marriage – Page 4 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Relationships, A Series: Part Five — To My Darling Clementine

August 2, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team10 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Five of this series was originally published on June 4, 2013.

*****

*****

Part Five — To My Darling Clementine

To be perfectly honest, this part of our story is a bit of a blur to me.

There were a few incidents that stood out to me during this time but I just remember an overall feeling of numbness, pain, and the feeling like my heart was constantly being gripped in an iron fist that was squeezing the life out of me. I hated it, I buried myself into my work, and found many nights filled with tears, nightmares, and wondering if this time was ever going to end.

*****

I wouldn’t have said that I loved this guy.

I don’t think I really could have picked a “feeling” of what love would have been for me.

I knew that I deeply missed Phil, my heart was still in many pieces, and I knew that I was waiting for him, and I knew that God had told me to keep an eye on him. After the parenting seminar, I went home and spent the next few weeks trying to survive. I remember pulling out old emails he had written to me and re-reading them. I remember crying as I read and wishing I could talk to him again. I remember wanting to pick up the phone and call him and hear his voice. I remember something happening that would make me smile and almost immediately feeling punched in the gut when I went to go tell Phil about it.

During the first two months of our separation I didn’t talk about not being able to talk with him. I think only one friend really knew how I was doing, and after the initial first few weeks, I stopped talking about Phil. My parents didn’t seem to care, or give any thought to us, and the friends who were all buzzed about the drama to begin with soon gave up and the story was no longer a new and exciting piece of drama in their dull lives. Only a small handful of people really stuck with me through the entire journey.

This story isn’t just about Phil and I, it is also a sad reminder of all of the friends we lost along the way.

I caught up with a good friend two months after losing Phil’s friendship and I broke down and told her everything. She was shocked, but at the same time some of her first words were “I knew it!” She told me that without knowing anything, she had played a bit of match-maker and had pair us together. (Several people told me the same thing when they found out later that Phil and I were together. They told me I was one of the only girls who was shorter than Phil and we perfectly rounded each other’s personalities out.) We would go on walks and she never seemed tired of hearing what had happened that week or where I was at.

Ironically she was the one who was with me for one of the most difficult situations I found myself in during that horrendous summer.

My best friend’s brother had a surprise birthday party at an ice cream place and I ended up getting invited. I had a feeling Phil would be there, and I was incredibly nervous. I knew he had recently bought himself a sweet car and knowing him, he would be there with it and would be showing it off in his own subtle way. My friend and I drove up to the ice cream place and managed to pull in right when Phil did. My heart stopped when I saw him break into an amazing smile and come charging towards us. He had these glasses on that looked like old fashioned scientist sunglasses. To be honest, I actually did come to like them a lot and they fit his quirky personality, but that’s not what happened this day.

The first words out of my mouth were the ones I wish I could rip back and burn. I told him I hated the glasses.

I told him I didn’t like them on him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy, or any person, deflate that quickly. His shoulders dropped and I almost started sobbing right then and there. My heart broke all over again and I couldn’t think of another thing to say. I just didn’t want to see him so defeated. And it was all my fault. I went for a walk with my friend after the birthday party and I spent the entire time bouncing back and forth about whether or not I should call him and apologize. I had his number dialed twice and my finger on the send button. I found out later that he was so surprised to hear me say that I hated the glasses and he couldn’t help but see the pain in my eyes. He was more worried about me than hurt by what I said, even though he was hurt, and wouldn’t wear the glasses for quite some time after that.

Oh that is one day I wish I could relive and do it all over again!

Towards the end of the summer, around the end of July, I was in VA for a sewing workshop for some girls. I was teaching them all to make a proper corset and helping them all make their own patterns that would fit them the way the corsets were supposed to fit. I do miss this part of reenacting and I wish we were still in it, but too much went down and it no longer holds the attention for me that it used to. Anyway, at the end of the first day of the class, I found out that Phil was planning on naming his car. I wasn’t too surprised especially since his car was so unique. When I found out the proposed name, I had a very delayed flipping out reaction.

Being surrounded by girls who I was supposed to be a role model for, I didn’t feel like I could really react the way I felt I was reacting inside.

He wanted to name his car Clementine. And in that moment my world stood still; was he waiting for me? Is that why he wanted to chose a name that meant something special to both of us?

Let me explain about Clementine. This is a little known story about us and it is one of my favorites that I hold close to my heart.

About 3 months after I met Phil, he hit a really bad anxiety day and was pretty far down in the dumps. I had already dealt with one of those days before this and I kind of knew what to do to cheer him up but I was still trying to work around his no talking on the phone rule. It’s hard to cheer someone up when you can’t hear them or see them. This time happened the day before his brother got married. They weren’t all that close at that time, but I think that it was hitting him hard that things were changing drastically and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

The first time he hit the wall, I wrote this comical letter that really cheered him up. I wrote the letter as if he had written it to a crazy, wild girl named Clementine. I created this entire persona of a purple haired, red lipped, bubbly girl. So when he needed cheering up again the night before his brother’s wedding, I wrote the second letter to Darling Clementine and it worked exactly how I planned it to work. He told me the next day that he could barely keep from laughing out loud as he read it.

Honestly, those letters are rather strange to read now. They were hilarious back then, but they were a bad memory during that summer and a fond memory now that I can smile about.

When Phil decided to name his car Clementine, I was elated and crushed at the same time.

How dare he name a car something that was uniquely special to us? Does he like me still, is that why he wants to name his car that? And then the thoughts of what if he doesn’t like me anymore came pouring in. By the time I went to bed that night at the people’s house the class was at, I thought I was calm and could handle things. I had also let Phil know my mind and how I didn’t approve of the car name via some tricky commenting strategies on Facebook.

(Really, who am I kidding, I pulled the typical write a comment and then delete it prank. that was back when we got emails about comments left on our walls. so even if I had deleted the comments he still got an email about it.)

I didn’t have that hard of a time falling asleep. One of the girls at the sewing class was in a budding relationship herself, and I was getting the scoop on all of her exciting drama so Phil wasn’t completely at the forefront of my mind. I fell asleep feeling comfortable (which was very rare for me) and I fully expected to actually sleep that night.

I woke up around 3 am sobbing.

Bells were going on in my head as piece after piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I had been trying to solve was put together. I think up to this point I had been denying any other feeling other than that I was waiting for Phil and that was it. For most of the summer I shut down even more emotionally than ever before. When Phil had come into my life I had started very slowly breaking down the walls around my heart. But when he was ripped from me, those walls were reinforced and were even thicker. That’s why that early July morning I was struck breathless as emotions flooded my heart and left me sobbing.

I saw the world through opened eyes and I simply knew I couldn’t live without Phil.

I couldn’t go on living without him by my side.

I truly did love him.

I needed him.

My heart settled into the greatest peace I had even known.

“I love Phil.”

With one phrase, my world was calm. The chaos was hushed, my sight was clear.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Four — To Lose One’s Best Friends

August 1, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Four of this series was originally published on May 29, 2013.

*****

Part Four — To Lose One’s Best Friend Is To Lose A Part Of Your Heart

Now we are getting to the part of our story that is going to get increasingly difficult to deal with. I know some people can look at what my husband and I went through as trivial and unremarkable, but for us, it was hell. It was frustrating.

It was enough to make us both lose faith in family.

Phil still won’t talk about what happened, nor does he like being reminded of it.

Both of us were faced with relationship issues that we had to deal with alone and in some ways, it forced Phil to take on more responsibility than a “normal” situation would have required. It was good for us, as this part of our story burned away any of the fluff that might have been left from the first infatuation.

It brought forth the real hearts that somehow sustained us to the day we said “I do.”

Ah, this is hard to write. I have been putting this post off for over a week now, and now that I have the time to really focus and write, I am finding myself trying to find any distraction I can to keep from writing it. Please know that what I am about to write is four years old, and a lot of things have been dealt with but they still hurt us really deeply and are still painful to write. So please, be gentle with me, and my husband, as you read this.

*****

As soon as Phil had finished telling me what he had to say, he dashed out the door, tears streaming down his face. He took off running and was nowhere to be found for at least two hours. I have never been that close to fainting as I was in that moment. A life sucking darkness started blinding my eyes as dry sobs started rising from some part of my numb self.

I was numb; totally, perfectly numb.

I collapsed on grass outside the door and lay there in shock for ten minutes. Our mutual friend was with me for a little bit of the time just holding my hand but she soon left. I don’t remember how I got up or how I found my phone but I somehow managed to call my best friend back and in a broken voice told her what had happened. All she could say was “Oh Caleigh, I’m so sorry!” I told her that I was sure there was a plan and felt peace that I hadn’t lost him completely. I think I was on a pain high, I was very optimistic for about an hour and a half, and then I suddenly crashed very hard.

I got off the phone and cried, walked, sobbed, and just asked God why. I knew I had heard from him to keep an eye on this guy when I first met him, but I really didn’t understand why Phil was being ripped away from me now.

