EMDR and moving on with life

We just got back from a family vacation.  It was so nice to have both of my children and my husband with me, enjoying the relaxing days and nights.  It was also something of a milestone.

Two years ago on vacation, my husband was  not the man he is today.  He was (had been) an abusive bully for many years, but I was just waking up to it.  I was only beginning to read  Passive-Aggression: A Guide for the Therapist, the Patient and the Victim and visit web sites about domestic abuse, putting it all together.  For years I had been accommodating my husband's behavior (I am such a forgiving person) and putting it all behind me, only to have new painful letdowns occur every few weeks.  Since he had only been physically violent once, I was still unsure that what I was experiencing was abuse.  In fact, this blog is the story of my awakening to that fact, and how I have chosen to respond in light of this knowledge.

Two years ago, he engaged in behavior that was unmistakably, straight off of the checklist, abusive behavior. When I was terrified, confused, and shrinking against the wall, crying and praying, he snuck up next to me and snarled a loud "BOO!" in my ear.

I had my answer. No question about it: this is clearly intentional emotional abuse.  Who DOES that to someone they love?!

Now two years later, I have good news.  My husband lived a life of love and self-control on our vacation.  Any request I made, he happily complied.  Any time I was concerned about anything, he listened and adapted.  We actually had a very good time together, all the time, the whole week.  And now that he's home?

Still good.

What are the factors to his healing/improvement?

Well, I am more independent in every way.  I am well on my way to achieving my career goals.  I was accepted into the school to which I applied (I was told only 15 are accepted out of 500 applicants).  I am maintaining a high GPA.  I am in therapy, on the final stages of EMDR and soon to be done with that.  I think this determination to take care of myself, and not be dependent on my husband for anything is key.  I don't need him emotionally.  If I go to talk to him and he is aloof, I just stop what I'm saying, get my inner bearings straight, and walk away without a word.  Sometimes he apologizes and chases me down, wanting to know what I was going to say.  The thing is, it doesn't hurt me anymore.  I really don't care if he wants to be there for me or  not.  I am well capable of hashing out my thoughts on my own, or with a friend. I don't NEED him to be there for me.  Oddly enough, this inspires him to be there for me.  Weird, huh?

He is in trauma therapy and on anti-depressants.  He is getting healthier, and while it may have all started out as a mere attempt to save the marriage, now it is to save himself.  This makes both of us very happy.  He has stopped jumping when his parents call, and we don't go to church anymore.  I think these last two are milestones in his healing at this point.  When he sees his parents next, it will be on his terms.  When he goes to church again, if he ever does, it will be because he wants to, not because he should or as proof he is a good person.

Every night we read together.  Right now we are reading Divine Nobodies by Jim Palmer.  He plays golf, something he does for himself.  I study, something I do for myself.  I also do yoga now, which I love.  I started out with Brooke Boon's Holy Yoga and am exploring the discipline from there.

Some things are sadder.  No one in my family goes to church now.  So much for the home school promise of daily devotions turning out model church-going Christians.  Lolz.  As far as the Christian part goes, though, everyone in my family has a genuine faith and a personal relationship with Jesus.  We are just each and all so burned by organized American Christianity that we are not in church right now.  Prove everything, hold fast to that which is good.  =D

I wish I had a fellowship of believers to take communion with, and to spur one another on to love and good works.  If it's out there, though, the Holy Spirit will have to lead me to it as I live my everyday life.  Visiting churches is such a bummer so much of the time.  So, we'll just see where it all goes from here.

I like where we all are now.  I love my daughter.  I love my son.  I love my husband AND it even looks like he might be fit to live with, not just for the time being, but for some time to come.

This makes me very happy.  Namaste, ya'll! (Loosely translated: the light in me honors the light in you- a yoga version of the song we used to sing in Charismatic church while holding hands and looking into each other's eyes:  "Yes I love you with the love of the Lord, yes I love you with the love of the Lord, I can see in you the glory of my King, and I love you with the love of the Lord."

Peace and good will,
SS

Deify or Defy?

