Lenten Project: Seventh Fearless Friday (Good Friday)

One thing that missionary kids excell at is in reveling in their natural habitat. From swings to elaborate treehouses from which to launch on zip lines, we certainly created plenty of opportunities for thrills. 

Even when my family was on deputation, raising monetary support to go to Grenada, we had a nice wooden swing in the backyard of our house in Sharon, PA. There were some nice playgrounds in that area, too, and I have vague but fond memories of playing when I was a little girl. 

But it wasn't till we got to Grenada that our outdoor habitats got more awesome. At one house, an old plantation manor house with two and a half acres of land filled with tropical fruit trees, Dad built us girls a double decker treehouse.

This is one of the breathtaking views we had from that house.

We also had a little platform over some roots that was our hammock space. When Dad was putting up an even longer rope swing, he asked for a volunteer to test it with him. My sister Lizzy stepped forward, unafraid that Dad's knot tying might not hold. Sure enough, the rest of us girls had our doubts vindicated! On the backswing, the rope broke, and Dad and Lizzy fell to the ground, landing on some big above-ground roots. Dad landed on Lizzy, and Mom was certain he'd killed her or broken bones or caused internal bleeding. At first, Lizzy assured everybody she was fine, but when Mom continued to fuss and Dad kept acting so contrite, she began to ham it up, whimpering and letting her arms hang limply while she got carried with great fanfare into the house. She got to spend the rest of the day on a pile of cushions, eating the entire sent-from-America Tootsie Roll stash. With rewards like that, the rest of us girls felt sorry we hadn't volunteered after all!

At the next house we lived at in Grenada, we took it to the next level and had a four  storey treehouse, complete with super long rope swing. 

Come to think of it, we Schaefer girls haven't had much luck with rope swings, because Mary was swinging on this one once and ended up flipping over the nearby retaining wall to land on her back on some coconuts. Dad was so scared she'd broken her back that he drove the little red car down the hill to get her and drive her back up to the house so she wouldn't walk. But Mary was too good and honest to let our parents feed her all the American candy when she wasn't really injured.

Aside from rope swings and hammocks, the favourite contraption at MKs' houses was the zip line. A couple of our friends had great tree lines in their yards that were perfect for their zip line setups. We'd spend hours taking turns hurling our bodies from tops of makeshift ladders (slats nailed into coconut trees) while hanging on tightly to small metal pipes suspended from the zip line. Only be careful you don't slam into the tree into the other end!!

One missionary family lived right on the edge of the rainforest, so we'd go exploring and hiking whenever we visited them. There was a small quicksand pool that Darrell always told us we'd get sucked down into our deaths if we even stepped a toe in. Scared me spitless everytime he ominously warned us. If it was really that dangerous, I wonder at our parents for letting us go play around it! More likely he was just being his annoying self and teasing me (probably made all the sweeter for him since I swallowed it every single time!).

I grew up climbing mango trees and spending all day up there, reading. If I got hungry, I could always reach out a hand and pick a snack!

Growing up so close to nature is something I really appreciate about my childhood. While it's a miracle none of us ever got seriously injured, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-five

We used to have lots of kids' clubs for spiritual instruction in Grenada.  Not only did our mom teach all the boys and girls, but we kids, especially me and my sister Mary, were teachers.  We'd walk through a village and invite all the kids we saw on the street playing cricket to come on out to our kids' club under the mango tree up the road every week. Dozens of kids would come regularly, and we eventually started having these in our church, or in the other IFB churches on the island.

We used Kings Kids curriculum in Grenada because it was cheaper than Awana, plus it was KJV-only (even though we weren't--yeah, I never quite understood it either).  We had flannel graph, of course, and lots of stories of missionaries or kids who almost died, but got miraculously saved at the last minute.

Because I had to be a teacher, I was supposed to always have all the spiritual answers. But I didn't.  I could lead the songs (Stop! And let me tell you... and My God is so Big and Who's the King of the Jungle?) with lots of enthusiasm. Tell the stories using all the voices so that the kids were hanging off the edges of their seats, anxious to hear what would happen next.  I could lead kids to the Lord using the Wordless Book faster than Dad could shimmy up a coconut tree.  But in my heart I had so many questions and doubts that I felt like nothing but a faker.

There was little room in our ministry for a daughter who wanted to ask tough questions or be free to reject what she didn't believe.  I knew better than to rock the boat too much, because when I did, the whole island erupted.  And my questions never did get answered. So I learned to just keep on teaching, keep on leading songs, keep on acting out missionary stories during storytelling, and turn off my brain.

In Singapore, I was a Sunday School teacher.  Just a teenager, teaching other kids.  Nowadays I get uncomfortable with the very idea of untrained Sunday School teachers, and I prefer that my kids' church class leaders all have background checks and lots of training.

Lenten Project: Sixth Fearless Friday

My sister Mary has always been my best friend out of everybody in the world, probably because she's the person who I've been closest to the longest (by virtue of the fact that we're only 15 months apart in age).  She's been my foil, my sidekick, my confidant, my confessor, and my challenger.