I found comfort in Romans 8:28 and trusted that God had a plan in all of this.

I called my mom to tell her what had happened. She seemed singularly unimpressed by my tears and almost didn’t want to come and get me. I asked her to tell my dad, and to this day, I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea or why he would respond. (To be clear, from this point on, my relationship, or lack thereof, with my dad completely deteriorated to even less than what it might have been had he responded differently.) She said he was out cutting the lawn but would tell him when he was done. I called her an hour later and begged her to come get me. I was falling apart and couldn’t allow the kids at rehearsal to see how much I was breaking.

I don’t know how else to explain just how intensely destroying that day was for me. I had met my heart’s companion and in the course of 5 minutes he had been ripped from me and I was left gasping with barely half a heart. The words I know barely seem adequate to describe the pain I felt that day and still feel a little piece of four years later. Mom came and got me and I could barely hold back the tears as we drove home. I remember dad being in the garage and I walked up to him maybe hoping somewhere in my heart that he would comfort me. He stuck his arm around my shoulders rather awkwardly and said that he was sorry.

Then he said, “If your heart hurts then you did something wrong.”

I think my heart stopped for the second time that day. It was like a deep gong went off in my head; I knew instantly that I was not going to get any support whatsoever from this man who had his arm around my shoulders. I remember walking inside and not saying anything to my siblings but went straight to my bed, turned off the lights, shut the blinds, and curled up on top of the covers and sobbed. I don’t remember being able to eat dinner that night, and I quietly tried to tuck the mangled pieces of my heart somewhere no one would see them.

I did have one consolation. Our mutual friend had asked Phil if he would be willing to wait for me and she told me that his answer was a huge yes. I wrote a letter to him that day once I had some sense of my surroundings that evening. I told him in the letter that I promised to wait for him and that no matter what I was going to be here for him. I folded up the letter and placed it in an envelope that would sit until I felt it was time to give it to Phil.

I went to rehearsal the next day, and by this point the pain in my heart had turned into immense anger. I burned fiercely, and all I could think was I liked this guy, I needed his friendship, and they had dared to rip that from me. I wrote him a madly scrawled note asking if we could talk to our parents about setting up guidelines. I knew that Phil was hurting and his pain was just as deep as mine. He looked very sick that day when I saw him. There was no life in that face of his that had previously lit up the moment he would lay eyes on me.

The following weeks were dark, and I don’t remember much other than asking my mom over and over if all of the parents and us could meet and set up guidelines so we could talk. My dad, now that we couldn’t talk, seriously thought that there was nothing in between Phil and I and that there was no need for us to talk. He used to spew this crap at me about how it was wisdom that Phil and I not talk, without ever saying exactly why it was wisdom when I asked for an explanation.

My first gut reaction to my dad not being supportive was proven true over and over and over again during those first few weeks and it is still true four years later.

Our parents met once during those first three weeks, but their responses to that meeting were all different. Not one side of all four of their stories lined up. I found out later from Phil that his parents got a very different take on that meeting than my mom or my dad. The lack of communication was astounding and it has never ceased to frustrate me as I look back on that time.

Just over a month and a half after that horrid day, there was a parenting seminar at church. I went with my parents and we ran into Phil and his parents as soon as we got there. I was so uncomfortable, and wanted to find a dark corner to cry in as soon as I laid eyes on him. He tried to look happy but he looked just as miserable as I felt. (Those who remember this time and knew me closely then said that my eyes looked dead, I was barely functioning and I rarely talked. I was a ghost of who I had been) During this seminar we ended up sitting right in front of Phil and his parents. I just about ran out of there when I realized that they were sitting right behind us. All I could think of was how Phil could see the side of my face and I could see his reflection in the drum-kit up on stage.

I found out later from Phil that this seminar was a huge turning point for him.

It was during this seminar he realized that he loved me.

Not only did he truly whole-heartedly love me, he wanted to marry me and spend the rest of his life with me. He was more than 100% sure and he told his parents this on the way home, thoroughly shocking them.

He looked genuinely happy when he left after the seminar and I died a little bit more inside thinking that he was happy to be leave me.

If I had only known…

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Three — The Calm Before The Storm

July 31, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Three of this series was originally published on May 23, 2013.

*****

Part Three — The Calm Before The Storm

Phil made me feel safe.

There really is no other way to put it, other than that he truly makes me feel safe, protected. As I write this I can only think of how much this miraculous man has kept life in me and has committed himself to loving me with all that he is. He has done nothing but firmly stuck with me through some of the worst parts in my life. He has wiped tears from my eyes when I no longer had strength to do it and he held me close when the outside storms threatened to overturn our little boat.

He’s pretty awesome, people, and that is becoming even more clear and obvious to me as I gain a clearer perspective of our story.

*****

Phil started telling me that if he ever started his own company he wanted me to be his secretary. I asked him why, and he told me that I had some of the most efficient writing skills he had ever seen and that I was at the top of the list (I honestly think I was the list!). He loved my ideas about projects and we were constantly coming up with ideas that we could do together. We were an odd mix of very outgoing and incredibly introverted. We were most happy when brainstorming in the corner at a party than being in the midst of all of the action.

By the time we had known each other for 5 months we were best friends in the sincerest form of the word. Ever since letting go of my tightly held idea of marrying a tall man I had started realizing that Phil was a man that I would be willing to spend the rest of my life with, but I had no idea what he thought of me. So I somehow very easily pushed my feelings of romantic interest in him back and just let myself enjoy the awesome friendship we had.

I am glad we had such a deep friendship before “falling in love.” In fact, I’d say that it was our deep friendship that actually made loving each other a natural next step.

I am a huge advocate of being best friends with your husband.

For his birthday I planned a surprise birthday party. I wanted it to only be his closest friends and just an opportunity to hang out, eat pizza, and play games. He just about ruined the surprise when a day before his birthday he sent an email to all of the people I had invited, saying that all of them were welcome to stop by for his birthday. His sister and I managed to contact everyone and let them know to play it cool about dropping by. We did actually surprise him and it was a great party!

A few days later, Phil told me that he wanted to send me something. I raced up to the library that day, and opened the email he had sent me, only to discover a song that he had written for me. It even had my name in it! (Cheesy, I know, I know, but it was pretty significant to me! I still work that song into some of the piano compositions I make up these days.) I was floored. Here was a guy who had told me a month ago that he wouldn’t get into a relationship until after college. Here was a guy who seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, going so far as to write a song that was specifically for me.

And yet, as he told me later, he still wouldn’t admit that he “liked” me.

At the same time as our friendship was reaching deep, our church was putting on an original production of Pilgrim’s Progress. I was doing costumes and Phil was in the play. The play provided a convenient location for us to see each other and to spend time together. There was rarely a time when we weren’t talking a mile a minute and discussing all of our marvelous ideas. I also discovered that he thought pretty much the same things as I did on a number of random topics, but he had just enough variance in his thinking that it made for fantastic conversations.

From February to April (we met in October of the year before), our friendship started changing very subtly. Phil wrote several very long letters to me during that period, and I still have those letters tucked away in my memory box. During those months, we hit a strange rough spot.

He sent me an email one day and told me that he wanted to take Spring Break that year to think and pray about our friendship specifically.

I was taken aback but readily agreed to cut back communication. I think even though he still wouldn’t have admitted it at that point, he was falling hard for me and that was freaking him out especially since he was barely through the first half year of college. This meant that his plans for the future were being drastically shaken.

The end of that week landed on the birthday party of the mutual friend who had introduced us. I was very unsure about going, especially because I didn’t want to lose Phil’s friendship. The week of limited communication had been hard. Seeing him at the party was one of those moments where a sweet calm washed over me and I knew instantly that everything was going to be okay, there was no way on earth I was going to lose this guy. We were some of the last people to be dancing on the dance floor that night. We danced for over two hours, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company and having a total blast. Our friendship very much deepened after that week, but there was also that one crucial thing left unsaid, so there was a creeping awkwardness. We started seeing more of each other as opening night for the play started creeping ever nearer. Rehearsals were frequent but were also very busy. I spent a lot of time repairing and managing a huge 20 x 40 (I think that’s how big it was, probably bigger) foot piece of canvas that was part of one of the scenes. I still managed to see a lot of Phil, and as most mothers are, we started getting comments about how often we were hanging out together.

I started having friends come up to me to ask if I was guarding my heart.

No really, I’m serious.

I started getting really annoyed and frustrated with all of these people putting their noses into something that seriously wasn’t any of their business.

That’s what we get for having been in the famous, I Kissed Dating Goodbye Josh Harris’ church.

It all came down to the Thursday night before opening week. I was having to fix a major rip in the canvas, and was seated on the floor of one of the gyms, hand sewing and trying to get the thing patched up. (I hated that canvas by the end of that opening week! I was fixing it after almost every rehearsal) Phil, of course, was a very frequent visitor to my misery and on that particular evening, I had at least 4 people come up to me and question my judgement about hanging out with Phil.