What should be the proper response of a believer to an other who wants to claim for themselves the title of gatekeeper to God for that person? Is not complying with that demand giving to that mere mortal equivalence with God himself? If this mere mortal claims the right and responsibility to interpret Scripture, issue edicts, demand total submission and obedience, are they not putting themselves in the position of God himself?

What blasphemy! What arrogance! And yet, whole ministries and families run on these very presuppositions. Not only so, but they market the ideology and ensuing lifestyle to others. It is an extremely profitable business, if the Vision Forum full color catalog and the prices of their wares are directly related to the success of their venture. Big bucks are flowing into the idolaters coffers.

It all comes down to this for the children of patriocentric homes: deify or defy.

Deify your father, ascribe to him all the rights and privileges of God Almighty, live as if his words are the edicts of the Most High, in other words, commit blatant idolatry... or defy him.

Just say no. In that simple act of honesty, "no, daddy, you are not god", the children of these homes face an emotional cruelty that mirrors the excommunications the Roman Catholic authorities handed out to those who dared defy their claims to supreme authority acting as the sole representative of God on earth.

I have seen and read with my own eyes, listened with my own ears, of multiples stories of excommunication. Daughters who just say no to idolatry are cut-off from their families "for their own good". Just like the Catholic church excommunicated Martin Luther for defying their idolatrous claims to power and authority, these daughters (and sons) are sent edicts, damning them to hell in some cases, cutting them off completely from all love and fellowship with their families in all cases. And like the devout Catholics of the seventeenth century hated the Protestants and joined in the persecution of those "rebels", followers of patriocentricity band together to ostracize and persecute the faithful believers who have just said no to Daddy, casting them out with the dreaded charge of "rebel" as in days gone by.

I never thought I would see the day when the evangelical community so closely resembled the Roman Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Everything that was wrong with the Roman Catholic church then, all that our fore-fathers struggled against, is now repackaged as "the true faith" and sold in glossy catalogs, wholesome-looking web sites, promoted by fresh-scrubbed speakers at well-attended modern convention centers and parroted by a world of wannabes looking to be included in the esoteric circles of the truly committed. The office of "priest" is now conferred upon daddy, but all of the power ascribed to the role remains the same.

Deify or defy. Idolatry or obedience. Traditions of men or the terrifying leap of faith into the holy wild with Jesus.

To all of my sister in Christ who have chosen Jesus over Daddy, even though it meant excommunication and exile from all you have known and loved, you are in good company. I know that Jesus will never fail you nor forsake you, and life will be a grand adventure as you go from glory to glory with the Lord leading every step of the way.

Mark 10: 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

You made the right choice.

Faith Suicide (or is it homocide?)

This blog post started as a response to this blog post at The Wartburg Watch. The author of that post coined the term "faith suicide" for the phenomenon that the Barna group recently uncovered. The cold hard truth revealed was that 61% of young adults stop going to church once they leave their parent's home. Here is my reply on that blog. Comments that I added later as I edited it for my post are all in italics:

I am both horrified and and strangely encouraged by the term “faith suicide”. Horrified for what should be obvious reasons, since my relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is life itself to me. Strangely encouraged because at least some few people are starting to understand that it is the fundamentalist rigidity and poor reasoning that are responsible for what is happening to our youth.

I am a Christian home school mom. I started home schooling (as any home schooling purist would say! ;-) ) on the day my first child was born. I was attracted to home schooling as a nurturing, creative, possibility-filled, liberating way to raise and teach a child. All of this is possible for a home school, and many people choose to home school for this reason.

(I am a Christian, and passing my faith on to my children is as important to me as any Christian parent. However, it was never my primary motivation for home schooling, as home schooling is not necessary to passing on the faith. A genuine living relationship with the Living Lord of Love is the only thing necessary to passing on your faith. That is something all Christians should live daily, regardless of who teaches their children their ABCs.)


BUT, once you start exploring the religious branches of the home school sub-culture, especially the “Christian” support groups, curricula, seminars, etc., you quickly find that it is a rigid, doctrinaire, fear-based lifestyle. Ken Hamm rules in this world. Apologetics are taught in every spelling lesson, math workbook, history text, and especially in what passes for science education. The most popular high school science textbooks supplier is even called Apologia.

