Letter to Our Parents

Dear parents,

I'm in several online groups consisting of thousands of the homeschool alumni of my generation, the "Joshua Generation", the products of the Christian homeschooling pioneers. And one major theme going on in our conversations right now is an overwhelming frustration that we cannot talk to our parents. We cannot be real with you. We want a relationship but don't know how to get past the mental and emotional walls you have put up to protect yourself, the denial that your choices for us caused pain. Your disapproval of our choices and rejection of how you raised us is thick enough to be cut with a knife, and weighs very heavy on our shoulders. Can we just for a moment sit here together, walls and guards down, and be honest with each other? There's so much we want to say to you, to help you understand. So much WE want to understand. So this is my attempt to give voice to so many, including myself.

Unless you're never on the internet, I'm sure you know by now that your kids' generation isn't turning out how you'd hoped and planned. How you were assured we would if you only followed the rules. Dissatisfaction, pain, anger, and disillusionment are plastered all over the internet by your children and their cohorts. Story after story written by the adult alumni of the homeschool movement, honest and real and painful. Stories of dysfunction and inability to cope in the real world because of the choices you made for them. Stories of pain suffered, feelings of betrayal, and honest, raw emotions that are probably hard for you to see and hear. Words like "spiritual abuse" everywhere, directed at you and the people you trusted to teach your children how to be godly. "Survivor blogs" are popping up, being written by your adult offspring. That's gotta hurt. We are walking away from so much that you held dear. We are raising our own kids so differently than you raised us. Even the leaders you followed have turned out to be frauds.

I've seen your reactions. Denial. Anger. Verbal lashings. Tears. Disbelief. Shunning. Excuses and justifications. Feelings of betrayal. Guilt. So much pain.

"How dare they!"
"We were just doing what we thought was best."
"We only wanted to protect you."
"We were trying to follow God the best way we knew how."
"We gave you the best we could and you repay us by rejecting it all and plastering your discontent all over the internet?!"
"You are dishonoring us by focusing on the bad!"
"You're just bitter and need to move on."
"We loved you and this is how you repay us?"
"It wasn't that bad."

I understand the sheer amount of unexpected consequences and the reactions of your children must be overwhelming. You didn't expect this. You did everything "right" and followed the people who had all the answers, who made promises about how your family would turn out if you did what they told you was "God's will". And when it didn't work, those teachers and their followers blamed you and your "rebellious" children. "You must not have followed the rules correctly." The broken relationships are like a knife in your heart.

Our rejection of your ways is not personal. It's not a "reaction", as we have been accused of ad nauseam. Many of us were taught to "stand alone", to figure out what was right and then go do it regardless of what everyone else was doing. Well....that's what we're doing. We have weighed the teachings of our past and found them wanting. We have chosen different paths for our own families, much like you did for yours. We have taken what was good and thrown out what was not, some of us throwing out everything because, honestly, there wasn't much good left to hold on to. Many of us are lost and dysfunctional, trying to put together pieces of a puzzle, trying to live in a world we were not prepared for because we were told we weren't part of it. Many of you have taken this as ungratefulness toward what you did for us, but this is not about you. This is about us....our lives, our choices, our own children who we must now make choices for. Can you please stop making this about our rejection of you and instead see it as our embracing of our own lives? We are your children yet we are not children anymore, many of us older than you were when you set out to raise your family the way you saw fit. We want to have relationship with you, but not as your children. As your equals. As friends. As fellow human beings. Please stop treating us as rebellious children. Think back to when you chose differently than your parents and remember what that was like before you treat us with the same disdain and disappointment.

For those of you invalidating our stories, saying "it wasn't that bad", can I ask you to take a step back for a moment? To gain a broader perspective? Because what may have been only a small part of your life, was our ENTIRE lives. You were adults when you chose to attend that Basic Seminar, when you picked up your first courtship books, when you decided to promote the modesty culture, when you chose to become part of a patriarchal system, when you made the choice to spend your kids' childhoods sheltered from the world in your own little reality and the culture you created. But us? We were born into it. We were raised our whole lives immersed in it. We spent the most formative years of our cognitive and emotional development in an alternate religious culture ruled by fear, shame, legalism, and authoritarianism. We had no choice. We knew nothing else. We had no other experience and knowledge and discernment to ground us like you did, to give us perspective, to compare anything to. For you, this was 10-20 years of your life. For us, it was our whole lives. It was all we knew. Our entire lives have been built upon a time period that was just a small part of your own life. So, yes, it was "that bad". Our experiences were nothing like yours and you'll have to see them through our eyes if you want to understand.

