authoritarianism

Raising Godly Tomatoes: Book Review By Sarah Dutko

HA Editorial Team20 Comments

By Sarah Dutko, member of the LaQuiere Group (1991-1999). This review was originally posted on Amazon September 2, 2014, revision re-posted on September 9.

I feel that I need to write this review because as someone who knows Mrs. Krueger personally, and lived out the methods she teaches in her book, I feel I need to warn any parents considering buying this book or using her methods. This is the second time I’ve posted this review, because Amazon removed my review the first time, after someone apparently complained about it. I’m not sure why Amazon feels the need to censor negative reviews of Mrs. Krueger’s book, but no matter, I will keep posting it if Amazon removes it again, because I am determined to reach parents who are considering Mrs. Krueger’s methods and tell them the truth.

I not only know Mrs. Krueger, I grew up with her and her children: for 8 years I (and my family) were a part of the same fundamentalist cult that she and her family still belong to. I’d like to provide some valuable perspective on what it is like to grow up under this kind of child “training”, and the kind of damage it does to children.

Mrs. Krueger’s child-training methods are not original to her, or just “common sense”, as she claims: they come directly from a man named Joe LaQuiere who was the leader of our cult up until he died this past year (she mentions him and his wife in her book as a “godly older couple” who gave them advice). This cult to which Mrs. Krueger and her family still belong is an insular, legalistic group with neo-Jewish practices, such as eating no pork products, celebrating the Sabbath (Saturday), condemnation of Christmas trees for being “pagan”, as well as using emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse to control its members. Having lived through it from age 6 to 14, and having family members who are still a part of this cult, gives me a unique insider’s perspective, which will hopefully provide you with enough information about the damaging and evil results of this method of “child-training” that you will help in warning against it, as it has become far too popular in the ultra-conservative, homeschooling movement, which is beginning to see a whole generation of survivors speak up about the abuses they’ve experienced, and give warning to the dangers inherent to the homeschooling community.

I am going to quote here both from Mrs. Krueger’s book, and from an article she wrote at the same time as her book.

Here is the first quote from her book. Mrs. Krueger writes:

“Let me share my experience with my third born…One day we were visiting some close friends and he decided to exert his new found power. He blatantly refused to come to Dad when Dad called him. He ignored Dad and continued playing with our friend’s telephone instead, about six feet from where my husband and I were sitting. The friends we were visiting were excellent parents and offered their advice, which we readily accepted. They coached us to outlast him, instructing Dad to keep calling him. When he didn’t budge, Dad was directed to go over to him, administer a little swat on the bottom (over clothes and a diaper), then return to where he’d been sitting and call him again. We were encouraged to repeat this, pausing appropriately between repeats, until he obeyed us…Finally, after approximately an hour and a half, he began to cry and take a few steps toward us, but he still refused to come all the way. He still did not want to totally give up the power he had enjoyed exerting over us. Each time he took a few steps toward us then stopped, we would replace him back by the phone and call him to come to us again. We devoted the next half hour to making sure he obeyed completely, not just partially…This one outlasting session had a considerable and exciting long-term impact on our child. He clearly learned he was under our authority and must always obey us…The initial two-hour ordeal never needed repeating.”

 

These “friends” who were “excellent parents” that she refers to are Joe LaQuiere and his wife, her mentors, and they are the people who taught her to use the methods in her book (as well as much more abusive methods which they themselves used on children, including my own siblings). This method of teaching toddlers to obey by spanking them…and then repeating…and repeating…and repeating…for 2 straight hours….or as long as it takes (which is what she means by “outlasting them” – a concept she refers to many times in her book)…is exactly the kind of child-training my family and I experienced in the cult. I’d like to share one more quote, this one from her online article that she wrote at the same time as her book. This article is from “Christian Moms of Many Blessings” (http://www.cmomb.com/child-training/). I quote a portion of what Mrs. Krueger writes:

“Don’t be afraid of a confrontation. It is helpful to set up a confrontational situation in the case of a toliler [my note: I think this is a typo for “toddler”] who is “out of control.” For example, tell him to sit on the couch next to you. When he tries to get down, give him a firm swat on the bottom and say, “No” in an `I mean business’ tone. Continue this every time he tries to get down until he stops trying. If he actually makes it off the couch, tell him to climb back up himself, if he is big enough, or replace him if needed. Don’t restrain him. Don’t give in. Ignore his crying. You are not done until he sits there quietly for as long as you want him to without resisting. Let him fall asleep if he likes. Even after he stops resisting, don’t let him down too soon. Ten or 20 minutes or even an hour is not too long. Once you have done this, continue to expect him to obey everything you tell him to do.”

Both this method and the method described earlier by her in her book were used to train young toddlers, as young as one year old, in our cult. These methods in particular were used on my little brother, Joshua, during one of the “training sessions” that Mrs. Krueger’s mentor, Joe LaQuiere, conducted in order to teach his followers how to train “obedient” children. Joshua was made to sit on my mom or dad’s lap, and spanked every time he tried to get down. He was a bright and happy baby, but very stubborn. He didn’t want to give in, but kept on trying to get down, and getting spanked for it, over, and over, and over, and over. He’d cry and cry, but he wasn’t allowed to be comforted until he “submitted” and gave in. The goal was to get him to “sit there quietly for as long as you want him to without resisting”, as Mrs. Krueger wrote. This “training” session started in the afternoon, and went on…all afternoon…and evening…late into the night. It was 2 or 3 in the morning before Joe LaQuiere okay-ed stopping for the night. At this point they had been “training” him to sit still and not cry for over 6 hours. He was not allowed to nurse during this time, or to see his mother (my mom), because that would “comfort him”, and they wanted him to be miserable until he gave in and obeyed. You may think “a small swat on the bottom” does not sound over-the-top for a small toddler as a way to get them to sit quietly (as if toddlers were created to “sit quietly” – their nature, and their developmental needs, as any child psychologist can tell you, require them to explore, not sit quietly for hours). What about spanking them over…and over…and over…for 6 hours straight? Does that sound abusive? Mrs. Krueger’s methods (really, Joe LaQuiere’s methods) say that you CANNOT GIVE UP until your child (or baby) submits to you and obeys, no matter how long that takes. If it takes all night, so be it. If it takes dozens, or a hundred spankings, so be it. This is not training, this is child abuse. My one-year-old brother Josh was subjected to this “training” day after day, until he finally, sullenly, gave in, and was now a “well-trained” baby, who would sit quietly on demand, and not try to get down and play in normal toddler fashion. In a few short months, he went from a bubbly, laughing one-year-old to a quiet, sullen, baby who rarely smiled. He was mostly silent from then on: he didn’t speak until he was nearly 4. Joe LaQuiere, (who, remember, is Mrs. Krueger’s mentor, and the one who taught her these methods) said Joshua was an exceptionally “rebellious” baby, and it was necessary to discipline the “rebelliousness” out of him until his will was broken.

See, Mrs. Krueger’s book, and her advice, is really the somewhat-milder face of Joe LaQuiere’s teaching: the public face, if you will. She watched more violent abuse occur, and was taught that it was acceptable: babies having their faces stuffed into couch cushions to teach them not to cry – children being beaten mercilessly with “The Paddle”, not once, as she writes in her book, but often 20 or 30 times. Children being dragged by their hair, thrown against walls, or dangled in the air by their throats. My own siblings endured all of these abuses, and I was made to watch.

Mrs. Krueger, whether or not she treated her own children quite this severely, watched this abuse happen to other children, and agreed with it. Her book is merely the milder, public face of private child abuse, because she knows that some of the stricter methods taught by Joe LaQuiere would be too unpalatable to put in print, as well as likely to land her (and him) in trouble with law enforcement. But make no mistake that it occurs. To be fair, Mrs. Krueger and her husband I don’t believe followed every child “training” (abuse) method that Joe LaQuiere taught: she and her family are best friends with him (one of her daughters is even married to one of Joe LaQuiere’s sons), and while their methods differ somewhat in severity, the principle is the same: OBEDIENCE is paramount, and it is of little importance HOW you get your children to obey, or how often you must beat them, as long as the end result is IMMEDIATE, UNQUESTIONING obedience, from children of any age, even through adulthood. THIS is the goal (which is in itself a very bad goal) and the methods used to achieve it, as touted by Joe LaQuiere, through the mouthpiece of Mrs. Krueger, are cruel and damaging.

