Blogs

Going back through some of my blogs, I realize how much things have changed in a short amount of time. I mentioned a few months ago that I was having trouble with Bible reading, and wanted to respond to that now.

I still don’t tend to pick up a Bible and start reading. My former church was heavily into the BREAD program, where everyone is supposed to read a certain number of chapters (and certain ones, designated by a sheet that’s handed out) every day. That might be part of my resistance to picking up the Bible and reading now, I’m not sure.

What I do know is that it’s becoming easier to read and study the Bible now. Several months ago I started participating in an online Bible study. It obligated me to post 15 verses a day and study them. Fifteen verses isn’t much, so I could do that. I had a few nightmares, but posting online and opening the verses for discussion helped me immensely–I was accountable to read at least some amount, and when I got to a sticky place I could ask questions and/or look for answers to help someone else. I still don’t know how I’d handle Revelation, but even Hebrews is OK. Fewer and fewer verses trigger me, even of those that haven’t been part of the discussion yet.

Everyone’s different. I wanted to read but couldn’t seem to do so without resentment and a flood of bad memories. Everyone’s different, but if a person wants to do something and can’t seem to because of memories, there’s probably a way, or will be, given a little time and patience.

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 1, 2015.

Growing up homeschooled means you get a lot more time with your siblings than other kids. As an older sibling, it also means you have much more responsibility for them.

My parents told me I didn’t need friends, I had my siblings. They also told me I was the example for them, the prototype.

This set the pattern for some unhealthy dynamics. My first counselor after moving out said my dad’s insisting our only friends being immediate family members was incredibly codependent. Libby Anne writes about being an older child instructed to spank her younger siblings.

Parents expecting more of older siblings is typical in secular culture, but not usually with the same connotations like in fundamentalist homeschooling. As the oldest in my family, I heard things like:

A good older sibling sets the example for their younger brothers and sisters. Even if you don’t think they look up to you, they do. They watch your every move, and often, they’ll try to walk in your footsteps. So it’s important that you behave in ways that set a good example for them. Just like we look to Jesus to be our example, that we look to live how he lived and behave like he behaved, our younger siblings often look to us that way, too. — Taken from Christian Teen About

Statements like this put an excessive amount of pressure on older children.

We’re not just expected to protect younger siblings from danger, we’re responsible for their eternal salvation. And fundamentalist parents often manipulate this idea to check rebellion. To squash any behavior they didn’t like.

I couldn’t get angry if Dad was controlling and demanding, because that wasn’t having a meek and quiet spirit. Suffering without complaint was more like Christ, I was told, and a better example.

If I wore a fitted sweater, I was not being an example of modesty to my sister.

When I asked to have a curfew of midnight instead of 7:30 p.m. in college, I was not demonstrating submission to authority for my siblings.

My mom often said: “What will your little brother and sister think? They are always watching you. You know what Jesus said about those who lead little children astray. It would be better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck.”

So when Dad said things that hurt, when the house felt like a cage, when I thought of running away in the middle of the night, I didn’t. Because of my siblings. I was responsible for them.

When I thought my parents punished my brother and sister unfairly, I’d try to anger them into spanking me instead.

Junior year of college, I moved out because my parents said the alternative would be transferring to Bob Jones University. I went back and forth, uncertain what my decision would mean for my brother and sister. I’d be the first to leave home.

I told my professors that I wanted to be a good example for my siblings, that I didn’t want to run away or rebel if it would hurt them, that I’d go to Bob Jones if I had to, even if it killed me.

They told me that I could be a good example by moving out, that I could show my siblings that freedom was possible.

But I worried. I knew I couldn’t live at home anymore, but I still wanted to be a good big sister. That fall, I struggled to set limits as my parents barraged me with visits and phone calls, begging me to reconsider.

A couple of classmates, both named Cynthia, asked me what was wrong after one of our Saturday writers’ group meetings.

I gave my fears a voice. I didn’t understand taking care of yourself before helping other people. Fundamentalism taught me the reverse: don’t be selfish, sacrifice everything for others. Shouldn’t I just put up with my parents’ behavior for the sake of my siblings?

