a divided household. Additionally, I was the only child, and female. For the first couple of years after my mother joined our fundamentalist church (while my age was still in the single digits), we basked in fellowship and preoccupied ourselves with the joys of home. Fundamentalist culture is extremely good at fostering an environment that feels like shelter, with clearly-defined expectations and an emphasis on the “simple life” – about which I’ll write more later. So for the early years, I happily did my homeschool lessons, read books, played outside, and ran to the door yelling “Dad’s home!” whenever his pickup truck began the descent of our long rural driveway.

Then puberty hit like a bombshell.

At nine, I developed breasts and wrapped them in sports bras to keep them hidden. At eleven, menstruation, which was impossible to hide. I was the youngest girl I knew to cross the threshold into womanhood, and the least willing. Although certain parents in my church had already singled me out by age seven as a sexual threat to their sons, the outpouring of messages about my sexuality was suddenly deafening as I crouched under the table in our church’s reception hall, clutching my abdomen and crying from the senseless pain.

The church had more answers for me than I had questions. Over the next few years, I was set adrift in a sea of advice. I was instructed in the rigors of courtship, plied with the sweet, romantic story of a married couple who first held hands at the wedding altar. Purity pledges became common in my peer group; I bought a key necklace with a cross in the center to demonstrate that I was “taken” by Christ. I even wore a fake engagement ring in public to ward off interested parties. I was warned against talking to boys, the same boys who had grown up my friends. I discovered, to my mortification, that I could no longer give a boy a birthday gift without his interpreting it as a sexual advance. I experienced my first stalker at age 16 – a member of our church a decade my senior. I was taught to look for a Christian boy who would ask my father’s permission to court me, who would show no interest in my physical form, who would be a model of a godly leader and provider. I was taught to expect to obey him and bear him children. I was taught that my father could veto any unsuitable boy; I was his responsibility and he was my head.

I was terrified.
But more than that, I was a special case. My father wasn’t a godly leader. He couldn’t judge the character of my potential suitors, since he didn’t have the Holy Ghost. He didn’t believe in the orthodoxy he was expected to enforce. What was going to happen to me?

My “specialness” in this regard was the subject of great angst between my mother, the pastor, and our friends. My mother asserted that God Himself would be my “head” and send me the right boy. My pastor cautioned that I still needed to be obedient to my father. Our friends told me that I ought to treat him as if he were already godly and he would follow suit as God worked in his heart. I was exhausted with the commentary. What if I just didn’t get married? I tried to ask. Paul had favored celibacy. I could be a missionary! I could run a soup kitchen! I could follow the Lord perfectly fine without courting anybody, ever.

Yeah right, they said.

Now, all of this angst presumed that my father would approach my adolescence completely differently. They presumed that he would encourage me to be immodest and promiscuous, to be a cutthroat career vixen, to abandon submission and childbearing, to have a string of boyfriends and marry only for money. They presumed that he would let me drink and smoke and go to places no decent girl had ever heard of.

They were full of crap. My father was a fundamentalist of his own kind.

My father responded to my changing body with a mixture of terror and possessiveness. He oscillated from warnings to lectures to assertions of power. He claimed the right to see my body naked to inspect my “development,” then warned me that boys my age were only interested in one thing. He lectured me about the weaknesses of men, telling me that they were helpless victims of their urges and that a high-heeled shoe could destroy a relationship. He taught me that men would cheat whenever possible (“it’s in their nature”) and that I should protect myself by withholding my body from them. He told me that boys would do anything to get me into bed. He said that I shouldn’t even trust the ones who seemed genuinely interested in my ideas and my life, because it was all just a mask hiding their real intentions. When we were out shopping, he pointed out boys in the crowd and told me that they had been staring at me, and if they got any closer he would have to kill them. I rolled my eyes and told him I could defend myself, thanks.

