You liked me as a quiet, meek, first-to-clear-the-table, last-to-speak-up girl. You liked me voiceless.
You wanted me submissive, obedient—powerless—and happy about it.
You told me to just keep submitting because it would all turn out okay. You said God would work everything out for good, but then you went home and minded your own business because you aren’t God…
Read MoreFor most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.
I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.
I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…
Read MoreWe never called our churches “fundamentalist.” We were Reformed. We were Presbyterian. We were Calvinist. We thought we were the true Christians.
Now that I’ve left, I use new language that I would never have used before to describe my childhood church and the homeschooling world I grew up in: abusive, high-control, legalistic, cult, fundamentalist. These words help me explain what really happened. But of course, they weren’t words that we would have used for ourselves back then . . .
Read MoreWhen I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, “I’m going to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.” This wasn’t what I really wanted to be, but I believed that it was my destiny and that I had no other option.
As I got older, I was trained for this future, and I was told that after I graduated high school, I would stay in my parents’ home as a stay-at-home daughter until I got married. All my friends from church were given the same expectations. This was the norm in the Christian patriarchy movement.
Daughters were treated differently from sons because we were helpers in training. We were supposed to be dependent on men, protected by men. Any independence of thought or action was shut down . . .
Read MoreYou 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 MoreWhen I was a child, I understood the world through a set of absolute rules that required absolute obedience. I heard these rules at home and at church, and I was very good at telling them to the neighbor kids. I was called a “goody two-shoes,” but I didn’t feel too offended because at least I was “good.” I desperately wanted to be good. And to me, that meant following the rules without question.
I can look back now and recognize that my life was controlled by religious fundamentalism—in my case, a Christian ideology framed by a rigid, literal interpretation of the Bible, which I was told was inerrant and completely transferrable to our modern lives.
Being controlled by religious fundamentalism or a high-demand group is a little like living in a very small, dark box . . .
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. . . .
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