By the time the evening was over, I was furious, at Phil (even though it wasn’t his fault that we both enjoyed hanging out so much), at everyone who had talked with me, and with myself, and most importantly the canvas. Phil came to say goodbye to me, but I was less than cordial as it was now coming up on three hours that I had painstakingly been hand sewing that wretched canvas. I was so uneasy and upset, and as I went home that night I felt like something was about to happen.

Something most definitely happened the next day. The first sign was that Phil wasn’t answering any of my texts, nor was he online. I felt a far reaching sense of foreboding as I made my way to rehearsal that afternoon. I still had a bit of the canvas to finish fixing, but I was mostly anxious to see Phil. I knew something was wrong. I was among the first crowd of people to show up at rehearsal, and I immediately knew he hadn’t gotten there yet. I knew the moment he arrived and my heart and stomach reached my throat when I caught sight of his face.

Something was definitely wrong and I raced out the door, frantically calling one of my best friends.

Phil and our mutual friend headed in the opposite direction. My friend thankfully picked up after the first two rings and I started breathlessly telling her that something was about to go down and I desperately needed pray. “Pray, and pray hard. I’ll call you in 20 minutes,” I told her. While on the phone with her, the mutual friend called me and wanted to know where I was. She was soon walking towards me as I stood in the middle of the field at the back of church. She told me that Phil needed to talk with me and that he wanted her to be there as well.

My heart barely beat as I felt my limbs turning to molasses. This was it, I thought, this was what I had been waiting for all day. I walked up to where Phil was waiting for me barely breathing, and my heart just about stopped as I saw how pale, teary-eyed, and sick he looked. I still feel the panic in my stomach as I write this out, even though it’s been 4 years since this moment. I waited blindly for him to start talking as I watched him look at me with heavy concern. He rushed through words that I can hardly remember him saying. He said something that my friendship meant the world to him, and that he wanted me to always remember that. Then he dropped the bomb.

“We can’t be friends anymore. We can’t talk, email, chat, or text, nor can we hang out in the same group.”

He said something about this being his parents’ decision, and then asked if I had anything to say. I don’t remember responding, and in that moment, I was closer to fainting than I have ever been.

For the second time in three years, my heart was completely shattered.

The very person who had been keeping me breathing and moving for the past six months was being ripped from me.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part Two — We Were Best Friends

July 30, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part Two of this series was originally published on May 23, 2013.

*****

Part Two — “We Were Best Friends, Heart Readers, And We Were Loyal to the Nth Degree”

When I wrote about courtship at the beginning of the year, I sincerely intended to continue on in a series of posts about relationships, but as life would have it, my plans got derailed. I was in the middle of some pretty difficult days, emotionally and mentally, and I didn’t have the words to continue writing. Other topics came up, and this series got put on a dusty shelf for another time. I finally feel like I have the words to get this second post in the series out. I once said that I would never talk about my husband’s and my story, but I should learn to not say “never.”

As I have been working through things with my therapist, the more I am seeing life, my life, from another deeper and wider perspective. What I am seeing is a very comforting picture, and one that makes me proud to say that yes, this is my life. I haven’t, to my memory, ever before been able to say, “yay, I love my life!” at any moment before this.

I told my therapist yesterday that I have never been able to look at my husband’s and my story without feeling guilt, shame, and feeling like it is a story of simply surviving a hellish encounter with forces outside of us. I told her how ever since the moment I met my husband, I have felt like it’s been a non stop whirlwind that has threatened to stop us from being together. It has only been in the past 2 (maybe 3) months that I have finally felt able to take a breath and let my body’s stress and tension melt.

My therapist looked at me and told me that our story was one of the most inspiring stories she had ever heard.

She told me that she would consider it movie material, and she was so amazed that we made it through what we did and are still happily married and doing amazingly well. I sat there looking at her, trying to see from her perspective and understand what she was seeing. In that moment, I think I really did catch a glimpse of the story she saw, and this is what I saw.

* * * **

I met my husband in a fairly normal way.

We met through a mutual friend and were surrounded by my siblings when we first met.

He thought I was the mom of all of the kids, and I thought he was seriously short. I had these feelings of almost intrigued disgust at his height, or lack thereof, but there was also something deep in my heart that did a double take when this really friendly, bubbly guy shook my hand and embarrassingly stammered over his mistake of thinking I was the mom. I felt God tell me to keep my eye on this guy because he was going to be someone really important to me.

We didn’t start talking right away, it took two weeks of me trying to find out what I could about this guy, and not hearing anything from him until we connected over online chat. Right around the same time, my life was falling apart with my fibromyalgia and I still wasn’t diagnosed and still was dealing with tons of doctor’s appointments. Meeting Phil and getting to know him and as our friendship quickly progressed from just acquaintances, he was the one who kept me afloat when I desperately needed that life buoy. Our short online chats very quickly morphed into two hour long conversations about nothing in particular other than wherever the conversation led.

I don’t really know what I think about soulmates, and love at first sight, but I do know that there was something seriously deeply connected between Phil and I. He had this silly rule that he would never talk with a girl on the phone unless that was the girl he was in a relationship with or had a business deal to discuss. I remember feeling frustrated when I knew he wasn’t doing well with something and I couldn’t call him and hear his voice or to yell at him to buck up. We found creative ways around the fact that I didn’t have internet at home, including sending e-texts; texts between his email and my phone. I totally jacked up my phone bill within the second month of our serious conversations because of going over my text limit for the month. Oops.

There was something deeply connecting us.

About three months after I met him, I went through the second time in my life where I cut off anyone who I felt like was sucking life from me or I felt like I couldn’t invest in. I joke that Phil just made the cut. If I hadn’t met him when I did, I probably would have never paid much attention to him, but because of his sincere care for me, and the deep sense in which he understood me, he made it. I started keeping my phone on me everywhere as I felt like he was a life line. He knew the moment something happened that wounded me deeply. He was the first one I texted when something funny happened.

We were best friends, heart and soul readers, and we were loyal to the nth degree.

At the three month mark I strongly wrestled with God over Phil. I told God that I wasn’t going to marry someone short, I had to marry someone tall so they could protect me, carry me. God kept telling me that I had to let go of that dream, I had to let him show me who he wanted me to see. For two weeks, long weeks I might add, I fought and wrestled knowing that as soon as I gave in I would see something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge. At the end of that time I finally gave in and wearily told God that I was ready to hold my dreams loosely. As soon as I did that I saw something in Phil that made me really take a hard look at him. The first thing I saw was that he was nothing like my dad and was one of the first guys I knew that I actually felt safe with.

This was huge, people —

For the first time in my life I felt safe.

I felt safe, and that changed my life.

*****

To be continued.

Relationships, A Series: Part One — What is Courtship?

July 29, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team15 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part One of this series was originally published on January 8, 2013.

*****

Part One — What is Courtship?

My dad once told me that he wasn’t going to let me get married until I was 30. I was probably about 12 or 13 when I first remember hearing him say that, but I couldn’t figure out whether he was joking or not at the time. I knew that there was some reality behind his joke because he is deeply under the courtship culture that I grew up in.

I grew up “broken.” Some normal girlish part of me has never quite worked. I never had any dreams about getting married, nor did I have any idea of what a relationship for me would look like. About 6 years later, I found myself in a relationship, and it was going a heck of a lot differently than any of the “courtship” books said a relationship was supposed to go. I read all of the courtship books I could get my hands onto. I found any book that had to do with emotional purity, courtship, dating or not to date, and I devoured the advice.

I even read a book by someone I used to know way back when all this was called “Emotional Purity.” I read almost all of Josh Harris’ books, and used to daydream about having a relationship that played out just like the couples in the books, or how the authors of all of these books said a courtship should be played out. Ironically, my daydreams usually included very complicated messed up situations where I was the maiden in distress where I almost died and the man who loved me saved me. Who knew that the relationship with my husband would actually turn out a lot like my daydreams, minus the almost dying part?

I have hated the word Courtship. I hated it because of what it stood for, what I have been through in the name of “courtship,” and what I have watched others face. But, I discovered something; it is not courtship in and of itself that I have been burned by, it is the twisted version of the word, act, that over the past decade or so it has become. I had a long conversation once with a friend about labels. We talked about how so many people have made up meanings for things such as courtship, family, fatherhood, denominations of churches, and whatnot and the original definitions have been lost. I used to cringe every time someone used “courtship” to describe their relationship. That was until I finally looked up the original definition of the word. According to the dictionary, Courtship is defined as thus:

Courtship
1. the wooing of one person by another
2. the period during which such wooing takes place
3. solicitation of favors, applause, etc.

There is nothing in this definition that says that the man seeking to win a woman’s heart must first “court” the dad and the parents rule the relationship. There is nothing in here that indicates that this is a strictly biblical, family based process. In fact, I find myself having flashbacks to a certain Jack Sparrow egging a certain Will Turner on about wooing said lady. This definition brings up memories of a sincere “I want to get to know you” relationship. This reminds me of a man and woman falling in love and choosing to marry.

