Lenten Project: Day Eighteen

We're halfway through Lent.  Far from running out of stories to tell and things to post on this blog, I keep uncovering more, remembering more. I'm facing myself in the mirror and coming to terms with a lifetime of abuse, and it has not been as easy as I imagined.

Today I dug out all my diaries and journals, from 1998 to 2003.  They're horrifying.  Not just my recounting what happened each day (usually not positive things), but also myself, who I was.  I was not an admirable person.  True, I was a product of my upbringing, but I was also a jerk.  A selfish creature with an ego the size of an airplane.

My husband likes to look at my old pictures and say he would have liked me and had the biggest crush on me if we'd known each other in my childhood.  But I was not lovely.  I was not nice.

In spite of my enormous character flaws, a few of which I've outgrown by virtue of the simple fact that I've grown up, and a few others which have been shed since I left Fundamentalism and then Evangelicalism, the truth remains that what was done to me was not merited at all.  It was not right, it was not good, it was not of Christ.

Two months after my 18th birthday, I wrote in my diary that all I wanted was to explore this faith of my parents, to be able to express doubts without fear of punishment.  I admitted I didn't believe God existed.  I confessed it, with much shame, in a prayer I wrote in my journal. (My father, in a strange attempt to save me from my rebellion, required me to write a prayer of at least 100 words each day. He also required me to correspond with him through another journal.  I still, to this day, don't know why he didn't just talk to me face to face.  We lived in the same house, after all.)  After trying and proving some of the teachings of Fundamentalism to be false, I jumped to the conclusion that all of Fundamentalism must be false, and that God was nothing, not true, not real. (Because I was taught that Christianity is Fundamentalism, and Fundamentalism is Christianity.  Everything else was pagan.  So to reject Fundamentalism was to reject God.)

Then, a few days later, I fearfully backtracked and apologised to God.  Later I wrote that I had to conform so I could survive.  And that's really sad.  I was never encouraged to believe because God is true and real and good.  I was compelled to pretend to believe "for the sake of the ministry," and because that's what was expected of me.  Doubts were not allowed. Exploring life, trying new things, deciding for myself were not allowed.  Challenging the teachings of Fundamentalism, examining our rules and practices, and trying to understand why, were all strongly discouraged.

Since I had to do all of those in secret, my attitude was nasty.  I didn't like hiding who I was or what I was discovering.

When I read my diaries, I agree with what my sweet mother-in-law said again this weekend: That is not true Christianity.

Lenten Project: Day Eight

Much of my questioning of Fundamentalist theology and practice came to a head in Singapore in early 2000.  I'd been punished for going to the cinema, chastised for not-so-secretly liking CCM (my Avalon CD was confiscated), shamed for enjoying American teen tv shows (which I only knew about through the influence of other MKs), and generally had all privacy invaded and subsequently stripped away when my diary was read and taken.

I bought this album three times in the space of a couple years because, though it kept getting taken away and destroyed, I kept returning to my sin like a dog returns to vomit.

One day, after more, "Why can't you just be good, Hannah?  Why do you have to question everything?" I finally snapped.  I stomped to my room (which was shared with another sister), gathered up all my Bibles (every good Fundie has at least three) and Bible study books, and threw them into the dining room.

Only I didn't throw them, because I imagined that God would kill me, literally, right that moment, if I disrespected His book like that.  So I stacked them neatly outside my door instead.

I said, "If that's what being a Christian means, I don't want to be one anymore!"  And sat on my bed, contemplating this new-found agnosticism.  I liked it.  A lot.

The idea that I did not have to be just like my parents, that I could be different and unique (and not unique in the sense that I was the only one wearing a headcovering full-time), really grabbed a hold of me. For the first time, I honestly considered what it could be like if I rejected Christianity. I had no concept that there was anything other to the Christian faith than what I had been taught in Fundamentalism. All other "Christian" denominations, I was told, weren't really Christian, so I'd have to give up Jesus completely to leave Fundamentalism, I believed. What would it be like to be openly worldly?