To this day, I suffer panic attacks and horrible flashbacks to watching my brothers and sisters abused through this method of child-rearing. I grew up emotionally-stunted, being taught that ‘a cheerful face’ was the only acceptable expression, and that any negative emotions I felt, like anger, or sadness, or frustration, were sin, and needed to be corrected. Thus I learned to disassociate myself from my emotions, effectively divorcing them from my conscious mind, which is a process I am still trying, with the help of therapy, to undo. The children, including those in my family, who grew up under these methods, are emotionally unstable; are fearful of and often unable to make their own decisions; are unable to move into independent adulthood without the constant guidance of parents telling them what to do; and worst of all, have a false and damaging picture of who God is, and who they are meant to be.

After leaving the cult that Mrs. Krueger belongs to, I was confused, depressed, and suicidal. I believed that God was an angry God who despised me for not reaching His standards of perfection. I learned nothing about grace through this experience. Thank God, I discovered it after I left, and realized that God does not treat us like Joe LaQuiere and Mrs. Krueger do their children: punishing every crime and dealing out justice until we are perfect. Instead, He already provided the perfect righteousness that we can never achieve through Jesus, and gave us in one fell swoop, a perfect record and status with him, and complete forgiveness of all sins, past and future! He doesn’t demand perfect performance from us to gain His acceptance. We are not “spanked” until we learn to obey Him instantly, with no questions, and with a false smile. Instead, He loves on us, extravagantly, and at great personal cost to Himself, in order to draw us to Himself…by LOVE. LOVE is what calls us to CHOOSE to obey Him – not repeated punishment, or the fear that He will only “enjoy us” as long as we fulfill the letter of His law. THIS is how we need to treat our children: with the same mercy and grace that God showers on us. To follow Mrs. Krueger’s method instead will give our children an outward layer of “goodness”, on which they think their acceptance by God depends, while inwardly they remain full of sin and darkness, needing God’s redeeming love and GRACE to flood in and wash them clean! Mrs. Krueger’s book and methods create little Pharisees: looking pretty good on the outside, but with aching hearts inside, knowing the misery of never being “good enough”. Thank God we don’t HAVE to be “good enough” for Him: we already are, thanks to the sacrifice He made for us!

Please PLEASE do not buy this book, or use these methods on your children!! Try instead something like “Families where Grace is in Place”, or “Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Children with the Love of Jesus” both EXCELLENT books! Leave Mrs. Krueger’s book where it belongs…forgotten, gathering dust in her basement somewhere, while your children flourish in the LOVE and GRACE of God!

If you have any questions, or would like to ask me specifics about why Mrs. Krueger’s methods are so damaging, please feel free to email me at sarah.dutko77@gmail.com! I’d love to talk with you 🙂

Painful Evolutions Required: Wayne’s Story

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Wayne” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

I am a graduate of Patrick Henry College. Moreover, I am a recent graduate – I didn’t go through the schism. Many of the stories critical of PHC come from those who lived through that time, and many of those defending the school come from those currently attending.

I hope to offer a perspective that “splits the difference.”

There will be many in the PHC community who will immediately write this off as the complaint of yet another of the “bitter alumni.” That’s an in-house pejorative frequently applied to PHC grads who openly criticize the school. To preempt this narrative, I would like to observe up front that I am not a disaffected former student taking out my recession-inspired frustration on the institution. At PHC, I worked hard, received good grades, and graduated with honors. I participated on multiple forensics teams, including the celebrated moot court squad, and was accepted to my top-choice graduate program. By most metrics, I had a very successful outcome.

In many ways, I regret attending PHC. In others, I do not.

(Some background: I did not have the extremely conservative homeschooling background many on this website experienced. My parents are successful professionals and committed Christians who truly live out the call of their faith to love others. They are two of the most exceptional people I’ve ever met. Accordingly, my homeschool experience was both spiritually positive and academically enriching. I’m also a straight white male, so my perspective is certainly limited compared to the experiences of others who have written here.)

As a student interested in pursuing a public-policy career, I thought PHC was a perfect fit. I was, unfortunately, incorrect. In my view, PHC must confront and overcome three major issues if it hopes to succeed in the future and avoid the serious problems of its past: 1) lack of meaningful academic engagement, 2) administrative authoritarianism, and 3) corrosive student culture.

Before discussing these, however, I wish to highlight some of the positive aspects of my time at PHC.

Positive Elements

During my time at PHC, I met a number of very exceptional people with similar backgrounds and, in many cases, similar convictions. (I still consider myself a committed Christian, though I have renounced the “evangelical” subculture). Furthermore, the school’s Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Frank Guliuzza, served as both a mentor and a personal friend to me. Over and over, Dr. Guliuzza exemplified the very best ideals of Christianity, offering both compassion to the broken-down and guidance to the highly motivated.

I do not know if I would have met the same concentration of incredible people elsewhere. In some ways, PHC’s lack of “diversity” ensured that many of us shared common ground and common experiences. Accordingly, when we faced challenges, we developed uniquely close bonds. I can say with complete honesty that I would die for many of the friends I made at PHC.

And despite the presumed inferiority of any supposed “liberal arts” education delivered within such a rigidly doctrinaire framework, PHC is not an easy school (something which many of its detractors fail to appreciate). The coursework is objectively rigorous (at least in many upper- level government major classes), and the success of the school’s forensics programs speaks for itself.

Having outlined many of the positive elements of my experience, I move now to consider the challenges the school faces.

Lack of Academic Engagement

I first developed concerns on this front during freshman year. Even as a new student, I understood that censoring Michelangelo’s “David” and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” – with black boxes around the genital areas – was contrary to the purposes of a classical liberal arts education. PHC’s overprotective and intrusive Internet filtering system extended to “tasteless” material (as defined by whom?) and blocked any discussions of drug legalization as a matter of policy. The perspectives of contemporary Catholics and Orthodox Christians were largely absent from the curriculum, as were the contributions of minorities and non-Western cultures to philosophy, history, science, religion, and the arts. Moreover, students were expressly forbidden from making a case for same-sex marriage, even as purely a matter of public policy (Student Handbook 5.1.2.9).

This is not how any “liberal arts education” should be conducted, but it is the inevitable consequence of maintaining a rigid Statement of Faith interpreted solely by the College’s senior leadership.

Administrative Authoritarianism

The school’s priority, above all else, appeared to be maintaining its pristine image as the “Christian Ivy League.” This objective naturally conflicted both with valuing students as individual persons and producing scholarly research which may challenge the established consensus.

I frequently felt that my political views and opinions, which emphasize personal liberty in one’s private life and affairs, were unwelcome on campus. Moreover, I was constantly afraid that any expression of views deemed “problematic” would be relayed to the ever-present Office of Student Life. It is impossible to convey the particularly sickening, stomach-churning dread that somewhere, someone is judging your attitude and spiritual condition. No student in higher education should face that kind of fear on a daily basis.

I hold the Office of Student Life directly responsible for creating a climate of paranoia among students whose views differ from the established consensus. There was no counterpoint to this authoritarianism; the college “newspaper” was censored beyond belief, clearly forbidden to print anything critical of the College or the administration (this last point was not the fault of the staff or supervising professor, but of the College’s higher authorities).

If I had been female, it would have been far worse. I witnessed the shaming of girls by their Resident Assistants – who obsessively sought, as a “Mean Girls”-style means of social retribution, to dress-code them for made-up modesty violations. I listened to chapel messages stating that the responsibility of women was to “control their beauty.” Further discussion of the gender issue is properly the domain of others, however.

As a final example, the administration recently decided to institute an electronic “card scan system” to monitor chapel attendance. The rationale? Attendance numbers reflected that 81% of the student body was attending chapel, rather than the (apparently more acceptable) 85%. I find such an approach – as well as the policy of mandatory daily chapel – a disgrace to worship.

Frankly, I find much of the “big issues” on campus laughable in retrospect – but at PHC, they’re spoken of with dead seriousness and an absurd level of self-righteous pomposity.

Corrosive Student Culture

This is necessarily a highly subjective question, but one which I feel warrants some discussion. A few highlights based on instances I personally witnessed:

  • My personal focus on obtaining good grades and planning for my future career was condemned by other students as unspiritual and utilitarian.
  • Some students outright refused to argue certain topics, even hypothetically, in parliamentary debate rounds (i.e. resolutions in which they may be required to construct a theoretical case for abortion rights). They were subsequently celebrated for their moral courage, rather than encouraged to think through both sides of crucial issues or advised to leave the league. (PHC tuition dollars funded the cross-country travel of these students.)
  • Student “Resident Assistants” betrayed personal confidences to the Office of Student Life, which in turn betrayed those confidences to other Resident Assistants.
  • A large subset of PHC culture expected that fathers give permission for their adult daughters to go out on dates.
  • Many students attributed mental health issues to “spiritual warfare” and “demonic activity,” creating a climate of distrust for modern medicine.
  • Students were taught, and routinely promulgated to others, the toxic idea that the school administration may claim spiritual authority over its students. The school rules expressly forbid public criticism of professors, based on the rationale that such activity “violates the Biblical principle of submission to the authorities whom God has put over us.” (Student Life Handbook, 2.1.2).