One of the Cynthias looked at me and the other Cynthia. She said, “Are you familiar with New Life Church’s teaching about confronting lies that you’ve believed? You identify the lie, you replace it with truth, and you pray against the power of the lie. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for your siblings. You’re free to make your own choices.”

They each laid hands on me, praying with me that I’d heal and live in freedom.

I can’t save my siblings. All I can do is be a good human.

My little sister is going to BJU, and my little brother is a serious, quiet teenage boy. I lost contact with them for two years after leaving, so I can’t just speak my truth to them openly.

All I can do is be there and listen.

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on August 23, 2015.

So I got a tattoo.

In April this year, the word I’d written in Sharpie on my wrist for two years was etched into my skin. Became a part of me. It was kind of a spiritual experience.

Here, I’ll explain.

A couple of my friends from CleanPlace, the writer’s forum I joined in 2009, did a lot of growing recently. One of them had been writing “love” on her wrist for four years, inspired by To Write Love On Her Arms and suicide prevention.

Another one hated herself, despised her name. She begged God to give her a new name, and she heard a name: Glory.

“I wanted a name I could grow into. I wanted something I could become. Something I could keep becoming and never completely finish being. Something that was bigger, grander, limitless,” she said.

And they marked these revelations on their bodies, etched them permanently. They didn’t want to slip back into those old patterns of self-loathing, they wanted something to mark their healing.

It’s like the ancient practice of standing stones.

In both Jewish and pagan tradition, people used stones to mark significant events, like this:

The stones were supposed to prompt questions.

Ray VanderLaan, who studies Jewish culture and archeology, explains to his Israel tour group: “Anybody who walked by and saw them could say ‘Woah, what happened here?’ And you could say, ‘Let me tell you what God did.'”

And I think that’s what my friends and I wanted. A sort of living memorial.

I used to believe that any body modification would damage my body as a temple of God when I was a fundamentalist. Then I pierced my ears for the first time in May 2014.

I’d read the verses in Leviticus about not tattooing yourself for the dead, but the context was 1) for the dead and 2) that’s Old Testament regulations anyway, which don’t apply under the new covenant.

There’s another practice in the Old Testament that interested me: piercing the ears of a slave who asked to be a bondservant for life. Because they chose it, because it wasn’t forced loyalty.

I don’t want to leave Christianity.

I’m just tired of watching people distort and manipulate something beautiful to me until it’s monstrous. I wanted a living standing stone, I wanted to mark myself as part of this journey for life.

So back to the word: ἄφες.

That one word encapsulates over 30 nuances of meaning in two syllables: “to send forth, yield up, to expire, to let go, let alone, let be. To let go, give up a debt, forgive, to remit, to give up, keep no longer. To permit, allow, not to hinder, to give up a thing to a person.”

Jesus uses this same word for “let the little children come to me” and “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Ἄφετε τὰ παιδία
Permit the children
– – – –
καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ
and forgive us our debts
– – – –
Πάτερ ἄφες αὐτοῖς οὐ
Father, forgive them

You know that scene in the Passion of the Christ where they’re nailing his hands, and like, /while/ they’re doing it, he’s saying that? (Not before, not after, but during?) And the soundtrack crescendos in the background?

It sounds like a release… like some sort of freedom within pain… and it seemed very different from repression.

When I first saw the movie in fall 2012 after moving out, I was like, “I am going to find out what that word is in Greek,” and I did. And I learned ἄφες means “to let go, to release.”

Much different than how churches taught me “forgiveness,” which is more like burying the hurt, or feeling guilty about being angry about it.

It’s letting go when /you’re/ ready to, and it frees you, it lets YOU be your own person. Like, we were always told forgiveness was the answer?

But we also always had to forgive instantly and never harbor resentment ever because 1.) Jesus clearly suffered worse than you ever could! Why can’t you forgive? (because you’ve never been tortured or crucified) and 2.) the faster you forgave, the more Christian you were.

But this, this thing I saw in the film, is way, way different. There’s no obligation or guilt involved.

So I marked it on my wrist, this word that spoke life to me.

Thanks to my friend Sam, who gave me a gift certificate to Pens and Needles.

– – – – – – – – –

P.S. This dude who blogs also has two awesome tattoo stories:

A Roadtrip. A Tattoo. A Damn Good Story.