My father expected a lot of his rules to be broken. He expected me to get a boyfriend and to be physically involved with him, but demanded the right to grouse about it and treat the boy with suspicion and contempt. My father expected me to dress to attract boys; he wanted me to be immodest so that he would have the satisfaction of telling me to go upstairs and change. He wanted to have “a talk” with my hypothetical boyfriend, to warn him of his impending demise if he “laid a finger” on me. But despite all these expectations, my father nonetheless told me all the same things the church did about men. And ultimately, his actions added up to covert incest: the emotional substitution of a daughter for a spouse. He openly told me that my mother was asexual but I was hot, that she had abandoned him but I would not, could not, because I was his daughter.

From both my father and the church, the combined messages were:

1. Men are primarily motivated by sex and are hopelessly weak against feminine wiles
2. Women do not want sex, but use it to get power and money by leveraging it for marriage.
3. The father’s job is to protect his daughter from would-be suitors, with physical violence if necessary.
4. “Boyfriend” is a dirty word that means “drunk sex addict who beats up girls for fun.”
5. A daughter should adore her father and measure all suitors against him.
6. Fathers should “date” their daughters to prevent them from seeking admiration outside the family.
7. Daughters should practice their wifely skills on their fathers.

At the core, the church and my father saw adolescence through the same lens: as a dangerous time in which pair bonds between peers must be warded off and substituted with father-daughter relationships lest the gates of hell pop open and spill out clouds of heroin and gonorrhea. I suspect that fundamentalist-evangelical culture’s enshrinement of emotional incest as “good practice” for marriage reflects a paranoia unique to patriarchs. Men are made to compete with their daughters’ suitors for their hearts and minds. Marriage is only acceptable if the “other man” is nonthreatening to the father’s centrality in the daughter’s emotional world. “Daddy’s Girl” is a life sentence. Marriages might end, but daddy is forever.

This identical lens was the source of serious damage for me as an adolescent. Here’s how:

1. When my father asserted that he owned my body and could “inspect” it to see that I was “developing” properly, my church told me that I didn’t need to obey my father if he asked me to sin. They didn’t elaborate on whether his demand was sinful.
2. When my father painted boys my age as sexual predators, the church agreed.
3. When my father made allusions to our shopping trips and lunches out as “dates,” the church agreed.
4. When my father told me that other people on the street would probably mistake us for a couple, the church was silent.
5. When my father told me not to put on clear lipgloss because someone might think I was his prostitute, the church only sighed and shook its head.
6. When my father told me he planned to drive off any suitors or do them physical harm, the church agreed that this was a sign of his protection.
7. When my father told me that I was looking “busty” or sexually alluring, my church told me that he ought to say those things to exhort me to deeper modesty.
8. When my father talked about our “special bond,” the church agreed. Voddie Baucham and the Botkin Sisters had made this “special bond” a God-given benefits package for fathers.
9. My church told me that I should practice being a wife on my father. I should care for him emotionally. I should do domestic tasks for him. I should always be meek, submissive and adoring. My father’s gruff demand for coffee and his critical eye as I washed dishes were evidence of his “care” and “involvement” in my life.

When I chafed against my father’s invasions of my privacy, against his sexual crudeness, against his erratic moods and his sense of dependence on me for validation and emotional balance, my church told me to be longsuffering and to obey him as much as I could.
When my father ultimately left, the church mourned as if I had become a ship without a rudder. When I told them I was glad to escape his neediness and critical oversight, they told me that I was really acting out because I missed him.

My church enabled my father to practice emotional incest. It gave me no defense against him. Even though he lived outside their jurisdiction, they validated his desires for emotional possession of me and told me that I should accept them as normal. They mourned that he was not there to be my “head,” to take me to purity balls, to “guard” my virginity. They did not mourn that he placed me in the impossible position between doll and wife, the mediator for himself and my mother but also the replacement for her.

I am now engaged to my partner of five years. We have been through hell and heaven together. We are ever more committed to each other as the time wears on. But there’s a problem, you see, for my father and my church. My partner is a “boyfriend” – that inherently evil entity that disrupts the father’s “special bond” with his daughter and deprives him of his junior wives. Hence, within the first six months of our relationship, my father took me out to brunch for the express purpose of telling me that my boyfriend would dump me in the first month of graduate school the moment a “warm body” made itself available.

According to evangelical-fundamentalist culture, he was right to do so.

But he was so, so wrong.

