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Post by arietty on May 15, 2009 7:41:52 GMT -5
arietty ~ I did the same thing ~ destroyed and threw away all my "worldly" music and books. And I honestly was convinced that I could not lose my salvation ~ and would argue (well, not exactly argue ~ because, you know ~ I was never the argumentative sort ) from the scriptures with anyone who wasn't absolutely sure of their eternal security. So ~ in my mind it was never about losing my salvation ~ it was just as you described ~ if I really loved God then of course I was going to do WHATEVER He asked of me. Though He slay me ... How many times did I repeat those words to myself? And if you didn't do it.. I never really did the backslidden thing I kept hearing about. One day I believed it all and one day I didn't. Or rather.. one day I just didn't care any more. I didn't care about my salvation, things were very shitty right here and I wanted to change that NOW and not just wait until I was dead to enjoy myself and feel the freedom to exist.
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Post by arietty on May 15, 2009 6:42:41 GMT -5
I answered Yes, I could lose my salvation. However if you had asked me that question I would have strenuously denied that any of my belief was works based. I would deny this despite working myself into a frenzy to be good enough for god.
I remember reading once in some QF publication that we were not to judge other christians who did not eschew the things we eschewed because they were not called to do so and were not accountable the way we were (superiority). Once we suspected something was wrong we were accountable to get rid of it. Once we suspected God might expect something from us we were accountable to do it.
Every month magazines and newsletters would come into my home from QF or homeschooling sources, or fundy ministries. And every one of those magazines would be about what was WRONG with the world and how we had to get rid of it. Once you had read this you had to do something about it or you would be in disobedience to God. The stuff I got rid of! The beautiful irreplaceable books given to me as a child by now-dead relatives, given to me with love but I threw them all away. One was about Native American mythology, of course that had to go. My dear uncle gave me that one. Others had witches in them, or rebellious children, or children who made plans without consulting their parents. Anything with magic--there goes years of lovingly picked out gifts by my Grandparents. A book of Walt Whitman's erotic poetry I bought in school, of course that was tossed. And on and on..
I did balk once though, a newsletter came in from some Homeschoolers in Ohio (I think) that talked about how children's books that had animals that talked were VERY BAD. Probably tied it in with evolution, LOLOL.. well I couldn't swallow that one, we would have had nothing left! Poor Beatrix Potter!
And then there was all the modest clothing, the frugality to the point of ridiculousness, the endless self denial. Don't even get me started on music.
WTF was it all for? If I really didn't think my salvation would depend on it why was I so intense about it? Really, I was afraid of God. Once you heard something was wrong if you didn't get rid of it or change it you were a jezebel. If you loved God you would get rid of it so if held onto this worldly stuff you obviously didn't love God and exactly how far did that leave you from not being saved?
I have a QF friend who thinks if she puts her children in school she will be going against her conviction and will be no better than a heathen. Her children are completely uneducated, barely literate and very innumerate, right up through their teens. She can't change her mind though because if you go against what God has told you to do you will end up like Jonah or worse.
So.. works based faith? YES. But don't expect anyone to admit it because they are brainwashed and truly believe they do all this out of love for God, manifesting in obedience.
btw, I have replaced some of my thrown away books that had meaning to me because of the giver. I know it's not the same book but I can overlook that, I see the book and it reminds me of the care a relative took in choosing it for me.
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Post by arietty on May 9, 2009 0:45:24 GMT -5
After Mom went home, the kids all came home from school. Every afternoon, it's the same thing. They come through the door and drop their stuff in the livingroom ~ so I tell them to put it away ~ and then they start handing me notices and papers to sign ~ and telling me what all they need money for ~ and then they want to play with their friends. . YEP. That is one thing I miss about homeschooling, every time I get handed all those endless forms and notices and newsletters I think UGH.. I never used to have all this stuff. When you have a lot of kids it's pretty full on, and I'm always procrastinating forms so it kind of builds up. And then there's the stuff they thrust at me to sign 1 minute before they are supposed to leave the house to get the bus! And the money requests.. lol.