Keep Walking

I wrote this about two years ago. I don’t believe any man is a shepherd anymore, but this was the only way I could try to explain what was happening when I was in…

Once upon a time, there was a shepherd who had many sheep. The sheep were healthy sheep, though all had their little differences that made them rather sheepish. Most of the sheep were happy sheep, and they all enjoyed doing sheepy things, laying in the sun or eating the grass and watching the lambs play. The shepherd was happy too. He had a peaceful job, for the most part. He had time to think and enjoy the outdoors. He practiced hunting the bears and lions that occasionally came around looking for fat sheep or little stray lambs to steal, and ensured that none of the sheep wandered too far. It was nice being a shepherd. He protected them from predators, and they, by sharing their wool to make him coats, kept him warm on cold winter nights.

One morning a bear came. The shepherd got his sling and started to stand. The sheep were scared and huddled in close to him. They trusted him, and they would protect him. But then he couldn’t get to the bear, and it was getting close to a favorite lamb, and though he knew they were doing what they knew, the shepherd got angry. He began kicking and yelling at his sheep, trying to make them move. The sheep got scared and huddled even closer together, tripping the angry shepherd in his attempts to get at the bear. When he stood, he saw the bear lumbering away with his little lamb in it’s paws.

The shepherd was sad. His lamb had been lost, and his sheep were at fault. As they calmed down, he did not. He vowed this would never happen again. As the sheep came toward him through the day, he would push them away. He had his lambs to worry for. The sheep didn’t feel it much through their warm coats. But they felt the shepherd’s anger, and this made the sheep sad. Over the next days, the lambs stopped jumping as much, and the old rams stopped eating as well.

After a few days, the bear came back. The shepherd knew this bear, and immediately jumped up, kicking and yelling at the sheep to move. Most of the sheep, seeing his actions, and smelling the bear, ran to him like they had done earlier that week anyway. But one little lamb remembered the shepherd’s angry voice. It hesitated to get too close, and the bear snatched it up, and lumbered toward the forest. Again the shepherd was angry. Now two lambs were lost to one bear. The shepherd planned a bear hunt, and resolved that the bear would never eat another lamb.

It wasn’t long after this that the shepherd began to notice changes. Some of the sheep were sickly, even though there was nice green grass there, and water nearby, and they didn’t come to him like they used to do. He also started noticing more and more of the sheepish qualities about these sheep. The rams would butt heads. The lambs wandered too far. The ewes were too fat. Some would come and he would talk to them and play with their lambs, but others seemed to stay away. The shepherd distrusted these sheep, not realizing the sheep now also distrusted the angry shepherd.

One more time the bear came. The shepherd was prepared. He had made a club to carry along with his rod and staff, and as the bear came out of the forest, and the sheep started toward him, he beat them away with the club, yelling and kicking at them as he ran toward the bear. This time he met the bear head on, hitting it with a stone from his sling. His aim was true, and the bear fell with a roar. After killing the bear, the shepherd walked back to the sheep. A surprise waited him there. Several lambs lay dead. Two ewes had broken legs, and three rams were cut and bleeding. The shepherd looked around in dismay. The sheep huddled together at a distance, as though still scared. What animal had done this damage? No sheep were missing, but the injuries were horrible-and those poor lambs were dead. He dropped his club, his rod and his staff and knelt next to the littlest lamb. He called to the sheep, but they wouldn’t come near. It was then that he noticed the blood on his club and realized what had happened.

The Bible says leaders should be slow to anger. My pastor was hot tempered and quickly angered. I never knew what might set him off. It could be someone else’s problem that he was angry about, or some lie a member told about me. Sometimes I was at fault for something, but all too often the punishment far outweighed any crime. My faith and my salvation were questioned, false labels were placed on me. I was told I was like this one or that one who had left the church, and told I wanted to leave. My pastor finally told me that God didn’t need me and the church didn’t need me, and that he could care less whether I was in church or not. He said he was fighting for our salvation. But he too often fought the “sheep,” wounding and even killing the ones who trusted him. I doubt he has realized even yet that most of the damage he saw done, was done with his own words.