You had a different life before this, and a different one after. This homeschooling movement and the resulting culture is all we know. It made us who we are, for better or for worse. Our stories cannot be separated from it. We are the products of that movement. You were the facilitators who got to choose what affected you and what didn't. We didn't have the capacity as children to even begin to make that choice. What you only observed and instigated and perpetuated, we lived, felt, internalized, and became. 

You keep telling us we're overreacting. You're offended because we "don't appreciate" what you did for us. But this is not about you. How we tell our stories and work through the consequences of your choices for us is not about you. It's about us. Our lives. Our hearts, souls, minds, marriages, relationships, spiritual journeys, and futures. The things we write about how teachings like emotional purity, the umbrella of authority, modesty, and courtship affected us, how they hurt us, messed us up, how we're working through the messages we received and internalize....these things are not about you. We aren't telling our stories to "dishonor" you. We're telling them because truth sets free and light banishes darkness. Because wounds fester in silence and heal in openness. We can love you, forgive you, and have a relationship with you and still tell our stories. We HAVE to tell them and tell them truthfully. Because sometimes it's the only way to wade through the muck and the crap and the dysfunction that you inflicted on us and we are leaving behind.

Some of you have regrets. You look back and say "What were we thinking?!" You know you made mistakes, big ones, and you know it hurt us, hurt our relationship with you. Some of you are watching your children struggle to overcome the consequences of your choices for them and hurt for them and are angry at yourself. Can you please just say it? Be as open and honest as we are. You know what I don't hear in the reactions of our parents that I listed above? "We are so sorry." Why is that so difficult to say? I know it's scary to think that the choices you made damaged your children. I'm a parent. I have the same fears that my choices will hurt my kids. But as a parent, I cannot imagine NOT telling them "I'm sorry" when they come to me and lay bare their souls, and explain how I've hurt them and how they're healing. Yes, it hurts. But I guarantee that holding it inside and bearing that burden alone will hurt you and your children far more than being honest with them about your regret.

So many of us get it. We get that you were duped. That you were victims of spiritual abuse yourself, who went on to unwittingly inflict that abuse on your kids. Give us a chance to express that. To openly forgive and to honestly work through the anger and the pain with you. Many of us have forgiven you, but we cannot talk about it with you because you refuse to go there. It's easier for you to just deny the past, our pain, and your part in it. Keep that up, and the denial and facade will eat out your soul til there's nothing left, while we move on with our lives without you. We want to have a real relationship with you, to repair what was broken, but you are holding so tightly to your elephants in the room, and we have to stay on the surface and walk on eggshells around you, playing your game of pretending that everything was peachy, trying to live well in the present while denying the past. Meanwhile we are frustrated and wonder how much longer we can keep up your charade. Please stop. As scary as it is to face pain you caused, it's much worse to pretend it never happened. So many of us are ready to start building a real relationship with you, to include you in this conversation. But it's your move. I can't promise it'll be easy or good, that' everything will turn out the way it is supposed to, but it will be worth it, for yourself and for your family. Honest and human is the only way to live.

I asked some of my friends...your children who are now grown...what they would say to their parents if they could. I'd like to end with their words. Listen to their hearts.

"Can you please stop focusing on the extremely few truly good things there were about the way you raised me and just admit, "I was wrong" with no conditions, qualifiers, buts or brakes? Can you please just admit that you were far too strict on standards which had nothing to do with my relationship with God and only hurt my relationships with others, without inserting qualifiers about how your extremism was justified because 'there was so much evil in the world?"