From the very beginning, Mary has made me a better person, a better sister.  Even though I'm the oldest, she was always the designated "girl in charge" when our parents went out and left us kids at home.  It's because she's the most responsible kid.  And she has the gift of peacemaking, which is a good for being in charge of the rest of us rabble-rousers.  She's taught me through example how to love my sisters and respect my parents, even when I don't agree with them.  She perfectly bridges the gap between being her own person and being loyal to others.

As kids, we shared a room (along with all the the other sisters, of course), and got along the best. I frequently fought with my other younger sisters, but Mare and I rarely squabbled.  Even though I was the bad kid and she the good kid, we evened each other out.  I've been daring and liked to push the limits with our parents, and she's been safe and liked to quietly conform.  We meet in the middle to compromise and it works really well in our sisterly partnership.

One time, though, we both agreed to be bad together, and it was glorious!  Here's the whole marvelous story, in her own words:

One night Hannah and I were aching for pickles. We were only allowed ½ a pickle on grilled-cheese-sandwich nights. We longed for more. After the house was quiet and we heard dad march up to his room, we sneaked down to the kitchen. Hannah was the first to take the glass pickle jar from its gleaming pedestal in the refrigerator door.

“Quick! You’re letting the light out!” I said.

She sat down on the floor with the jar between her feet and tried to turn the lid. It was too hard for her. I had always been known as the jar opener. Even Mom sometimes came to me for help with jars of jelly that were to tight for her. I was proud of my reputation. I took the jar from Hannah and tried to open it, but it still wouldn’t open. Finally I gave in to the old knife trick. Hannah handed me a butter-knife from the silverware drawer and I banged its butt against the lid. After two or three taps the lid gave and I pulled it off.

The next minute we were indulging in the wonders of pickled cucumbers. By the time we were satisfied, the jar was empty. Hannah said that no one would suspect us if we just put the jar back into the fridge leaving the pickle water in it. So that is what we did. And she was right. No one asked us if it was us . . . specifically. Dad did ask a few days later, “Okay! Who put the pickle jar back into the fridge EMPTY!?” He hates it when we do that.

When she joined me at Bob Jones University as a freshman in 2002, she became my roommate (along with two others in that tiny room).  We went to meals together, attended Artist Series programs together, reminded one another to brush our teeth and write to Mom.  Since, after Christmas break, classes often started on or around my birthday, she'd be the person who celebrated with me, who never forgot I was a older by another year.

She was a bridesmaid in my first wedding, and I've always been the tiniest bit offended that she didn't ask me to be in hers. I did have weird hair that year, though, so maybe that's why.  She's the only sister who RSVPed 'yes' to my sacramental marriage ceremony last year, the only sister who chose to come and celebrate my new marriage and new family.  Her van broke down on the way, but, dangit, she was actually trying hard to be there, and that counts so much in my eyes, since none of my other sisters even bothered to try (I don't count my youngest sister, who was there with my parents, because she's still a part of my parents' household, and when they changed their minds and decided to come to my wedding, she, by extension, was brought along).

Even though I'm the eldest Schaefer girl, she's the one we sisters all look to for leadership, the one who makes the wise decisions we can trust.  When Dad was busy and Mom was distracted by whichever new baby we had at the time, Mary stepped up and took the reins.  She's like a mini matriarch to us.  She's always been like that.  She's our mother hen.  Mother Mary.

Of course, now, she's all grown up, and she's a real mother.  Her husband and two sons are weeks away from flying away to Togo, West Africa, to minister on the mission field.  Second generation missionaries (both of them, since her husband, Andrew, is the son of missionaries, too), serving God and loving others.

Mary is the only sister who has intentionally set out to get to know my husband right from the start, to actively be a part of my life.  She's the one who has visited my family in DC, who has called, emailed, messaged, and texted when too long has passed between communication.  She's the only one out of my whole family who has met all my kids, who rejoices with me when new milestones are achieved, who drives for hours to come to birthday parties, who listens without judging when I whine about the tough parts of parenting.  She's the one who is willing to discuss theology with me, even though we don't agree on everything anymore.  

Mary is an encourager, a vibrant model of Christ.  She is compassion personified, a reconciler.  I'm going to miss her when she's gone, far away to Togo.  But I'm confident that doesn't mean she'll be out of my life, because she's the kind of friend who will never forsake, never abandon.  Mary is the one I want to be like when I grow up.

Join the conversation

Yesterday was National Siblings Day.  (I found that out after this post was planned, coincidentally.)  Tell me about your favourite sibling and why you look up to him or her.
If you're an only child, is there any one in your life who you wish was your sibling?

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-two

Since I grew up Fundy and went to FundyU, I didn't really learn to dress myself properly till I left college.  I remember going into Goodwill with my family during short trips to the States, and just looking through all the clothes for something I liked which would also fit in the strict modesty guidelines of my parents.  I never looked for the correct size or for matching pieces.  I used a lot of safety pins, and many of my clothes were either homemade or altered in some way to make them fit and also be more modest.  I was wearing a lot of size mediums when I should have been wearing extra smalls.  Or I'd pair a regular tshirt with my lovely god-honouring culottes.