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

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog  the phoenix and the olive branch

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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I have a lot of respect for my dad. He’s thoughtful and generous to all of us. His constant reading makes him an interesting and well-informed conversationalist. He makes his life decisions very carefully, yet never looks down on me for making different decisions than him. Instead, he tells me all the time that he loves and misses me, and that he’s proud of who I’ve become. I feel so lucky to have him as my dad.

Unfortunately, we have not always gotten along so well. Less than ten years ago, our relationship had been almost completely destroyed thanks to the authoritarian parenting techniques of the fundamentalist Christian homeschooling culture. Authoritarian parenting forced both of us into roles that we were not at all suited for, with tragic results.

For my dad, authoritarian parenting caused him to see our relationship as a power struggle; maintaining his authority was his biggest responsibility and highest priority. After all, if we were calling the shots in our own lives, we would become self-indulgent and lack internal self-control. That would lead us to more dangerous “worldly” teenage rebellion against our parents and God. So in order not to fail at parenting, my dad had to be hyper-vigilant against giving up power to us kids. What an insane amount of responsibility to put on one person! And how difficult to create a positive relationship with that kind of dynamic: it’s impossible to mandate real respect and love! My dad began to crack under the pressure.

For me as a teen, authoritarian parenting very nearly reduced me to an empty shell of a person. I found that my opinions and emotions were sources of trouble and guilt. Anger or frustration–even just on my face–were signs of disrespect and lack of self-control. Questioning my parents’ decisions or expressing different opinions, even on trivial matters, were signs of rebellion. Even the simple act of lifting my eyebrows could get me in trouble. In order to survive, I had to bury my negative emotions and try to become more passive and less opinionated.

In addition to guarding my facial expressions and speech against “disrespect” and “rebellion”, I also had to hide many positive feelings. My parents’ preferred method of discipline when I was in my teens was to take away privileges. Anything that I had shown happiness or excitement about was a likely target. So, to protect things I cared about, I tried to stay detached. One technique that helped me care less about something was to focus on the negative about it. Unfortunately, it was hard to rekindle my excitement once my negativity had extinguished it, but at least it was easier to deal with the feelings of helplessness and disappointment.

At the worst point in my relationship with my dad, I went for several years without my dad smiling at me even one time. He spent long hours at work or locked in his room and tried to avoid talking to me or looking at me when we passed. But still, every night, my mom made me find him to say, “Goodnight Dad, I love you,” and stand there looking at the back of his head with no answer. Any time I protested this nightly tradition and expressed my hurt to my mom, she simply cautioned me not to let the “root of bitterness” spring up in my heart. So I did my best to bury my negative emotions, just like I saw my mom doing.

I was supposedly in the prime of my life, but I started to feel very old. My body was full of aches and pains, and I was constantly tired or dealing with a headache. Finally, at my mom’s urging, I went to see a doctor. I was caught off guard when the doctor asked, “Do you think you’re depressed?” “Oh my goodness, no!” I answered. When the doctor left the room, I burst into tears with no idea why. I finally decided that I must have been upset that my Christian witness was damaged since I wasn’t showing Jesus’ peace and joy on my face during my doctor’s appointment.

Looking back, it’s easy to identify that I was deeply depressed and incredibly emotionally repressed. But I didn’t interpret it that way at the time. I saw my depression as “deep spiritual sensitivity” that came from my desire to be perfect. And I saw my emotional repression as “true love”: by pretending I was never bothered and that I had no preferences, I thought I was being unselfish and putting the needs of everyone else before my own.

As I entered college and started to work through many of my social anxiety issues, I continued using the relational techniques that had helped me survive at home. I was passive; I went along with other people’s ideas and goals; I had no strong opinions or desires of my own. I was just there, a non-factor, grateful to be included.

The real change for me came through developing my relationship with my boyfriend/husband. Our long conversations helped me work through my pent up emotions and discover my opinions. On many occasions, he waited patiently even for 20 minutes, silently walking next to me with his arm around my shoulders, so I could finally express a basic opinion or feeling. At some point, I came uncorked, and we now have an entirely different challenge as my opinions and feelings come flying from left and right! In time, I’ll find balance.