Questioning the faith was never allowed. We had to all be fine, godly young women because we were the examples to the people we were trying to reach for Christ.  The show windows.  The attractive lure. People were supposed to be able to look at us and say, "you're different!  I want what you have," and thus be converted.  So there was never to be any doubt or dissent.  And what I was doing was both.

I wasn't allowed to meditate on agnosticism for very long.  My sister Mary came in to reason with me.  She warned me that Dad and Mom were discussing sending me away to someplace like Hephzibah House if I didn't conform.  I'd grown up regularly listening to the Hephzibah House radio program, and, though I didn't yet know about the severe abuse that goes on there still to this day, it still scared me that my parents were talking about sending me away, exiling me from the family.

My blood runs cold now at even the threat that I could have been sent to this house of horrors.

Mary said it was either send me away or give up the ministry and leave the mission field, because the Bible says a spiritual leader like Dad must rule his children well.  Since I was rebelling, it reflected badly on him (all about image again!), so I had the choice to conform or destroy my father's ministry.

That was really hard for me to hear.  Obviously, there wasn't really a choice.  I couldn't be the reason my parents left the mission field in disgrace! I couldn't let it happen. But in order to conform, I basically had to give up my brain and quit asking questions, quit believing things I knew from experience were true. It would have to be all in or nothing.

But I still wondered.  Would God punish me if I was the cause of their being forced to leave the mission field? And what would it look like, for them to move us all to the States?  Would I really be incarcerated in a reform school?  I knew Mary had been sent in by my parents to tell me all that. Mary has always been the peacemaker in our family, the one with the most tender of hearts, but for her to be able to tell me details like my parents plotting to send me to HH, they had to have either told her to relay the threat, or influenced her indirectly by openly discussing it in front of my siblings. I didn't understand why neither of them talked to me directly.

That night, as I was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, my dad came into the room and kneeled beside my bed.  I stayed still, because I really didn't want to talk to him, since I believed he'd give me that ultimatum. I wanted to delay the choice making as long as possible. I'd only been given a few hours to contemplate the fact that I might be the destruction of our family's ministry. I still wasn't certain I could sacrifice my intellect, give up my hopes, and and live a submissive life, all for the sake of the ministry.

He didn't try to wake me up.  Instead, he started praying.  And weeping.

Now, I have never in all my life, before or since that night, ever seen my dad cry.  Not when people he'd respected and trusted were cruel and spread lies about him during an ugly, nationwide KJV-Only fight in Grenada.  Not at any of our weddings.  Not with us or for us during the normal trials of growing up.  Just never.

It scared me.  Then he started praying verses over me.  Things like how I deserved to be stoned to death.  How I was bringing shame upon my father's head.  How my disobedience was probably going to cause God to kill me with an early death and that grieved my father very much.  A lot of, "Oh, Lord, what am I to do with this, my wayward daughter who prefers wickedness to the joy of salvation."  And so on.

After a good bit of this, he finally stopped and left the room.

Now, here's the thing.  He may not have known I was awake, and was honestly praying over me while believing me to be asleep.  OR, more likely, he knew I was listening (because it was no mumbled prayer--he was really loud), and was choosing his words with care in order to hit me the hardest.

Basically telling your daughter she deserves to die (something he is an expert at) is a very manipulative way of getting her to capitulate and conform, fast!  Heaping on the guilt and shame certainly works.  It's also a great way to devalue a person.  Lots of MKs feel secondary to their parents' ministries, and I was no exception, despite being involved in that ministry.  I understood that preaching and teaching God's Word would always come first, before family.  Sure, missionaries love their kids.  But they love God more, right?  I believed that, if I were on the altar of sacrifice, there would be no hesitation.

In the morning I passed on the word that I'd decided to be a good little daughter and be a Fundamentalist again, so there would be no need to either call Ron Williams or buy plane tickets to move to the States.

Not rebellious anymore

And that was that. I was poised to begin my freshman year at Bob Jones University as a tried and confirmed Fundamentalist, one who refused to let herself question, refused to doubt, and who was intent on having higher standards than anyone else.  Because image is everything.

Lenten Project: Day Seven

I was a rebellious kid, so defined because I secretly listened to country music (I thought it was heavy metal), enjoyed CCM, and wore jeans a couple times before my parents decreed them not to be sinful after all. Oh, and I went to a couple movies in the cinema.

