Overwhelming Memories of a Love Lost

Today I have been really struggling. I felt on the verge of tears all day. It was not until tonight that I understood why. And what has led me back to this all but forgotten blog.

Pinterest. What an incredible site. So many awesome tips and ideas. So many memories rekindled. As my girls were growing up, something that always meant a lot to me, was to give them memories that were special. To go the extra mile in creating special times. Every year, I made made them costumes to enter the Fancy Dress Competition at the bay. (For those in practically every other country, this was a costume parade at our local Christmas Carnival. We were never into Halloween, and at the time, it was still pretty small in New Zealand anyway). There birthdays were always pretty elaborate. There were fancy cakes I made myself, themes that somehow related to that child's life at the time. From Little House on the Prairie for Sara who loved the books so much she insisted to calling us Mama and Papa, to Renata's Medieval party complete with a Medieval Museum in the playhouse and activities like pillow jousting. From Bryanna's Wiggles Party that had food to match all the different Wiggles songs, to the 3 different Winnie the Pooh parties (Pooh Bear for Bryanna, Tigger for Christiana, and Eyeore for Renata). And one that really choked me up today, looking at quiet book ideas, was the homemade felt book I made for Renata well before the term Quiet Book was plastered all over Pinterest.

I saw so many ideas today of things I would love to have made them. But they are grown up now. My babies are not my babies any more. But, they are not the adults I thought they would be either. Don't get me wrong. I love them, and I am proud of them. But I miss the closeness of spirit I always thought we would have. I looked forward to the day when they would be adults, and we would have heaps of happy memories to share, and heaps of things in common. Instead, the one thing I was so sure of, the one thing that mattered more than anything else, the only thing I was supposed to get absolutely right, was the imparting of my faith. I think a couple of them still believe in God. I know some of them don't. None of them are really followings Him. But then, neither am I really.

I was always so sure I would not lose my faith. That if nothing else I was too darn stubborn to walk away. But I am left questioning, why, when I only ever wanted to serve God in my capacity of the mother of the children He entrusted to me, why, oh why, did I get it so wrong?! He knew my heart. He knew I wanted to follow Him, not man. And yet where was He when I was stumbling through messing it up? Why didn't He stop me? Well, at least, why didn't He stop me sooner? I wasn't trying to be holier than anyone else. I wasn't trying to fit in with the crowd I was mixing with. I just wanted to follow the truth. We questioned many aspects of the faith over the years. Rejecting many doctrines we were taught. Why did we still not see? Where was God when we were asking for direction? Is He even there at all?

I have lost my faith. But I don't want to lose God. But how do I separate the truth from the lies? Am I holding on to false doctrines? Or is the truth still there, in the words of the Bible? I miss the days when I was so sure. I may have been wrong. But there was comfort in fully believing in something. Some if the Quiet Book ideas on Pinterest were exactly what I would have whole heartedly made when the girls were little. But now, I wonder what would be the point in doing them for Samara. There are so many other things she struggles to learn. And while a relationship with God would have been top priority in the past, now I am left wondering how much good that did for my other girls. Maybe it is safer to stick to colours, shapes and numbers. But then I feel sad. And I feel guilty. Because if God is God. If He is the God I have always believed in, then despite my anger, confusion, and grief, I still owe Him my everything. If He is real, I need Him to lift me out if this pit. Not just me. But my 7 beautiful daughters as well. I love them so much, and it hurts to be separated on the issue of faith. Because what we believe is at the core of who we are.
May God have mercy on us all.

The Forgotten Victims of the Quiverfull Movement

Much has been written in recent years about the most innocent victims of the so called Quiverfull Movement. The children. Fair enough. After all, they lived with the problems created by this lifestyle from a very young age. But I am at the point right now, where I am actually more concerned by the victim mentality that the anti-QF is creating amongst the next generation. The pendulum has swung. Where once, we were trying to ensure our children were moulded into conformity, this new movement is laying the blame squarely at the feet of the parents, creating division, unforgiveness, hate, and a general attitude of woe is me. I have seen in my own girls, a strange phenomenon whereby they have taken on every tenet of the QF movement, every wrong thing that every parent ever did within that movement, and applied it to their own childhood. 

