Teenagehood and Tragedy Ages 10-15 (Part 4)

CW: Depression, SI, Purity Culture, and injury of a child.

Where We Left Off

We had left off with the birth of my third sister. I don’t want to jump too quickly to trauma. And to be fair there was about a year of peace before anything drastic happened in our lives. But her accident at 1.5 y/o was the start of a much worse chapter in my life.

When my youngest sister was about one and a half years old. She was involved in a horrible accident involving a lawn mower. Unknown to my father, she had been following behind him while he was mowing the grass. He went to back up (didn’t see her) and backed over her. She suffered severe trauma to her right leg, head, face, and chest.

I think this goes under horrible and traumatic memories, but I was there throughout this. My dad grabbed my sister and brought her into the house. He was screaming and crying at the time. My sister was not. She was breathing but something was very clearly wrong as she wasn’t screaming and was limp in my father’s arms. I helped my dad apply pressure to my sister’s leg and grabbed supplies from around the house to help my parents, and then my memory kind of fades to being at Ken’s house. (I know an ambulance picked up my sister, and I know I had to have been driven to my friend’s house. But I don’t remember either event).

For the next night or two we¹ stayed with Ken and his family. I didn’t really have any information on my sister other than the fact that she was still alive. We changed hands to another family friend and stayed there for a couple of days. This is all a blur to me, and I just remember a lot of tears and TV. We eventually settled into a more permanent situation with my grandfather and grandmother.² Mom and dad were completely checked out and were solely focused on my youngest sister. I don’t remember them ever visiting us while my sister was in the hospital.

I truly can’t remember how long with stayed with my grandparents. But it think it was close to a month. This was a really shitty time overall. Grandma and Grandpa had no idea how to care for all four of us,³ or how to direct us to homeschool ourselves. We had nothing to do and nothing to play with except a pool table, TV, and large red ball. They did nothing to help us get out and feel normal, and we mainly sat at home and watched TV during this time. Once near the end of this time a family friend took us to see our sister in the hospital. She was heavily bandaged and bruised and really didn’t interact with us much. But it was the first time we had seen mom and dad or my sister in weeks.

My parents may have been updating my grandparents, but as a child I don’t remember knowing anything about the progress of my sister’s health. I don’t even remember being given a timeframe as to when everyone was coming home. We were just stuck in limbo without any information.

My mom certainly was in contact with her friends though during this time. As the same family that took us to see our sister started a big push to clean up our house. While this sounds innocuous, it truly wasn’t. My mom had been starting to hoard and our house was truly seeing the effects of that behavior. Fifty percent of our house was unusable. My mom had expressed concerns to her friends that social services might visit the home and deem it unlivable. I can remember helping this woman clean out the house.

When we did move back in together it was very clear my mom was extremely paranoid, and my dad wanted nothing to do with the family. Dad disappeared emotionally and physically for a long time after this. He had farm work to catch up on and he used that as an excuse to just not think about or talk about anything that just happened. Mom continued to express concerns to us regarding the possibility of a CPS visit. Apparently during their time at the hospital my parents were interviewed by CPS. My mom repeatedly expressed concerns and paranoia around her kids being taken away by CPS.⁴ She coached us on what to do or say when they came so that we wouldn’t get taken away.

The actual pain and trauma of that month (probably longer) was never discussed. Mom worked hard to show my dad the progress my youngest sister was making towards recovery. And we learned very quickly to not bring up the accident around dad.⁵ So very quickly we ignored and moved past everything. Even though it was extremely clear neither of my parents were in good mental health. My sister was alive and okay and that’s all that we needed to know or focus on.⁶

Suffice to say this whole event really changed our social lives for the worst. While before we had been moving towards getting more involved in the Caro. After this point we completely dialed that back. My mom’s involvement in my homeschooling went from very little to zero. I was now in charge of my own learning, testing, and grading.

Puberty was another complicating factor. My family also handed this with the same type of method previously described in regards to my sister’s trauma. I’m dubbing it the “ostrich method” as in reference to sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending nothing is wrong. Their entire method of teaching around puberty was “No, it’s all bad” and “you don’t need any information.” I feel like they had good intentions of approaching this topic, but I only remember being given “I Kissed Dating Goodby” and “Passion and Purity” as a form of conversation around puberty.⁷ We had one children’s book that was aimed at 5–7-year-old kids, but that disappeared around the time I actually hit puberty. The actual knowledge I found around puberty I found was from my mom’s medical dictionary, a book on “bush” medicine,⁸ and from an Encyclopedia Britanica.