Sorry, but I don’t agree with ___.
I felt really sad when you ____.
I’d really rather ____.
I don’t really enjoy ___.
In my opinion, ___.

These phrases may seem mundane to you, but to me they are priceless. Every time I use them, they remind me that I am a real and valuable person with my own identity, my own voice, my own choice. They make me feel empowered because I remember what it was like to try to live without them.

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

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture. Becoming a wife and mother has prompted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes.  Her blog at Past Tense Present Progressive is her place for sorting through her thoughts.

We would love to feature your personal story on No Longer Quivering. Please submit what you have to say via our submissions form.

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by Latebloomer

What do homeschooled girls and trash cans have in common?
They both only leave the house once a week.

This joke was well-received among homeschooled youth because it rang true for so many of us. For almost all of my teen years, church was the only social activity that I engaged in, the only time during the whole week that I might have a chance to interact with people who were not my immediate family. Making friends in that context, especially as a shy teen girl, seems daunting. However, I had an even greater obstacle to deal with: I was not allowed to participate in youth group.

My parents were absolutely terrified of teenage rebellion. Thanks to various books and speakers popular in the homeschooling community, my parents believed teen rebellion to be a recent American trend due to indulgent parenting and peer pressure. A rebellious teen was more than just an annoyance in the homeschooling community: that teen was turning his/her back not only on the parents, but also on God. What a tragic waste of years of sacrifice and careful training by the parents! This type of thinking motivated my parents to maintain careful discipline and to shelter us from almost all contact with our peers, even at church.

I distinctly remember the conversation between the youth pastor and my mom. I was probably 14 or 15, and so shy that I would start shaking if anyone tried to talk to me at church. Although social interaction was painful, I desperately needed it, and I think the youth pastor noticed that. He approached my parents after church one day to invite us to Sunday school. My mom asked for the materials that were being used in Sunday school, and took them home to peruse them with my dad. I heard the decision the next week at the same time as the youth pastor: “Our kids will not be attending Sunday school.” The reason? Apparently the material mentioned a teen who was frustrated with his parents, and it was dangerous for me to think that frustration was a valid or normal feeling for a teen to have toward parents.

The tough thing about social phobia is that it is often self-reinforcing. In my case, my severe social anxiety displayed itself in uncontrollable muscle spasms, and anticipating the shaking made me even more anxious about interacting with people. What if someone noticed me shaking? I used to cry myself to sleep at night quite often, occasionally trying to get my mom to notice my tears by sniffing juuuust loud enough for her to hear as she walked by my door. When she came in to ask why I was crying, I would say something like, “I don’t have any friends” or “I don’t know how to talk to people.” The answer to these was always the same: “You have us” or “You’re talking to me right now.” In the morning, life would proceed as usual.

Unfortunately, the “usual” for my life at home was very empty and quiet. My dad was working long hours and was permanently in a bad mood when at home, and my mom was always sapped of energy for various reasons. She left us kids to do our schoolwork independently much of the time; we even corrected our own errors from the answer key. Later, due to mysterious and debilitating health problems, her energy was so low that just going to the grocery store was often too much for her to handle. It was simply understood in the family that we shouldn’t harass her about wanting to leave the house. Since I wasn’t able to get my driver’s license until I was 18, I was stuck for hours, days, weeks, months, years with little-to-no mental or social stimulation.

Little-to-no stimulation is not an exaggeration; obviously, a teen girl who can’t even go to Sunday school due to “bad influences” is going to find many other things forbidden to her as well. Our home did not have a TV; we watched few movies; we only read pre-approved Christian or classical books; we did not have internet access; and we certainly did not listen to most music. My one musical joy was listening to Steve Green and going to his concert with another homeschooling mom. When I tried to add Rebecca St. James to my CD collection, my mom almost had a meltdown because of the beat and the heavy breathing; it didn’t matter that almost every song was a verbatim quote from the Bible. I knew my role–honor your parents–so that CD went straight into the trash and I tried to feel happy that I was obeying God.