I dressed the part. Sneakers instead of ladylike sandals.  Vests over longsleeved shirts or tshirts instead of blouses or dresses. I wore as short of a skirt hem as I could get away with (so, about to the middle of my knee).  I wore "cool shades."  I tried to be grunge.

This was not an easy outfit to wear in 95 degree Caribbean weather!

If these rebellious behaviours sound unrebellious to you, you've got to understand, to a patriarchal, Fundamentalist father, image is everything.  Especially as all eyes were supposedly on us since we were missionaries, the highest of God's spiritual callings.

We kids dressed modestly because that was the way to "bring glory to God."  And modesty was defined very strictly.  We read books about it, heard sermons about it, lectured one another about it, all for the glory of God.

Thank God this book has gone out of print.

Once, as an 11 year old, I asked my mother while were shopping at the flea market in Miami, "Mom, can I have pants?"

She looked at me with disapproval. "We don't wear pants."  Not five steps away stood her own mother, who had driven and accompanied us.  She was wearing pants.

So the message was clear: we were better, more holy than anyone else, even our own grandmother, because we adhered to stricter standards of modesty.

When our clothes didn't come from the missionary barrel or Goodwill, we handmade them.  Long dresses and culottes were the fashions we displayed.  We usually ended up looking like homeless persons, but the goal was to be identified as godly.

Bob Jones University visit, 1998

While on a solo visit to my grandparents when I was a teen, I bought myself a pair of ill-fitting jeans.  (I also bought a Barbie, since I'd never been allowed to own one.  I didn't realise that normal teenage girls don't buy or actually play with Barbies.)  Upon going home to Grenada after my visit, I hid my contraband carefully in my luggage.  It was still found and tsked over during the public unpacking of the bags.  I wasn't made to throw away my things, but I wasn't allowed to wear those jeans either, or openly play with the Barbies.  Eventually, the shame and guilt got to be too heavy, and I repented, packed up my rebellious items, and burned them in the metal trash bin in the backyard.  My reformed behaviour didn't last long, and I fell right back into my sinful, immodest, rebellious ways.

I'm the one in black culottes, with brown shoes, cool shades, and messy hair.

Dad's modesty rules had biblical basis, of course, just like every other law he preached and taught to us.  We girls were not allowed to wear "men's clothing," because the Bible said that was an abomination.  And the whole skirt-must-cover-knees thing was based on a verse about Old Testament priests' garments.  Our modest outfits reflected our respect and honour of our father, our ruler and head of the family.  Of course, if we ever wore any immodest garment, like a sleeveless blouse, we would be causing the men around us to sin because they would have no other choice but to lust.  (I remember one reason given for the old no-pants-on-women rule at Bob Jones University was that it protected us girls from getting raped while off campus.  Think about that one for a moment.  Wouldn't it be easier to rape a girl wearing a skirt??)  Therefore, the only way to protect ourselves was to dress like hobos.

In 1998, we attended the Quinceanera party of a girl from our home church.  We didn't own anything fancy enough to wear (homeschoolers don't get prom or school dances), so our mom took us to Goodwill, where we three eldest girls picked out what we imagined were fashionable gowns.  Only when we got to the party and saw what everybody else was wearing (normal late 90's party attire) did we realise how uneducated and naive we were.  It was not a fun realisation.

We honestly had no idea we were at least 10 years out of date because our mother said we looked amazing!

But when we moved from Grenada to Singapore, we suddenly were allowed to wear pants.  At first, it was just the billowy pants in the punjabis or salwar suits we started wearing (and I still wear them to this day, because they're so comfortable and pretty).

Then we gradually started wearing pants, and then jeans.  Our parents said we were allowed now because of Chinese culture (pants are considered very modest, and whores are known to prefer dresses, according to our dad).  But those Bible verses the previous family modesty rules had been based on didn't just cease to exist.  It never made complete sense to me why we rejected Scripture in order to conform to culture.  Southeastern Asian culture is okay, but American culture is not?  The double standard (and change in standards without apology or explanation) left me questioning the validity of Fundamentalist teaching once again.