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Post by arietty on May 8, 2009 21:35:38 GMT -5
Good for you Sea! Yeah stuff does work out, but it works out better if people jettison the requirements society puts on relationships IMHO. Yet the whole Big Wedding thing still sells, the whole trajectory we are all supposed to be following is still a requirement for most.
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Post by arietty on May 8, 2009 21:12:57 GMT -5
I'm very very happy with my husband of 5 1/2 years. I put it down to sheer good luck OR a wonderful blessing (depending on the day) that I found him. If people asked me the secret of our happy marriage I would say "compatibility". I've never met anyone as similar to myself. The marriage is not a lot of work. It's easy and simple.
As to your story of your neighbours.. I do think it is a pattern to find someone else in order to have the strength to leave a relationship. I don't think those circumstances doom the relationship to failure though, it's all individual.
People should feel free to craft their relationships to suit themselves, choosing whether to marry or not, live together or not, combine finances or not, have children or not.. so many of us go into it expecting to tick all the boxes and meet the requirements of the marriage picture that is presented as the norm. People struggle to meet that picture and see their relationship as problematic because they fail in some area when often you can just jettison that area and live a little differently.
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Post by arietty on May 4, 2009 23:45:18 GMT -5
This thread has really affected me, more than most.
I've been thinking about the insanity of a man forbidding Xmas or some other thing and then going all out and embracing it with the second wife. What gets to me is that this is SO familiar, I've seen it with my own ex and I've seen it with other people. I think that these declarations and ideological proclamations are really all about control and the man making himself feel more spiritual and in charge. With wife no. 2 that need will still be there and it will take a different form because as has been pointed out the insanity takes some years to brainwash or intimidate a family into accepting. My ex was very aggressive with me and the kids. With his string of live in girl friends he has been much more sneaky and passive aggressive, sickly sweet talking in his "religious voice" to their faces but spewing swear words about them to the kids once the girlfriend is no longer present. I have no doubt in my mind he's indulging in varying secret sins behind the girlfriend's back because that will make him feel more in control. So something like canceling christmas was a control point with the first wife but won't work with the second wife BUT.. there will be other things.
As to the double moral standards, it's a continuing mystery to me. My ex has had several girlfriends, two living with him in the 10+ years since the divorce. He has continued to attend his fundy churches and his parachurch activities. I can just imagine what a pariah (a fallen woman!!) I would be if I showed up at one of those places week after week while "living in sin". I do think the hand of judgment definitely falls heavier on women in these places. Part of that is simply that it's easier to judge her because (and I suspect this is a dynamic with my ex) people may be too intimidated to judge the man. Another element is that men DO see a woman who appears to be carrying on her life as she sees fit without their permission as a threat. If this woman can divorce her husband and take up with someone else then how do they know their own wife's grumblings won't lead down that track? It freaks them out. A woman outside of their control is something to be very wary of. A man "living in sin" is no personal threat to the church males.
Laura my words to you in regards to your children are to always offer them a place of freedom and love in your home and your heart and in all your dealings with them. It took several of my children some years to actually see me as the person that offered that and their father for what he was. In the year after the divorce I had my 7 year old's teacher call me up and tell me that he was praying during devotions time that "mommy and daddy would get back together because otherwise mommy will go to hell". This is what his father had told him. The teacher knew there was some bad stuff going on from the father's end. My oldest daughter was emotionally manipulated in the extreme and viewed me as an evil, hellbound woman who had "destroyed our family" (again, the father's words). It was time, love, freedom and the sheer contrast of his home and my home that allowed them to see the truth. Each child had their own timetable of shaking free the religious and emotional pressures and coming into freedom. Always keep your doors open in every possible way, heart, home, communication. My oldest daughter used to RAGE at me (she was a teenager), about the family destroyed, her world ended, how God is against divorce, how embarrassed she was at school.. and I honestly felt that allowing myself to be the object of her rage was my gift to her. Because I was the safe person, the person she COULD vent her pain at. There was no way on earth she could vent anything at her father. She has a freedom with me (even if it was to be angry) that her father would never give her. She is an adult now and has apologized many times for all that and thanked me for leaving many times as well.. we are very close and she does not speak to her father at all. It took a long time but the power of being the one who offers a healthy relationship won out over manipulation and control tactics.