This is my definition of Courtship: It is simply the wooing of one person by another.

[I have been asked multiple times to share my story about how Phil and I met and how our relationship played out. Let me just say this. I will never write that story under my real name. I consider some of the relationships that I have now with some involved in the story more important than what they used to be, no matter how messed up things were. Things were rough, parents controlled our relationship and forgiveness has been asked on all sides as has been needed, and that is all you need to know for now. ]

I found this story recently and it brought to light a pretty significant problem that I have with courtship as it is played out today. Even though this is a very radical (and true as much as I can tell) story, it shows how much the Patriarchal/Quiverfull/Fundamentalist Christian movements have gone back to the Old Testament for their rules. They believe that the father [of the woman] is in complete control of the relationship, and that father is holding the only key to his daughter’s purity. They believe that the man should ask the father to court/get to know his daughter, ask his blessing for marriage, and to give the daughter over to the man at the altar. Again, a very clear picture of how much control the father has in the entire relationship. Even though the purity culture within these movements believe that the women are to be cherished, that is roughly translated into these women are the men’s slaves and they have no voice. The women’s only responsibility is to keep house and spit out babies.

On the surface, these are all, for the most part, not all that bad. Underneath, it’s the legalism, control, and authoritarian structure that causes problems. It is not a bad thing for a father to want to protect his daughter, but her purity is not his to keep. It is not his to manipulate and flaunt about so that he can catch the man he wants his daughter to marry.

There comes a certain point in any child’s life when the parents truly have to let go and let their child figure out life for themselves. It is not a bad thing for a man to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It is just not a biblical commandment or principle. It is cultural. It is not a bad thing for the family to be involved and around while a couple is working through their relationship. It goes south very quickly when it becomes an obligation for the couple to always be in sight of the family, and never have any time for themselves to talk, and to get to know each other without little siblings acting as spies for the parents, ultimately the father. It is not a bad thing for a couple to seek advice for their relationship from their parents, or others they respect, especially if they are serious about marriage. But that again, is not a biblical commandment or principle, and taken too far to say that the father has ultimate control is really wrong.

[ I am not a parent yet, and most likely when I reach this point with our children, I will probably have different ideas. But for now, this is simply what I am seeing, what I have pondered long and hard about, and what I am now ready to share. ]

Courtship isn’t about a man overcoming a woman and designing her life with her father’s consent but without her consent. Courtship isn’t about a man pressuring a woman to marry him because God told him so. [Read more about that here from my dear friend Hännah @ Wine and Marble.] Courtship does not have to be a deeply serious thing. It can simply become a man really liking a girl, she liking him back, and they take the step from being friends to something deeper.

Normally, in normal cultures, this step happens naturally. If there is something more in a friendship, usually it manifests itself and becomes clear as the friendship becomes deeper. Courtship is two people loving spending time together and enjoying each other while their friendship deepens. If they, as a couple, without parents pressuring them, or controlling the relationship, feel like it’s time to move closer to getting married, then by all means, it is up to them, and them alone. Courtship should be two people deciding for themselves that they are ready for a relationship.

The purity culture and the courtship culture (basically those both go hand in hand) have taken good things and turned them into extra-biblical commands that are expected for every couple, family, and parents to do.

Phil and I have had many conversations about what we are going to do when we have children old enough to decide for themselves. We will not try to control them, nor will we force them to date, court, marry someone we want and not who they want. I want to see my daughters truly wooed and my sons wooing their ladies. I want to rejoice in that, not feel concerned that our children aren’t obeying us. We will raise our children to make good decisions. By doing so, when they reach the age when they are interested in the opposite sex, then we want to give them the freedom to make those good decisions.

Courtship is the wooing of one person to another.

*****

To be continued.

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Seven: Lana Hobbs the Brave

June 30, 2013May 14, 2020HA Editorial Team14 Comments

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Seven: Lana Hobbs the Brave

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog, Lana Hobbs the Brave. Lana describes herself as “an aspiring writer and a former religious fundamentalist” who currently identifies as “post-Christian.” She was homeschooled in junior high and highschool. Part Seven of this series was originally published on June 19, 2013.

Part Seven: Lana Hobbs the Brave

This is the final part of my story. For the introduction and the list of all previous posts -and any recap posts I might do – see here.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of suicidal thoughts.

After Christmas 2012, which was more stressful than usual due to having left the Church and not knowing what I believed or what was trustworthy, I was a bit blue.

In early January 2013, mild post holiday blues turned into a full-scale serious depression with severe pain, emotional darkness, suicidal thoughts, and on occasion the inability to get out of bed. No will to eat, read, or tell any friends I was depressed. Due to the changes in my beliefs and my depression, I wasn’t even sure I had friends. Frequently, getting out of bed and getting dressed was all I accomplished. I moved to the couch or floor and lay by my children while they played.

Sometimes instead of a deep sadness or an apathetic depression I experienced a raging, drive-the-plane-into-the-ground, furious depression. I sometimes would read short blog posts or play quick games on my phone, when I had furious depression, to distract myself from it.

For months, I felt nothing but depression and self loathing, with tiny blips of less-sad that i struggled to feel and pass off as happiness, mostly for Luke’s sake and our children’s sake.
I stayed as strong as i could during the day and after the boys went to bed I broke down (you can imagine what this did to our sex life. Basically obliterated it. Making me feel even guiltier.)

I was also dealing with leaving the faith and coming to terms with some things my parents had taught me – I was trying to salvage my faith while getting rid of the self-righteousness and legalism. Trying to thresh out beliefs while your brain wants to kill you is plain hard.

And the suicidal thoughts – they were just there; the wish to not-live was almost constant. I wanted to cut myself so bad, but I was afraid of being caught, especially by my children. I banged my head against the wall in a twisted (but sensible, at the time) attempt to feel better about myself, to punish myself for being a miserable, depressed person.

Gone – or pushed aside – were my beliefs that ‘this isn’t my fault’. To Luke’s frustration, all my progress seemed lost in the fog. The self doubt and hatred from my college days all came back, but now I had the words to combat that. It was a battle; a near-constant battle between self hatred and the wish to die and acknowledgment of illness and the wish to really live.

At one point, I decided to get help, but I shook and gagged when I held the phone to make the call. Luke called the place we had decided on, and they weren’t taking new patients without referrals. There were a couple other places to call, but we didn’t. It is hard to find mental health care around here and I was still fighting — ‘yes i need it, no i refuse it won’t help but it might but i don’t need it I’mabadperson!’

One night, I decided to kill myself. I purposely tried to stay awake until Luke slept. He noticed and asked why. I decided to tell him so he wouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised at finding my dead body. I considered myself a very thoughtful person. I can’t remember my plan (some things I don’t want to remember, I hardly like to remember this) but I had one. I felt as happy as I had felt in a long time.

(Wow this is hard to write. It all made so much sense at the time, you see. This depression-mind feels so far away, although not as far as this somewhat healthier brain felt then.)

I literally couldn’t remember what it felt like to be healthy or happy, or what my personality was like when everything didn’t make me sad or panicky. So I was ready to end it.

When I announced my plan, Luke was… mad. As mad as I had ever seen him. I tried to explain that we would all be much happier if I were dead. It was the ultimate solution. My depressed self finds that Luke rarely understands my brilliant depressed logic. He was angry. He yelled , ‘This cannot be happening!’ He hit the wall beside the bed with both fists. I have never seen him so angry, but I wasn’t really scared, I was mostly sad for him, that he didn’t realize how brilliant my plan was and how happy he could be. He assured me it was a stupid plan and he wouldn’t be happy and our boys would not be better off without me.

I didn’t want to die. i just didn’t want to ruin everyone’s lives by being alive and being a terrible depressed mom, and I was tired of fighting. I was tired of trying and feeling like I was failing at life. Tired of being miserable. And just tired. Always so tired.

But Luke didn’t care about that. He furiously challenged my logic, but more than that he reminded me of promises I had made to never kill myself. Something in his anger reached through the superficial happiness of my final decision. I held him to my chest, whispered ‘shhhh’ and I angrily and sadly remade the promise. ‘I won’t, Love. I won’t kill myself. I’ll stay here for you. Why are you doing this to me? You’re a jerk. But I’ll stay. I promise. shhhh. it’s okay. You’re mean. But I promise.”

I was pissed off, but I was not going to die.

The next weekday (I think it was a weekend at the time, days are fuzzy when you are depressed), he made a call and made an appointment for an initial evaluation. The appointment was scheduled for Friday, that week.

I was nervous. It was at an inpatient mental health hospital, with lots of locked doors and old faded carpets. We waited forever, and when I went in, I was by myself and frightened, but the man who did my evaluation did his best to put me at ease. I cried while answering questions – they should keep tissues in there.

The evaluator recommended considering medication and therapy and told me I’d be getting a call to make an appointment for each.

