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Post by krwordgazer on May 19, 2010 14:19:37 GMT -5
Vyckie, hang in there. Life is going to be fairly rough for about a year or so. Pastor Tom is right. But that doesn't mean you have to go back to a spiritual abuser any more than you have to return to a physical abuser. El is a jealous god and he hates it when his sheep wander off. He will do anything to get you back, up to and including killing your whole family so you have nowhere left to turn. I know several families to whom this has happened, including an attempt on my own children when I walked away for good. You need to make a formal renunciation of Christianity, clear your house of all content and let El know in no uncertain tems that you are not his, your children are not his and that he has no power or recognition in this place. It may feel silly, when you no longer believe, but it will help. And yes, the other 99 sheep are standing there bleating "whatever it takes." That imprecatory prayer is baneful magic being worked against you and yours. And that much foul energy being released in a specific direction is going to have consequences. I hardly know what to say to this. It's one view of Christianity, I suppose-- but it has nothing to do with Christianity as I understand or practice it. Its founder said to those who wanted to call down curses on those who disagreed with them, "You don't know what spirit you are of." Though I am a "sheep," I wish you nothing but healing, love and joy, Vyckie.
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Signs
May 18, 2010 15:13:51 GMT -5
Post by krwordgazer on May 18, 2010 15:13:51 GMT -5
Sierra, I'm so angry right now I feel sick. Your mother told you, "I love you, but if Jesus comes, I'm outa here" !!! In other words, "Nine-year-old daughter, you can't count on me. I may say I love you, but I don't want to be with you. I can and will abandon you without a moment's warning. And God is the one who will orchestrate it." How, how, how, could anyone say that to their own child? I understand that she probably didn't really grasp herself what she was communicating to you; I understand that she was miserable and wanted to be taken away-- but it's still beyond belief. All I want is to take that little girl that you were, and mother her myself, teaching her that I would never leave her unless I were killed first . . . The god that is worshiped by The Message is evil. It bears no resemblance to anything I have ever understood as God-- even when I was in a cult myself.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 16, 2010 12:27:36 GMT -5
Maicle's "changing your story" actually sounds pretty much like what I learned as the final step in codependency therapy. After you have gone through your grieving process and expressed the anger, pain, etc., that had been denied-- you figure out what the messages are that you've been sending yourself and learn to send yourself new ones. This takes some mental discipline, but it does work.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 15, 2010 15:11:16 GMT -5
Burris, I think you make a lot of sense. The perspective of the Bible you present could have exposed the insanity that nearly killed poor Quivery, for what it really was. I understand Quivery's parents pulling her out of that cultish college, though I'm very disturbed at their reaction to their own daughter's plight. As for the parable of the lost sheep--a parable is intended to illustrate one idea, not a whole systematic theology. The idea that the lost sheep parable presents is that God loves and seeks the lost sheep-- there is nothing about the Good Shepherd hurting the sheep in order to drag it back into the fold. Tom was absolutely in the wrong. His job was to love even a person who, from his perception, had been a "sheep" and was now his "enemy," as Burris says. There are plenty of other parables and teachings of Jesus that talk about how we relate to others who are not of our group, and none of them involve either abandoning them, or trying to drag or drive them back into the fold with threats and condemnation. Blech. In fact, it's not the sheeps' job to return a lost sheep to the fold-- it's the Shepherd's job. And his folds are bigger and more numerous than most of the sheep want to believe. He even said he had other sheep in other folds. (I'm frankly appalled by the story of the "Christian" free health clinic that would only treat other professing Christians. Did they just take some scissors and cut the Good Samaritan parable right out of their Bibles? ) Shunning those who dare to leave is a characteristic of cults. But I also think it's just plain human nature (as Maicle pointed out) to pull back from those who not only leave our group, but then begin exposing the group's problems. From the perspective of a Quiverfull "sheep," Vyckie is not only a sheep