Anyway.. my heart goes out to you very much.
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Post by arietty on May 3, 2009 8:13:53 GMT -5
After I left my abusive ex I had a lot of anxiety attacks. Sometimes it was so bad I couldn't bring myself to leave the house. I tried once when I was in that state to go out as I read somewhere that it would help but I barely made it home. While these sometimes appeared to come out of the blue they were most often triggered by things to do with my ex. Having to call the child support agency about ANYTHING. Any kind of official form arriving in the mail. Filling out those forms. Anything to do with lawyers. I could not watch an ad on tv for the show Law and Order as the sight of a courtroom would trigger anxiety.
I felt like such a failure, so just.. awful and stupid and fragile. And I had already done the horribly hard part, I had left! So why was I beset like this?
And then one day it occurred to me that my ex had spent 15 years making sure I was afraid of him. And that he had succeeded. And any thing that reminded me of his power over me or potential power over me was going to induce that raw fear because I had been trained that way.
That realization helped. It also helped to see the anxiety as something I had to pass through to get over, both in the individual instances and as a whole.
It's ten years later and I still get anxiety about certain things, such as forms or calling the child support people but it is no longer crippling. I do manage to push through it now and it passes quicker. I am not a person inclined towards anxiety at all.. it is damage that has caused it and it has yet to fully heal. Whether I will be left with that damage for the rest of my life, I do not know.
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Post by arietty on May 2, 2009 0:20:17 GMT -5
I used to find Christmas sooo horrible and stressful. Trying to squeeze all that religious meaning into it to make sure we were doing it right. It seemed every christmas season there would be a sermon about how we should focus on Jesus's birth and not let ourselves lose sight of this because of busy-ness.. which was just another lecture about how we could potentially fail at christmas. And who was doing all the busy-ness that pulled them away from Jesus? The women of course. SO it was always TONS to do, tons to not do (like Santa), making sure it was all done right and that the kid were not present obsessed but truly getting that Jesus is the Reason for the Season blah blah..
We no longer have a religious christmas. I just gave up on the whole thing. We have tons of food, tons of tacky decorations which amuse the older ones and delight the younger ones, and tons of gifts as we can afford them. It's just a big old family festival of eating and drinking and playing loud music and games and other stuff people got as presents. We have tons of fun.
And.. we have like, FOUR trees. Because I like trees so I buy new ones every year (fake, garish trees.. we are aiming to get a pink one this year to add to the forest).
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Post by arietty on May 1, 2009 20:14:40 GMT -5
When I got to the end of the post where it says "Discuss!" my head burst with "I can't, I can't, it's just too painful!!"
Oh Laura. You have my deep sympathy.
I have seen this dynamic MANY times with divorced men. My ex gave away our big television and bought a tiny one so that we "did not feel tempted to watch television". What did he do approximately 5 seconds after the divorce? Buy a massive television.
It just highlights how arbitrary and based on their own whims these supposedly godly family decisions are that they impose on others.
I think it's Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff that talks in a few places about seeing these QF men get mail order brides after their wives divorced them. My ex has had a series of live in girlfriends all the while still roundly condemning me in christian terms for my sin of divorce.
I don't know if you still talk to Dale but I'm curious if you were ever able to ask him why you were not allowed to have Christmas but his new wife is?
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Post by arietty on Apr 27, 2009 19:15:05 GMT -5
Oh and Charis, LOL on the 6 year old's school events. I have been going to playgroup with my little ones and it is quite a generation gap at times. I sit there and listen to earnest discussions women in their early 20's have about "what age is it okay for a child to have sugar for the first time" and "how do you stop them from pretending sticks are guns when guns aren't allowed" and long debates about television. Yes I was there a loooooooooooong time ago but I am so over ideology and child raising. I suppose I seem very slack to them, LOL. Telling them, "well my 20 year old daughter gave the baby chocolate when she was 8 months old so that's when she had sugar.." is a bit of an eye-popper for them.
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Post by arietty on Apr 27, 2009 19:10:18 GMT -5
I've met a few mom's my age now Charis, with children the age of my young ones.. but these are their first (and only, lol) kids. When they hear I have kids in their 20's they kind of take a few steps back, lol.