Conclusions

My objective in writing this is not to exact some sort of retribution. After all, I and my friends are graduates. I seek to identify some serious problems that persist at PHC and suggest that the school recognize these, taking steps to reform itself accordingly. Such changes are absolutely not incompatible with the Christian faith that the school professes, but may require some painful evolutions: as long as the school’s current administrative figureheads remain in power and remain committed to inflexibility, genuine reform will likely be stonewalled.

I deeply care about many of the people involved in my PHC experience – both those currently attending and those who have graduated. If you are a current student at PHC and this story resonates with you, I hope you realize that you are not alone. Others have wondered the same things, asked the same questions, and faced the same unknowns. Do not accept the narrative that all alumni are angry, pathologically bitter individuals whose post-PHC lives have stalled; I think I speak for many PHC graduates when I say that we sincerely care about you. Please reach out to us. Hear our stories before you make snap judgments about our character or motivations.

When all is said and done, there are two directions a Christian college such as PHC may pursue: embrace the simplistic model of Bob Jones University/Pensacola Christian College, and choke off dissent in the name of ideological purity; or take the path of Wheaton and many others, encouraging cultural engagement while recognizing that all students will not fit into cookie-cutter molds. PHC is clearly caught between these two competing impulses.

One can only hope the school chooses to take the harder, but necessary, road toward reform.

Forgiveness and Power

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sarah Henderson’s blog Feminist in Spite of Them. It was originally published on her blog on July 29, 2013.

Over the course of my life I have been instructed to forgive so many times. Ironically, the people who were telling me to forgive were also the people who spent a good deal of time telling me that in reality there was nothing to forgive, or that no wrong doing had occurred. Technically I think this means I am off the hook anyways. But in reality, there was wrong doing from people in my life who were supposed to protect me.

I now believe that forgiveness is a religious concept. I believe it was created to control people who have been wronged, by investing them with an equal amount of responsibility for the relationship, so that if they do not choose to forgive and rebuild, they have at least half the blame. After all, if you are a person in power, you can do anything. All you need to do is make sure the recipient of wrong doing feels guilt if they do not choose to trust you again.

I think this can come in so handy for rogue religious leaders and fathers in isolated families. A fear can be fostered over decades that the recipient needs to be open to the idea of allowing similar offences over and over again in the name of forgiveness. The recipient can be handled as many times as needed to allow the cycle to continue.

There is definitely something to gain if you are already in a position of power. The person in power is already in a position to justify their own actions based on whatever act of god or man put them in power in the first place. I am speaking of power in the small scale, but when a person is in this type of power position, it is easy for them to lose sight of their own place in the world. They can become the king of their own little castle, as it were. They need the concept of forgiveness to exist, so that when they violate the rights of those they control, they can keep that control by inflicting guilt on the recipient.

I do think that there is some freedom in moving forward, which is often confused with forgiveness. It is a totally different concept in my opinion. In my opinion, moving forward is more about recognizing that those who violate your rights are choosing to do so, and have no reason to change in a vacuum. A recipient of wrong doing does not incur responsibility, but if they are going to take any kind of action, ending the ability of the person in power to retain the cycle of control is not a bad idea.

Sometimes the only way to break the cycle is to end the relationship. People often seem so horrified by this idea, but why should someone stick around and allow their rights to be violated over and over again in the name of a religious concept that only benefits the wrong-doer? If someone has been traumatized by their own parents, the options are not simply to stick around and try to maintain the relationship or else live in a cess-pool of bitterness and hurt. There is a whole other option out there. You can walk away. You can choose to surround yourself with people who are not interested in violating your rights. When you walk away, you can leave the hurt there too, because you are leaving the source. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, but everyone has a right to live their own lives, regardless of wrong doing in the past. This takes time but no one has to submit themselves to a proven risk.

Homeschooling, A Means to an End: R’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

tools

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “R” is a pseudonym.

I’ve been following Homeschoolers Anonymous almost from its creation when I first learned about it from Lewis Wells’ blog, CommandmentsofMen. Many of the stories written here have resonated with me, and I’ve shared quite a few on Facebook, especially those regarding HSLDA.

But a comment one of my friends left on one of my Facebook posts got me thinking.

I was homeschooled all the way through high school. When I would ask my parents why I was homeschooled, the answer they gave never involved religious reasons. I was a hyperactive child, and the preschool teacher I would have made it clear that she did not want any parental help with the 15+ little children in her class. Thus my parents decided it was in my best interest for them to teach me at home, at least for the first few years of school to ensure that I had good preparation. I think my parents planned to enroll me in public school at some point, probably once they felt the school subjects were above their reach, but that day never came. I remember asking a couple times throughout my young life when I’d go to public school, and my parents always had a different reason to delay.

To be fair, the quality of education I received was very good.

Both my parents have 4 year degrees; my father even has a science-based PhD from Stanford. I think the real concern for them was choosing a curriculum, building lessons plans, and being responsible for my younger brother’s and my education. I think as the years went by, they became more comfortable with the mechanics of homeschooling.

I’m not sure when it started, but religious fundamentalism started to creep into our house.

I know both my parents were Catholic growing up, but in college they found evangelicalism. Their faith, however, wasn’t rooted in a specific denomination; whenever we’d move to a new city they would find a church that agreed with their dogma. In one state we were Baptist, in another Presbyterian. I think they grappled with how to best instill their values in their children. I can’t recall what age I was, but I remember sitting through one of Bill Gothard’s seminars and also participating in a Growing Kids God’s Way workshop. Naturally, with these influences my parents gravitated towards a very authoritarian style of discipline.

It was several years into college before I could even entertain the thought that I may have been abused as a child.

Because of my parents’ involvement with HSLDA, they had carefully built the following mental roadblocks for me:

  • DHS is bad. Completely normal disciplinary actions are considered abuse by them, and if DHS even suspects my brother or I have been abused, they will swoop in, kidnap us, and stick us with a family that doesn’t want or care about us because we’re an inconvenience.
  • Psychologists only care about money; they will try to blame every problem on the parents and write scripts for imaginary issues.

But it all worked out.

Random people would always compliment my mother on how well behaved my brother and I were. People that knew us from church or other places were always impressed by how talented we were. I was a national merit scholar, went to university on a full scholarship, majored in engineering, and now work for a global leader in the oil and gas industry. I have a talented wife and a beautiful daughter.

It seems homeschooling did an excellent job.

Except it is a lie, just like the cake.

I mentioned earlier that my parents first decided to homeschool me because of hyperactivity; I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and took medication for it until I was around 12. My father was an excessive perfectionist, and both parents embraced an authoritarian style of parenting. By the time I got to university, I was struggling with depression and low self-esteem that oftentimes left me paralyzed with feelings of hopelessness and uselessness. While I graduated as an engineer, my grades were far from exemplary, and my current position is the result of years of work and preparation overcoming the hurdles I had graduating from high school.

Because of my lack of freedom growing up, I still have problems deciding what I want, and I am plagued with uncertainty and doubt every time I make a major decision. In short, I could not function in the real world and still have difficulty even today.

So I blamed homeschooling.

But as I began to think about my friend’s comment, I realized something: homeschooling is just a tool, a method of instruction, a means to an end. All the positive homeschooling stories combine with the negative stories to show that.

Like any tool, homeschooling can be misused and abused.

It is important to remember this as we chronicle the stories of our youth: that responsibility does not lie with the method of instruction but with the instructors themselves, whether they be our parents or those our parents look to for guidance.

To My Past — I Wouldn’t Be Who I Am Today Without You

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Faith Beauchemin’s blog Roses and Revolutionaries. It was originally published on June 30, 2013.

I was raised in a home and a church with certain expectations.

Most of the people I grew up with have lived up to those expectations.  They’re all good Christians, remaining doctrinally pure and behaviorally righteous. Most of them are married and gearing up to raise the next generation of good Christians, in homes where the father is the leader and the mother is submissive.

My peers who have followed this path are the pride of their parents and the future of their church.

