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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Jun 17, 2010 8:14:31 GMT -5
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Post by cherylannhannah on Jun 17, 2010 9:04:36 GMT -5
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm beginning to dislike this Cecelia.
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Post by hopewell on Jun 17, 2010 9:09:50 GMT -5
Cecelia is worming in just the way a seasoned Amway member would--lifestyle evangelism in action. Make a friend to use a friend. She's picked a perfect target--a Christian Mom, trying to do the best she can, feeling frumpy and fat, etc, etc making her feel far less than perfect--even a 16 year old is a better mom!! Just the way Amway quietly beats underachievers over the head with subtle "you aren't worthy" messages till they give up their J.O.B. and make Amway their life. Here we have a mom who had a "life"--husband, kids, hobbies, FUN, but who is hooked on an image of unattainable "perfection." Instead of getting herself in over her head with the mortgage and credit cards for the perfect home, perfectly decorated she's bought into an equally unreal "vision" of the perfect wife and mother, perfect kids. Poor thing!
This is simply the most compelling reading of the summer! Please post more SOON!
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Post by rosa on Jun 17, 2010 9:20:53 GMT -5
This is plain evil. "You're a bad mom! Feel bad about yourself! I love you and want you to be my friend! But you don't live up to my standards!" It's like a real live talking version of one of those lifestyle magazines aimed at women. Oh, and btw, Ms. Bad Mommy Project "Friend", even though you're a bad mom you should work on having more babies.
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Post by francescateresa on Jun 17, 2010 9:24:13 GMT -5
Thank you for your story Shelly! I am sorry that you got sucked into the whole horrible mess...just wanting to be better...((((Hugs)))) Cecelia makes me want to vomit... Hopewell, The AMWAY comparison is so true! Sad sad sad ... I've know quite a few people who have gone (or are going) through the conversion to Multi Level Marketing. by the way, here is a website that talks about the lies of AMWAY and their ilk. www.mlm-thetruth.com/
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daisy
New Member
Posts: 1
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Post by daisy on Jun 17, 2010 9:34:05 GMT -5
Hi, I've been reading NLQ for months now but this is my first post.
I just read Shelly's story from the beginning and one of the things that fascinates me about this movement is how scripture is twisted and taken out of context to support the "rules". I've started looking up bible verses that are mentioned.
Can someone please explain to me how Isaiah 53:4-5 gives the rules for when couples are to abstain from sex? Shelly mentioned this in Part 4. These rules sound familiar to the ones in Orthodox Judaism and (not so surprisingly) seem to increase chances of conception.
Thanks!
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Post by hopewell on Jun 17, 2010 10:29:53 GMT -5
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maicde
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by maicde on Jun 17, 2010 10:44:53 GMT -5
Cecelia sounds like the type of “woman” (for lack of a better word because in all effect, she is a robot) that a “patriarch” would envision as being the ideal “woman”, a woman that can bear dozens of children (with no morning sickness, changing hormones, tiredness, fatigue, etc.) while maintaining a perfect figure, perfect household, raising perfect, “God-fearing” children, preparing 10 course meals from scratch, all the while adoring her husband 24/7, clinging to his every word and action, and being a sexual dynamo in the bedroom. Yeah, sounds like something a fiction writer would conjure up, or at least a woman hater with a small wee wee living in his mother's basement would conjure up. Oh, wait, I think we have a winner! Ding! Ding! Ding! Bill Gothard! While she (at this point, in your story) is being held up as the ideal woman, or the woman that has everything, in reality, she is a woman that has had her spirit and soul sucked out of her through the teachings of ATI. She has become the ATI Stepford wife and mother that people like Bill Gothard apparently think is the “ideal.” It’s too bad that people like that aren’t just hurting themselves, but they are also damaging their children, and people that meet in the process while they are “recruiting.” Oh, yes, they are recruiting. Bill Gothard and ATI are marketing the “perfect family, the perfect marriage, the perfect kids, the perfect Christian”, etc. Cecelia and her family are the bait. You take the bait, thinking that you are going to partake of the same secret that Cecelia apparently has, and instead, you get the “switch”, which is years of therapy for you and your kids....maybe a divorce thrown in for good measure. I don’t know if that was your case (years of therapy), but I know that it would certainly be my case (and my kids’ case) if we ever got involved in some sort of model that is totally unattainable. It is unattainable because we are humans, not robots. Cecelia and her family sound like the Brady Bunch (times 3) - on steroids. I don’t know when all of these events took place, but I am genuinely interested in what has become of Cecelia, her husband, and her children. I am especially interested on how the children are doing. I, of course, am following your story to find out where you are at this point in your journey in life. Your story is fascinating. Thank you for sharing with all of us. I do hope