I am a curious person, and I watched closely the families that had gone before me. One thing I began to notice after only a few years in the home school community, was that children were not turning out to be the principled holy warrior world changers the home school prophets were promising. I noticed quite a few home school grads starting families awfully young and not according to script, i.e. out of wedlock, and certainly outside of mom and dad’s master plan for the lives of their young people.

So what was the religious home school community's answer to this? More control! Vision Forum sprang up, and scared parents willingly shelled out the money and started putting a stricter milieu control into the lives of their children.

And now, what am I seeing? Starting a family young and outside of mom and dad’s master plan is the least of the home school community's problems. (That can hardly even be called a problem, if one believes in a God of grace and a life of faith, now can it?)

Cutting, eating disorders, suicide attempts, substance abuse, and atheism are (some of) the products of this impossible to survive religious paradigm. These are real problems. The insanity of trying to live up to impossible standards destroys hearts. The madness of denying the realities of life and trying to distort it all to fit into the doctrinal constraints of fundamentalist demands takes a toll on young minds. The spirits of these children are starved for the unconditional love Jesus spoke of, yet is rarely manifested in the daily experience of rigidly religious families.

It is this rigidity of thought and coldness of heart that is destroying the faith of our children. 61% of our young people are leaving the church? Jesus said in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

So who IS driving these children away? Clearly it's NOT Jesus.

Rigid ideologues are driving their own children out of the faith. They are doing so by relentlessly insisting on a more and more stringent belief system. YE creationism is at the heart of this movement, but is only one example of doctrinal demands trumping truth and damning any deviation from the family party line.

Ironically, the tighter controls they are taught are necessary to keep their children in the faith are the very thing that is causing their children to reject the faith. These youth are not rejecting Jesus, they are rejecting the false Jesus and his ridiculously narrow and mean- spirited dogma that their parents are presenting to them.

These same parents insist that anything less than complete agreement with the whole paradigm is apostasy. So when broken and discouraged young people finally realize that there is no earthly way possible to be happy and healthy in that paradigm, they choose apostasy. The teaching allows for no other options.

Tragically, those late-comers to this fear based lifestyle are calling for the rest of the church to follow in the footsteps of these home school train wrecks: Why Young People Are Leaving The ChurchThis author thinks parents need to dominate their children's thought and social lives more completely, and that will solve the problem. Insanity.

YE creationsim is responsible for creating more atheists than Darwin himself, from where I sit. And that is just the beginning of the problem. Total subordination of women, adults living as children under their father’s “authority” for the rest of their lives, no birth control, women can’t work outside the home, college is evil, it’s considered sinful to work for anyone other than yourself, the medical community can’t be trusted- the list of verboten thoughts and practices just keeps getting longer and longer.

Total milieu control and attempted total thought control of our children will not produce disciples in love with Jesus and passionately devoted to Him for a lifetime. When successful, it will produce automatons who parrot back what their parents and church taught them to say. Only God knows if that can even be called "faith". If you have never had any real choice about what to believe...

But mostly it will fail, and produce angry, defiant, hurting and broken people who will logically conclude, if faith in God is so weak that it requires total isolation and continual indoctrination to survive, then it’s a sham.

Well, I have gone on long enough, but it is a subject I am passionate about. It is very encouraging that others see how damaging and destructive this rigid ideology is to the future of the church.

An Apology for Doing/Saying Nothing

To all the defrauded daughters and sacrificed sons of patriarchal home schools, I apologize for doing and saying nothing on your behalf.

I deeply and sincerely regret not speaking up for you when I had the chance. It might have made no difference in your parents' lives and the way they treated you, but at the very least it would have been one (more?) outside voice validating you as a person. I know how powerful that is, as a suffering child, to have someone say to (or even merely about) your parents "this is wrong!"