I had an awesome dark green denim jumper dress with a floral cotton skirt, but it was an inch too short, so my mom added a long ribbon of lace to the bottom of the hem.  Viola!  It was modest. It was also really odd looking.  I thought I was so cool wearing it, though, because the colours were unusual and, I imagined, rather grunge.  Incidentally, a missionary kid from a neighboring island wrote me a letter after a short visit when I'd worn the jumper and told me she could no longer be my friend because of my wearing that worldly outfit. She said it indicated a heart problem.  We tried to become friends again in college, but it never worked out.  I was just way too worldly for her.

When I came to the States for good, I was so confused by styles and what was in and what was out.  I still didn't understand that clothing was made in sizes and I probably had a size I ought to be looking for, instead of just a style.  I never got both right at the same time.  So when I bought my first pair of shorts (a huge milestone for me, who grew up believing girls who wore shorts were slutty), I was thrilled that the waistline fit me perfectly, and didn't notice that they were old man shorts.  I thought I was being so daring and cutting edge, fashion-wise, because my knobby knees were showing.

The first time I ever wore a real bathing suit, I was in my teens, and it was only allowed by my parents because I was helping at our home church's summer camp, and during the counselor/helper swim time I needed something other than a dress to swim in (for safety reasons, the rulebook said).  So they got me a hand-me-down one piece bathing suit that was way to big for me.  I would have been more modest if I'd just gone swimming naked, because that swim suit gaped in the crotch like you wouldn't believe, and the straps didn't stay up.  But I didn't know that bathing suits were supposed to be skintight, so I had no idea that anything was wrong--I was so excited just to be wearing "normal" swim clothes like all the other girls.  One camper asked me why on earth I was wearing a bathing suit that clearly didn't fit and was ugly besides, and it dawned on me that I wasn't like all the other girls after all.  I was incredibly mortified.

Once I got to college I realised that I could really have a little fun with this old fashioned dress requirement (even though I still had no clue how to match clothing--I thought brown shoes went with black dresses just fine, and a blue belt made the outfit perfect!).  I found this old fur coat at a goodwill and would wear it during every fire drill.  Bob Jones University at the time conducted the fire drills of the dorms at night after lights out, so all of us girls were in nightgowns and pjs.  The Public Safety officers (mostly male students) would leer at us as we filed out of the dorms, and it was pretty humiliating.  So covering up with a huge coat had a dual purpose of keeping me warm and fending off the boys' stares.

Have you ever worn something that you thought was cool, only later found out was about twenty years out of date, or horribly ill-fitting?

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-one

Confession time: when I was 15, I had this amazing mix tape with country music on it.  I thought it was heavy metal because I'd been taught all music with a beat was "rock," and therefore evil, and the designation, "heavy metal" just meant really, really bad.  I'd never listened to any real heavy metal, so I honestly had no idea that calling country music (Shania Twain!) that was ludicrous.

I got this bad music mix tape from my best friend, who, when I begged him to make me a copy of his Lion King soundtrack (also banned in my house, due to the wicked African beat), went a step farther and mixed me a tape full of jamming tunes, the better to corrupt me. He also taught me how to lie with a straight face when my parents suspiciously asked what I was listening to on my walkman.  ("Patch the Pirate, of course!"  Only, you don't say, "of course," because then it's obvious you're lying.  Just look distracted, make brief but not sustained eye contact, and try not to appear guilty.)

Ahh, Michael taught me many things, but how to say I'm listening to Patch
when I'm really listening to Shania is probably my favourite.

One time, I was home alone with my youngest sister while everyone else went on the grocery shopping trip.  I'd gotten to stay home and take care of the baby, and I knew I had at least an hour and a half before they all got back.  So I started recording a duplicate of my precious bad music tape.  I'd already been caught with it more than once, and had managed to save it from destruction, but I knew next time I'd better have a backup copy so my life wouldn't be over if it got ritualistically unwound and burned before my eyes.

That's my walkman, but it really IS playing Patch the Pirate here.

I was playing the tape while it copied on the stereo, enjoying being able to listen to it through regular speakers out loud in the sunshine instead of through my crappy earphones in the middle of the night.  The sliding glass door was open, but the gate in front of it was closed and locked.  The front door was also locked.

I kept going outside to check the driveway and squint over the hill to see if the van was coming home, so I could rush back inside to turn off the music and hide my tapes.  I held the door open each time, since it could swing closed and automatically lock, but on the last time, it slipped out of my fingers and slammed shut.  I was locked outside!  The baby was trapped inside, alone, the evil rock music was blaring, and any moment my family would come home and I'd be so much in trouble!

I slid to the ground in front of the door, crying and begging God to help me.  I ran around the house, trying to figure out another way in.  There was none.  All the windows had bars on them, which even I, skinny as I was, could not squeeze through.  I swore to God that if He saved me, I'd give up my evil rock music lovin' ways.  Finally, on the porch, I stopped and peered in at the baby, happily gurgling at me.  She couldn't open the door, or even give me the keys.

The keys!  I remembered that we'd kept spare keys hanging on the end of the curtain rod over the sliding glass door.  If I could pull the curtains down, the rod would fall, and I could pull the keys out and let myself back in!