there is more to follow or at least a wrap-up of where things are today for your family as well as Cecelia's. Thank you again for sharing. Edit: As I re-read your article, I forgot to mention how interesting I found Cecelia's husband "taking you and your husband out to a diner" before you left. It reminds me exactly of how an Amways recruiter would do it. They never come right out and tell you that they're going to tell you about Amway, rather, it's usually done under the guise of "come to dinner" and while you're waiting for dessert to be served, out comes the whiteboard and markers ready to show you "the plan." It appears to me that the ATI program is very similiar to Amway's recruiting technique. First the trust of the person is gathered, then comes the showing of the plan (which in this case, is ATI). Anywho.... For the record, I have been approached to partake of Amway by one of my dear nurse friends from church (over 12 years ag...editing to read almost 15 years ago now that I think about it as this experience was about 5 or 6 months after #4 was born). My husband and I actually went to a few meetings, but in the end, we noticed that were was more "cult" and a few more underlying weird things about it, then just the "business". I have no problems with earning money, selling product, or showing other people a business. My problem comes with the deceptive recruiting techniques and also the weird combination of conservative Christianity, patriotism, PATRIARCHISM (yes, definitely) AND business - all wrapped in one. The Pledge of Allegiance and prayer before a business meeting is something I found uncomfortable. The constant subtle references to biblical verses were another red flag. The various speakers on the cassettes my friend gave me sounded a lot like Cecelia and her family, but just in the Amway (way). I forgot to mention the unadulterated greed. Did I mention the "after meeting" meetings? Ah, yes. One particular time, after a "meeting" at a hotel, my friend, my friend's "sponsors", my husband and me, and a few other people ended up at a 24 hour truck stop in order to continue building "the vision." Now that I think about it, I shudder, as I can just imagine the truckers sitting there having a bite to eat before they resume work, watching us sitting at the tables in our business attire, cackling, talking, being all loud, oblivious to everyone in the room - they must have thought that we were either some sort of far-out religious group....or Amway! It all ended the next day when my friend's sponsors called us to tell us to make a list of everyone we knew so that we could start contacting them (and this is before we even joined - which we did not. However, one of the practices is to get a list of people (names and phone numbers) and even if you end up not joining or call them personally, "someone" will have those names and numbers and will say that you referred them as someone who might be interested in blank and blank). I thought, "I don't think so". I ended up taking all the audio cassettes back to my friend one morning as she was getting her kids ready for school and I told her that it was not for me. She was not happy with me, but in the end, she got out a few months later anyways. I think the light went on for her too. In all reality, she was looking to earn some money while taking care of her four children. There is nothing wrong with that. I still like her, I still see her at church. She never mentions her brief involvement in Amway; it's as if it never happened. Her kids have since grown up and she is now back to doing nursing; she rotates between several schools functioning as a school nurse. I have done businesses before that employ the direct sales model, the network marketing model so I'm not knocking that at all. I've successfully run Discovery Toys, Pampered Chef, Tupperware - all direct sales and network marketing models since the birth of my fourth son in 1995. I am still operating a business in the direct sales industry, have done this one for almost 11 years now. Yes, there are people that like to poo-poo direct sales/network marketing, but I ask, those people what other venue can offer the same amount of income (or more) than a traditional job, especially if one has children, especially 7 children like I do? I'm not talking about people on this board, I'm talking about so-called "experts" who poo poo and lump all legitimate direct sales companies with Amway. I don't even want to put down Amway as a business entity because I personally know a few people who are doing extremely well in it. I just know that Amway is NOT just a company who employs the network marketing/multi-level marketing model; it's the people at the beginning of it (the founders, those who finally made the model work) use/(d) a substantial amount of biblical verses to coorelate with earning money, having vision, "bringing mom home so that she can raise the children", etc. Again, none of these things are wrong. It's very hard to put a finger on it because I don't want to put down anyone, but I just know that it "didn't feel right" to us. I think that people need to seriously pay attention to things that "don't feel right" because it is the voice inside of us that tells us whether something is right or wrong (for each of us). This holds true for everything in life. I knowt that every time I did NOT listen to that little voice inside of me, things went badly. The goal of these brain-washing cults (and models) is for THEIR voice to become louder than YOUR voice until you no longer have your voice anymore. When that happens, it is "mission accomplished." Then it is time to find new blood. www.dsa.org - national trade association for direct selling companies.