"The scars from our past are not the fruit of bitterness, but part of the healing process for us. It would help if you acknowledged our feelings and apologized for the pain you caused us instead of passing the blame to us. We don't demand any retribution for the hurt in the past, but for our relationship to be fully whole we need to be able to talk through what happened without being made out to be the bad guys."

"If what you did was perfectly right, why did you change with my younger siblings? And if you were wrong... why don't you acknowledge it??"

"You rejected how you were brought up, how is it wrong of me to do the same?"

"I know you've changed, I know you're trying to love us as best you can. But can you stop pretending the past was perfect? Can you please just say 'our choices hurt you and we're sorry'? I've forgiven you. But I'm tired of playing your charade, walking on eggshells, pretending that I wasn't hurt that I'm not still trying to wade through the mess of my past. Can we just talk about it, really, truly, honestly? You want me to 'move on' and I will, with or without you. I'd prefer with you. But we have to go back in order to go forward."

"You disagree with some of my life choices, but I disagree with some of your life choices as well. That is just everyday life: there are very few people with whom you will ever truly agree 100%. We're both mature adults and need to learn to respect one another's choices and learn to have a relationship despite our differences."

"I would like for my Mom to stop whitewashing the past. Instead I'd like her to acknowledge that she and my dad were controlling and manipulative, that they were abusive and authoritarian, that they didn't trust me (instead treating me as guilty until proven innocent) and they demanded things from me (like my heart) that was not theirs to demand. A lot of what I'd like to hear them say could be summed up as "I'm sorry". That would go a long, long way for me. But they can't even say that, not without 60,000 disclaimers like "We were doing our best" and "We were following God", or worse "YOU DID x, y, z". If they could ever acknowledge that they did something wrong without attempting to share blame with me... I'd really, really like that."

"There are parts of me I hide from you because even though you say you love me, I know they would break your heart and make you want to scream. I know because you've told me how you felt about my siblings. Since I can't share these vital parts of myself without disappointing you, I feel like an adult relationship between us is impossible."

"Please don't write off my opposition to Christian patriarchy as 'an ax to grind' and attribute all my adult decisions to a reactionary attitude or desire to flip off people who haven't been a part of my life for years. I make decisions based on what's best for my mental health. And you have to admit, I'm a lot more balanced and cool-headed than you were at my age. Did you get involved in the fringe movements you did as a reaction against your parents? If you did, please consider that I've learned from your mistakes and am not repeating them."

"Why do you act like I've turned my back on my upbringing and my faith, just because I don't agree completely with you? I still love you very much, and it kills me to avoid so many topics with you because you get upset and sad if I'm not parroting you perfectly. You made completely different life choices from your parents and yet you still love and respect them. Why can't you see that I'm in exactly the same place?"

"Even if you don't see anything as wrong in the way you raised me or treated me, please recognize and acknowledge I had a very different experience than you perceive. Acknowledge that I was hurt, deeply, and don't invalidate my childhood."

"I feel like I don't need any retribution for the pain of the past, but it would really help to have our feelings acknowledged. That would make a huge difference in moving forward."



Please, let us have these difficult, but so necessary, conversations with you.

And So I Choose Freedom to Love

You say being your brand of Christian (which, of course, is the True Christian™) is so much better and fulfilling and joyful and free. But I'm not so sure.

Your christianity says "Women submit to men and must be under their authority and have restrictions on what they can do for God and humans, roles they must fulfill, and anything outside these roles is sin and less-than." 
But without your christianity, I am equal with my husband and have no restrictions on how I can serve God and others. I and my daughters are free to follow our hearts and dreams and be who we want to be, who we were called and created to be.

Your christianity says "Men must be assertive, leaders, and fit into this box in order to be acceptable as men". 
But without your christianity, my husband and sons are free to be whomever they want, and to live their lives without restraints, and to love without boundaries, and to be feeling human beings, and to not worry about being labeled as "not man enough".

Your christianity says "Children must be smacked in the name of God or they will turn into perverts; they were born wicked and it must be trained out of them".
But without your christianity, I am free to treat my children as people, with rights, desires, and minds; free to see them as innocent and beautiful and to treat them with respect and grace and The Golden Rule.