It worked.  I was saved, and just in time, too.  Shortly after I got up from kissing the baby, kissing the ground, kissing the keys, kissing the stop button on the stereo, and kissing the bad music tapes, the family van roared up the hill and into the driveway.  The Fam spilled out and conscripted me to help put groceries away, never suspecting my bad music tapes were safely tucked away in my hiding place.

This is the gate and the curtains that saved me,
and this is my bad music lovin' self.

I didn't make good on my vow to God until I'd listened to my tapes a few times more.  Then I put them in the burn bin out back.  I even ripped out their guts and tied knots in the tape so I wouldn't change my mind and go dig them back out again later.  I wish I'd kept them.

Do you have anything in you got rid of in your past, but wish you'd kept?

Lenten Project: Fifth Fearless Friday

The Schaefer family likes to travel and hike.  That's what we've done for years, together as a family, enjoying time together outdoors.

From the very beginning, in Grenada, we often went hiking together.  Grenada has some amazing mountains and trails, and even a few forts leftover from the colonial period.  We'd drive up to the old volcano-turned-crater-lake, Grand Etang, which the locals claimed was bottomless (it's only 20 feet deep).  If we were lucky, we'd see the remains of an animal sacrifice made by the Spiritual Baptists.  Some of our friends liked to tease us that a sea monster dwelled in the bottomless depths, but I never saw anything but fish, which we liked to catch in little nets we made.

Sometimes, Dad would organize country-wide church events, where all the other IFB churchgoers would be invited to go adventuring with us.  We went hiking up Mount Qua Qua and visited the Seven Sisters waterfalls, went mossy rock-hopping across rivers and streams (Mom always fell in), swung on the rope swing into the waterfall pools, ate off banana leaves, waved our arms to keep the monkeys from pulling our hair, and admired the beautiful, brightly coloured birds and flowers.

It was always so cold up the mountains--at least 70 degrees!
So we'd bundle up in sweatshirts every time.

Our love of hiking didn't end when we left the West Indies.  While on furlough in '98, we hiked all over the States' East coast, enjoying the Appalachians and Smokies.  We'd goof off and have fun together.  My sister Elizabeth liked to do "tour guide" voices and make things up as we trekked along, and she always had us in stitches, laughing as we hiked.

Hannah and Mary attempt to murder the tour guide

Singapore has a hill in the middle of it.  I say hill because, after Grenada's volcanic mountains, Singapore's little Bukit Timah is like a backyard stroll.  We still had fun hiking it, though.  We laughed at all the rules and restrictions--that's Singapore for you!

And even more recently, with so many of us girls grown and married, my parents would come back to the States every year and occasionally rent a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina or Georgia.  We'd go hiking in the Appalachians.  

Dad's antics have only gotten crazier over the years, and they've rubbed off on the rest of us. One time, in Grenada, Dad grabbed a snake from the bushes along the trail, and instead of slithering away in fright, like usual, the snake wrapped around his arm and wouldn't let go.  One of the church girls had to pry it off of his arm where it was constricting him.  That incident hasn't stopped him from snatching at snakes and critters on the trail, though.  He still does it!

Like that time he wore a dry cleaners bag as a poncho

Dad likes to be as embarrassing as possible when we pass other hikers on the trail, and it used to make us girls want to dive off a cliff.  Now we all join in and try to embarrass our spouses, or better yet, Mom.  Lizzy is still the master at "tour guide voice," though, and her husband is the perfect foil.  Since we grew up in Grenada before it was as heavily tourist-ised like it is now, we're used to trails with no signs and no rules.  Our only guidelines were: make it up as you go along, bring a compass so you don't get lost, and always respect the map reader in the group.  Also, stick close to the designated snack-carrier.

  

These more recent family get togethers provided time for catching up, family pictures, and relaxing.  We haven't been all together since a year or two before my divorce, though. Most of my family hasn't even met my husband, much less my stepson and new daughter. And now that my beloved sister Mary is moving to Togo with her family to serve on the mission field, a complete Schaefer family gathering will probably be put off till many years in the future.  Hopefully the next time we're all together won't be a funeral or something, but that's the reality we face, since our family is now scattered all over the world. Missionary problems!

   

 

My fanciful dream is that we can all forgive one another and leave behind past hurts in order to forge a new future of unconditional love and acceptance for those in our family, setting aside personal interpretations of the Bible and theological beliefs to really live out the Gospel to one another.  It would take a lot of humility, which is not a staple in Fundamentalism.  But someday, someday not too far away, I hope we can all go hiking together again, joking with one another again, listening to Lizzy's "tour guide voice" again. There is a whole generation of grandkids who haven't yet been embarrassed by their grandad on the trail, or heard their grandma freak out that they'd die if they climb that tall tree/eat that fruit/jump over that stream/touch that unidentified animal.  And before the chance is gone, I'd like my kids to experience that, along with their cousins they've never met.

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-four

I was eight before it dawned on me that my skin was not going to turn black if I just stayed out in the sun more.  It was a pretty devastating realisation, since I'd been looking forward to the day when I'd look just like everybody else, and especially for my hair to look good in cornrows like my friends.  I'd imagined that I only needed a few more hours of sunlight baking time to get my skin to darken to a lovely mahogany, my hair to kink up into perfect puffiness, my eyes magically change to cocoa brown.