I've always had trouble with isolation, part of it is my personality but a lot of it is just not fitting conveniently into social slots. I felt I was making some headway doing some volunteer work at one point (at a food bank), really loved the older women there and we had wonderful in depth conversations.. but that was before my two pre-schoolers. I was quite incapacitated during those pregnancies and could not keep up any of these social connections I had worked so hard on. I felt like it was 2 steps forward, 10 steps back.
The majority of my socializing is with my adult children! Which is great and we do have many many common interests but of course I'm still being the mom and there are many things I wouldn't talk about with them.
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Post by arietty on Apr 27, 2009 18:58:14 GMT -5
Of course another reason that patriarchs and men in the QF movement hate and preach against government services is that government services enable women to leave oppressive family situations and get back on their feet financially. Without welfare, public education, SSI, etc... women would be even more a prisoner of their sole breadwinner husbands than they are now. I live in a country where there is very little anti-welfare sentiment, and the word "welfare" is not used to describe government handouts. When I left my abusive husband I went straight on the payments the government hands out to single mothers and I was eternally, overwhelmingly grateful. I did not have to take finances into consideration when I left--which as I type it now seems amazing to me. Sure we were poor, but oddly even though my income was about 1/3 what it was when married to the abuser (who btw paid no child support) we seemed to have far more money than before! My abusive ex had spent huge sums on himself and was a control freak about money (of course). He never had enough for xmas or birthday presents because he was incapable of budgeting. It was amazing to me to be able to buy my kids nice presents with planning, take them to movies (they had NEVER been!!) and other fun things. I know we were technically below the poverty line but I always felt incredibly grateful and well off. 200.00 you are not allowed to spend because your husband refuses is worth nothing while 10.00 you can spend freely is worth a lot of joy, that was my experience. Anyway, prior to my leaving my ex used to speak with absolute hatred about these government payments and about single mothers, he was QUITE aware that they meant women could up and leave a man they were financially dependent on. You are quite right in your quote Aimai, I heard this complaint from many fundamentalist males, sometimes veiled and sometimes quite direct.
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Post by arietty on Apr 26, 2009 20:17:07 GMT -5
The idea that god is saving just a few of the millions of people we see walking down the street—that their salvation is always fragile and that most people are doomed—is at the root of a lot of QF obsessive behavior. There are many QF people who are not Calvinists. The Reformed folk just tend to emphasize an intellectual approach and the writing of many articles, LOL. Nancy Campbell of Above Rubies is a pentecostal and they urge folks to have more arrows for evangelism. There are many QF'ers who want more children to win more people to Jesus and haven't a wisp of Calvinism to them.
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Post by arietty on Apr 26, 2009 20:10:13 GMT -5
I am not against using services but don't tell me you are "trusting" God to provide. If you are going out and solicitating clothes from shelters and food from banks, God is not providing. . Well.. I don't agree with this. It think it limits God to doing magic acts. Someone donated food to those food banks, and gaining access to it is no different than having someone leave a box at your doorstep. Does God not provide through our society? Charity, whether private, church or government is based on a desire to help and care which most believers in a God would say is an impulse based in the divine. I have no problem with someone trusting in God to provide and thanking God for the food bank. Isn't God in everything? Maybe if a person feels like they take more than they give it's an opportunity to make a meal with that foodbank food for another family in stress, a pay it forward thing. America seems preoccupied with judging how deserving people are of receiving any kind of aid. I am horrified to read that Vyckie feels guilty about getting Medicaid for her three girls surgery. It's a different perspective when you live in a country with socialized medicine and such a questions never comes up. That women are choosing dangerous home births because they think it would be a bad testimony to get Medicaid for a hospital birth.. wow. I did have a home birth myself but that cost me 2000.00 as opposed to having a birth center or hospital birth which would be free, thanks to the socialized medicine. One reason I didn't bother having any more at home was to save money and because the birth centers were like having a baby in a luxury hotel suite.