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Post by Ex-Adriel on Jun 17, 2010 11:28:54 GMT -5
I'm liking the ATI = Stepford Wives image actually.
I didn't remember this from school, but I read Stepford Wives again, and it was really creepy.
Just like in your story, the heroine felt something was OFF, but didn't manage to figure it out in time to escape. It's creepy, and sad at the same time. She feels so guilty for having hobbies and interests, and not being perfect, but there's still something that seems not-quite-right about the 'perfect' wives she's trying to emulate.
Also, I really hate Cecelia. A passel of homeschool women at church, just like her, are what led my own mom down the primrose path to crazy.
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em
Full Member
Posts: 176
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Post by em on Jun 17, 2010 12:18:29 GMT -5
Oh man. Each installment just gets better and better -- from a story-telling perspective obviously it just keeps getting worse for you. I'm dying to know what happens next. Thanks for sharing, Shelly. Can't wait for more of your story.
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Post by humbletigger on Jun 17, 2010 15:29:18 GMT -5
So how long until the part where Cecilia is hospitalized for attempted suicide?
(Mean and snarky, I know. But sheesh....)
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Post by cherylannhannah on Jun 17, 2010 16:32:07 GMT -5
I don't even want to put down Amway as a business entity because I personally know a few people who are doing extremely well in it. I just know that Amway is NOT just a company who employs the network marketing/multi-level marketing model; it's the people at the beginning of it (the founders, those who finally made the model work) use/(d) a substantial amount of biblical verses to coorelate with earning money, having vision, "bringing mom home so that she can raise the children", etc. Again, none of these things are wrong. It's very hard to put a finger on it because I don't want to put down anyone, but I just know that it "didn't feel right" to us. I think that people need to seriously pay attention to things that "don't feel right" because it is the voice inside of us that tells us whether something is right or wrong (for each of us). This holds true for everything in life. I knowt that every time I did NOT listen to that little voice inside of me, things went badly. I am in several direct marketing companies and not all of them are equal. I think part of the discomfort for me as a Christian when it comes to Amway was that I was struck by the fact that some of these people had to ask themselves if they should share the Gospel or Amway first? Yikes.
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Post by quivery on Jun 17, 2010 18:58:23 GMT -5
Shelly,
As soon as I saw the letters "ATI" and Bill Gothard's name, I quivered. Literally.
Back when I was at my first college, the same one at which I had my first lapse into clinical depression (and hardly slept or ate for 9 days straight), my friend Chrissy and a few of her friends invited me to a simulcast by Bill Gothard entitled "Basic Life Principles". I had been searching for deeper and clearer answers to the questions I had about God and Christ. Thus, I thought that this seminar would help "ground" me by getting me "back to basics". If I started from "ground zero" in my walk with God, I'd be better off.
Or so I thought at the time.
First of all, I thought it was weird that Bill Gothard himself wasn't there to present to us. We watched him on a huge television screen, and I found that a bit disconcerting. Were we watching a DVD or a videotape? I didn't know, but I was intrigued anyway. I was also intrigued by the huge crowd and theme song of the evening's seminar, which went:
"We need to get back to the basics of life, a heart that is pure and a love that is blind, Belief that is scripturally grounded in Christ, Oh, we need to get back to the basics--the basics of life."
I found myself nodding along, even though I didn't exactly know what that meant yet.
Then the REAL weirdness started.
Bill Gothard (on TV) taught us that "hard facial features" in women were caused not by aging or stress, but by "bitterness". He also said that if we had someone we hated in our hearts, we had a "bond" to them, and if we didn't let go of that hatred, we would grow to look, sound, and behave just like them. I was terrified by this prospect and vowed to surrender the hatred and fear that I had for my roommate, who was a bully.
He also said that "modest dress" was important for women, because "immodest dress" caused men to lust and have sexual (sinful) thoughts about them. I agreed (then).
However, when he talked about "surrendering our most basic rights to God, including the right to eat, sleep, bathe, and have shelter," I began to get worried. SERIOUSLY. What if God did not want us to eat, sleep, bathe, etc. on a certain day or for a week?