When it didn't happen, I was disappointed, to say the least.  I resigned myself to being white, but that didn't mean I really liked it.  We kids used to mock the American tourists who showed up on the cruise ships every week, laughing at their clothes, their mannerisms, and, yes, their skin colour.  It was just such an odd sight to us.  I really thought I was Grenadian, and people from my own country were "other" and alien to me. Visiting the States, which was very rare, was always a massive culture shock, partly because of all the white people.  It was strange for us to see more than two or three whites at a time.

We were American kids, yet not, because the culture we lived in and loved was Grenadian (and later Singaporean, and then Indian for my sisters).  But we weren't Grenadian either. We were Third Culture Kids.

I became more aware of the differences between me and my friends after that realisation. Despite being racist against white people, I also started to develop a prejudice against Islanders.  My parents never explicitly told us were were better than the people they were ministering to, but there was still this atmosphere of superiority, an air of, "we're better than you," that infected me.  I think it was because many Grenadians didn't have solid educations, and those that did weren't very respected by my parents.

I found a pamphlet of my dad's that he'd gotten while he was in seminary at Bob Jones University. It talked about the necessity of keeping the races separate in order to forestall the coming one world government, which would herald the End Times.  During this time period (the 90's), BJU was still staunchly against the races mingling, strictly enforcing their interracial dating ban.  The school's founder had preached vehemently against desegregation in the South, and that just spilled over into a lot of very evil teachings that the school and its constituents (like my parents) didn't give up till as late as 2001.

I didn't understand why, if black people were good enough to save (through witnessing and open air crusades), they weren't good enough to marry.  But, even though I didn't understand it, I didn't question it.  My superiority to my friends was an attitude I picked up from my parents, and they were right about everything in my eyes (till they weren't).  We were there to save those people, but they'd never be our equals.  My mom, the largest role model I had, didn't have any Grenadian women as close friends or confidants, so I should keep Grenadian girls at arm's length, too, and focus on deepening my friendships with other (white) missionary kids.

Other missionary kids fell in and out of puppy love with native friends, but I never did. There were a couple boys that developed crushes on me and would call me, though.  I remember one, Che was his name, I met at a King's Kids Club we held in a village.  He'd call and promise that if I married him, he'd be the one to get a job and I'd be the one to stay home to watch tv and have babies. I just laughed at him because I didn't know what to say.

I knew, though, that I wouldn't be marrying any Grenadian boys.  I was destined to go to Bob Jones University and meet the man God intended for me, get married right after graduation, and we'd serve God together, maybe even as missionaries.  Because that's what my parents planned and prayed for me.

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-three

In the summer of 1994, I was 11 years old and traveling all over the States with my family on a short furlough. We lived in a trailer which we pulled around with a borrowed truck.  At one point, I was riding alone in the truck with Dad.  I don't remember where the other kids were--maybe riding in another vehicle with Mom.  At any rate, it was just and my daddy, and I was thrilled to get some alone time with him, since usually we all had to share him.  (Large family problems, y'know.)

The inside of the small trailer. The youngest child got her own bed...in the bathtub. So lucky!

I remember watching the white lines on the highway disappear under us, and vividly recall gazing at the glove compartment, absentmindedly staring at the plastic latch button. Nothing much was going through my mind, other than a stray thought that I wished I could think of something witty to say to impress my dad.

Hannah, 11, with two of her sisters

Then, out of the blue, he said, "Tell me your spiritual experiences, Hannah."

And I had no idea what he meant.  I asked him.  He just repeated what he'd said.  "Share with me your spiritual experiences with our Lord."

I got scared, because I didn't have any. And I didn't know what he wanted me to say.

Now, in the Fundamentalist world, the hatred for charismatics is strong.  The only context I had for "spiritual experience" was from sermons raging about those mushy minded Bible twisters and stiff-necked heretics called charismatics.  I didn't have any of those experiences, and if I did, I wouldn't be a true Christian.

So I thought it was a test.  Was my dad was trying to trap me into admitting that I was a heretic, or an unbeliever?  My mind scrambled with something convincing to say, and I may have babbled something mostly unintelligible, but it of course didn't pass inspection.

He repeated himself several times while I dissolved into a sobbing mess, my lack of "spiritual experiences" to share making me believe I was unsaved and on my way to hell.  I could imagine the heat of the flames, ready to swallow me up for not being a true believer. Maybe I failed the test by crying for ten miles.  But if I had had any spiritual experiences to share, it would have proven I was a heretic.  So it was a lose/lose, and I was the biggest loser of them all, having fallen from God's Grace.

Two of these girls don't belong. One isn't even a Schaefer girl (and none of us remember
who she was), and the other (Hannah, second from the left) was a doubter of her salvation.

This encounter formed a foundation to my childhood suspicion that I was not very tightly held in God's hand, that not only were my parents ashamed of me, but God also wouldn't mind if I didn't turn out to be one of the Elect after all. Sure, the Fundamentalist teaching is "once saved, always saved," but there are plenty of things a person can do to prove that he or she was never actually saved in the first place, like coming out as gay, getting divorced, or becoming a charismatic.