What did I do with my time at home? I dragged my school work out to take up most of the day; I spent large amounts of time spaced out, lying on my bed; I wrote in my journals; and I made my own clothes. My homemade clothes were the outward sign of my feelings of isolation. Starting at about age 13, I was responsible for furnishing my own wardrobe (within the boundaries of modesty my parents provided, of course). I had $25 a month to work with, and my mom could tolerate shopping at fabric stores much more than at clothing stores, where everything was “immodest.” (And that was in the women’s clothing sections–I didn’t even know that clothing came in junior sizes until after I had graduated from high school!) Out on various errands or on family vacations, wearing my very odd, ill-fitting clothing, I felt the stares and desperately wished that human contact was unnecessary. “I wish I could just be a hermit!” ….this sentence occurs a little too frequently in my teen journals.

My first friend of my teenage years came from Hope Chapel, when I was about 17. Pastor Reb Bradley, with the support of the homeschooling families of HC, would not allow a youth group in the church. Finally, I was not so odd! It was easier to strike up a conversation with someone, knowing they might be just as desperate and nervous as me. It was easier to not feel judged when the other person’s clothes were just as odd as my own. I could more easily feel successful at conversation because it was not full of cultural references that I had no idea about. I became a little more confident socially, strengthened my atrophied conversational muscles, and got a little more hopeful about life. I was even able to add a second friend by the time I was 19.

Now I’m 30 years old, with four years of college and eight years of work between me and my teen self, yet I still feel the effects of the isolation I experienced growing up.

First, I still feel significant social anxiety in even the most non-threatening situations. I am particularly at a loss in group settings full of new people. What do I say? When do I say it? Whom do I say it to? How/when do I end a conversation? Even in a circle setting, when it’s my turn to say my name, my blood pressure skyrockets.

Second, in the whole world, there is no place and no group of people where I feel like I belong. It’s like I was raised in a different culture, with the distinct difference that I can never go “home” to it. I’m permanently a foreigner; interacting in this foreign culture takes a lot of attention and effort. I’ve tried to catch up on the culture I missed…to watch the movies, to listen to the music, to see pictures of the clothing styles…..but it will never mean to me what it means to you. People always use cultural references and nostalgia as a way to build community and connections between people; for me, they create distance and remind me how different I am inside.

My profile photo is of the 80s star Molly Ringwald. The first time I ever heard her name mentioned was at my first real job, when I was 22 years old. God bless my dear gay boss, who saw through my awkwardness and gave me a chance at the job because I looked like his favorite childhood actress! When he learned that I had no idea who she was, his jaw hit the floor.

These days, I manage to avoid shocking people too much, unless I decide to tell them about my past. To me, the biggest compliment I can receive today is, “You were homeschooled? Wow, I can’t even tell!”

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

Latebloomer

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture.  Becoming a wife and mother has prompted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes.  Her blog
Past Tense Present Progressive is her place for sorting through her thoughts.

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I heard the stories so many times as I was growing up, the reasons for my parents’ decision to pull me out of public school halfway through first grade and start to homeschool me. I heard how I cried every day when my mom dropped me off at school. I heard how I was bored in class because I had learned to read at age 3, long before going to kindergarten. I heard how my teacher was wasting classroom time on political issues by having the class write a letter about saving some whales. I heard how the teacher hurt my feelings badly by insulting my quiet speaking voice during a presentation. I heard how I had the problem boy as my seatmate because I was the best behaved student. I never thought to question my mom’s narrative; school was certainly a terrible place for me, based on her stories.

As a former elementary school teacher, my mom knew that she could give me a more personalized education than I would get in a classroom of 30 other students. While helping me get ahead academically, she would also be able to protect me from worldly and liberal influences. The temporary sacrifice would certainly produce rich rewards for our family, she believed, so she steeled her will against criticism and dove in the the relatively new homeschooling movement in Northern California.

These days, I am often amazed at adults who remember what grade they were in for important world events, or who say things like “This was my favorite song in 6th grade!” As a homeschooled student, I have almost no time markers on my memories. Everything is a blur. However, it seems like homeschooling went fairly well for my family throughout elementary school. We were part of a homeschool group that had weekly park days and occasional field trips to factories, restaurants, and government offices. My younger brother and I were very independent in our learning, with high reading comprehension, so we could complete our assignments each day with very little input from my mom. Although there was almost no regulation of homeschooling in CA at the time, my mom still made sure that we covered the same general topics as our public school counterparts in each grade, except of course that our education was exclusively from a Christian perspective.