Your christianity says "There are restrictions on gender display and anyone outside that is unacceptable, an outcast, a second-class citizen, an abomination."
But without your christianity, I am free to express my gender however I want and free to love and fully accept people who also do so.

Your christianity says "There are tons of rules and restrictions and laws on how you are to think and act and if you fail those, you are in sin and must repent and if you don't repent, you'll go to hell". 
But without your christianity, I am free to live and love and laugh and dance, and to only make sure to treat others how I want to be treated, to respect, love, and honor myself and everyone else.

Your christianity says "Those who don't follow our rules are excluded".
But without your christianity, I am free to include anyone.

Your christianity says "If your child is gay or transgender, they are an abomination and a sinner".
But without your christianity, I am free to love and accept my child exactly as they are.

Your christianity says "Morality trumps love".
But without your christianity, love IS morality, and love trumps all.

Your christianity says "Everything that goes against what our Bible says cannot be true and must not be considered; you must close your mind to every other idea; they are works of Satan to deceive."
But without your christianity, I am free to think critically, to consider all ideas and evidence, to open my mind to all kinds of incredible possibilities, scientific discoveries, historical perspectives, and interesting philosophies, without feeling threatened by them. To see God as so much bigger than the boxes we put Him in, and His creation as "very good".

Your christianity says "Everyone who disagrees is going to hell".
But without your christianity, people are free to be tolerant and kind, even in disagreement, and live not out of fear of punishment, but out of love of people and life.

Your christianity says "Fear and suspect everything from 'The World' " and makes everyone your enemy until proven otherwise, until they join your club and agree with your religion.
But without your christianity, I am free to live with wisdom and discernment, without fear and suspicion, proving what is good and throwing out what is not.

Tell me again why I would want to give up a full life of freedom and love and acceptance and inclusion? Tell me again how your "christian" life is better than my "heathen" one, how your restrictive relationships are better than my inclusive ones? How is anything you are teaching Good News for me? How is the picture you're painting attractive in the least and why would I want anything to do with it? Because, Hell? Is that all you got? It's not really enough for me anymore.

A kingdom ruled by money and fame, kept intact by control and by keeping many of it's citizens at second-class status, shunning people declared not good enough for any number of arbitrary reasons. Top-down power and corruption everywhere. Fighting over everything. Don't question, just obey. Patriarchy. Abuse covered up, victims ignored or blamed. Fear used to control and manipulate. Oppression. Power-hungry leaders lining their pockets with money of the poor. People told to conform to the status quo or leave. "The least of these" squashed, dismissed, or used as pawns in political games. The strong preying on the weak and shooting their wounded. Intolerance and bashing, all disguised as "love" but looks nothing like any love I've ever wanted. Persecution complex. War against those different. People declaring they are special and better than and set apart yet acting worse than the people they think are not as good as they are.

These are what I see when I look at the Church in America. This is what drowns out the people who are still trying to actually follow Jesus. So much ugliness, I am ashamed to call myself Christian. I can't do it anymore. I refuse to associate myself with that label. It is no longer my identity. It only brings up ugliness in the minds of the culture around us (and in my own mind), not love or peace or humanness. Everything is so backwards of what it is supposed to be, what it once was. I am heartbroken and angry and so very done. I love Jesus, and I try to love people. But I cannot in good conscience call myself Christian any more. I'll just be over here, living, trying to love others though imperfectly, but with inclusion and tolerance. Trying to wade through the mess that is my spiritual journey, authentically and with honesty. Trying to raise children who will not perpetuate such pain, who will make the world better, who will fight for the weak and downtrodden, instead of self-righteously stomping them into the ground like my generation has done. Please, don't try to "convert" me. Don't offer empty cliches, I've heard them all before. I used to use them myself. Don't quote Bible verses at me, I can out-quote you and I flat-out don't care. I want nothing to do with American Christianity, though I love so many of you still a part of it and that won't change one bit. I understand why you stay, you beautiful people with hearts of gold. But I cannot stay where I am not welcome, and the people I love are not welcome because we do not fit into neatly labeled boxes. I hope you can understand that too.