That was the beginning of the official journey to seek help, although my journey to mental health really began 4 ½ years before that when I finally allowed myself to think I might have a problem beyond just not being good enough.

During this depression, while I was hunting for the truth and what to believe, and how to heal, I was slowly coming to realize I really had issues and I really could get help. When I was in bed but could concentrate, I read a lot of stories of people – women especially – who had grown up in fundamentalist circles and left. They were often scarred, and some of them have mental illnesses. They got therapy, they talked to friends, they took meds, they admitted that they were not mentally healthy and that praying it away wouldn’t help.

Whether they were blogging about therapy or just about leaving fundamentalism, these strong women helped me realize i could get help, and they helped me occasionally see a glimmer of hope through the fog. Sarah, Samantha, Libby Anne, Sarah, and Shadowspring were all helpful.

I was mentally ill, I had been mistreated and misled in the name of Jesus, but I could get help. Maybe, someday, I could be healthy.

We made appointments, I had to wait 8 weeks because mental health care is apparently hard to come by where we live and everyone is booked, and then I finally got to see a therapist and a nurse practioner, both funny, good listeners, and Christians, and both saying I present as bipolar. My med-lady, C, had heard the pharmacopeia/witchcraft argument before (I brought it up as making me hesitant to take medicines, to partially explain how long it took to get help), and flourished her pen like a witch’s wand when writing my prescription.

If I ever feel like a terrible person when I take my medicines, I picture C flourishing her pen to write out an order for my magic potion, and I laugh, and I take my medicine with gratitude that I am getting help for my brain’s struggles.

I’m learning things in therapy, and I’m taking meds every day and we’ll work on dosages but I think the mood stabilizers started helping right within a week. I have stabilizers, anti-depressants, and something to take for anxiety when i need it.

I have a new self-help tool that is all about changing my thinking. So now I have decided to view it not as fighting my brain or hating on my brain, but as working with my brain and my body, with therapy, meds, and a lot of thought-changing, to become a healthy individual.

I’m still pretty messed up. I still deal with depression and hypomania. I still struggle with the stigma and other unhealthy ideas from my fundamentalist upbringing. I will always be bipolar, and I might always have to fight against the negative self-beliefs in my brain since childhood. But I will learn to handle them better.

I have always been brave and strong, and I think that some day, it will show up for everyone to see.

In the meantime, I know it. I am bipolar. I am depressed but I am getting help. I am strong. I will raise my children and I will live my life.

I am Lana Hobbs the Brave.

*****

End of series.

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Six: Unashamed of Taking Evil Pills

June 29, 2013May 14, 2020HA Editorial Team12 Comments

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Six: Unashamed of Taking Evil Pills

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog, Lana Hobbs the Brave. Lana describes herself as “an aspiring writer and a former religious fundamentalist” who currently identifies as “post-Christian.” She was homeschooled in junior high and highschool. Part Six of this series was originally published on June 17, 2013.

*****

In this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven.

*****

Part Six: Unashamed of Taking Evil Pills

This is the next part in my story of over coming shame and stigma from my fundamentalist christian upbringing, and finally being willing to take medication and get therapy for bipolar disorder – which hadn’t been diagnosed at the time. For the introduction and list of all previous posts, see here. The following section doesn’t deal with depression, but with another problem that required a solution which many people I knew would have been opposed to, and therefore wound up being closely linked to my later decision to take anti-depressants and mood stabilizers.

In spring 2012, I began having worse health problems than usual. They seemed to be, ahem, lady problems. I’ll not be very explicit, but it is actually an important part of my story.

I had severe pain and dizziness during different points in my cycle, and irregular periods. After a several months of suffering, with days at a time that I was so dizzy and cramping so badly that I was practically immobile, I made the connection with the pain and my cycles, and then finally made an appointment with an ob-gyn.

I had some blood tests done, but nothing came back irregular.

My ob-gyn wasn’t sure what to do besides prescribe birth control pills. They would stop me from ovulating and supress my natural hormones. She figured it would give me relief and perhaps when I went off them, my cycles would be better able to regulate themselves.

One problem: I was taught that birth control pills are a sin, because they are abortifacient. Still, I wanted to be physically healthy to take care of my family.

I was in a pickle. So I turned to Google. I spent hours online looking for answers. I hoped to either find another way of dealing with my problems, or else find that certain pills were less risky, but my research actually led me to believe that evangelicals have generally blown the ‘abortifacient’ thing WAY out of proportion.

After much reading and emotional wrestling, I decided pills weren’t abortion, and that it wasn’t my job to make sure that my womb was constantly ready for children I didn’t plan to conceive, at the expense of caring for the children I already have (and my husband and myself). My pain and dizziness was putting me out of commission about ten days each month at that point.

I took the pill. For about a month, it made my emotions crazy. The hormones were nuts. Then it began to help with the pain and the hormones screwing up my brain gradually quieted down. I wasn’t really better, but I was better than I had been and on the road to improvement. I was told to give it three months and during month two, I began to feel hopeful.

I had a friend over during the time that the crazy symptoms of starting birth control were abating. We talked about my health a little, and I told her I was getting better compared to the first month, and I was hopeful this would really help my strange health problems.

Sometime shortly after, I had a rather emotional weekend involving a bit of family stuff.

We got to church late that Sunday. I was tense already. The sermon was about stress. The pastor repeated over and over the things that make people stressed. (I think the point was we should trust God?) At one point he shared an anecdote about how ‘stressed’ people in Walmart are when their kids pitch a fit, but that’s all because they never taught the kid to behave by spanking it like God said. That really made me angry. I was nauseous from being so angry at the judgemental attitudes Christians often have towards other’s parenting, when they have no clue what is going on with the family. (We don’t spank, by the way. Non-spanking is frowned on at our old church.)

Plus the word stress, over and over, made me feel even more stressed.

After the service, I was surrounded by a horde of women telling me they had prayed for us earlier in the service; my friend had shared a prayer request and they were all so glad I was doing so much better, praise God!

I was bewildered and felt betrayed by a trusted friend sharing about me to the whole church without permission. Besides, I wasn’t really ‘better’ and if I were, what would all these women who were praising God say, if they knew the pills so many of them called evil, abortifacient, and ‘not pro-life’ were what were starting to help me feel better. Prayer had done nothing, the pills that were off limits for so long due to my religious beliefs had done something (and by the time the three months were up, they had helped immensely! I still take them).

I felt like all these people were flocking around me to praise God, without really caring about the state of my mind, body, or heart. They just wanted to hear a testimony.

There, with the stress, the frustration at church, and the knowledge my solution was a villified little pill, I had a panic attack in the middle of all those women. I retreated as soon as I could and hugged my knees to my chest in a dark room, while taking deep breaths.

Then I stood, gathered myself, and walked out the door with dignity, nodding goodbyes to everyone.

I sat in the car with a smile on my face. Luke caught up with me with the kids.

‘Well, dear’, I told him, ‘this is my last time at church. I’m done and I am very happy with my decision. You go wherever you want for church, but I am deciding to be my own person, and I am done until I am ready to go back.’

I’ve been to my in-law’s church a few times since (have I mentioned Luke is a PK?), for special occasions, but most of those have triggered panic attacks.

I need more time, and I may never go back to any church.

The evil pills helped me more than the prayers. Despite what I had believed about medical professionals being money-grabbers, the doctors cared more about me really getting better than most of the people seemed to. I realized if I wanted to get healthy I would have to embrace the medical discoveries, because prayer, herbs and trying to have a perfect attitude and a perfect diet were not solving my problems.

My last time in church was early fall 2012. The birth control pills helped me feel healthier, and taking pills I had once thought were wrong to take made me more open to both doctors and possibly taking medications for mental illness some day.

I was doing better than I had in awhile, and i felt lighter from leaving a church where people seemed to judge anyone making different choices. By this point i had tasted ‘grace’ – or understanding of differences – in a few friends and my mother in law and in books like Grace based Parenting, and I thought the church should have more of that. I’ve found a lot more kindness and love outside the Church than inside it.

I continued to have my usual mood swings, but nothing I couldn’t cope with. But then came winter.

*****

To be continued.

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Five: Fighting the Shame

June 28, 2013May 14, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Five: Fighting the Shame

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog, Lana Hobbs the Brave. Lana describes herself as “an aspiring writer and a former religious fundamentalist” who currently identifies as “post-Christian.” She was homeschooled in junior high and highschool. Part Five of this series was originally published on June 14, 2013.

*****

In this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven.

*****

Part Five: Fighting the Shame

(This is the next part of my story of how i went from doubting mental illness is real to getting help. For the intro and full post list, updated as parts are added, click here.)

Our firstborn, Aiden, was born in october 2009. Life continued with general ‘sickness’ and many emotional ups and downs, some obviously caused by life, and some seeming random.

While pregnant with Aiden, I discovered I had low blood sugar issues. I expected that after recovering from birth, a good diet would solve all my problems. But while eating more protein helped a little with daily mood and energy shifts, I found a perfect diet as elusive as a perfect attitude for solving ‘my sickness’.