Apparently, there was some sort of "spiritual experience" that was acceptable for a Fundamentalist, and necessary for proving one's status as a believer.  But, at eleven years old, I couldn't figure out what it was.  Later on, in college, I'd be asked something similar: "How do you know for certain that if you die tonight, you'll go to heaven, Hannah?"  And my answers then would still not be satisfactory ("Because I asked Jesus into my heart when I was three.").  It wasn't until I discovered Sacramental theology that I realised my assurance in salvation comes from nothing I can or have done.  It all rests squarely on Christ, and His work in me through the waters of Baptism.

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 Thirteen

I grew up reading Christian romance novels.  No, I devoured Christian romance novels.  Beverly Lewis, Lori Wick, Gilbert Morris--you say the author's name, and I'd probably read the author's books more than once.

It wasn't till I started reading more of the classics, like Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, Sir Arther Conan Doyle, Dickens, and Shakespeare, that I started to realise Christian fiction was a farce.  Most of it was horribly written, flat, inaccurate, and preachy.

But the deeper danger in Christian romantic fiction is that it brainwashes young girls into believing that those stories are the epitome of true Christian relationships. The patriarchal focus on women's submission to male authority was a strong theme, especially in bonnet rippers.  Many of the stories featured flat out abuse of women, with the main character eventually saving the male counterpart through her meekness of spirit.  Sadly, some of my favourite books by Lori Wick fell into this category.

This girl spends the whole book throwing away her
independence in order to be dominated by this man.

Most of these books just help cement the whole ideal of "get married, have kids, live happily ever after" that was pushed on us as kids.  Of course, my parents added that we should get married to someone called to be a missionary or pastor.  That was the highest goal.

I still feel like I somehow let my parents down by first marrying a lousy EMT (someone who helps people stay alive long enough to get to the hospital still isn't as valuable to God as someone who saves souls, amen?) and now a public accountant, who does other people's taxes all day long.  I struggle with the deep down suspicion that these two professions couldn't possibly be "pleasing to the Lord."  Unless one is "in ministry," one's life is wasted, I grew up believing.

I never read a Christian romance book that had an accountant as the main male character.  Have you?  Maybe as the bad guy, before he "comes to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ."  Then he renounces it all as filthy lucre and moves to deepest darkest Africa to be a missionary to the unwashed natives.  But not before finding a submissive "help meet."

A couple of my sisters have "made it" in life, though, according to the ideal presented in these romance books.  One is a missionary, another is married to a pastor and they're planning on going to the mission field.  The rest of us are failures, I guess.  My mother never talks on Facebook about how proud she is of the rest of us, but those two who have achieved the ideal get lauded a lot.  I don't envy them, but I feel sort of sad that the rest of us aren't as valued to get a positive Facebook mention now and again.

Even as a young girl, before getting into the Winslow series or Amish bonnet rippers, I read the young adult Christian fiction offerings of Bethany House publishers, like the Mandie books, a series steeped in racism and unreality.  While I did also enjoy the Nancy Drew books and Hardy Boys series, I always wondered why they weren't all happily dating or married by the end.  I knew Nancy couldn't keep on sleuthing forever, because she'd have to submit to her husband and stay home to honour him.

These books made me think that this really was the ideal: to marry, submit my will, dreams, and desires to my husband, produce a houseful of kids, and have a happy smile all the time.  Even better if I could play the piano at church every Sunday, too.

Taken alongside heavy preaching toward this same goal, these books were a poisonous pill.  I honestly believed I'd be a failure at life unless I got married right out of college.  My parents further encouraged that notion by telling us girls that we'd find our husbands at college.  Education was secondary to finding our mate.  We could use our degrees to help our husbands in the ministry.  It never entered my mind that I would ever support myself with a job, using the skills I'd learned in college.  The notion was absurd.  And worldly. The husband is the breadwinner, and the wife is his supporter in all things, and beneficiary of his generosity.

They told us about all the fun dates we'd experience, the courting culture at BJU, and that we'd be free to marry once we had our diploma in hand.  (Dad even made a vow to not attend or sanction the wedding of any of us girls until we presented him with our Bob Jones University diploma.  I think of my sister who got expelled and realise that it sucks to be the kid who is now going to graduate from somewhere else.  Dad takes his foolish vow very seriously, a lot more seriously than his daughter's heart.)

I'm still an avid reader today, but I have more discerning tastes.

My expectations about dating, based on these Christian romance books, were so far out of the realm of reality that I completely floundered once I got to college.  There were no "gentle eyed, kind-hearted men" who were attracted by my fervent attempts at a "quiet and godly demeanour."  BJU was and is filled with immature boys, some of whom turned out to be sexual predators.  My attempts to be submissive landed me in abuse situation after abuse situation, and I didn't even realise it.  I thought I was just doing God's (and my father's) will, just like all those characters in all those Christian romance novels I read.

What about you?  What were some of the books you read growing up?  Did you have a favourite Christian author or a favourite series?  How did those books shape your life?