who has left the fold, but has also started calling to the sheep that are still in the fold, "Hey, are you unhappy? From out here where I am, I can see that you've been herded into a tiny, airless cage inside the fold-- the fold is much bigger and more open than you think it is! And it's not so bad outside the fold, either! Are you sure the shepherds who put you in that tiny cage inside the fold were acting on the orders of the Good Shepherd?" And then the sheep hear that Vyckie has come to doubt whether there even is a Good Shepherd. Even though she is not trying to make them doubt, they are upset by that. The sheep in the cage feel that the lost sheep has not only rejected them, but is now attacking them and their safe little cage. It's not surprising that they feel defensive. Though they are supposed to love their "enemies," they are probably too upset to do so. Some of them are even lashing out in response to the perceived attack. I know how hurt you feel, Vyckie-- I've been shunned and attacked too, by scared, angry, defensive "righteous" sheep. It seems to me that it's harder to have compassion for them than for just about anyone else-- and I think that voicing your very legitimate disappointment and pain is an important part of your healing. But I also know I was once one of those who shunned and rejected people who left my cult too. Eventually, I found a way to forgive myself, and to forgive them. Broken relationships often just stayed broken, though. But new relationships came along, as others have also said here. We on this forum are all in your corner. ;D
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Post by krwordgazer on May 13, 2010 0:25:13 GMT -5
My daughter is loving the Cleary books. Stampinmama, has she tried the Elizabeth Enright books about the Melendy children, beginning with The Saturdays? They are delightful, and in pretty much the same genre. Set in the 1940s, about a group of five very unique siblings. Completely secular. I was and am a voracious reader. Since I wasn't involved in fundamentalism as a child, I have no experience with having my books censored. The time period that I was most deeply in the fundamentalist cult, I was also majoring in English in college, and had way too much literature to read for homework, to pay any attention to what I was or wasn't supposed to read per my church! (Though I do remember gravitating towards mysteries after getting out of college, because fantasy -- my first love-- was frowned on.) But books like Elizabeth Enright's are just great, fun books about being a kid. A Wrinkle In Time and its sequels were amazing, but I loved L'Engle's companion series, beginning with Arm of the Starfish, even better. L'Engle is a fantastic writer-- a Christian whose theology is fairly liberal (as Rowling is also).
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Post by krwordgazer on May 10, 2010 23:01:18 GMT -5
Erica, my sister is a children's librarian. Sometimes she talks about how apparent QF moms (dressed frumpy, lots of kids) come into the library. They always want really old stuff-- she keeps some of the old-fashioned fiction books around just for them. She says they're mad at her because she replaced old non-fiction books where the data and information had become obsolete. Apparently these moms don't trust any book that contains knowledge discovered after 1955 or so.
I have no doubt she'd help a kid smuggle something home they weren't supposed to read or listen to-- but so far, no kid has asked her.
You know, I was a lot more like your sister than like you as a child-- eager to please, wanting approval even at the cost of independent thinking. My sister who is now a librarian played the same kind of role in our family that you did in yours. I know how hard it was for her, but also that she couldn't have done otherwise. I so admire her courage and the backbone she had, that I just didn't have back then.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 8, 2010 20:06:07 GMT -5
Wow, yes. I remember how, little by little, one at a time, all this stuff got added to what being a Christian meant. It started out just being about believing in Christ, going to church, and not doing things that could hurt yourself or someone else.
And then-- if I was going to really follow Christ, I should set my sights to becoming a mother and a homemaker.
And then-- I needed be against abortion.
And then-- I needed to believe that public school was bad and that what I'd been taught in school was lies, particularly if it had anything to do with American history.
And then-- I needed to support certain political candidates, and not others.
And then-- good Christians didn't date, but prayed for God to send them their mate.
And then-- I needed to stop listening to "secular" music and listen only to Christian music.
And then-- Books and movies I liked were wrong and demonic.