As a home school parent and a libertarian, I tend to be live-and-let-live about all strange (to me) doctrines and practices. You want to eat only organic? Fine by me. You can't go out unless you have make-up and high heels? Dress however you feel like dressing. Your dream is to build your own house in and live off the grid? Build away. Diversity is a good thing, I would tell myself. Live and let live.

I had the same cavalier attitude about religion and philosophy, but now that I have seem up close how it destroys lives, I am ashamed of my silent tolerance of religious craziness in the home school community. Yes, I mean the whole "keep women ignorant and pregnant, silent at church and hard-pressed at home, hidden away under Daddy's watchful eye until/unless Daddy can add a new member to the family cult" subculture known as "quiverfull", "biblical patriarchy" or "movement home schoolers".

I regret saying nothing to those parents who were falling under it's spell. In fact I went out of my way to avoid them, to my shame.

I regret every time I saw a women in a head covering and a long dress at a home school meeting and ignored her. I regret not looking to befriend her so she could see a better life in someone else. I might have been able to say, at least once, that the path she was on was a dead end, dangerous, with ravening wolves pretending to be shepherds flanking both sides of the journey.

I regret not whispering in a teen's ear as they passed by me in a vendor hall that YOU DESERVE BETTER.

I regret not standing up in a crowded lecture hall to heckle a speaker promoting this patriarchal garbage. Some one should "speak truth to power"! I regret that it was not me.

An apology is so lame, but at this point, it's all I have to offer. This is probably my last year home schooling, and it's been years since I went to a convention or attended a support group meeting. I am not a voice in the home school community, like Karen Campbell. I have no real personal experience as a daughter of patriarchy, like Hillary McFarland or even as a former parent of patriarchy like Vickye Garrison.

So, if by chance a mom, son or daughter of patriarchy ever lands on my blog, know that I very much regret not doing or saying anything to stop the madness. I should have stood up for you, and I did not. Please check out the above links, and send them to anyone you know still caught in the religious destruction that is the Movement. Maybe some of these kind people will be able to help.

Mea culpa.

Blot on our Home School Reputation

You know what is the absolutely most stupid way you can possibly live in this world and make decisions? First, surround yourself with people who think exactly like you do. Allow no deviation in any area.

Next, add to the disdain and pity you have for those poor people outside of your little world a strong dose of paranoia. It will be easy to convince yourself of this need because you never have anything to do with them.

Finally, make all of your decisions in life by following the patterns of the few people you have allowed in your life. So, while you continually stroke one another's egos in this mutual admiration society, and congratulate one another for your dedication to be set apart from the rest of humanity, you will be blissfully oblivious until the day reality smacks you upside the head with a major course correction.

Proverbs 18:1 An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends;
he defies all sound judgment. (NIV)

Proverbs 18:1 Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom (KJV)

Proverbs 18:1 Loners who care only for themselves spit on the common good. (The Message)

Proverbs 18:1 HE WHO willfully separates and estranges himself [from God and man] seeks his own desire and pretext to break out against all wise and sound judgment. (Amplified Bible)

I am just so mad I could spit right now at all those foolish, foolish home school families who operate outside the law. I don't have time to look up all the verses about honoring the king, obeying the civil authorities as agents of God, the example of Jesus in honoring civic requirements like the census at his birth and paying taxes. Nor all the scriptures about loving our neighbor, having good relationships with our neighbors, living in such a way that outsiders will recognize God in our lives as a good thing, etc. I have way too much to do today, but as time permits I may edit this post to actually add references.

Home school families who operate outside the law are NOT practicing noble civic disobedience! Get off your high horse, if you are one of those people. All you are doing is crippling your children's opportunities in life. It is cruel, and selfish and is definitely going to cause a huge rift in your relationships with your adult children. And if you hadn't been so arrogant that you refused to have anything to do with all those "other" home schoolers, the "worldly" Christian and the so-called "ungodly", you would have learned that truth without ruining your children's lives and your future relationships with them after they are grown.