Years of countering criticism of homeschooling, years of being surrounded by other like-minded Christian homeschoolers….the effects on my family were detrimental. We lost the ability to objectively evaluate whether homeschooling was still working for our family. Things were obviously falling apart as my brother and I reached our teen years and as my younger sister reached school age, but no one could acknowledge it. By then, our identity as homeschoolers was inseparable from our spiritual, political, and family identity. Failure was not an option.

Desperate to achieve the Christian homeschooled family ideal, my family was drawn into the dangerous personality cult of Reb Bradley and began attending his homeschooling church, Hope Chapel. Each member of our family has suffered as a result of the messages and culture of Hope Chapel. Our weaknesses were exacerbated by the well-intentioned “support” we received there.

For me personally, the last 10 years have been an intense journey, a re-working of my entire worldview, in an attempt to become a healthier and happier person. I’ve been working hard to weed out the deeply-rooted ideas that were planted by the homeschooling community and Hope Chapel, and I’ve seen the positive effects on my life as I have done so.

Upcoming posts will cover my personal growth in each of the areas where I was damaged:

Isolation

Fear of sexuality

Emotional repression

Poor boundaries

Warped view of humanity

Restrictive view of gender roles in marriage and society

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

Latebloomer is on a journey away from the ideals she was raised with in the conservative homeschooling culture. Becoming a wife and mother has promoted her to re-evaluate her childhood experiences in an effort to avoid repeating those mistakes. Her blog www.pasttensepresentprogressive.blogspot.com is her place for sorting through her thoughts.

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As a young man in my early twenties who grew up in conservative homeschool circles, I was excited to return home after spending four years in a Christian college. I had very little experience in dating and hadn’t been in a relationship in college, but I had a good degree and a solid career lined up in front of me. My parents were excited too, because they hoped that I would be able to easily find a bride among the many single homeschool girls my family knew. I was a willing participant to their plans, but I soon found out that even with the right credentials, it was still impossible for me to come against homeschool patriarchy and perfectionism.

According to Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips, a girl who has spent her entire life preparing for marriage under unquestioning submission to her father should expect to have almost too many young men seeking to win her hand. Eventually, her father would choose the right one for her. Her future husband would be a paradox: ambitious and hard-working and able to support a family, yet fully under his parents’ authority and living in their house without going to college. He would be an intelligent, independent critical thinker, yet he would agree unquestioningly with every belief of his parents and church.

Most of my family’s friends subscribed to these philosophies. But as their daughters approached their late teens, these families began to realize, either consciously or subconsciously, that many of the required attributes of a “godly young man” are mutually exclusive. An ambitious, hard-working young man is going to want to go to college, or at least live at a level of independence from his parents unacceptable to Gothard and Phillips’ teachings. And any truly intelligent and critical-thinking suitor is not going to agree with his parents on everything – especially if his parents are die-hard ATI-followers.

For many girls I know, the perfect suitor never materialized. Instead, they became forced to wait for the elusive young man who could gain the approval of their father. Many of my more ambitious male friends left the homeschool community entirely out of disgust, tired of facing impossible obstacles set up by fathers just to get to know their daughters. The boys who remained were often never given enough freedom to choose anything for themselves, and were under-employed, unable to communicate with women, and altogether as uninteresting as they were ineligible.

Faced with failure, most people don’t accept their mistakes but instead cling more dogmatically to the same beliefs that created their errors. Thus, when forced to decide between the two types of young men – those who are ambitious, entirely Christian, but not conformist, and those who were essentially mini-versions of their parents – many fathers ultimately consigned themselves to giving away their daughters to the latter. Doug Phillips loves to say that a father is in a much better position to judge the true character of a suitor than his daughter. I, on the other hand, have found that fathers are just as subject to the flattery and smooth talk of an ill-meaning young man as they assume their daughters are. I have seen young men get married who never would have had a chance of even getting a date in the real world. But for girls with no other alternative except being surrogate mothers for their younger siblings, even bad marriages often seemed desirable. If anything, it allowed them to get out of their fathers’ house.