But more on that in a different post. Today's post is about the forgotten victims. The parents. The anti-QF movement has become full of finger-pointing haters. People, often in the name of Christianity, placing the blame squarely at the feet of parents. People who have never been brainwashed. Never been sucked into a cult mentality. Never understood that fundamentalism destroys the mind of even the most careful of people. 

Today, I look back on our experience and without fail I sob my heart out. For us, it started with the determination to do the absolute best for our kids. We were not concerned with the cost to ourselves. So long as we did all we could to train them up in the way they should go. After we both had terrible school experiences, the first step into this journey was homeschooling. We were Christians, but that was not our reason for homeschooling. We simply wanted a better education for our girls. Of course, a part of making that happen, was to form a group whereby we could join with others on this journey, and also make use of resources that are more readily available to larger groups. 

Never, in a million years did I foresee the dangers ahead. There were no warning signs. No "bridge out ahead" alerts. If there were, would we have heeded them? I honestly don't know. Maybe the problem was that the homeschooling movement was at the beginning of its hey-day. No-one knew just what lay ahead, or how so many parents around the world would go from simply trying to give their kids a better education, to living and breathing every part of their lives based on a legalistic form of Christianity, that at its heart, boasted grace not works. 

I guess the interweaving of grace-based salvation, with works-based "proof" somehow made it seem that what we were doing was not legalism. We knew works could not win Gods favour. Yet, at the same time, we were acutely aware of "choosing" works, not to earn anything, but to show God our love. Which, of course, really translates to "proving" our love. Something God doesn't actually ask of us. Our good works should simply be an outpouring of the love he has given us, not a study to figure out what He wants us to do. But nothing would have convinced me we could do it right without studying the "guidance" of the Bible and following it to the letter. Of course, this study was directed by the leaders of the movement. Those who claimed humbleness, yet took control of our very thoughts. 

Think about it for a minute. What woman in their right mind would CHOOSE this lifestyle? Truthfully, I spent years thinking my whole life was a punishment for Eve's sin. Whatever happened to grace? Long, heavy and painful periods? Eve's fault. Pain in childbirth? Eve's fault. Submit to my husband in everything? Eve's fault. Painful sex? Doesn't matter - it's your duty. Find pregnancy hard? Stop complaining. If you were living a proper spiritual life, everything would be fine. This wasn't just pray hard enough blab it and grab it stuff. This was, if you are suffering, or your kids are suffering, search your heart for what sin you are committing and get right with God. There goes that grace thing again. 

If you get to a point where doubt starts to creep in, they have that covered too. In the form of free magazines and cheap women's retreats. What better place to be? Surrounded by "like-minded" women who can ever-so-sweetly stir your conscience until you are prostrate on the floor overcome with the burden of your sins. Knowing that you deserve every ache in your tired overworked body. 

Turns out, my sins were bigger than everyone else's. from birth. Because I just so happened to be born with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. A connective tissue disorder. With each pregnancy, I was killing my body just a little bit more. I didn't know this until near the end of my 7th pregnancy. A pregnancy that, in the past, would have killed both me and my unborn baby. 

By the time our oldest was about 6, our lives were no longer our own. Homeschooling had become a commandment from God, not a lifestyle choice. As time went on, and my health continued to deteriorate, teaching my children became more and more of a chore. I failed a couple of times by putting some of them in the local small private Christian school. The guilt that came with that was compounded when our niece died, and we stayed with "THE" national homeschool gurus, in her hometown. They pointed out the dangers in having the girls in even a Christian school. Suitably chastised, we didn't send them back the following term. 

 By this time, we had learned that the primary purpose of homeschooling was to protect our children from worldly influence. If I was too sick to teach, at least they weren't being taught the ways of the world. After all, the Christian school was certainly not fundamentalist enough. 

And so we continued. Every day was a battle. My health was at an all-time low. Some days I couldn't walk. But that didn't mean that continuing to produce children was optional. And so I continued to suffer through pregnancies that had me begging for death to come quickly. I suffered severe post-natal depression - something that proved how un-Spiritual I was as I wasn't living in the Joy of the Spirit. This, of course, added to the depression. I attempted suicide several times. But my fear of being banished to Hell always over-rode my fear of living on this Earth, and I would chicken out. 