I can hear it now. All your daughters will ever do in life is marry a son of the cult you ascribe to, because that's what you all tell each other in your insular little groups. So why does she need a diploma? For some of you, I'm sure it doesn't even matter if she's educated, much less that she have any documentation to prove it. Many sons fare no better, as you have decided your sons will be "entrepeneurs", i.e. will be unable to get a job and will have to think of some other way to keep from starving.

Home school families are for the most part extremely tolerant, as we are asking for a certain amount of leeway from society to do our own thing. Those of us who truly love freedom and education have no problem complying with home school laws. In fact, we welcomed a way to prove the existence of our home education program and show that we are productive members of society. We are not willfully keeping our children ignorant in order to foster their dependence on us or our chosen way of life. We are not selfishly separating from society to pursue our own selfish agenda. We are seeking more freedom for our children, not less. We are seeking a broader, more global education for our children because we believed an institutional classroom too small. We wanted the world for our classroom.

Patriocentric, religious zealots are a blot on our home school reputation. They choose home school in order to limit their children's experience of life, not to expand their opportunities for learning. Patriocentric, religious zealots rarely comply with the law. They believe themselves to be above the law, and teach their children that government is evil, rather than the reality that government exists for the common good so that as a society our mutual needs are met and we can better live in peace with another.

The true goal of a patriocentric home school is to cripple their children intellectually (with a restricted education), socially (no references of common experiences to build upon, no paper trail of an education to gain entry level jobs or higher education), financially and spiritually. Yes, these parents take for themselves the position of God, teaching their children that God speaks through them and that the children can have no relationship with God apart from submission to parents.

Why did we let this take root in our home school communities? How did this happen? And more importantly, how can bona fide home educators clean them up out of our midst?

I know it's a radical thought, but what about calling in truant any "home school" family you know is not in compliance with the law? That seems so unAmerican. We all internalized in public school that a snitch is the worst kind of person. But we are not children any more, and we do not have to fear reprisal from any of these families who are in fact, TRUANT.

Stop and think about it. If the children from these truant homes ever need to get work outside the home, or want to pursue higher education later in life, they will be unable to do so. They will be forced to take the GED to document their knowledge, and the longer it has been since they studied the harder that will be for them. And even if they ace it, there is real discrimination out there in the world against people who took their GED rather than earn a high school diploma. Turning in these families as truant will do the children a huge favor, as their parents will have to face up to how ridiculous their lives and beliefs have become while there is still a chance to help the children.

Oh, eventually life will slap them upside the head. In spite of the "multi-generational" cult lifestyle they believed they had chosen for the children, these children are real people. They are true autonomous human beings.

Eventually each one will discover this truth. When that happens, they will leave the family cult, and step out on their own. And will they be mad! Hoowhee, will they be mad!

Just ask around, or check out Hillary McFarlands new book Quivering Daughter or her blog. Some will figure it out younger than others.

The saddest stories will come from those whose parents married them off into their own patriocentric marriage while they were young. Many of these will not snap out of it until middle age is upon them and they have a house full of children to think about. You can find stories of women already in this boat at No Longer Qivering.

At least these stories are from first generation QF moms, many of whom have a documented education to fall back on in their day of awakening. How much harder will it be for their sons and daughters to rebuild their lives if they do not awaken to reality until they are parents themselves?

Shame, shame, shame on every home school family operating outside the law. Each of the fifty states has legal provisions for home schooling. It is your reasonable duty as a citizen of this country to comply. The home school movement was started by people who valued learning and liberty, then sadly it was co-opted by the religious zealots who have since taken over on many levels. But there is a new wave of home schoolers who value learning and liberty as much as our pioneer home school forerunners. I am appealing to this new wave today.

Call in as truant any family you know of that is operating outside of the law. It is in the best interests of their children, society itself and our own home school reputation. And wherever you live, make sure you are in compliance with the law. If you feel that is too hard for you, then you are not competent enough to be home schooling future citizens of our great country.

And please don't bother to leave a comment that "God gave me these children, so he approves of the way I raise them" or any variation. Any two human beings in a heterosexual relationship, who have no biological impediments and do not use any form of birth control, will reproduce. It is not a sign of God's approval when you get pregnant. It is not a divine intervention.