And then-- If I really loved God, I would do everything I could to raise enough money to go to a particular Christian conference. If I didn't want to go, it meant I didn't want God's best for my life.
And on, and on, and on. No music with a rock beat-- even if it was Christian music. No movies that weren't G-rated. No G-rated movies either, if they had any mystical elements. No jewelry with any non-Christian symbolism or significance (if you bought something you thought was pretty and it turned out that it could be seen as a mandala or a Native American totem animal or something, get rid of it!) No this. No that.
I remember being astonished at how worldly I'd been being without even knowing it. What would I do without my new church, my Titus 2 friends, and my new Christian leaders to show me the right way to live? They'd use some Scripture or other to show why their position was right-- but though they said we were to be "Bereans" and study it for ourselves, we were expected to come to the same conclusions, using the same Scriptures that we were given. If we didn't, there was something wrong with our motives, that was causing us to twist the word of God.
It was very gradual and very insidious. I remember my mother, in exasperation, saying to me, "You've become so rigid!" (This because she'd bought me a shirt with purple unicorns on it, that a year earlier I would have loved, but I'd turned against unicorns along with everything else I used to love.) And all I could do was wonder how I never noticed before, how totally worldly my mom was.
Sigh. I must have been absolutely impossible to be around. Your story brings it all back, Shelly. Wow.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 7, 2010 14:25:32 GMT -5
Thanks, Sierra. So what you're saying is that you were supposed to hear from God, but peer pressure and leadership dictated what would be considered really hearing from God, and what would be rejected as self-deception. Is that right?
(As far as "in rebellion" is concerned, I just read a link in another thread from Margybargy, in which Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. ;D That was great! Any man worth his salt would respect your strong feelings in this regard and never try to make you take his name.)
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Post by krwordgazer on May 7, 2010 13:15:26 GMT -5
"Discernment," yes-- that played a big factor in the group I was in, too. It sort of backfired because all that emphasis on hearing God, led us rank-and-file people to dare to trust our own gut feelings-- which is what I have been reading Vyckie was specifically discouraged from doing.
Was "discernment" a big deal in Quiverfull, or were ordinary people (women and children, anyway) discouraged from attempting to hear God's will for themselves? Were only men and leaders allowed to pray for, and believe they had received, "discernment"? Or was this not a factor in this particular movement?
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Post by krwordgazer on May 7, 2010 13:10:51 GMT -5
Good grief, Freedom, that's awful. It makes me wonder why he married you, if he didn't like you or anything about you. Except maybe the way you looked? He just wanted arm candy?
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Post by krwordgazer on May 5, 2010 21:09:04 GMT -5
Sierra, of all the stories you've told so far, that one made me the saddest. I remember so strongly what it felt like to lose a best friend in childhood like that. I hate the kind of pressure that forces kids to reject their friends in order to fit in. *hugs to little-girl Sierra and her lost friend*
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Post by krwordgazer on May 4, 2010 12:19:20 GMT -5
Huh.
In Maranatha Campus Ministries, all the guys tried to dress and talk and walk like the leaders, too. Some of us dared to roll our eyes (in private where no one could see us). ;D
Branham's biblical exegesis bears every sign of being done by a guy with a 7th-grade education. The amazing thing is that more educated religious leaders let this guy speak at their rallies and never, apparently, tried to correct his ignorant misreadings.