There were several levels of extremity in our circle of friends. We were among the least extreme. Apart from a short period of time while I studied the issue, we wore pants (yes, I know, the horror!). We did momentarily go through the faith healing thing, but dropped it after it turned out our faith was much smaller than a mustard seed. We made our own bread - somehow that was a sign of your Christian-ness too! We also smacked our children for the 4 D's. Disobedience, Defiance, Delayed Obedience, and something else that started with D! With daughter #3 this was a very trying experience. She was later diagnosed with ASD, dyspraxia, and Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Smacking never worked with her. Well, it might have if we were willing to follow the instructions to the letter. But, I failed at that too. For a start, the whole smack, talk, pray, hug, smack cycle could seriously have lasted all day with her refusing to surrender her will (it was all about breaking the will or defiance). So partially because I didn't have the energy, and partially because it sounded a bit to abusive to me, smacking became much less "by the book" in our home than in many others. 

Throughout this whole time, hubby was battling a pretty impressive anger problem. The whole control aspect of the "Train up a child" methodology only fed this fire. As he was not seeing the promised results. Sometimes he still starts to revert to the old ways, before realizing that it isn't about control. As a submissive wife, I bore the blame for his anger. If I was training them correctly, their behaviour would be so good, that there would be nothing to trigger his anger. Many times I wanted to leave him for the children's sake. But the Bible forbade divorce. It also forbade speaking badly of him, so I had to suffer in silence - although I did eventually talk to a friend. Things are improving in that area. Perfection is yet to be obtained, but I haven't figured out how much is a change in his heart, and how much is we only have 2 children still at home! Lol

Today, my family is broken. My older girls blame me for everything that is wrong in their lives. And they even manage to blame me for the things that are right in their lives. One daughter just graduated university. And she has used this to point out how hard it was for her because she was homeschooled. It is so unbelievably painful. Because I know that they did learn a lot. Probably more than if they were in school. She didn't come top of her class from being a genius. But she has made it abundantly clear that she had to work extra hard (between all her social events) because I had not taught her properly. Despite our shortcomings, I know this is not true. She has also decided she was systematically abused. I don't even really know what that means. Unless she means that the smacks she got were for actual infractions, rather than out of anger. It seems to be an outgrowing of the whole anti-QF thing. Because nothing they went through was near as bad as what I went through as a child. Not to make excuses. If I went back with hindsight, I would do things a lot differently. But I do have a huge concern that the blame game is actually resulting in a generation who does not take responsibility for their own lives. And it matters. Because otherwise they are the ones who will lose out in the end. There is an aspect to all this, where we all have to say, "You  know what? This happened. It sucked. We were wrong. The people teaching us were wrong. But it is in the past. We need to move on. We need to forgive. We need to stop blaming each other. We need the grace we were promised all along but never got."

I am a victim. I am a mother who was sucked into a black hole for 20 years of my life. I lost my health. I have lost my children. My suffering is more than my deepest darkest fears. I fell in this hole directly out of the love I have for my children. Because it was my search for how to be the best mother I could be, that led me down a road of deception. To call me a child abuser, which is what the anti-QF movement does, is to snatch away the very grace that was taken from me by the QF movement in the first place. Because lack of grace is really the heart of the problem. 

If you want to reach out to someone still trapped in this movement, you have to be full of grace. You have to recognise that he or she is a victim too. Pointing out their faults is exactly what the movement has done to them all along. We must approach them with the love of Jesus. Anything less is just another form of abuse. 

The beginning of the end

After a long hard battle, in a war that is still being fought, the time has come to speak up. To share my experiences as a Fundamentalist Christian, on the inside looking out. And as a recovering, confused Christian on the outside, looking in.

My story began 1/4 of a century ago. It relies heavily upon memories. Some facts may get muddled, and I may never figure out what I was thinking at certain times, or why I did some of the things I did. But what really matters, is those memories are a part of a journey that cannot be relived. Memories of a time when I honestly thought I had been blessed with knowledge of the truth that had eluded so much of the rest of Christendom.

Thanks to those who led me to this truth, my daughters would not face the traumas, the confusion, the sins, and the difficulties that we had faced. Because we now knew the answers, we could instill them into our children, who would embrace them. If we trained up our children in the way they should go, they would never depart from it. Their future was in our hands. We had just taken on a job that even Adam and Eve failed at. But, despite never having walked through the Garden of Eden, chatting with God, somehow, through the passage of time, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we would succeed.

How wrong we were......