It is a cruel irony: a culture which esteems marriage and family as the highest ideal ultimately makes it unattainable. Organizations like ATI and Vision Forum that claim that women only have a role in the house ultimately doom them to a lifestyle apart from their ideal. By idolizing marriage, finding a spouse becomes almost impossible.

I experienced this dilemma first-hand last summer when I asked a girl out from a “courtship” family. My family had known hers for several years. I had only spoken to her on a few occasions, as her parents believed very strongly in limiting male-female interaction. Still, I was very impressed with what I had heard about her. She had been accepted into a prestigious Christian university, although she was not attending in accordance of her father’s wishes. She was very intelligent, and did not agree with many of her parents’ stances but chose to live in respect of them anyway. Her family didn’t interact much with anyone outside their very narrow church circles, so she seldom came into contact with the outside world.

I did everything the way a godly young man was supposed to. I called her father first. I patiently listened to his opinions on what our “courtship” should look like for four grueling hours on the first day that I met him. I found a chaperone for our first outing. I learned from an overly-talkative younger sibling that I was the first person ever to ask her out.

Our first event went very well. We spent a day perusing a museum and getting to know each other. I was very impressed with her thoughtful insight and her cheerfulness despite her circumstances. She had the ability to run a household that wasn’t even her own, yet was not blindly accepting of everything she was told by her parents. Deeply impressed, I asked her parents’ permission for another outing.

A week later, I got a phone call from her dad. He was apologetic but firm. He told me that I was a true gentleman several times and congratulated me on my career. But there was one theological difference that he could not overcome, regardless of how his daughter felt on it. When I heard what is was, I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. The issue was so minor that my Christian parents had been married twenty years together in perfect harmony before they had ever even thought of it!

Still, I was satisfied that he at least accepted me as a person. I knew a boy who had been met with ridicule and disdain by a girl’s father when he had expressed interest in her. When she turned twenty-five, still living at home and waiting for a suitor, the dad relented and tried to get the young man to court his daughter again. The young man said in no uncertain terms that he was no longer interested. Several months later, he started dating a woman from far outside homeschool circles.

Recently, I heard that several homeschooling mothers were lamenting that he left the circle of women had grown up with in order to find a wife. To them, it was a contradiction of everything they had expected. They truly had no idea why he wasn’t in a “courtship” with one of their own daughters! I’m afraid that their daughters will also be wondering why for many lonely years.

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

The Graduate is a young man in his mid twenties who was formerly raised in the ATI lifestyle. Although he appreciates the contributions his parents made toward his education, he now sees how many parts of his previous lifestyle were both unwise and unbiblical. Because his family has left A.T.I., he struggles to connect and relate to the people he grew up with

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by Incongruous Circumspection

Baking is one of my favorite pastimes.  I make a killer banana bread.  I love baking cookies and many times, like Marie Barone, bake a cake just because.  I follow recipes very closely but always add vanilla even if it is not called for.  I can follow those recipes to the letter for one simple reason – I live 900 feet above sea level.

Those who live 2500 feet above sea level cannot enjoy the ease of baking I take for granted.  When a recipe calls for a certain amount of flour, they have to add a bit more of the liquid ingredients.  If baking powder is needed, the elevated baker must reduce the amount by as much as half.  Baking temperatures must be increased.  And it isn’t as easy as following specific directions for a perfect cake either.  In order to find the perfect balance of everything, copious testing and many failures must ensue.  But, just as the elevated baker is finding the correct balance, a thunderstorm hits and their angel food cake comes out of the oven in the shape of a discus.

Such is life in the baking world and such is the idea behind marriage.  What works for one couple will not necessarily work for another couple.

Everyone in the world is familiar with JimBob and Michelle Duggar.  They are all over television with their TLC program, as well as having been on numerous talk shows and the subject of many a news story.  They tow the line of an organization called Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and their home schooling program Advanced Training Institute (ATI).