Lenten Project: Day Twelve

My sisters and I were all homeschooled from Kindergarten though high school.  At first, the reasoning was because, in Grenada, the schools were all terrible.  But when we moved to Singapore, we were too dumb to make it in the academically strong schools there, so Mom just kept homeschooling us.

We primarily used A Beka books.  We had a few BJPress textbooks, too, and dabbled in Saxon Math.  Once, we used Alpha & Omega curriculum for a year.

I hated it.  In 1998, we were on furlough in the States, getting ready to transition to Singapore, and I was allowed to sit in on afternoon classes for a couple weeks at the school attached to our home church in Miami.  The thrill of daily being around other kids my age almost eclipsed the excitement of having a different teacher for each subject.  I loved it!

One other MK sat in classes that week with me, and we had an amazing time.

Some of my MK friends got to stay in the states and attend their senior years of high school in their home church's schools, and I was so jealous.  My parents wouldn't go for it when I begged to be allowed to stay behind while they went on to Singapore. Later I was glad, because I loved living in Singapore.

It wasn't till I did go on to college that I realised what a terrible education I'd received.  I barely knew how to write a research paper, and I certainly did NOT know how to cite sources, as I discovered to my dismay my freshman year.  It took me almost two semesters to figure it out and save my grades.  I certainly didn't know how to do any math at all--and barely scraped by in remedial math in college, only passing with the help of my teacher's private tutoring and padding of my grade.  (I still can't add or subtract anything past ten without the help of a calculator. I wish I were joking, but I'm not.)

The one thing I could do was read, and read very well and very fast I did all throughout my childhood, though I wasn't exposed to much beyond the classics and really badly written Christian fiction.

Part of the problem was that my mom had a degree in Elementary Education, and no training or skills in teaching high school.  So we just muddled along as best we could.  The videos we got for some of the upper grade subjects were from A Beka Books, which are poor school textbooks, and filmed at Pensacola Christian Academy, which had classrooms filled with sheltered Fundamentalist kids (which means that no one ever asked any deep or profound questions).

I only had a few video classes towards the end of my schooling.  Mostly I just had textbooks and workbooks. The curriculum itself was atrocious. A Beka books teaches everything through repetition and memorization, so there is little to no critical thinking required of the student.  I could get all my schoolwork done daily without engaging my intellect.  Besides, everything begins and ends with the premise of "God did it," so there's little reason to dig deeper or explore further. 

The Trail of Tears seems like a sad, terrible story about genocide? Well, God used it "to bring many Indians to Christ," my A Beka American history textbook said.

One of my history books from A Beka insisted that only ten percent of Africans can read and write, and that this illiteracy is the fault of Communists who have prevented missionaries from opening and maintaining educational institutions.

The Health textbook urged me not to like science for science's sake, or even to use science just to help people, because loving God should always come first.

The same textbook also taught me that sexually transmitted diseases are almost impossible to contract in a monogamous relationship such as marriage, since “people who live according to God’s standards of waiting until marriage to have sexual relations are very unlikely to acquire venereal diseases.”  With a sexual education limited only to that and LaHaye's Act of Marriage, which my mom gave me just after getting engaged, it's no wonder I was clueless about sex when I got married at the age of 22.

My favourite bit of scientific wisdom which came from one of my science textbooks was an explanation of electricity.  There's no way I can adequately describe the nonsense this schoolbook stated as fact, so I went and found a shot of this particular page.  I do remember that I was more interested in the girl in the picture than the words below.  I wondered what she was like, if she had siblings, and if she had lots of friends at school.  I also wondered just what in the world she was doing with that hairdryer.  So maybe I escaped anti-intellectual brainwashing in this particular case due to being distracted.

While homeschooling may be the best choice for some families, especially if they use a solid curriculum and expose their kids socially, for me, it wasn't so great.  I needed the challenge of other students competing for top spot.  I needed the social development that would have come from being around other kids my age who were not immature, socially-stunted Fundamentalists.  I needed the academic integrity which my textbooks simply could not offer.

A Beka was probably the worst, and that's what we mostly used.  But there were the times when we ditched the textbooks and created our own unit studies.  Those were great!  We did a big study on the American Civil War while we were on furlough once, and visited tons of battlefields and cemeteries all over the States.  We also did special history studies of the countries we lived in, going around to all the historical spots. I really enjoyed it, and I feel I learned more (and learned accurate information) during those times.  But those were few and far between.

Please tell me, because I really want to know, are regular schools as bad as this?  I was only homeschooled, and the sole "regular school" exposure I had was to Fundamentalist institutions.  Were your school textbooks like mine?

Lenten Project: Day Eleven

In the late 1990s, the Independent Baptist community in Grenada, West Indies, suffered a terrible split over the KJV Only issue.  And it was partially my fault.

In the States, Pensacola Christian College, my parents' alma mater, and Bob Jones University, where Dad went to seminary, were bitterly butting heads over the KJV issue.  In the islands, we IFB missionaries pretty much all used and loved the KJV, but didn't waste much time calling down hellfire on other versions (that is to say, we didn't have any Bible burning services for NIVs).