I choose love, joy, peace, kindness, honesty, justice, mercy, redemption, equality, and inclusion. It's all I can do anymore. 

Hindsight

Four years ago today, our home and all our belongings went up in smoke. That event started a chain of events that changed our life and brought us where we are today. Such a crazy whirl-wind. It's strange to think about, actually...that if our home hadn't burned down, we wouldn't have had to take out a loan against our property and we might still be living in Washington among our family. The constant "what ifs" keep swirling around in my mind. What if I had unplugged the heater before I went shopping that day? What if I had put my wedding ring on before I left? What if I hadn't left at all but had been there to stop it? Or the worst, what if I had left my kids at home with a sitter instead of taking them with me?

If I close my eyes, there are some very vivid memories that flash like movie scenes in my head. As I wrote a year later: "So many memories are coming to me as I type this...so many emotions. My dad crying in the parking lot of Wal-Mart because he was so glad we were alright. Pushing a shopping cart around the store, dazed and trying to think about what I needed for my babies. Leaning against a DVD display, crying my eyes out because I realized that our wedding rings were one of the casualties. Letting my siblings and parents take over as they one by one showed up and filled my cart with things that they payed for out of their own pockets. Going home only to realize that "home" was gone. Getting phone calls from friends who wanted to know how they could help. Holding my babies, afraid to let them out of my sight for fear that something would happen to them, too. That was a dark night. I lay in my husband's arms, unable to sleep, listening to the steady breathing of my children. They had no idea that their entire world just changed. The tears just kept falling...I couldn't stop them. It was all so overwhelming, so shocking."

I was mad at God for a long time after that. To be honest, I've been angry a lot in the past few years for many things. Nothing has turned out the way we thought it would. I wrote not too long ago: "When is life supposed to work? When does the whole "all things work for good" promise actually come into play? For years now we've done what we thought God wanted us to do, followed Him with everything we have, and for what? To get patted on the back and told "well done"? Yeah, that'll put food on the table. I know that God still works miracles. Is it too much to ask that He could work one for us?"

But I've learned something since then. Sometimes miracles happen in tiny steps instead of big bangs. Sometimes they take years to come to fruition, a building and swelling of little moments that one day become something grand. Or even something ordinary and unnoticable to passers-by, yet understood in the hearts of those who notice; every-day miracles that we wake up to and forget are just as extraordinary as the grand ones. Sometimes it takes tearing down to build up. There is no formula for a life of blessings. The rain falls on the just and unjust, time and chance happen to us all, suffering is no respecter of persons.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, as they say, and the day I stood looking at the ashes of my life smoldering before me I had no idea that it was the first of many unfair, unhappy events that would make us feel like we lost all control of our lives and leave us standing in unfamiliar territory wondering what was next.

I've learned something else about life. There is a time for every season under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to laugh, and a time to cry. A time to tear down and time to build up. I can complain and be angry about what I perceive as the "bad" things, but that won't make them disappear from my life. They are part of life and we can't change that. Sometimes they serve to bring us to a place where we wouldn't have gone without them. Would I be in Montana now, surrounded by great friends and more beauty than my soul can hold, with hope for the future if my home had never burned down? Would I have ever found this place of peace with life if I hadn't known unrest? Would I be the strong person I am now if I hadn't fallen to my knees, crying in agony a few times, my legs refusing to hold me up any longer? Would I appreciate freedom as much if I didn't know bondage? Would my marriage be as strong as it is now if we hadn't been stripped of everything and forced to face things we were ignoring? Would I be enjoying the moments of pure bliss as much if I didn't know what raw pain felt like? I don't know. Ask me 30 years from now. Hind sight being what it is.....

This journey isn't over yet. I have no idea where we're going from here. I know less now than I thought I did the day I was digging through the still-warm ashes looking for our wedding rings. But I think I'm OK with that. I'm enjoying the journey (most of the time), enjoying looking back and understanding what brought us to where we are now. It sure as hell wasn't much fun getting here, but here we are. Everything beautiful in its time, everything redeemable by the God I follow who makes all things new. Thank God for hindsight....I think it give us hope.

