You never know who will be impacted by your story.
More than ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home daughter, waiting around for a man to marry me and wandering in Borders bookstore looking for something to read in the meantime.
I was about to leave the store when a book with the image of a girl’s face stood out to me. The book was called Paper Towns. I’d never heard of it, but something about it made me know I needed to bring it home . . .
Read MoreTo my thirteen-year-old self.
You probably can’t imagine twenty years into the future, but here I am, remembering you as if the past two decades were hardly any time at all. And yet, I hardly recognize you.
You were likely up early that day because you were an over-achieving homeschooler who wanted to get her vocabulary homework out of the way before breakfast. And when your parents called you in to watch the news after the first tower was hit, you didn’t understand something so devastating as the violence you witnessed in real time. You thought it was a joke.
I cringe to even write that, but I know now that you were in shock. You were processing that the world wasn’t quite as predictable or safe as you wanted to believe . . .
Read MoreWhen I first left the Christian patriarchy movement and moved to Michigan, I knew that I wanted to work, but I didn’t know much at all about how to get a job. As a stay-at-home daughter, I hadn’t been allowed to work outside the home because that would mean being under submission to a man who wasn’t my father. The only thing I could do to make money was teach piano lessons from my parents’ home, which ended up being a significant reason I was able to save up enough resources to eventually leave.
In Michigan, it seemed like there were endless opportunities, but I had limited options and very limited experience. I didn’t have internet in my apartment, so I would spend my days at the library looking for job openings on the computer and submitting applications. I applied to more jobs than I could count, from retail work to babysitting jobs, anything entry level that didn’t require any college education. I got a few interviews, but I had zero practice, and I felt so inexperienced, even though I was in my mid-twenties. Another snag was that I shared a car with my husband, making it difficult to find a job flexible enough to correspond with his work schedule.
Read MoreWe were told daughters need protection, daughters need help, daughters need supervision.
Daughters need fathers.
We were told a daughter is a princess, and her father is the king. It doesn’t matter if this daughter is 5 or 35 years old. She is bound to her father’s kingdom, waiting for an approved prince to marry her and become her new protector.
I was one of those stay-at-home daughters. . . .
Read MoreThis isn’t the first time I’ve had to shelter in place.
The world seems off-balance this year, but the deep part of me has found the old tracks through the forest, hidden due to years of absence, but still there.
During the work week I can muffle the echoes of the past, stay busy in my virtual office, stay connected with the present.
But on my days off, I’m reliving something I haven’t experienced in the seven years since I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter. . . .
Read MoreThey called it Babylon. A place without God. A place where you would lose your faith, lose your innocence, lose your soul.
We were told the professors were armored with the “liberal agenda.” We were told they hated God, that they spoke lies. College was a place where the naive were brainwashed.
For us daughters, college was off-limits. Women who went away to university would forget their calling to be wives and mothers. They would become obsessed with careers and displace men in the workplace. They would get ideas. . . .
Read MoreBarlowGirl was a band made of three sisters, who wore a little bit of black leather, used black eyeliner, had hair with layers, and played guitar and drums like real rockers. To make it all okay (at least in my mind at the time), they sang about topics that had real impact on my life: modesty and purity. I was in love. I could listen to music with an actual beat and still be able to say I was being edified in my faithfulness as a stay-at-home daughter. . . .