When Aiden was six months old, I got pregnant again (we were into the ‘quiverfull’ movement at the time so didn’t want to sin by ‘limiting our blessings’.)

I had a relatively uneventful pregnancy and a safe home birth in a birthing pool. Kieron was born in the last hour of February, 2011.

With Aiden, I had needed an emergency induction and the birth took awhile to recover from, with Kieron I recovered quickly.

In the following weeks, I was energetic and exhilarated. I could have been hypomanic but I think I was just really happy, surprisingly bubbly. I was confident, I already knew how to breastfeed and take care of a baby, I was a pretty good mom.

The new-baby-high slowly faded into a new routine of pleasant, tiring life.

Then in the summer, depression hit again. This time, I knew it was depression – when I would allow myself to admit it.

I wanted help this time. Or I almost did.

But Luke had lost his job and was working a paper route, and my only insurance was through my dad.

And even with thoughts of getting help, I hated to ask for it. Even if it was real depression, I thought I should be able to manage it myself. Besides, there is something about depression that makes a person help resistant. I’m not sure why but depressed people frequently don’t want to go get any help.

I admitted to my mother in law that I was depressed and she told me a story: she had once suffered from post partum depression. It interrupted her whole life. She wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t really sane. She finally realized she needed help; she took pills for awhile; she went back to normal. Her moral was, despite what people say, sometimes you need medication and you take it thankfully.

I was still against medication, but this helped me get up the nerve to look for somewhere to make an appointment, and to find insurance information.

So in a slightly clearer moment, I decided I would try to get help. but first, I had to call my dad for insurance details, and he didn’t provide many. Instead, I somehow ended up mentioning I thought I was bipolar and needed meds, and despite my intention to just get the insurance details, I found myself defending my belief that I was bipolar. I told him about depression, hypomania, suicidal thoughts I tried to talk about since childhood and never could, the words spilled out now that I believed someone was listening.

Dad was confident I couldn’t be bipolar (a coworker’s ex was really bipolar so he knows about BPD), and he suggested that I was just immature, had trouble dealing with some things from my childhood because mom was so difficult (i think that was the word he used), and that although suicide was evil to think about it is fairly normal. He suggested Christian Counseling to help me forgive. He didn’t think I’d be able to afford psychiatry even with insurance, and was hurt that I had only discussed this with him because of insurance. Of course, the fact that he might try to talk me out of it was exactly why I didn’t want to discuss it with him.

He also said that I shouldn’t go to a diagnosing therapist and say I thought I was bipolar, because they would automatically diagnose me and I would be stuck with the stigma my whole life and he indicated I’d have to tell people i was diagnosed.*

My mom was seriously depressed at the time and my dad told me if I ever did get diagnosed bipolar, to not tell my mother because… something about how it would make her feel really bad. It didn’t make much sense to me as he had already made clear that they wouldn’t believe it if I were diagnosed, so I wondered what difference it would make.

When the conversation ended, my head was spinning. Was I really so immature it looked like bipolar? Suicidal thoughts aren’t a sign of mental illness but are ‘normal’? Was the real reason I couldn’t get out of the fog because i was lazy, unforgiving, and selfish? Should I want to avoid a diagnosis? Would my entire family hate me? They would, at any rate, not believe a diagnosis. I felt that my Dad thought I was just neurotic, not trying hard enough to be healthy, and wanting to be ‘special’ instead of dealing with my emotional issues. (btw, therapy DOES involve dealing with emotional issues).

I felt at this point like I probably shouldn’t be so selfish as to want to spend our very limited resources on counseling. I was back to thinking it might be wrong of me to have ever thought I might have a mental illness. Selfish, lazy Lana, wanting to be special by getting diagnosed bipolar but really just a bad person.

Doubting whether I should even try to get help at this point, and not wanting to, I talked to luke, and he said that even with a sliding rule fee at a local nonprofit mental health clinic, we couldn’t afford anything at all. We never called. (I should have at least tried, perhaps it would have been free for people as broke as us, but the conversation with my dad renewed my self doubts and it didn’t take much to shut down my little will to get help after that.)

But I was still in the middle of a severe active depression (I’ve heard it described as driving a plane into the ground instead of it just falling, sometimes I call it ‘furious depression’), and needed help.

I had a toddler and a baby and was fighting to be present for them.

I read all the books the library had about coping with bipolar disorder. I had Luke read the most helpful books so he could help me help myself.

I couldn’t focus on what I was reading all the time, but I slogged through the information and took notes and applied what I could manage.

It helped some, I learned about a few coping mechanisms – mostly writing truth to myself, arguing with my negative self, and trying to stay as active as I could with depressive pain.

I knew I was doing my at-the-time best to fight for sanity, and I had to slowly write my own story, choose what words I would accept to myself. I had to cut myself off emotionally from my parents’ view of me as unloving, immature, and lazy, because I didn’t feel, deep down, that it was really me. Luke insisted it wasn’t.

I had to accept other words for myself – hardworking but depressed. Struggling. Strong but needing help. Probably bipolar, or having something that mimics it closely. I felt trapped in my mind but at least now I was arguing to myself that this wasn’t my fault.

By the time Luke had a new job with health insurance and enough money to pay the electric bill on time, I was out of the big foggy depression.

My mother in law was – I realized recently – a little disappointed that I didn’t get help then. She had done her best to let me know it was okay and had even recommended someone to call. But she didn’t know about everything else; my parents, how incredibly broke we were, how deep the stigma ran in my soul.

Still, she didn’t push; she’s good at that. At that point, anything resembling pushing me to get help, would have been harmful, as I was doing the best I could, both emotionally and financially. The steps I did take, at the time, were huge. (If you can’t get help, relax and do what you can. Books aren’t the same as meds and therapy but they can give you some help!)

Looking back, I wouldn’t have changed much about how I coped with that depression. It was a very difficult few months for me, but I grew a lot emotionally; I became more of my own person, and I learned a lot about how my brain works.

*****

*I panicked a bit when he made these claims, then I did some research and logical thinking. For one, there are specific criteria for diagnosis and the doctors are trained. They don’t diagnose just everyone. For another, if I ever got a job, I wouldn’t have to disclose bipolar disorder unless I needed accomodation. And if I needed accomodation, it wouldn’t be because I was diagnosed bipolar, but because I am bipolar. The people saying bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, etcetera aren’t real or are so rare you aren’t likely to know anyone with it, or that try to dissuade you from treatment are probably not well educated on the subject of mental illness.

*****

To be continued.

A Courtship Story

June 27, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on November 28, 2012.

*****

Note from Julie Anne:

Over the past couple months, I’ve been sharing bits and pieces of the homeschooling movement as it ties in with abuse in churches. I’ve connected a number of times with Chryssie Rose who reads here and is also a blogger and asked if she could share her courtship story here and she graciously accepted my request. I encourage you to take some time to read some of Chryssie’s articles on her blog, Beautiful Disarray. She is one of the bloggers who was raised in the homeschooling movement I have been referring to. We will be seeing a growing number of bloggers lilke Chryssie Rose, you can be sure. As these young adults are detaching (escaping might be an apt word, too, it certainly was for my daughter) from their childhood families, they are thinking back through their lives and questioning what they went through. Most young adults go through this process – it is normal. But what is not normal is the amount of residual scars from this upbringing. That is why I want to continue to give these young adults a platform on my blog because this lifestyle of excessive parental control continues in many churches right now.

It is important in this story that you understand Chryssie’s family background as it is key to her story. Chryssie lived in a patriarchal home and was the eldest of 9 children. Her father moved around quite a bit because of his job, but in each place in which the family lived, they attended churches influenced by the homeschooling movement: full-quiver, patriarchy, courtship, and modesty and purity teachings. Chryssie’s family eventually ended up at a Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) church in Maryland. SGM churches have a high concentration of homeschool families, so Chyrssie’s family fit comfortably there. From what I’ve heard, SGM may not preach full-quiver lifestyle from the pulpit, but Chyrssie’s family would surely find other like-minded full-quiver families there. Courtship, not dating is the expectation at SGM churches.

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My family had just started going to a new church, and even though I knew a good number of people already, I hadn’t met any guys that I really liked. A friend of my mom’s jokingly told me that I would find the guy I married at this new church. I was adamant I wouldn’t. I honestly had had several different crushes, but I had this expectation, as probably most girls in my situation, that a guy would come to my dad and ask to court me. Then my dad would say yes, and we would walk out a relationship like the ones in all of the courtship books – a sweet, pretty, maybe slightly tear-inducing, love story.

It couldn’t have been further from the reality of what my relationship with my husband ended up looking like.