I'm convinced that during my 9-day stint, I remembered Bill Gothard's words in full. If I wasn't willing to "surrender all" to Jesus, including such basic needs as those, then what right did I have to call myself a Christian? I listened, rapt, convicted, and on fire.
Then the chalk drawing. Bill Gothard did a chalk drawing as he spoke on the TV screen.
To this day, I am still terrified of how that chalk drawing affected me. So small, so big...
The drawing was of Abraham burning a lamb (the lamb that God had provided) on a sacrificial altar. The sky was blue, and the drawing was beautiful. As he sketched, Gothard talked about how he himself had to sacrifice everything to God and Jesus, and because he did, he received back what he had originally given in spades. Amazing! He'd given a van to the church he was at, and he received 7 VANS in return when he said that he was in desperate need of a vehicle. How God had blessed him! He kept drawing and drawing, and I kept watching and watching. Something, however, was scaring me.
The blue sky in the drawing, at the very end of the seminar and the simulcast, began to change color. It changed from blue, to red, to purple, to yellow, to green, and finally to this Apocalyptic red-violet color and I almost SCREAMED. Truth be told, I was very frightened during Bill Gothard's talk while he drew. What if I did not have the courage, the strength, to surrender everything to the lordship of Jesus Christ? I was lost, yes?
Here's what happened. As SOON as the sky in the chalk drawing turned to that Apocalyptic red-violet color, I saw the OTHER, HIDDEN part of the sketch:
In the smoke of the burning lamb, I saw an image of Christ on the cross, crucified.
I swear. I almost screamed.
The secret of the chalk drawing was this:
If you were like Abraham, and would lose everything as a sacrifice for the sake of God, then you were just like Jesus, who was nailed to the cross and crucified for our sins.
I was terrified. I was supposed to be joyful about the drawing's message. I was not.
I did not want to be crucified like Jesus. I did not want to be burnt like Abraham's lamb.
Jesus KNEW that he would be resurrected from the dead when he went to the cross.
How? If a) Jesus is God and b) God is all-knowing, then c) Jesus is all-knowing.
I had no such guarantee that if I died to myself, I would rise again. I was only human.
For nine days, I sought to prove Bill Gothard's point. I came near to the point of death, both physical and mental. I thought that Jesus was speaking to me through a Ouija board, however, and so all my efforts were in vain. Still, that chalk drawing lingered.
Such is my experience with Bill Gothard and his ATI Life Basics program. Terrifying...
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Post by nikita on Jun 17, 2010 19:50:00 GMT -5
Okay, I know this is really really serious. And I know what you meant. I honestly do. And I have the deepest respect for your story and your pain. But when I read: I could not stop laughing. I am so used to associating the word 'quivering' in the context of paperback modern romance novels ('breasts heaving, quivering in anticipation...') that your sentence read that way to me on first glance. And the mental image just destroyed me. I really needed that.
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Post by freefromtyranny on Jun 17, 2010 19:55:13 GMT -5
I think it is a little obtuse to attack Cecilia for doing what she thought was helping Shelly. I believe Cecelia was just as duped as Shelly and was not acting in malice. Is it scary? Yes. But I don't think most of the people involved in patriarchy are malicious. They are confused, like we all were.
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Post by nikita on Jun 17, 2010 20:24:24 GMT -5
I think it is a little obtuse to attack Cecilia for doing what she thought was helping Shelly. I believe Cecelia was just as duped as Shelly and was not acting in malice. Is it scary? Yes. But I don't think most of the people involved in patriarchy are malicious. They are confused, like we all were. I completely agree with this. I think it is important to know that people are deceived and sometimes coerced by multiple circumstances in their lives and act within that deception/coercion. The thing that infuriates me about Cecilia is that she, in Shelly's account, seems to take great pleasure in upping the ante unnecessarily, as when she touted her own 'perfect' birthing experience at the same time Shelly was having difficulty. I don't care how doctrinaire you are, that the is action of a superior, intentionally smug and cruel person. So she loses sympathy points from me on that score. Some of the people who seemed to delight in pointing out my flaws and inadequacies in our old cult today would say that they were feeling inadequate and flawed also, by way of explanation. And that works, for a bit. But one is not required to treat other people as inferior because you feel inferior yourself. People do that, but it isn't written in stone somewhere that it's a free pass for rotten behavior towards another. That's the problem I have with Cecelia as she is so far in this tale. Who knows? Cecelia may redeem herself by the time Shelly has finished telling her tale. Wouldn't that be a kick?