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Post by arietty on Apr 25, 2009 22:18:25 GMT -5
Vyckie that's the weird thing about how people expect prophecies to unfold.. the prophesied items must have a wonderful air of a gift around their arrival, or must just appear to keep multiplying like the loaves and fishes. So it's okay to find a box of food on your doorstep but it's not okay to get the same box of food by filling out some government forms. If a family prays for help with finances why doesn't qualifying for food stamps count as an answer to that? Why is government aid outside the realm of God's blessing?
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Post by arietty on Apr 24, 2009 20:45:56 GMT -5
I was just heartbroken and sickened reading your story Vyckie and I haven't even read the storknet post.
Like others as soon as I read it I thought "gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia".
You know what came to mind when you wrote about the anesthetist fearing for your life and the doctor making guesses about your condition because he had never seen you? That this is what all the Baby programs and education tries to PREVENT. Anyone reading that part of your story and not knowing who you were would assume you were A. very young, B. very poor, C. very uneducated. Women in these categories not having pre-natal care is why the infant mortality rate is so high in the US compared to other 1st world countries.
That midwife was a DANGEROUS IDIOT. She cared more for her own warped ideology than for you and your baby. When you said "I really need to see a doctor" all she heard was FEAR vs FAITH. She did not hear the intuitions of a woman who had already had 3 children.
It's incredible to me too that we often choose homebirth to avoid just this kind of abuse and lack of a voice from doctors!!
I've had a homebirth myself but I always loathed the teaching that it was God's Better Way and a sign of your faith.
These threads have been good for me because they've been a real reality slap. Even though I use BC now and have chosen not to have any more children (I have 8) in the back of my mind I've always assumed that if I DID have another one.. everything would be fine. God would honour my having another baby and, thought it might be difficult, it would all work out. This is like some residual formulaic thinking that is still in me and it's been good to expose it to myself through reading this board.
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Post by arietty on Apr 24, 2009 1:59:18 GMT -5
For many in this cultic mindset an overwhelming fatalism settles on them.
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Post by arietty on Apr 23, 2009 18:16:21 GMT -5
I really feel for your daughters Vyckie, having to spend their summer vacation in surgery and recovering How long will the girls be off their feet when they have the leg surgeries? And say Hi to Laura
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Post by arietty on Apr 23, 2009 18:10:35 GMT -5
Hey titus2woman I understand why it upsets you to think you will be lumped into a package deal you don't follow. I have known quite a few big families who are not remotely patriarchal, some are not practicing christians. One culture I've come across it seems to be not uncommon for a woman to have kids with a series of partners, pretty much each man she is involved with. I have known a few of these women who are the matriarchs of large sprawling families and who LOVE children. I have known many catholic families who have 5 or 6 children, have never heard the term quiverfull and would be bewildered by all this stuff.
But it is a movement with it's own teachings and teachers, books and ideas and offshoots. In my own walk through this I have experienced and observed that a family starts out with one idea and gradually embraces more and more of them. Life can be difficult with a large family and when you step deeper into these varying teachings you access a community of like minded believers. Since many large families get little support from mainstream churches this community is very appealing. This is one way folks end up progressing from wanting lots of kids to buying chin to ankle bathing suits, LOL.
Even now I feel the regret of leaving behind the community I felt with other large families. I have 2 pre-schoolers and I am 46. I love the women in my local, mainstream church but I have little contact with them as my peers all work full time or have gone back to school to study. Their children are all getting married or in their last years of high school. The young moms there don't really warm to me, I am sometimes 20 years older than them! And I am in the weirdo category with my 8 kids. It was nice not to be a weirdo when I was a QF fundy.. and even more it was thrilling to be doing this incredible brave death-to-self mission for God's kingdom.
Anyway.. believe me I know there are plenty of big families out there, even no birth-control families that don't swallow the whole patriocentric control thing.
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Post by arietty on Apr 21, 2009 19:54:53 GMT -5
Have fun with Laura!!!! I am sorry all your girls have to have surgery again though I can see you were expecting it. I am glad you can have some enjoyment from these big trips!