I wasn’t given a lot of information and had a lot of questions without answers. My body was changing and developing in adulthood, but I perceived a lot of these changes as defects or malignancies due to my lack of information. I didn’t have a healthy view of sex or my own sexuality, and it quickly led to me hating my body and my burgeoning sexual desires. I hated myself and how I suddenly couldn’t stop having sexual thoughts or desires. My whole life I had been told about how even a thought could be a sin against god, and here I was left in a body that was unable to stop having these sinful thoughts. I wanted to control my body and my mind, and I was unable to do so. Purity culture and the books⁹ and lectures I was hearing told me that I could control my inner thoughts. ¹⁰

Even something as simple as romantic attraction could be dangerous.¹¹ Romantic attraction was supposed to be reserved only for your future spouse. Before that time, you were to forsake any type of romantic attraction and focus your attention on spiritual matters. Any “crush” before you meet “the one” can become an affront to god, and you need to focus your attention back on him and not on someone else. ¹²

My inability to control my mind and desires led to a lot of shame and guilt. I slowly piled this guilt and brokenness on to my identity and my person. The years of being told I was a wicked and broken person led me to do this naturally. The doctrine of total depravity also played a role here.¹³

I’ve read “Dateable” while I was going through my series on “Passion and Purity” and in the book it describes a mental process of making a sin so repugnant to you that it would disgust you at your core.

“When you do these steps, make the good seem so good and the bad so bad that you have no other options. You have to stop lying. When you read these, your mind knows that changing is the only thing you can do, because if you don’t your life will be messed up. The more you read it the more you will be sold on that fact.”

But this wasn’t something that I needed taught to me. I already had this process figured out. I believed that every thought about sex or even a slight feeling of arousal was condemned by the lord as adultery.¹⁴ But the only thing it left me feeling that I was a disgusting pervert who didn’t even deserve his own sexuality. I truly felt like my life would be so much better if I had been born an eunuch. I hated my body and my genitals.

Embodying this self-hatred really doesn’t lead to great mental health. And it should come at no great surprise to anyone that trauma and a poor image of self quickly led me quickly to depression. I had always struggled with anxiety, but at this point in my life my anxiety also increased. I turned to compulsions to help me control my “sinful” thoughts and to keep an eye on my changing body.

I became paranoid about my bowel and bladder habits and stopped drinking water unless I absolutely had to (for example to swallow pills) this led to a whole slew of health issues. For several years I had trouble with urinary tract infections and constipation. The constipation led me to belief I needed to have a BM daily so I would strain to void nightly. I gave myself hemorrhoids and an inguinal hernia from all this. All of this could have been headed off by better understanding of mental and physical health. I didn’t know that UTIs could be caused by lack of water.

I also was dealing with asthma throughout this time. I think a lot of it had to do with environmental factors as our house had chronic black mold. Thankfully I didn’t have a lot of asthma attacks. But I did spend many nights struggling to breath in my room dealing with chronic bronchitis and respiratory illness.

To be fair to my parents all of my medical problems I hid from my parents. This pain and suffering were all my fault after all. I DESERVED IT. I deserved to be in pain and in suffering. I was sinning (my sexual thoughts and feelings), and this was god’s punishment for my sin. I do wish they had seen the signs of this though far before I needed medical care. My mom was dealing with her own depression and struggles with the church, and she failed to quickly notice my self-inflicted misery.

My mom and dad had decided to confront the Deckerville Bible Church about their lack of action around David Lee and his abuse of my mother. Jay Chambers had left the church amidst another scandal and left David without any accountability.¹⁵ My mom had also found two other women who were abused by this man as well.¹⁶ She had attempted to bring it up to an elder of the church and was dealing with the fallout of that action.

She was told that she was sinning by bringing up sin that had already been forgiven. And eventually was told that she would need to apologize publicly in front of the church for bringing up sin that had already been forgiven. It was at this point my family moved towards a new church. As far as I know the only accountability that Dave ever faced for this was a private lawsuit by one of the other victims. The church never publicly admitted their culpability.¹⁷

I think you can see how all of that would lead to a lot of trauma. Especially for someone like my mom who already had a heavy history of abuse as a child and teen. She struggled to crawl out of her depression using only her faith and holistic medicine. By this time in her life she was under the belief that taking tradition medications for depression would be wrong.¹⁸ This led to a more distant relationship with her children, and a lesser ability to care physically and mentally for her kids. And from a retrospective look back my mom’s hording and conspiratorial thinking also escalated throughout this time as well.