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Post by krwordgazer on May 4, 2010 12:12:16 GMT -5
From "The Art of Being Feminine" website: theartofbeingfeminine.blogspot.com/2009/06/tips-for-feminine-and-fascinating-woman.htmlHave him lean back into a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to massage his neck and shoulders and take off his shoes. Don’t insist on this however. Turn on music if it's one of his pleasures. Speak in a soft, soothing, pleasant feminine voice. Allow him to relax-to unwind.Emphasis added. It's interesting that this website takes an article that's floating around the Internet, purporting to be an actual magazine article from the 1950s that modern readers can look at incredulously (which I have heard is actually a spoof!) and takes it absolutely seriously as good advice for women. I have nothing against being welcoming and doing nice things when my husband comes home (when I'm the one who gets home first-- otherwise I want him to welcome me!), but everything about this says "he is important; you are not. Your life should be all about him." I have no doubt that this high-pitched, soft tone is considered by women who follow this stuff, to be the quintessential "feminine" voice, and those who don't have it naturally, do their best to imitate it.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 29, 2010 14:36:06 GMT -5
Wow, Kiery. Those conflicting messages must have driven you crazy.
Stand up and think for yourself! No, No, shut up and do what we tell you!
I guess what they were after was either having you out of the house, or in the house and under their control. In the house and being your own person was not acceptable.
So nuts.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 26, 2010 22:27:33 GMT -5
Ok, those hospital policies do make sense the way you've put them, Nikita. But-- I don't know so much how things are now-- but it used to be that doctors and hospitals didn't feel they needed to explain things like this to anyone, least of all a "nobody" young woman with a baby. In addition, Tapati was risking engorgement and infection, since she couldn't make the breast pump work-- plus she was extremely uncomfortable, which could have had an effect on her healing process. It would have been better if a nurse or someone had given her some practical assistance, don't you think? (I never could make breast pumps work either. I found expressing by hand much more effective.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 25, 2010 16:19:34 GMT -5
Ok, Nikita, maybe that's reality, but what kind of sense does it make, really? I know, he's not a patient, and the hospital would want to charge him like a patient, to be there. They'd probably even have to let him use one of their little cribs. So then the insurance company would refuse to pay for him to be there since he wasn't sick. I'm not challenging you-- I know you didn't set the policy. But The Rules just don't make any sense, and they seem to be to be more about Who's Going to Pay For This than about what's best for the mother and the baby. Which is the American health-care system in a nutshell.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 24, 2010 17:25:48 GMT -5
What a story, Tapati! I agree about Grandma and the name thing. My parents tried to do that to me about my son's name. We didn't let them get away with it, either.
But that hospital! What's up with not letting you keep your newborn baby with you? Just because he hadn't been born at that hospital! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard-- except perhaps that jerk of a doctor getting impatient with your roommate's grief over her lost breast. How would he like it if he'd had his you-know-what cut off? Would he have consoled himself with "at least I'm not blind!"
Makes me want to slap him.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 24, 2010 14:51:14 GMT -5
Jane, I haven't known quite what to say here, so I've kept quiet. But I want you to know that I feel deeply for you and for all you've been through, and I do feel solidarity with you. I do have trouble reading your posts, partly for their length and partly because-- well, I'm sensitive, and I usually end up feeling pretty emotionally upset by all you share. And the capital letters tend to make me feel like you're TRYING to ellicit an emotional response from me that I'm not necessarily ready to give.
I might suggest that your writing would be more effective (have more readers who actually receive what you're trying to share) if they were shorter, focused on one point at a time, and if you avoided super-emotional words, especially in caps (such as when I'm reading along and all of a sudden it's about Child Rape, and I feel like it hit me on the head from out of nowhere).
Sometimes shock tactics are necessary, like when you're talking to a complacent group who doesn't really want to face the problem you're talking about. But when shock tactics are overused, or used on an audience that's already sympathetic, they tend to be counter-effective. I'd suggest choosing your writing strategies more carefully, and taking your audience more into consideration.
I hope this is helpful to you, because that's all I want it to be. It's not about finding fault or judging you at all. I wish you all the best and that your blogs will have many readers.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 24, 2010 14:43:16 GMT -5
This is very helpful, everyone. I'm starting to get my approach more pinpointed in my mind. Anyone else have something?