I have flouted all of these expectations. I quit attending fundamentalist churches years ago, and quit altogether around the time I graduated college.  Although my parents think it’s okay for a single woman to work, they also think a woman’s highest calling is wifehood and motherhood.  I’m nowhere near being a wife and I intend never to have children at all.  My politics are so far removed from those of my parents that we can barely discourse on the topic due to fundamentally different worldviews.  My behavior, as well, is far from the stringent moral standards held up by my former community, although somehow I think I’m still a pretty good person (mysteriously, drinking, going out to bars, and similar behaviors have not turned me into some kind of monster).

But it is clear to me that, however far removed I am from the outcome intended by the key players in my past (my parents and their church), my politics and anti-authoritarian worldview are a direct result of that past.

My parents made the mistake of teaching me to think for myself, to go against the mainstream, to be willing to believe what I know to be right.  They homeschooled me partially in order to keep me from conforming to ordinary culture.  Then they expected me to accept the exact same conclusions and ideas they themselves had accepted.

My church was, for a fundamentalist congregation, quite intellectual.  They taught us to look at textual and cultural context and to know (their version of) church history. They taught us to argue for our faith.  Then they expected that we would use each of these skills only to defend their particularly narrow viewpoint.   I attended a Christian college, where I took classes which taught me how to reason, how to gather evidence, how to think for myself and effectively communicate with others.

But that same Christian college naively assumed that its graduates would toe the party line. 

There were immense cultural pressures from my parents, their church, and my college to conform to a particular point of view, but all of them also gave me the tools to make my own way in the world, to reject conformity and with it the point of view they so desperately demanded I embrace.

At the same time as my parents, their church, and my college gave me the tools I needed to think for myself, they also taught me important lessons about fascism and forced conformity and loyalty to a particular ideology.  I saw and I experienced in my own life the terrible consequences of valuing ideology and power structures over people.

I learned that unquestioning acceptance of authority often leads to very negative outcomes. 

I learned that although those in authority demand implicit trust, I cannot implicitly trust them because they almost never truly have my best interests at heart.  As I have said before, fundamentalism is simply religious fascism.  It didn’t take long for my opposition to religious fascism to translate into the political arena as well.  Also, my past taught me the harm of a “we few vs. the rest of the world” mentality.  By its nature, conservative Christianity is elitist, claiming an inside track on knowledge and a superiority to unbelievers.

I am now utterly opposed to absolute power and I am wary of elitism in whatever form it takes.

So however critical I am of those in my past who attempted to control my life, I must also always be grateful to them. 

They gave me early experiences which formed my current worldview.  They gave me tools with which I was able to break out of the prisons they constructed around me and then build my own life, a life which looks nothing like they want it to but a life which I inhabit very happily.

Relationships, A Series: Part Eleven — Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

HA Editorial Team16 Comments

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HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Eleven of this series was originally published on June 18, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: What Is Courtship? | Part Two: We Were Best Friends | Part Three: The Calm Before The Storm | Part Four: To Lose One’s Best Friend | Part Five: To My Darling Clementine | Part Six: The Storm Starts Brewing | Part Seven: The Five-Year Relationship Plan | Part Eight: The Means To An End | Part Nine: We Made It | Part Ten: I Am A Phoenix | Part Eleven: Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

*****

Part Eleven — Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

For the past two weeks, and more, I have been working through Phil’s and my story.

I’ve gotten very interesting feedback. A lot of positive feedback and that seriously has meant a lot. I have felt more sure of myself, our story, and of what Phil and I have especially as I worked through the entire story. Unveiling our story, working out the hardest parts, and writing about the things that went wrong has only further solidified my feelings of why I don’t believe in parent-driven, parent-controlled relationships.

(NOTE: I think what I have to say could make some of you parents who read my blog feeling discouraged or angry. Please know that I am not writing to push anyone’s buttons, point the finger to say you did wrong. I am simply writing what I have observed, what my thoughts are on the topic and where my husband and I sit with this. I know I don’t have kids yet, so maybe my perspective will change, but for right now, I am writing as the child who experienced these things.)

First, I want to give a little background to why Phil and I have reached this point.

One of the biggest difficulties in our relationship prior to marriage was the lack of being taken seriously. Yes, we were and still are young, but we were completely serious and were not taking our relationship or our goals lightly. We both felt very strongly that God had given us each other, and we were 100% committed to getting married.

What was heartbreaking for us was feeling like our parents laughed at us, called us too young.

In my case, my dad brushed everything off and made me feel like I literally was crazy when he in fact didn’t know my own mind or heart. I have heard multiple people call some of my generation and the generations under my generation as the generation that is fading away, that can’t make responsible decisions, or make wise choices.

While I agree that I do not have the perspective of many, many years of life, or the “wisdom from experiences” right now in my life, that does not mean that I am incapable of making good, informed decisions that are wise and exactly what I’m supposed to do right now for me.

While I am not someone who has lived for over 50 years, been through many, many things, and has (hopefully) wisdom from experience, I am someone who has already lived 22 years, I have been through a lot, and my perspective right now is important. I think my perspective is especially important right now because I have not been faced with total cynicism yet, I have not lost the dreams and imagination that makes me me and that comes with youth. I have a fresh perspective that I think as an adult I will lose the older I get unless I keep using imagination, continuing to stretch my mind in creating new ideas.

I have a problem with parents who brush off their children’s dreams, ideas, and experiences.

It creates this idea that children are stupid and can’t think for themselves. The more parents brush off their children, the more that idea gets reinforced.

Am I suggesting that it’s the parents’ fault that young adults can’t seem to make good decisions, be responsible, or even dream? Yes, maybe I am. See, I have a unique perspective. I just went through the child’s side of a relationship, I have been on the other side of parenting. And I expect to be taken seriously because I know that my perspective is not any less important than the parents.

Frankly, I think getting a child’s perspective and not just the parents is important in getting the full picture.

There are at least two sides to every story, so why not go right to the people (and yes, children are people) who are being directly influenced by parenting ideas like parent-driven relationships? Can you see what I’m getting at yet? If a parenting style is shutting down your child (at any age), teaching them that their opinions are unimportant, insignificant, and that mom and dad’s opinions are the only thing that counts, that’s dangerous and has a lot of potential to damage the child’s capability to grow up with a healthy self-worth and a confidence in their own opinions.

Growing up, I learned/taught myself how to read at a very young age. By the time I was ten, I was reading college level books, and understanding them. I worked on stretching my mind, my understanding of my surroundings without really realizing that I was doing that. As I got closer to graduating high school, becoming of age (turning 18) and the potential of being in relationship, I fully and wholeheartedly bought into my dad ruling and controlling who, when, and where I got married.

I bought into this because that was all I knew.

I had no reason to think anything other than that could or even would work.  I had no problem letting my dad be my decision-maker, letting him be my heart, mind, and my opinions.

I didn’t realize that letting my parents control an entire relationship from start to finish left no room at all for my own opinions, feelings, or decisions.

It is the equivalent of treating me like a child, a toddler incapable of really making a complicated decision. But even toddlers have opinions and likes and dislikes.

Phil and I will not treat our children and their love interests how we were treated. We believe in letting our children have their own opinions and taking them seriously. We want to be able to raise our children to be fully function adults able to make their own decisions, confident in their own opinions, and able to trust us to help them if they need help.

I know what it feels like to not be taken seriously or to not be heard.

I want to make sure that I document those feelings so I can look back when I have children my age now and remember what it felt like to be their age. I don’t want to forget the perspective I have now. One day, I will most likely have a child who will tell me that I don’t understand and I want to be able to look back and remember.

Parent-Driven Relationships

You will find “Parent-Driven Relationships” most often among Quiverfull and Patriarchy cultures. Especially the homeschooling culture that is tied into these two.

I need to make a specific distinction here.

The usual circumstances for this set-up is when a daughter gets into a relationship, “dad” is especially controlling and protective. Daughters are special property to dads in these cultures, and thus it is usually the father of the daughter who is driving the relationship.  It all stems back to the idea that “dad” is “God” in the home.

“Dad” is the ultimate authority, he is the final say on everything, including his adult daughter’s choice of hairstyles (not kidding).

Add in daughters who are unusually, unhealthily complacent and content to stay at home until they are 30+, willing and happily ready to give “dad” total control of their lives and you get a living nightmare of control, abuse, manipulation, and brainwashing.  When “dad” drives the relationship, controls everything from which boy/man gets accepted into the precious family fold, to how much time the girl and guy get to talk, spend together, including assigning one or more of the girl’s multiple siblings to play “chaperon” — individual personalities and individual hearts get lost.