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Post by arietty on Apr 21, 2009 19:32:13 GMT -5
The Dutch Social Security system is not very well set up to the problems of muslims. This inadvertently contributes to perpetuating the situation and keeps everyone locked in the Virgin's Cage. Dutch psychologists are, quite rightly, used to treating their patients as individuals. In my interpreting days I witnessed how they also used this approach with Muslim women. An important question was always: "What would you like for yourself?" Many women simply did not know. They would sit, quiet as a mouse, and shrug their shoulders. "What my husband wants," they might say timidly, or "As Allah wishes." And there were even women who would answer: "Whatever you think is right." They had never learned to want anything for themselves. "What would you like for your children? What decision would you like to take for them?" They had not learned this either, so did not know how to answer. The social workers did not understand them; they were puzzled and frustrated. After I left my abusive husband I often came smack up against not knowing what my preference for something was, not knowing or remembering what I liked, being kind of stumped at simple decisions. This stage didn't last very long, once I recognized what was going on I threw myself wholeheartedly into exploring what my interests and preferences had been in the past, before I had squelched them. A lot of my forgetting was in order to protect those things that had once been precious to me.. because my ex would see anything that was mine (an interest that he did not have) as a threat and he would attack and ridicule it. It was weird in some ways because after I was free I just took up with interests I had not been able to pursue since I was 20. 15+ years had gone by.. and in some cases I had a lot of catching up to do. It was like having been in a coma for all that time and waking up and trying to take up my life again. I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if I had pursued those interests all those years, whether they would have born fruit or whether they would have run their course after a time. I literally felt like I was time traveling back to my youth and listening to my old music, watching my old shows, reading my old books and rediscovering them all with joy. I think a lot of people coming out of years in religious cults would have this experience too.
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Post by arietty on Apr 19, 2009 22:27:40 GMT -5
Last week was our 13th anniversary. Grandma had the children for the night and when I woke up the next morning my beautiful wife was dressed and sitting up in bed staring at me. Maybe she was contemplating how to do away with you.
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Post by arietty on Apr 18, 2009 20:44:57 GMT -5
Nadya Suleman purposefully set out to have IVF, with supposedly 6 embryos (which only time will tell I suppose), when she already had 6 children, no steady income, and soon no place to live. She is worthy of contempt. So what about the QF mom who has an unemployed husband, is on whatever welfare they qualify for and goes ahead and has an 8th kids? Or 10nth kid as one woman I was on a list with did? There are a LOT of QF families living in poverty, a QF list I was on that was private did a survey once as to who was on benefits of some kind and it was the majority. Are these women worth of contempt? What about a woman having another baby with an abuser? Is she worthy of contempt? If Suleman had had a husband I am quite sure the negative attention would have been a much shorter lived news event. I think there would have been more focus on the doctor. People really do love to hate her (or have contempt, to use the nicer word). When she was on welfare she was hated for that but every single thing she's done to earn money has been used against her and earned her contempt. Man if I had octuplets I'd be gong on Dr. Phil too, I would be doing as many interviews as I could while the interest was hot to get some money in the bank for the future when on one cared. When she lived in a teeny house people were disgusted, when she bought a bigger house people were still disgusted because she had to money to do so. There is literally nothing she can do that will not earn her disapproval. Anyway I don't think purposefully setting out to have a seventh child when you are single and of dubious financial status is any different than purposefully conceiving *another* baby in a QF family that is poor. Some of these QF families are living in trailers and tents, one of the Above Rubies daughters had like 9 kids in a ONE room house. Just picture any of those families and remove the husband from the equation--suddenly it's a full scale horror show worthy of a nations outrage. And yet frankly many of the husbands are quite useless. There's plenty of QF families where the mom has a home business that, while she presents it as just a little Prov 31 thing is actually the main or only income for the family. The father is chronically unemployed or even better, an evangelist doing God's work which translates into him doing whatever he wants and earning nothing. But it's his ministry of course so it's laudable, HAHA. At least Suleman is marketable, contempt pays.
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Post by arietty on Apr 16, 2009 23:09:57 GMT -5
I think you should leave it! As long as the address contains the 'u'.
That way people will ask and you can tell them solemnly, "well, there is no YOU in quivering". It's a great point.
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Post by arietty on Apr 16, 2009 22:34:07 GMT -5
Truthfully I had to skip a lot of blog comments because they were so long, (looking longer in that format too) and there were too many. Not being able to see latest comments past 5 wasn't helpful either. I think this is much more readable and workable.
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