When I met the guy who became my husband, I really didn’t expect anything to come out of it. It was in October, over 4 years ago, and even though I felt like God told me to keep an eye on this guy, he wasn’t really attractive to me. I couldn’t marry someone I wasn’t attractive too. I hadn’t expected to be in any sort of relationship right out of high school, nor did I expect to be in any sort of relationship any time soon. My dad used to joke that he wouldn’t let me get married until I was 30. I knew he was joking, but I also knew he meant it too. I wasn’t going to get married unless it was on his time, and his time alone. I really didn’t know what my parents had in mind when it came to relationships for their children. I never had a conversation with my parents about what it would look like for me when I got into a relationship. Being the oldest, my parents had never had to think about that sort of thing, ever.

A mutual friend introduced this guy to me, and I thought this could be a good friend. I’ll call him Daniel. A few weeks after first meeting, I started getting to know Daniel. He was funny, very quirky, had very different interests than a lot of other guys I knew, and yet, I liked it. I was having to deal with a lot of stress from my family’s situations (you can read more about that on my blog). It was really good to just have a friend I could talk to and not have to talk about my family’s stuff. He began guessing, though, about different things, and I soon realized that I could trust Daniel, and yeah, I kind of liked him now.

During the first 6 months of our friendship, things escalated quickly. It became clear to me that this guy was worth keeping around, and I definitely liked him. I was about 99.9% positive that he liked me too. Up to this point, we were just friends, and our parents weren’t involved at all. We were graduating from high school, and he had told me several times that he wasn’t going to be in any sort of relationship until he was done with college. That was what his mom wanted him to do, and it seemed like “wisdom” to do so. I didn’t argue with him, but it made it harder when I finally admitted to a close friend that I really, really liked him.

Conflict with Parents

It was about that 6-month mark when his parents realized that we were talking a lot and becoming very close friends. My mom, I think, was aware of my friendship with him, but I sincerely doubt my dad was aware, especially due to his reaction to the events that transpired next.

Daniel’s parents decided to step in and intervene, and tell him that he needed to cut off all communication with me. He didn’t agree with his parents, but did it anyway. He pulled me aside at church the next day and tearfully told me we couldn’t talk anymore. No emails, texts, chatting, or talking in person and in groups. I was heartbroken, but I knew that this wasn’t the end.

I went home, in tears, and told my mom what happened. She didn’t say anything, but when I told my dad, he gave me an awkward side hug and told me that if my heart was hurting, I did something wrong. I knew right then and there, I wasn’t going to get any support or understanding from my dad in this. We asked both of our parents multiple times to get everyone together so we could come up with guidelines for a friendship, so we could at least be friends. They refused, but did meet at his parent’s home a few times, but each time, came away from the meeting with a very different view on what was supposed to go on. My dad was determined that we wouldn’t be allowed to talk at all. He even told me that there was no need for us to talk and to stop asking if we could. Throughout the entire separation, our feelings for each grew instead of diminishing. We kept asking for the parents to let us talk and to come up with guidelines for us. And they continued to refuse. I got chewed out by my dad if I was even seen around Daniel at church. I went through those months like a ghost. I felt nothing, and it felt like half of my heart had been torn out of me. Yeah, I know that’s cliche, but I’m serious, I felt nothing.

We finally had had it about 6 months after we had been told to stop talking. I called Daniel up one day and asked him bluntly what he felt for me. He immediately told me that he loved me and was 100% sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. That was a breath of fresh air to my ears. We decided that we were going to take things into our own hands because our parents continued to not believe that they needed to do anything and that everything between us was over. We spent about a week coming up with a list of guidelines that we felt our parents would be quite okay with. We even had a couple, who became mentors for us, look it over and help us put it together. We decided that we would then bring it to the parents that coming Sunday, after Daniel officially asked my dad to court me.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom or dad that mad at me after Daniel left my family’s house that Sunday. Both of my parents were raging mad and wanted to know how I could be so disrespectful and dishonoring of them. I still, to this day, do not understand quite what I did wrong. Once again, after our parents calm down, there was no agreement made about us getting to talk. We never got to show our parents our relationship guidelines, and we were treated with much condemnation for having “disrespected and dishonored” our parents. My dad felt very disrespected by Daniel and couldn’t believe he had the gall to come and ask my dad to court me.

We seriously thought that our parents at least would be willing to listen to us. I honestly didn’t expect my dad would be so courteous to Daniel’s face, but then stab him in the back when he wasn’t around to defend himself. My dad’s poor opinion of him was shocking to me, and I couldn’t believe that my dad would be so condescending. Over the next few months we suffered through wanting to talk, knowing we really loved each other, and sneaking moments alone at church, or passing each other thumb drives with songs, letters, or just class schedules on them so I knew what he was up to with school.

In total, Daniel asked my dad 4 times to court me. Every time, going above and beyond, to get my dad’s approval, and yet, my dad would twist Daniel’s words, never give him a clear answer to any of Daniel’s questions, and my dad would brush me off anytime I tried to sit down and ask why we couldn’t be in a relationship. My dad kept telling me that I was making an idol out of this relationship, and I was lusting after Daniel. My mom backed my dad up and neither of my parents seemed to believe that God could speak to me or that I could possibly even love this guy.

A year and a few months after first having met Daniel, we got the pastors involved, and both of us tried to communicate with our pastor the difficulties we were having with our parents not hearing us out. The pastor kept telling us to just keep working on our individual parental relationships and that was all we could do. Being members at a church that strongly supported Joshua Harris’ courtship books, we didn’t have any say in how our relationship was supposed to happen. It was “wisdom” to let our parents rule our lives.

Over the course of that year, we met with pastors, we met with pastors and our parents, individually, and met with each other trying to figure out how to help our parents hear us and listen to our hearts. We spent hours on the phone talking with our mentors.

Year 2

Around the 2nd year of trying to get our relationship off the ground, Daniel decided to take my dad out to a nice restaurant and ask him one last time to court me. One of the recurring concerns my dad had was that we would never be able to get married because we couldn’t support ourselves financially. I actually had a really good job, and Daniel and I had no problem with the fact that I would be providing most of the income. But my dad, even though my mom had paid for him to get through college, didn’t believe that a woman should be the main supporter in the family. I even pointed out that that is exactly what my mom had done, but he told me that I couldn’t take what other people had done and use that as a guideline for myself. So for this last meeting, Daniel and I had come up with a very reasonable budget, and we had had several people look it over for us to make sure we weren’t missing anything substantial. My dad, once again, in a very roundabout way, said no. His reasons were that because Daniel didn’t have a very high paying job, didn’t own a house, wasn’t financially stable, and hadn’t graduated college yet, he would never be allowed to marry me.

See, my dad has this idea that the only kind of man who is going to be allowed to marry any of his daughters, is the kind of man who has everything, and is well into his 30s. And the fact that this young, college-attending poor guy was willing to bow down to the great and mighty dad was revolting to my dad. How dare he ask when the budget Daniel gave him was so insufficient. I asked my dad why he didn’t believe our budget was good, and the only thing he said was wrong with it was we didn’t have enough money put aside for car repairs. That was it!

We finally had had it, and in July secretly got engaged. I even got a gorgeous ring and everything. We kept it a secret for about a week, telling only our mentors. We then decided to tell our parents together. Meaning, he told his parents at the same time I told mine so that neither sets of parents would hear it from each other, but directly from us. Oh, and the clincher is, we were going to tell them that we were going to be getting married in 30 days. We finally told them; I told my parents at home, Daniel called his parents from work. My dad said, no, you’re not engaged, and I argued with him for a few minutes before just leaving it. I said we were engaged and that was that. Then got up and walked away. Daniel’s parents blew up at him and he had siblings calling him, sobbing to him over the phone, asking why he could be so disrespectful of his parents. I ended up going to meet him at his work because he started losing it.

By this point, we were sick of trying to hide our feelings and actually started going out on actual dates. The first real date we had was about 2 years after we had first met. After we announced our engagement to the parents, our pastors contacted us and wanted to meet with us. In that meeting they told us that respecting and honoring our parents looked like us calling off the engagement. We told them that we didn’t have any problem calling off the getting married in 30 days thing, but nope, we were putting our foot down with the engagement, and we were still engaged. The pastors let it go, but the parents didn’t. They kept accusing us of not listening to God because the pastors had told us to break the engagement and we said no. We have no regrets about getting engaged or putting our foot down with letting our parents guilt-trip us into doing what they want. We knew that the instance we gave in, everything we were working hard to stand by would crumble, and we would not be allowed to see each other again. We were dubbed, unofficially, the bad kids in the singles ministry at church, and rarely did anyone want to know what was going on because in their minds, we were disobeying God because we were “disobeying” our parents and not listening to the pastors.