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 22, 2010 0:49:04 GMT -5
I don't really watch the Duggars' show. If it's on in our area, I've never seen it, so I'm not really in a position to judge. But I will say this, Sisof9. I respectfully disagree that "letting God plan your family" is synonymous with what the Duggars are doing. Letting nature take its course is not "letting God plan," it's letting nature take its course. From what I understand, Michelle even stops breastfeeding when the infants are quite young, so that she will get pregnant again-- so she's manipulating nature to make herself pregnant more often even than she would naturally. My understanding of basic Christian doctrine is that it doesn't say everything that happens according to the course of nature is God's best plan. There's also a "curse" on the natural world. And there's also various manipulations of nature by humans, many of which are neither commanded nor forbidden by God, but are part of human freedom. The Duggars, too, are free to manipulate nature-- but when it hurts the children they already have, they should stop having more. Love is the greatest commandment. I'm working on a biblical refutation of the "no birth control" docrtine, to be published on the NLQ blog when it's done. You are welcome to disagree with it, but I hope you'll give it consideration.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 21, 2010 0:43:05 GMT -5
"And those of us with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces. . . " That was me, too, Sierra. I can hardly imagine how much worse it would have been to be in The Message. It's like they sucked all the joy out of EVERYTHING and deliberately magnified the pain.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 21, 2010 0:39:57 GMT -5
Musicmom, my heart goes out to you. I related to my dad kind of like that, too. *hugs*
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 21, 2010 0:37:09 GMT -5
All I can see is that boundaries-- even the faintest smidgeon of a boundary-- were simply not allowed. It's almost like your dad didn't even understand the concept, Ruth.
Your story is so riveting. I was raised in a disfunctional home, too, where boundaries were barely understood-- but your family took it to a whole other level.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 21, 2010 0:22:51 GMT -5
I'm hoping we can get some more discussion/examples here of how authoritarianism and heirarchical control happens in Quiverfull. Since this is NOT a centralized group organized around one or two leaders, we obviously can't give examples of that type of authoritarian control here. We have to talk about the ways authoritarian control happens in Quiverfull movements. Sierra spoke of "invisible" power structures in The Message group. So if the power structures are hidden, how is it that they do work? Looking back on it, my dear ex-QFers, what controls were you actually under, whether you were aware of them or not? I have gotten the impression that peer-pressure is a huge controlling factor in QF; hence my lumping of ideas of "conformity" together with "authoritarianism." Just because there isn't a visible figure at the top, doesn't mean it wasn't there. Please give me examples of how you feel you were controlled. Authoritarianism is one of the biggest and most damaging factors in spiritual abuse. I think it deserves a place as second in our series. It may be a little trickier to identify in QF than "Isolation," but we can find it. And it's important that we do-- that we point out the bait-and-switch that is going on. "We're allowed latitude in these areas, therefore this isn't a cult" or "There isn't a central leader, therefore this isn't a cult" can't remain unchallenged. (Another thought: we may consider re-naming this something other than "authoritarianism" if that word gives people too much of a picture of one central authority figure. Perhaps we could call it "Power and Control" or something like that. Any input?)
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 14, 2010 16:38:40 GMT -5
Humbletigger, I know no one here wants people leaving QF to feel their faith threatened; but of course this is a place where there are an abundance of different views. I suggest "Under Much Grace" as a blog where Cindy, an evangelical Christian and one of the members here, talks about all issues related to spiritual abuse and extremist forms of Christianity. undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/And if your friend wants to tallk to other Christian women who have rejected patriarchy, there's the Equality Central Forum: equalitycentral.com/forum/Though it is not specifically geared towards spiritual abuse matters, she will find a lot of good discussions, all from a Christian perspective, there. And of course, any of the FAQs I have written are very Christian friendly and geared towards people in exactly her situation. I suggest she read "Quiverfull and the Bible" and "Does Patriarchy Glorify God?" from this section of the NLQ Blog: nolongerquivering.com/nlq-faqs/Hope that helps.
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