(Note: This is not a post about “sex” or purity. This is a post about how my journey into puberty occurred. I’ll get to the purity stuff later.)

Discretion vs. Simplemindedness – The ability to avoid words, actions, and attitudes which could result in undesirable consequences (Proverbs 22:3) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

My body started developing secondary sex traits very early. By the time I was ten, I had breast buds and needed a training bra. What might surprise some is the fact that my mother and father saw this and immediately set about taking me to the thrift store to find some training bras. Yes, much to my embarrassment, my father went along for the purchase. It was humiliating to have the entire family standing outside the fitting room while my mother handed bra after bra over the partition for me to try on. When I found one that fit, she loudly announced the size to my entire family so they could search the racks. It’s one of the subtle hypocrisies of my family: your body was supposed to be a highly personal, spiritual thing, but because of reasons I’ll state below, it wasn’t kept private. 

I also started having body odor and a need to shave my armpits a year later. This was problematic because, unless you were a boy, there wasn’t room in the budget for antiperspirant or razors. I realized that I smelled gamey so I took to stealing my mother’s deodorant on the sly.

The razors were a bit more difficult. My father ran the boys’ lives like a prison warden. To get a new razor, they had to leave the used one on his sink. He would look it over and decide if it was dull enough to require a new one and then leave the new one in their plastic basket under the bathroom sink. They were in charge of their razors and since my father hated wasting money, they were encouraged to use them until it cut their faces from dullness. If they went through more than a certain quantity every month, it was discussed during family time.

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Sincerity vs. Hypocrisy – Eagerness to do what is right with transparent motives (I Peter 1:22) – Bill Gothard

by RazingRuth

Sincerity? – My dad was very careful about our public image. Most ATI patriarchs are. Though we didn’t go out in public very often, and certainly we never went out alone, when we did go out, we were dressed and pressed. My sisters and I were required to have long hair. This hair was not allowed to be braided, however, because that was un-Biblical. Usually, our hair was curled on rag rollers or sponge rollers and left to fall down in curls. The boys had high and tight, ALERT regulation cuts. 

The girls in my family wore dresses only, until we reached the age of ten, at which point we could wear skirts and tops. The boys wore pants and polo tops. No t-shirts were allowed for either sex (if we were in the public eye). If you were in a t-shirt, you were most likely male and in bed or wore it under something else. Us girls had to wear full underwear; bloomers, underpants, undershirts, and bras. 

Hypocrisy: One of Gothard’s teachings was that one shouldn’t be overly concerned with appearance. The first time I heard Mr. Gothard say that on a retreat, I was dumbfounded. What? We’re not supposed to spend much time worrying about our appearance…but we have to make sure we don’t violate all these rules for dressing and appearance?

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