It's reality. It's biology. It happens all over the world everyday to many people, people of other religions, people of no religion, morally upright people and morally repugnant people. So please, don't even go there. I will be embarrassed for you if you come back with that line.

Multigenerational Faithfulness

Psalm 100
A psalm. For giving thanks.
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and and not we ourselves;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

When I hear the phrase "multigenerational faithfulness" lately, one question pops through my mind and won't go away. The question is:

Whose faithfulness?

Whose faithfulness?

The Lord is the only one capable of multigenerational faithfulness! His faithfulness continues through all generations.

People are not capable of multigenerational faithfulness for reasons which should be obvious to any thinking Christian. We are incapable of being faithful to the Lord on an hourly, daily basis as it is. And we have no true power over any other person other than ourselves anyway. We can influence people in our lives during our lifetime. But we cannot make choices for them. God has not given us that privilege.

We do not have to go farther than Numbers 5:6 to find proof of our daily unfaithfulness to God. Here God declares that any sin we commit against anyone in our lives is considered being unfaithful to the Lord.

Numbers 5: 6 "Say to the Israelites: 'When a man or woman wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the LORD, that person is guilty."

Is there any one of us who can claim to be truly faithful to the Lord at all times? Any time we sin against another human being we are convicted of being unfaithful to the Lord? If this is true, no one can claim to be a truly faithful person.

Wow. No wonder Jesus said that what we have done or left undone for the "least of these brothers of mine, you have (not) done for me". (Matthew 25:31-46)

As much as I want to be faithful to the Lord each and every day, I know that I have failed him more times than I can count. If every time I have sinned against another person I am convicted of being unfaithful to the Lord, then I would be a liar to call myself a faithful person. I can only come off as a faithful person if I ignore the definition of faithfulness that Numbers 5:6 lays down for me and invent my own definition of faithfulness to God.

If I can define faithfulness for myself, then I can feel pretty good about myself. If I define faithfulness as attending church regularly, home schooling my children, having daily devotions, praying before meals, reading the Bible out loud to my family every day, avoiding bad movies and bad TV shows, and not going to bars, I can come off pretty well. Actually I can just keep adding to that list things that are easy for me to keep, and come off with a higher and higher opinion of my own faithfulness every day.

And isn't it human nature to do just that? We really are a sad mess. Our capacity for self-deception knows no bounds.

But let's say that God is okay with our homespun definitions of faithfulness (even though we know He's not going to buy it), how can a person possible perpetuate multigenerational faithfulness when the Bible makes clear that we are only responsible for our own souls? The entire 18th chapter of Ezekiel explains this concept at length, while verse four puts it in a nutshell:

Ezekiel 18:4 For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son—both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die.

There is absolutely no way any human person can commit to multigenerational faithfulness. We are only single individual human people ultimately responsible only for our own personal individual choices during our one lifetime on earth. It is grandiose narcissism to pretend we can accomplish "multigenerational faithfulness". How embarrassing for the human race that people lay claim to having such power.

Do I want my children to know and love the Lord? Oh yes, more than almost anything. I want them to see how gracious and good the Lord truly is and to be enamored of the beauty of His holiness. I want that with all my heart.

So how can this home school mom make that happen? Not by holding up my "works of righteousness" and waving them around in their faces all day as evidence of my faithfulness. Nope, those filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) are not going to draw one person to the Lord.

Humility and the fear of the Lord in my own life is a good start. But even then, the focus would be on me and I am nobody's Saviour. Better by far is to lift up the Lord in praise because He is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

I can not make my children's choices for them, but I can influence them in a positive way when they see true gratitude for God's mercy spilling out of my mouth. I can influence them in a positive way when they see real joy animating my personality because of the great mercy God daily shows to me, unfaithful sinner that I am. When my daily life reflects Psalms 40:16 then I can know that I am doing all I can to influence not just my children, but everyone in my life for God's glory.

But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation always say, "The LORD be exalted!"

Amen. The Lord be exalted. He is good. His mercy endures forever. His faithfulness endures through all generations. Amen.