Year 3

Another year went by, and we were still not married, but we were together for everything. Because of my job, I wasn’t home much, and then because of Daniel, I was home even less than I would be if he wasn’t around. My mom kept telling me that dad wasn’t happy that I wasn’t helping her out with my 8 siblings, or helping make dinner or clean the house. I told her there was no way possible that I could do all that. I was gone from 8:30 in the morning till 7 at night, and only got two days free a month. I wanted nothing to do with home life, especially since my dad and I weren’t on speaking terms…again, and mom and I weren’t exactly on the best of terms either. Another half a year went by and we were yet again trying to pick a third wedding date. We finally managed to get both sets of parents and sit down all together to talk. After 3 years of dealing with all of the crap, we finally got to sit down with the parents. But, it was honestly too late for us. We were so done with the way they were dealing with us, we wanted out. Daniel’s dad tried to encourage my dad to rectify his and my relationship, but I knew my dad had no intention of doing so.

Let me say something about my in-laws. They are great parents, and really, if my dad had been open with them about his issues with internet porn addictions and how he deals with my family, I don’t believe that Daniel’s parents would have been so easily manipulated by my dad. They weren’t really involved in the whole relationship process since it was their son asking me out, not a guy asking one of their daughters out. Also, Daniel did not grow up in a legalistic, patriarchal home. His family is surprisingly normal. By the time this group meeting came about, his parents had been filled in completely of my family’s issues and were suddenly 100% for Daniel and I getting married. They finally understand and realized all of the crap we had had to put up with from my dad. They were very sorry for the part they had unknowingly played in making things more difficult for us. Those are the kind of parents I really hope and pray Daniel and I can be some day.

Less than a week after this meeting, my dad and I got together for a coffee date. He told me that prior month he had been seriously considering kicking me out. When asked why, he told me that he was very frustrated that I wasn’t helping my mom out around the house. I told him that I couldn’t. I had a job and I had an obligation to that job to be prompt with my hours and those hours didn’t allow for me to be at home. He didn’t seem to hear me. Two weeks later, he told me that I had two weeks to move out. He was tired of dealing with me, and didn’t have time to deal with me anymore. He also told me that I was a bad influence on my siblings and he wanted me gone.

The Wedding and Conclusion

Three months after that, we got married, with my mom’s support and Daniel’s parents support. Oh, and guess what – the pastors supported us too. We have now been married for a year and a half, and life has been amazing, and we have been doing amazingly well financially even with Daniel still being in school.

I look back over our story and see so many things we will never do with our children. The first, and biggest thing would be that we will never force them to obey us at all costs. We want to be there for our children and sincerely listen to them when they are trying to work through tough relationships. We also know that no relationship is the same, and it is our goal to treat our children’s relationships as such. We want to get down to our children’s level, and we both know that because of what we’ve been through, that gives us so much more understanding that we can give to our children. The way my dad treated Daniel and me through our whole pre-marriage relationship is something I never want to see repeated.

I never want to question my child’s faith or that they can hear from God. The fact that my dad tried his ultimate best to make me believe that I was being lustful and idolatrous when I sincerely believed I wasn’t has made a huge impact on my faith. It took a long time for me to get over questioning my salvation because of how my dad treated me. It seemed that everything my dad did and said was for his own glory and his own control over me. I talked with my mom later and asked her if how my dad responded had anything to do with him feeling jilted because I hadn’t asked permission to like this guy. She told me it probably had a lot to do with that. My dad craved control and when I denied him the reigns of my relationship with Daniel, he lost it. To this day, I do not talk with my dad and I don’t anticipate resorting any sort of relationship with him until he changes.

And that, is a summary of my husband’s and my relationship. Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you all!

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Four: Shame Meets Truth

June 27, 2013May 14, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Mental Health — From Shame to Seeking Help, Part Four: Shame Meets Truth

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog, Lana Hobbs the Brave. Lana describes herself as “an aspiring writer and a former religious fundamentalist” who currently identifies as “post-Christian.” She was homeschooled in junior high and highschool. Part Four of this series was originally published on June 12, 2013.

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In this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven.

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Part Four: Shame Meets Truth

This is the next part in a series about my journey from doubting mental illness exists, to finally getting help. For introduction and post list, see here. And if Dr. R ever reads this, I would just like to say, ‘thanks’. Thanks for writing honestly about a mental illness that still has a heavy stigma on it. You changed my life, and gave me a shot at happiness.

Luke and I married in May 2008. Luke worked during the summer but neither of us took classes. We had a beautiful summer in our little apartment on campus. I was pretty happy, homemaking for two in an apartment was much less stressful than big-sistering for a crowd. Cooking was a delight because Luke was sure to eat everything and love most of it.

I still felt sick frequently and had periods of intense mental fogginess and confusion I now recognize as being caused by depression, but my life was pretty easy during the summer.

I planned a Spanish class to teach for homeschoolers during the fall and prepped for that. I cooked and cleaned and kissed Luke passionately when he came home. He came home for lunch every day and I loved it. On rough days, i just slept extra and took a long bath to relieve achy muscles, no pressure from Luke to get anything done.

Then came school, and concentration was not optional any more. I was soon deep into my junior year.

Then the fog came back hard. The emotional stress was less, without all the courtship stuff going on, but the mental fog and exhaustion were worse than ever. I now recognize those as trademarks of deep depression, but at the time it was just more ‘sickness’. I felt guilty for ever marrying and tying Luke to a sick woman; I sat at the computer in intense pain with a blank mind; I slept a lot. I felt, again, like the world, and especially the people I loved, would be better off if I were dead. Only now, with Luke, i could talk about it. He disagreed.

I didn’t understand why my brain wasn’t working like normal. I felt foggy and frustrated and like a complete failure.

And then one day, a breakthrough. A teacher, Dr. R, had us workshop a paper she had written. It was about bipolar disorder – her bipolar disorder. I squeezed back my initial, automatic reaction of ‘mental illness is rare if it’s real at all’ and read it.

And… while I could put all my struggles aside as me not being a good enough Christian, I couldn’t do the same for another person. She wrote about her struggles, her diagnosis, her management of her life after diagnosis. She wrote with honesty, seriousness, and hope about bipolar disorder. I thought that bipolar was something that got people locked into mental hospitals. But the truth, from people who experienced and knew about mental illness and bipolar disorder, was slowly opening my mind. I read more about it afterwards, searching on google when no one was looking because I was embarrassed. What i read felt so familiar to me; except I had never had a severe manic episode. (in later years,I discovered bipolar 2 and cried. It felt so familiar).

While not all of her experiences with bipolar fit me, the depression as she described it, the mood swings, the not feeling right inside your own head, the times of high energy and grandiose thought – i could identify with all of that, and i believed about her what i never believed about myself, that mental illness was real, and treatable – not something requiring shame and more prayer.

And I thought the thought I never allowed myself before: maybe I have a real mental illness. And I hated myself for daring to think that I wasn’t just a horrible excuse for a Christian. The shame of my uncontrollable feelings was huge, but I thought I was supposed to feel it; the shame would spur me on to Godliness. The idea my problems weren’t my fault had no room in my mind. But Luke, he latched on to it. He believed about me what I never let myself believe; that I was really a kind, good, hardworking and loving person with problems I couldn’t control. He took those words ‘mental illness’ and he used them like a balm.

“I know you’re frustrated you can’t manage this, but we’re pretty sure you have a mental illness like bipolar. So it’s okay, just rest.”

Sometimes I welcomed his words, but more often the old response came out. For years.

Sometimes, ridiculous as it is to say them while taking medications, I still say it: “no, I don’t, I’m just a bad person!”

I quit school that semester. I wish i’d gotten help then, maybe I’d have salvaged my school year. But for then, it was right to limit my stress. Luke was afraid the stress of school was slowly killing me, and I just didn’t know how to continue, so against my parents advice, I withdrew from most of my classes, thereby losing my scholarship and therefore ending my college career (though someday I might return, I had no intention of returning at the time because we were so immersed in patriarchal culture at the time that educating me, a woman, wasn’t really worth the money. Until I quit, I’d been paid to go to college because of my scholarships, but spending money on my education was unthinkable.)

In February 2009, I got pregnant.

Pregnancy was tough, both physically and emotionally.

I remember an email that made me very angry. Not irritated, which I knew it merited, but furious. I-want-to-punch-through-a-wall FURIOUS. I was shaking with rage. I had never been so furious in my life before – with so little provocation – and I was frightened of myself even while feeling the fury. For weeks my sleep was bad and I kept getting angry at little things.

Luke didn’t tell me to get over my anger, although he was sad to see me so upset and confused about it. He just let me feel it, uncondemned. I didn’t want to feel it, but I had no choice.

It was a very unhappy, unproductive hypomania.

I still regularly hated myself for depression and for daring to think I was clinically depressed instead of just incredibly sinful, but there was something about this anger, the fact i’d seldom felt the same level of anger before, that made me feel okay about saying “This isn’t my fault. I can’t control this.”

All I could do was make sure I did no harm, and that was enough. There was a little secret in my mind, slowly growing until I could believe it more often and the secret was this:

“Mental illness is real. You are not a bad person. You are a person with a mental illness”.

It started very small, with that confusing anger and the word ‘bipolar’, but first of all with Doctor R’s story, her truth. And eventually it would become my truth and set me free.

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To be continued.