Dad, in his role as teacher at the Bible school we had connected to our church, wrote a paper on the issue for a student who started asking difficult questions about translations and inerrancy.  That student copied the paper and passed it around to his friends, who passed it around to their pastors, and all of a sudden, the country was embroiled in a fight.

Only, I didn't know about that student's stupid move at the time.  I only knew that Dad had written a paper, and, when overhearing my parents talking about it, asked for a copy and read it myself.  A lot of it went over my head, but the main points I gleaned were that the KJV had mistakes in translation, and that anyone who claimed that the English translation was re-inspired was an idiot.

I was pretty shocked that the Bible translation I used and memorised had errors in it.  I looked up the verses that appeared contradictory and problematic, and got more and more concerned.  If the KJV had mistakes in it, why were we using it?!

I tried talking to an MK best friend about it, but she didn't seem interested.  So I called my other MK best friend and spilled my guts and read verses and generally freaked out to her.  I made her promise not to tell her dad, because I was worried everybody's ministry would collapse if we didn't have an error-free KJV as our foundation.

As a side note, it's really interesting that Fundamentalist elevate Scripture to almost an idolatry.  It's always placed first in their lists of beliefs, before anything about God or Christ or the Gospel.  So it isn't that far out of the realm of possibility that Fundamentalism would collapse without the Bible, as though God's very existence is tied to a book.  That's the way we viewed the Bible, anyhow.

Well, my friend couldn't give me the reassurance I needed to shore up my shaken faith in the KJV, and instead got scared by my being scared. She went to her dad and asked him the same questions I'd asked her.  He figured out the source and called MY dad to berate him for letting me corrupt his daughter with anti-KJV propaganda.

I was even more scared after that, because I thought I was the cause and reason for the "discord between brethren."  Amazingly, I wasn't punished, but Dad admonished me to not say anything else about the issue.  He didn't bother to reassure me.  Maybe there was no reassurance to be had.

After a special evening meeting at a fellow pastor's church, people were gathered and chatting in the church courtyard when another national pastor came up and started yelling at my dad.  I was standing right beside him as this man ranted and raved and shook his finger under my dad's nose, accusing him of crazy things like dad's supposedly encouraging his students to quit using the KJV, and not preaching from the KJV anymore, etc.  Dad just stood there with a fixed smile on his face and didn't say much.  Meanwhile, my breathing was accelerating and a panic attack was imminent.  I couldn't understand why Dad didn't say something, anything!  He was letting this other pastor say hateful untruths about him, and he wasn't even defending himself, or, at the very least, moving the discussion to a private place.  I heard, "Get thee behind me, Satan," at one point, but little else.

Finally, I couldn't hold back my own fear-induced anger, and shouted at the pastor, "Who told you that?!" when he paused for breath.

I wasn't really looking for an answer, and I remember I said it at a point in the diatribe that didn't really match my question. But that's all I could think at the moment.  Who had told this pastor all these lies about my dad?  I knew it had been my best friend's father, and that he'd gotten his information indirectly from me, and somehow, it had all gotten twisted up and changed in the retelling, because now none of the accusations resembled anything I'd said.  I just knew it was all my fault, and that really, this pastor should have been yelling at me.

The pastor stopped yelling for a moment, and our fellow pastor's wife came and dragged me away.  I suppose it was obvious to her that this sort of fight shouldn't be taking place in front of children.  I was never more thankful for her in my life.  She recognised my fear and flew to the rescue, assuring me that my dad would be okay and that everything was all right.  I so desperately needed to hear those words.

The result of that confrontation was that a clear divide emerged among the island's IFB congregations and pastors.  Those with my dad, and those who remained KJV-Only.  Of course, Dad was still using and clearly preferring the KJV as well, but that didn't matter to these folks.  One had to be KJV-Only to count.

One way to identify KJV-Only churches is to notice if they refer to their Bible as the 1611 version.

After that, our missionary friends had to choose: were they with us or against us.  One fellow missionary's mission board instructed him to to have nothing to do with our family, to cease participating in joint church services and ministries (like my baptism), to go to the other side of the street if he saw my dad, to urge others to shun us.  But he refused, because he knew we'd done nothing wrong.  (To illustrate in how small a world the Fundamentalists live, that same mission board chairman later officiated my first wedding, not remembering the sordid past associated with my last name.)

The furor eventually died down, but when the dust settled, I'd lost my two best friends to the KJV-Only split. Their families were on the opposite side of the line in the sand.  The father of one of those former friends wrote to my parents' alma mater and told them we were wickedly burning KJVs or something, and the Campus Church dropped our support. That really devastated my mom.  She wrote a long tearful letter to the Hortons, but as far as I know they didn't deign to reply.

As a result, another missionary family became a lot closer and dearer to us, since we really had no one else. We kids needed our MK friends, and this family had seven kids!  Thus, my two best friends were now boys, because that's all that was available.  Good thing they were pretty awesome.  To this day I still think of them as brothers.

Michael and Daniel are a lot less weird than they appear.

As for me, me trust in Fundamentalists and their Bible remained shaky, and I'd lost all respect for the national pastors and other missionaries.  I realised that questioning discrepancies in the Bible was as off limits as questioning ridiculous unBiblical rules, and that the safest policy was keeping one's head down in compliance.