IBLP/ATI is run by a chronically unmarried man named Bill Gothard with a storied past, full of scandals.  This gentleman has propped himself up as an expert on marriage and everything to do with family life.  He is quite the guru with millions of direct and indirect adherents to his ideas.  Yes…ideas.  Bill Gothard has seven steps to this, fourteen steps to that, twelve steps to everything except alcoholism, three steps to whatever else.  The material he puts out is so formulaic, a follower of his has nothing to do but reference any of his hundreds of manuals for any question in life.

As was put forth in ATI material that Michelle Duggar handed out to women at a conference she was speaking at, the formula for marriage is very simple.  The wife must worship her husband at every turn in life.  She must stand behind him in all his decisions and respect his leadership.  She must look at him lovingly whenever he speaks and not interrupt.  She cannot argue with him or disagree unless she follows a formula to make a “godly” appeal.  All financial decisions are his.  All final decisions are his.  Her husbands vision must be her vision and absolute unquestioning trust and faith must be placed in the man she married.

This seems to work well for JimBob and Michelle Duggar.  JimBob appears to be an ambitious man and has started numerous businesses.  Currently, he is successful at real estate, not to mention the large amounts of money involved in any television show.  Trusting a man to make good decisions is very easy when that man works hard, efficiently, smart, and enough to more than enough money is rolling in.

The problem is that two people living together is never a cookie-cutter situation.  JimBob and Michelle Duggar, as well as all adherents of IBLP/ATI practices, have a favorite line that you will hear whenever they give public interviews or are backed into a corner, defending their ancient and outdated belief system.

“This is simply our conviction.”

No it isn’t.  If you dig into the reality of IBLP/ATI/Duggar, you will see what they portray as their conviction is really much more.  They posit that, due to their convictions, they have been blessed by God.  The obvious conclusion is that if others do not have the same convictions, then God is obligated not to bless them.  Thus, the “simply our conviction” line is really a translucent lie.

In 2011, I played on a church softball team.  This league was unique in that most of the families showed up to watch their husbands and fathers make fools out of themselves.  (Ok, it was really just me making a fool out of myself).  A highlight of the game was the after-party where the home team would bring snacks and drinks and the families enjoyed meeting everyone.  My wife and I met a mother of eight children.  These children were very poorly dressed and had obvious, easily treatable medical problems (rashes, etc.).  We asked the mother how many children she had and she hesitated before she “remembered” that she had eight.  The children were well behaved but the older girls, around eleven and twelve, were very exasperated while taking care of their younger siblings.  The father was nowhere to be found.

I record this scenario here to portray a different side of formulaic marriage and family life as put forth by IBLP/ATI/Duggars.  The church league I played in was heavily involved in this mindset and they lived it, even to their detriment.  My wife and I went home and began asking the following questions.

Why is it right to have as many children as God gives you if you cannot support them?

What if the husband doesn’t listen to “godly” appeals and railroads through all his decisions, no matter the detriment to the family?

What if the husband is abusive?

What if the wife has a superior financial mind and makes better decisions in that area?

What if the husband has no marketable skills?

What about inflation where one income is not enough?

What if the wife is not educated enough to sufficiently school the children and money is too scarce to get assistance?

All of these questions, and many more can be easily answered when you watch JimBob and Michelle Duggar.  They don’t have to worry about them because everything appears to work for this family.  But this rosy, happy Hollywood story, is far from reality.

Not everyone has a husband who works hard and “gets lucky”.  Many marriages work better when all parties handle everything equally.  Many marriages work very well when the partners have extended arguments and constructive fights.  Disagreement is good in life. Many families struggle to make a living and need all parties to be gainfully employed.  Sometimes the spouse needs to sleep on the couch overnight to reboot the romance.  I cannot even begin to list all the real life differences from the perfect life formula that the Duggars portray as absolute and necessary.  There are hundreds – and they grow exponentially with every passing hour of life.

Happiness in marriage is what the two married parties make of it.  It will look different for every marriage.  Don’t let anyone tell you that your marriage would be better (or even worse, truly blessed by God) if you only followed their principled life.  It just isn’t true.

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

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

Read all posts by Incongruous Circumspection!

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