This idea for relationships is not only not Biblical, it is not an accurate interpretation of the Biblical ideas it’s supposed to be based on. The Old Testament structure of parent-driven relationships is based on daughters literally being property that is sold and traded for goods, money, and social standings.

Not only are we not in that era anymore, women are not property.

We are whole beings with hearts, minds, and souls, very capable of making wise decisions and holding good, strong opinions.

Now, here is what I think a parents’ role in their children’s relationships should look like. I think it should look like parents respecting their children’s opinions, decisions, hearts, and being there to help, share advice when asked, and to be a trusted person.

I think it’s great that some parents have a relationship with their children that automatically puts them in this situation. But that’s not all parents, all children, all situations. I believe that as a child becomes a young adult, and they start reaching the age of marriageability, and they look for a relationship, only they will know who is the right person for them.  A healthy adult will know who is right for them. Phil and I felt frustrated more times than I’d care to recount with older parents, friends, not taking us seriously, not believing how strongly we felt about getting married.

We alienated ourselves from a lot of those people because we couldn’t be ourselves around them.

We felt put down.

I applaud the parents who have healthy, strong relationships with their growing children, and it makes me very happy when I see healthy relationships as the result.

That is good.

*****

End of series.

Relationships, A Series: Part Ten — I Am A Phoenix

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

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HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Ten of this series was originally published on June 12, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: What Is Courtship? | Part Two: We Were Best Friends | Part Three: The Calm Before The Storm | Part Four: To Lose One’s Best Friend | Part Five: To My Darling Clementine | Part Six: The Storm Starts Brewing | Part Seven: The Five-Year Relationship Plan | Part Eight: The Means To An End | Part Nine: We Made It | Part Ten: I Am A Phoenix | Part Eleven: Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

*****

Part Ten — I Am A Phoenix

I finished chronologically writing our story yesterday.

Although, in a weird way, I haven’t finished it.

Our story still continues, and even though I reached over 2,000 words with almost each post, I left a lot out. Like, pages upon pages of information, memories, circumstantial happenings left out. I had the opposite of a writing hangover yesterday. My mind was buzzing with freshly remembered memories and I felt like I needed to go back and add even more to each part.

Like I didn’t talk about how we had nicknames for each other, how Phil called me Lady Mysterious because he couldn’t figure me out in one conversation like he could most girls.  I called him DLF; reminiscent of The Chronicles of Narnia. Or how Phil said that I was like a good book; a good book that makes you think and that you can’t read in one sitting. I didn’t mention how it became my goal in life to make him laugh.

Do you know how rewarding it is to know that you can make someone laugh?

Especially after he had told me that he didn’t laugh much. I still have a mischievous side to me that will try to catch him off guard by doing something he least expects. Tell you what, I have pulled some awesome stuff on him, and thoroughly enjoyed making him speechless.

I haven’t talked about how Phil once compared me to an onion, multi-layered and all that. He covered his tracks by hastily saying I smelled so much better than an onion. We even once tried to write a book together. It was going to be called The Official Guide to Modern-day Hermitage. Trust me, that would have been one heck of a spectacular book!

We both have felt the pull of wanting to be hermits for a very long time.

I didn’t mention how I stupidly almost ruined our friendship at the beginning. I held on to these very damaging ideas of emotionally purity and how I couldn’t be friends with a guy unless I was going to marry him. When Phil asked for a week of communication silence, I retaliated and basically told him our friendship was wrong, we needed to stop talking, and I apologized for “allowing the friendship to reach this point.” Gah, I was so stupid! I broke his heart without even realizing it because I thought that was the right thing to do. Girls, if you any of you are ever in a situation with a guy like this, put yourself on the line and speak the truth. Be bold, be honest, and be real.

Don’t let “purity-catchphrases” get in the way of a real friendship.

I didn’t write about how high and mighty I felt when I told Phil that our friendship was wrong. I don’t want to remember just how rude I was to a genuinely caring guy who was falling in love with me. I don’t like mentioning just how goody-two-shoes I was about a lot of things, especially when it came to relationships. I was a thoroughly messed up girl, and yet, I thought I was doing it right.

This is what is coming back to me as I work through the details I left out about our story.

It’s in those details that the guilt lies. It is in those details that I remember just how flippant I was with this precious man’s heart. Even though having him ripped from me was devastating, I needed that wake up call. I needed to know just how much I needed him. I needed to see that I could love him, and did. I needed a slap to the face for how much I played with him and wasn’t honest. I don’t like remembering or reading about how shallow I was with hinting I liked a guy when talking with Phil, but never being honest and saying look, I like you, really, I do.

I didn’t mention about a little red heart I made for Phil.

He told me one day after the six months of silence that he really wanted a token of love from me. I thought about it, and before I even thought all the way through it, I had crocheted a perfect red heart. From the day I gave it to him, to this very day, he still carries that heart with him. I didn’t mention that I still have the first two roses he ever gave me. Those roses — one red, one pink —are tucked away in a thin wooden box which I still open every once in awhile. I still have the first dozen white roses he gave me on our first officially dressed up date.

I didn’t mention how much I hated saying goodbye to him.

Out of everything that happened to us, having to say goodbye every night for so long was the worst thing. There is something about saying goodbye to the one you love that really eats at you. Our first words to each other after being pronounced man and wife were now we don’t have to say goodbye!

I have a sense of being unfinished. Maybe, one day, I will write about our first year, and this past year. Our story does not end at our wedding day, it has continued and will continue until the day we die. 

I have learned to never say never when it comes to writing about something.

We both have looked back on our relationship and recognized it as a testing ground for us both. I have often taken the stand that God was/is preparing us for something as we went through our pre-marriage relationship.

I say “bring it on!” to anything that’s coming in our future. If we were able to get through what we did, then there is no reason why we won’t make it through anything else that might be coming. Going through those three years of trial after trial only taught me more about being resilient. The past four and a half years have proved to me that I can make it. The past six months have taught me that I am strong.

I am a Phoenix, I will continue to bounce back even stronger than before.

Phil and I made it through some of the worst years of our lives only to come out stronger in love, in trusting each other to have the other’s back.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Nine — We Made It

HA Editorial Team13 Comments

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HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Nine of this series was originally published on June 11, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: What Is Courtship? | Part Two: We Were Best Friends | Part Three: The Calm Before The Storm | Part Four: To Lose One’s Best Friend | Part Five: To My Darling Clementine | Part Six: The Storm Starts Brewing | Part Seven: The Five-Year Relationship Plan | Part Eight: The Means To An End | Part Nine: We Made It | Part Ten: I Am A Phoenix | Part Eleven: Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

*****

Part Nine — We Made It

I am going to try to wrap up the before-marriage part of our story in this post.

This will be about a day that broke my heart. The walls that went up around my heart after this day have still not been taken down, only reinforced. I didn’t know that the same person could break my heart so many times.

*****

I didn’t feel much when my friend passed away. I said in my last post that something happened to me as our relationship continued. Part of what happened was I lost my innocence.

I lost faith over and over again that my dad cared at all about what happened to me, or whether or not he loved me.

Losing my friend was hard, but it wasn’t until almost a year later that I was able to really grieve her loss. My heart was slowly hardening and I was seeing just what I meant to my parents.

The Saturday of Phil’s guitar teacher’s funeral, the day before my friend’s funeral, I went out to breakfast with my mom. My mom’s and my relationship had grown increasingly rocky, and my trust in her was just about as broken as my trust in my dad. I felt like she wasn’t supporting me at all.

She didn’t stand up for me.

I was upset for most of our breakfast and we definitely didn’t see eye to eye on barely anything. I finally said that maybe it was time for me to move out. Some of the biggest issues that my parents, specifically my dad, had with me was that I wasn’t helping mom out enough at home. I wasn’t filling to huge role I used to fill with making dinner almost every night for 11 people, cleaning more than my fair share because my siblings wouldn’t clean, and babysitting without pay for all of my siblings. I was working 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, add in every other Friday off, and trying to get time with Phil, trying to see my other friends, and I simply had no time left.

Top it off with the snide comments, and the constant cold shoulder or being picked on from my parents at home —

Home was just not a place I wanted to be at anymore.

When I said that maybe it was time for me to move out, she surprised me by agreeing that yes, maybe it was time for me to move out. I was so surprised especially considering how just under a year ago I had tried to move out and both of my parents manipulated me into staying by using my siblings against me. I couldn’t believe my ears. I went home and sent a text to Phil about what mom had said, and then sent an email to my pastor because I wanted to make sure that I did things right this time.