Redeemed, How I Love To Proclaim It

I've been thinking about redemption lately. The act of God taking something that is wrong and making it right again. Taking what was originally beautiful but made ugly, and making it beautiful again. And I realized, this has been the theme of my life.

I look back on my childhood and grieve for the little girl that didn't want to be a little girl because nobody really thought much of little girls other then that they were cute. I didn't want to be cute...I wanted to be smart and adult and I wanted people to pay attention to my words and thoughts. To notice me. I wish I could go back and tell her just how much she would miss being a little girl; just how precious and loved she was even though she didn't notice.

I look back on my teen years and I hurt for the young lady that was so confused and alone and whose heart was ignored, stuffed, and trampled on. That self-inflicted so many needless heart-wounds, just trying to fit in and be acceptable. Who bent over backwards trying please and just ended up broken anyways. I wish I could go back and tell her to forget the conflicting voices of men and follow God from the very beginning. That her heart wasn't "evil" or "rebellious" and her desires weren't "fleshly". That she needed to find out what was true about herself from God alone, not men.

I look back on the budding young woman, flushed with the newness of love. Conflicted, torn between where she thought God was leading her and what everyone else was saying. Confused because what she'd always thought to be true was turning out to be a man-made paradigm, built from fear and not of God. Being drawn to a man who showed her, for the first time, what unconditional love really meant. I would like to go back and tell her to cling to him and never let go. To forget the years of trying to please others who could not be pleased and to follow God. To not waste those years, with their tumultuous emotions and struggles, and to claim the life she wanted and knew was right.

I look back on the woman who was a new bride, who adored her man and thought he was perfect and just wanted to be the perfect wife for him. Who read untold number of books and tried ridiculous things all in the name of "being a godly wife". Who, when her wonderful man fell from the pedestal she put him on (thus proving he was human after all), almost completely lost herself trying to get him back up there (where he really didn't belong and didn't want to be anyways). Because all the books said if that happened it was her fault for not being good enough. I wish I could go back and tell her that no one is perfect and all those books were crap and should've been burned or used as toilet paper. That her false castle needed to come down so a better, real, more lasting one could be built.

I look back on the tired new mother who thought she had it all figured out....until the babies came. That thought she must somehow get her children to fit the description in the child-training books. And when they didn't, somehow believed that she was a failure and her kids would grow up to be brats and heathens. All the striving to "do it right", the pressure to mold her kids "right", and the feelings of failure when they all just didn't fit the mold. I wish I could go offer her a hand, let her know that her children weren't meant to fit anyone's idea of The Perfect Child. That she was a great mom and the best thing she ever did was give up on know-it-all parenting books (and being a know-it-all parent).

I wonder if the older me will look back on the now me and wish she could tell me not to worry, that it's all going to be OK.That God really does take everything in our lives and weave a beautiful tapestry from it.

Because even as I look back and wish that things could've been different, I can see God's fingerprints all over my life. I can see things that I thought were ugly then, used by Him to make something beautiful now. I can see the shaping, the directing, the love and mercy that surrounded me even though I had no idea it was there. I don't believe for a moment that God "caused" bad things to happen in my life. But I would be blind if I couldn't see how He took those things and turned them around, redeeming them, making them beautiful again. What was intended for evil, God grabbed a hold of, turned it inside-out, and unleashed it for good. I keep wanting to go grab something else from my past and run to Him with it, like a little child, holding my hands open before Him, eagerly asking "This too, God? Can you redeem this too?"


I am amazed. And sometimes, honestly, angry still. Because part of me wonders....did those things really need to happen? Did I really need to suffer that? Couldn't God, if He was really all-powerful, have made my life good without the evil? I don't know. Would I be the person I am today if anything about my past was different? I don't know that either.

But this I know: Redemption. This is about so much more than salvation. This about our lives. This....is everything.

A wise man once said that there was a time and place for every purpose under heaven....the good and the bad. That God makes everything beautiful in its time. I hang on to that with everything I have. I look back and I see it, I look forward and I hope for it. And for now, in the in-between time, I proclaim it. And I marvel.

Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed through His infinite mercy-
His child and forever I am.