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Post by quivery on Jun 17, 2010 20:58:34 GMT -5
nikita,
I'm glad I could make you (and myself) laugh in the middle of my depressing story!
freefromtyranny,
I agree, but I believe there are DEFINITELY some malicious people in the QF movement.
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Post by yoshimay on Jun 18, 2010 6:06:06 GMT -5
Grr! You always end each segment so suspensefully! I'll be waiting eagerly for the next installment! ;D
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Post by km on Jun 18, 2010 9:51:53 GMT -5
quivery: Damn... Your description of the Gothard seminar is quite familiar to me. I had a very similar response to the whole thing. Thanks for writing that!
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Post by km on Jun 18, 2010 9:55:05 GMT -5
I think it is a little obtuse to attack Cecilia for doing what she thought was helping Shelly. I believe Cecelia was just as duped as Shelly and was not acting in malice. Is it scary? Yes. But I don't think most of the people involved in patriarchy are malicious. They are confused, like we all were. I tend to agree with this. I had my own "Cecilia" when I was a teenager. Now I'm 30, and she's 32, and I know that she was just as unhappy living the QF lifestyle as I knew I would be. At the time, she was the most impassioned, most vocal, most rigid disciple of the movement I'd ever met. She's still a conservative Christian, but I was completely shocked when she told me that she regretted her parents' decision to prevent her from going to college. She had always wanted to be a doctor. And she thought that they too readily passed off mothering tasks to her, giving her too much responsibility for a teenager.
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Post by jasmine on Jun 18, 2010 10:25:06 GMT -5
This Cecilia series is becoming one of my favorites...I can hardly wait to find out what comes next. I used to have a friend who was perfect like Cecilia with perfect children - and she was also involved in ATI. Interesting.
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Post by mickee on Jun 18, 2010 14:47:42 GMT -5
Something interesting to me regarding all the Amway comparisions. I have (or should I say HAD) a friend who has just in the past 8 months become involved in the quiverfull movement, through Vision Forum and Above Rubies. Then she got her husband and kids involved too. This is how I found No Longer Quivering - after she basically wrote me off as a friend after not jumping on board with all her newfound revelations from AR and VF. But to get back to my original point, interesting to me, about 10 years ago, she and her husband were full time Anway Reps. It made me wonder about them when she first told me that, just because from my experience with Amway Reps, they are only nice and befriend you because they want to sell you something, and get you to start selling it too.
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Post by Sierra on Jun 18, 2010 16:53:46 GMT -5
16 years later, when I think about 'perfect families' like this one, I still feel a little sick to my stomach when I hear about the stairstep children who never act up. I know that they present themselves as cheerful, so outsiders think they are actually happy in their 'perfectly obedient' state, but I noticed what happened to children who didn't tow the family line. They got spanked until their 'spirits' were right. I got yelled at all the time for my 'bad attitude' and I know that if I'd had a father in the movement I'd have been whipped every evening.
It actually really bothers me that people want these Stepford children. It's unnatural and scary and means that some crucial aspect of their personalities is not allowed to develop. No one is happy to leave their friends or give up their own time to babysit younger siblings or forfeit all personal space. Adults wouldn't be happy doing it. Expecting children to 'cheerfully' shoulder those burdens is just hypocritical and unreasonable. The only reason they never complain is because complaints are firmly punished.
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Post by usotsuki on Jun 18, 2010 17:13:04 GMT -5
They want perfection. Perfection is promised. Nobody is perfect, though. It's like that book "How To Be A Perfect Person In Just Three Days", if anyone's read that back when they were growing up.
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Post by margybargy on Jun 18, 2010 17:35:01 GMT -5
It actually really bothers me that people want these Stepford children. It's unnatural and scary and means that some crucial aspect of their personalities is not allowed to develop. No one is happy to leave their friends or give up their own time to babysit younger siblings or forfeit all personal space. Adults wouldn't be happy doing it. Expecting children to 'cheerfully' shoulder those burdens is just hypocritical and unreasonable. The only reason they never complain is because complaints are firmly punished. It bothers me, too. The parents don't see the damage as...well...damage. They see unquestioning obedience and limited vision for one's potential as good. Same with always putting on a happy front, which to me, is just plain dishonest and unhealthy. There's no negotiating. There's no conflict resolution. There's no learning to stand up for yourself. There's no testing your limits and dealing with failure. There's no learning to get along with people who are different. These are all essential life skills. The lifestyle just seems so barren and empty and sad.
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