Not even five minutes after sending the email, my parents walked into my room. I knew something was up right away.

My dad opened the dialogue by saying something about knowing I had breakfast with mom. He then told me that he wanted me to move out and I had two weeks to do it. He told me that he was tired of dealing with me, he didn’t have time for me anymore, and then proceeded to blame me for the problems he was having with my siblings.

He said I was a bad influence.

He said it all in a very nonchalant, “I don’t care,” kind of way while I sat there crying. I couldn’t believe that once again my dad was twisting my siblings against me. He asked if I had any questions and when I shook my head no, he then looked around my room and pointed out the few things I could take with me. He said that if I needed help, that I could ask, but basically, I was on my own.

The breath had been completely knocked out of me. I felt betrayed by my mom.

I felt like I was nothing to my dad but someone who he could no longer control and could be easily discarded.

My heart was ripped open and I felt any shred of faith that I might have had in my parents disappear. My parents walked back out of my room while I sat there, sobbing, and wondering what now. I emailed my pastor again and said disregard my last email, my dad just kicked me out. I called Phil, sobbing on the phone that dad had kicked me out. He hung up on me because he was so incredibly pissed. He tried to call my dad to talk to him and confront him. Phil tried to ask about listening to me, or caring about me, but my dad shut him down.

I had made the mistake when talking to my mom that morning about our pastor counseling Phil and I about needing to start looking at moving forward without my dad’s blessing.   So when Phil called my dad to call him out, my dad turned the conversation back on him and accused him of disrespecting him and daring to go behind his back and moving forward without his blessing.

Phil was so incredibly upset. That was his breaking point. I have never seen Phil so knocked flat. I had reached my breaking point as well. My heart shut down that day.

But the day wasn’t over yet.

My mom came back into my room and told me that dad had told her that appeals were welcome. What the fuck. My dad expected me to come to him on my knees and beg for him to let me stay? Absolutely not. I was completely done. He cared nothing for me besides having to have control over me.

I was not a daughter. I was not a person. I was simply a thing to be controlled.

I told my mom that I was not going to do that. She came back into my room even later around dinner time and told me that I was welcome to come out to dinner with the rest of the family. It was not an invitation like I was expected to come, it was an invitation like I wasn’t a part of the family. My dad was happier than I have ever seen him. He was practically bouncing around. He even let the kids play the games at the pizza place we went to. He never let them do that. Never. My siblings had found out that I was being kicked out and the oldest ones were furious with dad.

My dad was celebrating.

At my friend’s funeral the next day the drama of the day before hit Phil and I really hard especially during the service. I grabbed our pastor after the service and we ended up talking with him for a good half hour. He told us right away that through my dad kicking me out, my dad had renounced any control he had over our relationship.

Our pastor told us that he was completely 100% behind us and he wanted to get us married.

Phil and I were grateful for the support from at least one person.

I spent the next week frantically looking for a place to stay. Because I didn’t have a car, I had to rely on Phil, and he was right there waiting for me. He was by my side every single step of the way. I found a small bedroom and a bathroom that I could rent for a month while waiting to move in with friends. I moved out almost exactly two weeks after my dad told me to leave.

I removed myself from my family. I cut them off. I stopped talking to my mom unless I absolutely couldn’t help it. I didn’t tell her where I was moving to. She hadn’t stood up for me, I wasn’t going to go to her for help. My parents kicking me out went against everything they had said to keep me from moving out the year before. Everything was in direct contradiction. I couldn’t believe it, but at the same time, I was done, and I knew I had done everything I could to restore any sort of relationship with my parents. I was free, and because my dad had kicked me out, there was no viable ammo on me that could be used against me.

I found out later that rumors were being spread that I had moved out because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I expected that, and was totally not thrown off by it.

I expected such underhandedness from my dad.

The day I found a place to stay, we were able to settle on a wedding date with the church. Everything started falling into place. The date was three months away.

The month I lived on my own was the worst of my life. I felt bad for the family’s whose basement I lived in. We didn’t tell them about my family because we didn’t want to put any burden on them.

I began planning our wedding. We knew we weren’t going to get any support from either family, so we budgeted it out and found ways around the major expenses. I made my wedding dress, and was very happy with it. My dad’s parents sent us two very generous donations for our wedding. My grandmother called me one day and told me that she wanted to pay for my wedding dress.

We were lifted up on so many hands as people started coming out of the woodwork to help us.

My mom’s oldest sister was a lifesaver. She made my veil, she was the one who gave me my ring and found my wedding band for a very good price, and she made the brownie cupcakes for our wedding, along with numerous other things.

Things were looking up, we were getting married, but it was with sad and heavy hearts that we marched towards that day. There was no giddiness, there was no overwhelming joy.

There was simply this feeling of it’s time, we made it.

There was a sense of heavy relief as that day came closer.

We decided to save money and have a potluck reception. We only sent printed invitations to close friends and family, everyone else was invited via an online invite. The potluck reception was one of the best decisions we made with regards to our wedding. We were hearing praises about our reception for months after we got married. We wanted the people who had been our family throughout our relationship to have a part in our wedding and having a potluck was one of the ways to include people.

Honestly, I was planning on walking down the aisle myself, or Phil and I would walk down together. I did not want my dad to walk my down the aisle. When he kicked me out, he stopped being a father figure, not that he ever really was. My mom told me one day a few weeks before the wedding that dad was really depressed because he thought I wasn’t going to ask him. Frankly, I wasn’t going to, but I decided that I would simply because I didn’t want anymore drama. My family was not involved very much in the wedding, and I purposefully kept it that way. My friends are my family, and I had more than enough people helping.

The day finally came.

May 14th, 2011; the day we were getting married.

My dad almost didn’t make it to the ceremony because he had spent the night before our wedding in the ER with one of my brothers. By the time I got to church at 9 that morning, I was done with planning, I wanted to enjoy myself, and try to forget about the nagging feeling I had that something would go wrong. My biggest fear was that my dad would try to do something to stop the wedding from happening. I was completely calm all the way up till 15 minutes before I walked down the aisle. Then I almost started crying as I realized that we had actually made it.

We made it to the end. We were getting married.

Despite the people who didn’t believe us, despite the heartache, the tears, the hurt, we had made it. Three words that are such a relief to write:

We made it. 

We wanted a short ceremony, it was only maybe 20 minutes. We were pronounced man and wife, and we marched back up the aisle to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, part 4. A grand and triumphant march.

We made it. 

We spent the reception wandering around greeting everyone we could. We both felt a great relief that we were done with the drama.

We made it. 

We left the reception after about two hours, drove to our new apartment, changed, packed up the car, and took off to Williamsburg for a week.

We made it.

We made it! May 14th, 2011.
We made it! May 14th, 2011.

 

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Eight — The Means To An End

HA Editorial Team13 Comments

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HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Eight of this series was originally published on June 10, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: What Is Courtship? | Part Two: We Were Best Friends | Part Three: The Calm Before The Storm | Part Four: To Lose One’s Best Friend | Part Five: To My Darling Clementine | Part Six: The Storm Starts Brewing | Part Seven: The Five-Year Relationship Plan | Part Eight: The Means To An End | Part Nine: We Made It | Part Ten: I Am A Phoenix | Part Eleven: Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

*****

Part Eight — The Means To An End

Something started happening to me as our story crept on.

I think I started at the beginning with meeting Phil as a naive and happily innocent girl. Even though I was surrounded by abuse at home and I was clearly unhappy at home, I think there was still a part of me that thought that was normal. I still believed that my parents cared for me and loved me and would do what was best for me. At some point throughout all of this, and I’m not sure if it is when I said yes, or not, but I began to claim my life as my own.

Once a person begins to realize and claim what is theirs, I don’t believe you can really go back from that.

*****

June started slowly going by with typical muggy days, and I carried around a secret in my purse no matter where I went. I carried around the ring that my aunt gave me and would often pull it out to look at it. I had asked Phil the day I got it about whether or not he wanted to have it so he could surprise me, but he begged me to keep it. “I will most definitely lose it, if you give it to me,” he said. So, I kept it. A beautiful, one of a kind, sapphire ring. I have never wanted a diamond, and I loved the rich glorious blue of sapphires the best.

I want to back up a little bit in this story and go back to March of 2010. I just stumbled upon some really sweet parts of our story that I wanted to share, especially with all of the crap that is about to explode in the end of this part and the next part.

