V-L responded that she and her husband T didn't actually plan at all but instead 'allowed God to plan their family'. She said that she was willing to welcome whoever and how ever many children God wanted to bless them with and assured me this was the biblical way to think. Now I was listening. She fetched her trusty loan-copy of The Way Home by Mary Pride all the while expanding on QF ideology. Gaping as I grappled to digest all I was hearing, I accepted what by now seemed almost a holy book. Indeed reading TWH transformed my life and the lives of many of the people I loaned my subsequent well-worn copy to. At least, the ones who didn't throw it back in my face.
Taking the position (no pun intended) that my husband and I could have as much unprotected sex as we wanted and leave it to God how many sweet babies he sent brought with it a certain comfort and a sense of relief. One less thing to worry about, I suppose. And, anyway, we liked babies and children. Mary Pride gave me the freedom to choose the large family I would never have had the courage to produce otherwise.
Also, due to a medical blunder I became Rh isoimmunised during my second successful pregnancy. From that moment on my immune system would try to kill what it saw as each new little parasite growing in my womb. We were trusting God for healthy babies while doctors vehemendly assured me I'd never enjoy another live birth. In these frightening circumstances, leaving numerics to the Almighty seemed only courteous.
Although we didn't go quite so far down the road of Quiverfull fundamentalism as did some of our friends, I quickly got in the swing of some rather scary legalism. I wore nothing but overly modest long skirts and loose blouses and had a strong bent toward living in the country and raising organic tomatoes and goats. I even worked myself up to some pretty heroic if short-lived bouts of wifely submission. By the time we were expecting our fourth child we were ready to go down the homebirth road. We had four truly wonderful homebirthing experiences as a result.
Homeschooling was actually something I had planned to do even before Mary Pride made her way to my bookshelf. In my early 20s as a new and cringingly effervescent Christian I lived with a Christian family as helper to the mother, Jenny, who was blind. When Jenny's two young boys started having real struggles at school, Jen and her husband sent me off to do a little ACE superviser training course and I homeschooled their boys till they caught up enough to return to school. Two notable results of this were that I was hooked on homeschooling as a lifestyle and that I developed a powerful and lasting distaste for ACE materials and philosopy.
Several years past. I married and before I knew it was the joyful mother of 7 beautiful children and happily homeschooling them all. Enjoying my children so very much is one of the things that prevented me from seeing the depth of my delusion about QF, Christian fundamentalism and the miserable excuse for a marriage that was mine. Still I couldn't be gladder that we invited these beautiful young people into our lifes and remain grateful that we had as many as we did.
But my thinking became more and more legalistic. Mentally, and without conscious thought I divided people into 'right thinking QF sorts', the rest of christendom and everyone beyond those boundaries. I could tell who was on our side of the line in numerous ways including by the cute Little House on the Prairie dresses their girls wore. At first I had few non-Christian friends and later, very, very few non-QF ones either. I was sure I was right about so many things that didn't matter at all. But so very wrong about a good number of things that did.
Things tootled along fairly smoothly - at least on the surface - for some years. But as the kids became teenagers I found my thinking was continually challenged - especially by the first to hit his teens, JC a particularly clever and articulate young man. JC developed an interest in politics during the 2000 US presidential campaign. During that time, as JC challenged me to justify my policital standpoint, I experienced a growing realisation that I did not belong in the same camp as US fundamentalists, at least, such as they were represented in the Australian media. Indeed that I found their bigotry and narrowmindedness extremely distasteful. This blinding flash of the obvious opened the door to a whole lot of other 'dangerous' thinking. I started to wonder where I *did* belong.
I had always had some difficulty in fitting in to church situations - particularly the QF fundamentalist home-church variety. Partly this is because (1) I am naturally rather rebellious and (2) churches like those we frequented can only function by retaining control and squashing dissent. It may be apparent to the reader that is where point (1) kicks in again. My prickly legalism regarding all things 'right and 'biblical', my difficulty with silence and submission, combined with my inherent immaturity meant church and I were never a good fit.
My zeal to out-QF those around me, however, was fueled by both a genuine desire to please God as well as a natural inclination to legalism. When someone like Mary Pride outlined a fairly simply formula for ticking boxes with God, raising great kids and having a happy marriage - with the added bonus of being bloody well right all the time - I found it hard to resist.
It took me many years to admit that I was a follower rather than a leader in this regard. That instead of being an independant thinker at the cutting edge of some wonderful move of God I was just a pathetic, ungracious, loud-mouthed pawn who just felt much more settled with good clear rules in place and liked imposing her values on others. While I still believe that in many ways I was motivated by a honourable desires, I was very prone to seeking out what seemed to have produced good results for someone else - and rigidly inflicting it with little notice on my poor family. This legalism wasn't restricted to QF ideas. Just ask my poor kids about the Hallelujah Diet debacle or our years in the grip of
My 'dangerous' thinking started to get me into seriously deep water the day I realised that I did not love my husband, that I probably never had and that deep down I believed marrying him was a misjudgement of stupendous proportion. Suffice to say it wasn't long before we were separated under the same roof. I still couldn't bring myself to think in terms of divorce and in the end it was only his terrifying and probably illegal threats to exact his conjugal rights that nudged me out the door. Currently, we live apart - the 6 younger kids are with me - and we are negotiating a settlement agreement that will put a legal end to a marriage that has been dead many a good year.
Getting a divorce was one of the better ideas I've had. I'm currently studying for a BA majoring in Communications/Journalism and have some wonderful warts-and-all friends as well as family in my life. I do a little happy conga some nights as I lock the door of my own little house and skip off to enjoy bed and mayhaps a nice glass of red all on my own.
A couple of my children have suffered tremendously in the past two years. For different reasons they both almost lost their lives and it's still touch and go for one of them. The effects QF fundamentalism are part of their stories in some ways. I may write about them later. Or not, depending on whether I feel I can do it without impinging on their right to privacy.
Phew! Glad I got that lot off my chest. Sure feels like there is more to come...Better go look in on those kids for a bit....