In March, something happened with my family and my dad’s job. The same day everything went down with his job, my dad was also in a bike crash and broke his collar bone. Yeah, that wasn’t a fun day. I happened to be at church later that day and got to see Phil for quite some time. By this point in our relationship, we were shrugging off the guilt of talking to each other and were talking again quite regularly. In person was really the only thing that cut it now, although, I just remembered that we used to talk almost every night for a few hours if we hadn’t seen each other that day. We had to see each other, we had to see each other’s faces and read each other’s reactions as we talked.

Once again, it was that time of year when the high school group at our old church was doing their annual play, and guess who was in charge of half the costumes? Yeah, me, so I got to see Phil multiple times a week, plus almost every Saturday evening because I had to be at church working on all of the costumes. Those were some of the sweetest times in our relationship, and I could definitely say that that is when our friendship blossomed and turned the corner to being something so much deeper. Phil knew when I was down, when it had been an incredibly rough day at home, and he knew just what to say. He would often put his arms around me and tell me that I was beautiful. He would lean in close and ask me if I was going to be okay and then would tell me that he was proud of me.

Those whispered words were what kept me going, and I grew more in love with this man as each day passed. I knew, without a flutter of a doubt, that this was the man I was going to marry, and this was the man who was going to take care of me and help me heal.

Now moving forward again to our current part of the story…

July 6th, 2010, The big day

It was a Tuesday,  and we both had care group that night. We started making it a habit to meet before care group at the farm park just down the road from both of us. We would meet, eat dinner together, talk for awhile and then head our separate ways. Those meetings were, in a way, our version of dates because we weren’t “allowed” go on dates. Besides, we were away from the eyes of those who looked on us with disdain and there was almost no chance of running into anyone we knew at the farm, so we were free to talk, laugh, and share stories without feeling like we had to hide our emotions.

I met Phil as usual and it was really a gorgeous day. Not too hot, and the sun was getting ready to set. The sky was a brilliant blue with a splash of golden clouds reflecting the sun. I don’t remember what we had been talking about that day, but we had reached a peaceful lull in the conversation and were just sitting there, holding hands, and looking out at the corn fields and the trees before us. Phil suddenly turned to me and asked if I had the ring with me. I said yes very slowly and asked why. He just smiled and asked me to go get it. I went running to my car and on the way back suddenly realized something. Exactly 9 months ago to the day, Phil had told me for the first time that he loved me, and wanted to marry me. My heart gave a great leap of joy as I knew what was coming next.

I handed him the ring box, he stood up and grabbed my hand and led me off down one of the paths. During the walk he told me about how much he loved, why loved me, why I was his best friend. He told me about how excited he was to spend the rest of his life with me and how much he was looking forward to those days. By this point we had reached an enormous and beautiful oak tree, the sun was setting off to my left, and as I looked at him, Phil got down on one knee, held out the ring, and asked if I would be his wife.

Of course, I said yes. Immediately.

I said yes! July 6th, 2010
I said yes! July 6th, 2010

We both left that night having decided to keep our engagement a secret for a week. We didn’t want either sets of parents finding out until we could tell them simultaneously. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, they both refused to see any point to meeting with us…again. We asked if we could sit down and talk with both sets of parents at the same time, we really did try, so we resorted to other methods. The following Saturday, we decided that I would sit down with my parents while Phil called his from work. That was the only way we could figure out to tell them without one side knowing before the other and causing even more mayhem.

It really bothers me, seriously, about how paranoid we were about our parents throughout all of this. We were in love, we wanted to get married, we weren’t doing drugs, we weren’t sleeping around, we weren’t cursing our parents and going off to live with each other and saying forget marriage. We wanted to do things right, we wanted to get married, spend our lives together, and yet, I was treated like I was doing everything but that. Our reactions really goes to show you just how bad things were getting. 

I remember the day we told our parents. Ironically, my side of telling my parents actually went quite well compared to Phil’s side of things. I sat down with my parents, looked them in the eyes, and said that Phil and I were engaged and we were getting married in 30 days.

Oh yeah, forgot about that part.

We had this brilliant scheme that we were going to run away down to Williamsburg to get married.

This part of things was definitely a big mistake on our part, and I am sorry we tried to do this. I don’t remember if we had any plans for after we were married… kind of drawing a blank on that. I think the whole “Getting married in 30 days” thing was more of a desperate attempt to show our parents that we were really serious even though they continued to not take us seriously. We wanted to show them that we weren’t playing around here, but were taking things very seriously and we had already made our decision.

My dad told me that no, we weren’t engaged, and I shot right back that we were.

All the way up to our wedding, my dad still would not acknowledge that we were engaged.

The days after that fatal Saturday were quite fraught with chaotic pressure from pastors, parents, and even some friends to break off our engagement. But somehow, we made it, and continued to say that we wouldn’t break off the engagement because that was something that was strictly between us and only we could decide whether or not we were going to get married.

I tell you what, the weeks began stretching into a monotonous never ending round of one week of drama and then two weeks of semi peace, to another week of drama, to another two weeks…well, you get the picture. Between our engagement and rudely announced getting married in 30 days scheme and our wedding, we met with the pastors separately with our parents, we met together with the pastors without our parents, and we met individually with pastors, and Phil met with the pastors, and his dad and my dad. Oh, but guess what, we never got to meet all together with the two of us and our parents. That is still something that has continued to frustrate me to this day. It never made any sense as to why we all couldn’t have met together.

November came, and I actually got to celebrate thanksgiving with Phil’s family and extended family. I was treated with much caution. I’m going to be honest here and say that I felt incredibly out of place. I was the interloper, I was the girl who had stolen the nephew, son away, and I was the girl who was most definitely not engaged to Phil.

Yes, four months after our engagement, it still wasn’t being acknowledged.

It wasn’t until about 4 months before we got married that we were actually allowed to put on Facebook that we were engaged. Before that we had to simply say that we were in a relationship, but even that was a fight to get to say that.

And yes, as you can probably tell, this is still a very sensitive topic for me. It is one thing to have a piano recital ignored or to not receive congratulations for completing a huge masterpiece that took a long time, but it is another thing entirely to have one’s engagement rudely ignored and treated like it never existed. It’s one of those life events that deserves acknowledgement. This is part of why I struggle with shame and guilt when it comes to our story. Engagement is something to be celebrated and ours wasn’t; not by the people who would have counted the most. 

December rolled around, we had been engaged for 5 months and had made the difficult decision to call off our third wedding date (the only reason we called this date off was because the pastors told us they wouldn’t marry us…not yet, anyway) which was for the middle of January. New Year’s Eve was upon us and this year, I was not leaving Phil’s side. Things went down hard and fast that New Year’s Eve. That was the day that Phil’s parents found out all about my dad’s past and history, and that was the day that they found out what we had been facing throughout our entire relationship when it came to my dad.

The very next day, January 1st of 2011, was the day that for the first time in over 3 years, and after many requests for this very thing, all six of us sat in the same room and talked. By this point, Phil and I were done. I was done with my dad’s crap, with being picked on by both my parents at home, and not feeling welcomed anywhere else because I was with Phil. Phil was done with meeting with my dad to ask for his blessing on our relationship (he asked, point blank, four separate times), he was done with how I was being treated.

We were done.

I remember Phil’s dad entreating my dad to work on his and my relationship. I remember my dad’s disgusted face about being told to do something he didn’t want to do. I remember my inward scoff that he wouldn’t do anything. And I was right. I ended up initiating, yet again, a coffee date with him a week after the meeting, and a week of waiting for him to do something. We went out to Starbucks, and I told him that I was done initiating anything with our relationship. I didn’t even want to talk to him, I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t know if I ever would again unless I saw him do something.

He told me that he had wanted to kick me out (never really told me why he had changed his mind at that point) and that he just didn’t know what to say to me.

I shrugged and really had no interest in continuing the failing conversation.

*****

Two weeks later, my life changed drastically.

One of my best friends had been in a coma since the middle of December. She was one of the only people I felt I could trust was genuinely and extremely happy for us. She died shortly after my coffee date with my dad. Phil’s first major guitar teacher died of ALS the day before she died as well.

The following weekend held both of their funerals.

The following weekend was also when I found out just how much I meant to my parents.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Seven — The Five-Year Relationship Plan

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

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HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Seven of this series was originally published on June 9, 2013.

*****

Also in this series: Part One: What Is Courtship? | Part Two: We Were Best Friends | Part Three: The Calm Before The Storm | Part Four: To Lose One’s Best Friend | Part Five: To My Darling Clementine | Part Six: The Storm Starts Brewing | Part Seven: The Five-Year Relationship Plan | Part Eight: The Means To An End | Part Nine: We Made It | Part Ten: I Am A Phoenix | Part Eleven: Conclusion, Don’t Brush Off the Next Generation

*****

Part Seven — The Five-Year Relationship Plan

I have to keep moving with these posts or else I will lose momentum and it will become even more difficult to continue the story.

I want to explain a little bit about why this is so difficult for me to write, but also why I need to write our story. From that first devastating break in Phil’s and my friendship, I began losing a lot of friends, I faced opposition at home and from other parents, people I barely knew, and those who I thought were friends. I have always been sensitive to my heart, to my conscience, and it killed me when I couldn’t seem to get it across that my conscience was clear in my loving Phil and continuing to be in a relationship with him.

I was being accused of lust, idolatry, bitterness by my parents, I was called rebellious, disobedient, dishonoring of my parents by others around me. I was having friends question my heart, and asking whether or not I was being blind to wisdom just because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I felt almost nothing but shame, false guilt, and pain from those moments on. Shame because I wasn’t doing what others wanted me to do and feeling guilt because my conscience was being used against me. I was also feeling pain because what I felt was right and felt at peace with wasn’t even close to what everyone else around me said was “right.”

I felt manipulated, like I was being used against myself.

I felt alone, I felt the few friends I could trust were my lifelines, and without them Phil and I probably wouldn’t have made it. I watched the people who used to “look up to me” look down at me in disgust as my parents told stories of my dishonorable actions.

Here are the reasons why I need to write our story. By writing our story, I am owning the story. I am spreading it out and accepting that it is our story; the good, the painful, the ugly, and the bad.

I am acknowledging that our story is amazing; amazing because we made it.

Amazing because Phil and I are married, very amazingly happily married. It’s amazing because we came out stronger and more in love with each other than before. It’s amazing because we stayed true to our hearts no matter how many people tried to break us apart.

That’s why I need to write this story.

That’s why it’s important for me to accept it.

The next year and a half that I will be covering in the next few parts are the ones that make the past few posts seem like a walk through the park.

*****

That week of talking after 6 months of silence was pure bliss.

We decided that we were going to write up relationship guidelines that at the end of the week we would try to present to our parents. We spent hours on the phone and online trying to work through what we thoughts our parents would approve of (incredibly strict talking guidelines, timelines, and so forth). We talked with the couple who were becoming mentors to me about what would be best to put into this five year plan that we were writing up.

We even started working on what would become roughly a year later our budget that is still in play to this day.

We talked about where we would want to live when we got married, we talked about how many kids we wanted, we talked about their names, we talked about the kind of house we’d want to live in.

We talked about everything.

I vaguely remember my grandfather being in town that week, but I wasn’t around very much. Phil was taking my time and I sure as heck wasn’t going to stop that. The week began winding down and we started figuring out what the game plan was going to be presenting this five year relationship plan to our parents.

We came to the conclusion that approaching my dad and asking for his blessing on our relationship was the first step.

And we decided that it was going to be on Sunday. Phil approached my dad at church, nervous as heck, and actually came across a little abrupt to my dad, asking if my dad could talk with him later that afternoon. Oh, the day started out bad from the start, and that should have been a sign for us to stop because we both got burned. The first sign was Phil’s car battery dying. He almost didn’t make it in time to meet with my dad. The second was getting questioned on the way home from church by my dad about this meeting with Phil.

The third sign that the day was going ridiculously wrong was when I watched my dad talking with Phil and saw the typical signs of my dad BSing Phil. The typical long drawn out speech that my dad gives when he doesn’t want to deal with something and is annoyed, but is going to keep the polite man face up. Sure enough, Phil left, I waited a few moments and then went inside, only to be met by two furious parents, one of them a mom I had never seen that angry with me. My parents talked and yelled at me about how disrespectful I had been to them, how I had dishonored my dad, how Phil was disgustingly disrespectful to my dad by asking him for his blessing on our relationship.

I have never been able to understand how a man asking to be in a relationship with me was a dishonoring thing.

Or how Phil asking in a very polite manner was disrespectful to my dad.

I felt ashamed of my “sin” of dishonoring my parents for wanting to talk with the man I loved. Both Phil and I were talked down about how sinful we had been to talk. I still feel anger and confusion over just why what we did was considered sinful.

The weeks that followed brought confusion, pain for both of us, and a tentative continuing of our under the radar relationship. We both decided that it was more important to stay true to our hearts than to continue a forced separation. Phil gave me thumb drives with letters to me, his favorite music, and class schedules, and I wrote him letters and we continued to talk about our future. Thanksgiving passed, Christmas was fast approaching. I gave Phil a little figurine made out of nuts and bolts who was a little man at a desk on a metal laptop. And I also made him a pair of half fingered mitts and a scarf. I think he gave me a chain mail medallion. New Year’s crept up on us and I was greatly looking forward to seeing Phil at a mutual friend’s party.

At this point, Phil knew almost everything that had to do with my family.

I told him about the nightmares I had of my dad beating me. I told him about how scared I was when my dad got angry, I told him about the depression I felt when I was home. Phil became more and more my rock as things continued to get worse between my dad and I. Ever since the year I had found out about my dad’s issues, I haven’t been able to talk with him without feeling some sense of uneasiness, discomfort, and distrust.

By the time the new year’s party rolled around, my dad and I weren’t really on speaking terms again. I have no idea why we weren’t this time, probably something I didn’t say that made him pissed with me. That happened way too often for me to keep track of anymore. I was planning on going to to the party, but mom told me I still had to ask dad. So I went and asked him. I already knew Phil was going to be there, but I sure as heck wasn’t going to volunteer the information. My dad told me I could go, but as I turned to walk away, he told me that if Phil was there, that I had to come home right away.

My heart sank.

I needed this party.

Outside of my job, I didn’t see anyone, like at all. I was incredibly isolated.

Besides seeing Phil sometimes after work, at single’s meetings at church, I rarely saw friends. I frantically emailed Phil and asked him not to come. I told him that I couldn’t ignore my dad’s command if he showed up. My conscience wouldn’t allow it.

Frankly, I have no idea what I thought, or was afraid, my dad would do if I didn’t do this stupid thing. I was being scared into doing what he said because he knew that he still had quite a few pulls over me. I was taken advantage of because of my sensitivity to what was put to me as the right thing to do. My mom told me that one day. I don’t know why she told me that dad could get me to do what he wanted because of my sensitive spirit. After finding that out I was even more wary of my dad. Rightly so, I believe. 

Phil told me to enjoy the party for him and that he would spend the evening thinking about me and working on some projects. Throughout our relationship, up till a big thing happened in January of 2011, Phil tried his hardest to pull the fire off of me when it came to my dad. He was too much of a good guy.

I am angry about how many times my dad took advantage of Phil’s genuine care for me and his desire to do what was right.

After the beginning of 2010 had passed, life at home and around my parents began to reach new heights of buttons being pushed and nasty responses to almost anything I did. Sometime around February, I met a new friend, and shortly afterward got an email from her saying that her and her husband would like to offer me a place in their new house. She knew that life was hard at home, knew about Phil and I, and her and her husband wanted to give me an escape.

I quietly, secretly, began planning to move out. I was freaked out half to death that my parents would kill me and forcefully keep me at home once I told them that I was going to move out. I was pretty set on doing it, and even went and separated my bank account from them because the last thing I wanted happening was my money being taken.

I didn’t put anything past them.

May came around and I found out that major building delays were happening with the house that I was supposed to have a room in. That was seriously pushing back my projected move out date. The end of May came, and I decided to tell my parents anyway that I was going to move out. I wanted to tell them I was moving out, not that I wanted to move out. I didn’t want to give them any room to shut me down.

Little did I know that that was futile. I sat down with both my parents and told them I was moving out in a few weeks.

They immediately used their biggest weapon against me: my siblings.

They told me how devastated my siblings would be if I moved out. They told me how much of a good influence I was on them, and how they would need a big sister. They, once again, took advantage of my sensitive heart and manipulated me into staying. And yes, I stayed. I could feel the despair settle in even deeper in my heart. Twice in the months that followed I had a bad breakdown and asked two different friends to come get me. I was gone for hours both times, and I wish I had had the courage to leave when I had originally wanted to.

But, I suppose there is a reason for everything.

I also got something really special at the end of May.

My aunt had been saving a gorgeous sapphire ring for me, and I called her when I knew she was going to be in the area to ask for the ring. She brought it out from CA that May.

The ring fit perfectly.

Now if I could only wear it as an outward sign of my commitment to Phil.

*****

To be continued.