Positive Memories

Boy scouts was a welcome chance to get out of the house and go do something different. Our particular troop put a heavy focus on camping trips, and to this day I credit boy scouts with my current love for the outdoors and camping. Summer camp was also a chance to try new activities like rock climbing, swimming, and archery. Things that were not normally a part of my day-to-day life.

I continue to have a lot of positive memories visiting Ken. We had a chance to play video games together, camping outside, and chore time together. Our time to see each other didn’t happen a lot, but we treasured the times we did get to hang out.

My siblings and I had a ton of time spent playing together these years. And while it was frustrating to share a room with someone; sharing a room with my brother did bring us closer together. We also shared a lot of the same interests and hobbies.

My PSP. I got a PSP as a result of a winning a fundraising contest. My mom would have never allowed it in the house otherwise.¹⁹ Lego Star Wars and Star Wars battlefront were both welcome distractions from my life. This was also the first time I was really allowed to be exposed to video games. From my times researching for approved PSP games, I found a few classic games that the family computer could run and played them frequently (KOTOR and Rome: Total War).

Reading, I read everything I could get my hands on. I would read five to six full sized books a week.^{20 21}The redwall series is a particular highlight in my mind. Brave little woodland critters defending their peaceful communal lifestyle.

Retrospective Thoughts

I refused to let go of the idea that the homeschooling community helped radicalize my parents. The anti-science, revisionist history, and indoctrination all have shaped me and my siblings into who we are today. And the consequences of those false teachings continue to persist in my family.

Deckerville Bible Church and the pastor at the time enabled abuse within their church. Making snide comments about not forgiving the perpetrator while saying my mother “resisted temptation” are not okay. My mother should have been taken seriously and DBC could have helped to protect other potential victims by legally holding David Lee accountable. At the very least they could have prohibited any contact with members outside of the main church services and took away his teaching positions thereby protecting the members of the church.

My parents’ tactics of ignoring the pain and trauma in their lives deeply hurt them and their relationship with me as a child. By focusing on religion and spiritual bypassing they tried to fix and improve their mental health. But they weren’t even able to help themselves enough to be there for me. I’m deeply sympathetic to the trauma they were dealing with, but they needed to let go of their pride and reach out to professionals for help.

Purity culture and “total depravity” really did a number on my self worth. I was convinced I was wicked and deserved a life of misery and pain. My shame piled up and lead to a significant amount of depressive and suicidal thoughts.

The isolation of my upbringing certainly didn’t help any of this either. Throughout much of this trauma and shame I was left to navigate it on my own. My friendships were non-existent, or I had very little access to seeing my friends.²² The only support system I had was my direct family (and in many cases they were the cause of the trauma).

1. By we I mean me and three of my other siblings. ↩︎
2. They were separated but not divorced. They both came back to live in the same house to take care of the four of us. ↩︎
3. We were 10, 8, 6, and 3 at the time (ages not exact but it would be very close to this). ↩︎
4. Fuck HSLDA for adding to this trauma as well. They had so many stories of homeschool kids being taken away from their families by CPS. ↩︎
5. He blames himself for everything that happened to my sister. Even though it was a true accident and couldn’t have been prevented by my father. ↩︎
6. And focusing on making sure CPS didn’t cart us off. /s
   I can remember that fear sitting deep in my chest for a very long time after this accident. ↩︎
7. I found a copy of “Boy Meets Girl” by Josh Harris. And a copy of an informative Q&A puberty book promoted by focus on the family (I can’t find the exact title now. And I was only able to sneak a read of it once or twice). But both of these books were hidden in a way that suggested I wasn’t supposed to be reading them. I’m guessing my family felt both of these books went “too far” and gave too much information and withheld them intentionally. ↩︎
8. Hold outs from the time my parents were planning on going into missions. The book was a manual on off grid medicine, and it had basic information on birth and primitive contraceptive methods. Cervical mucus thickness and acidic sponges used as cervical barriers were the methods I remember from the book. (It was a wild title. And assumed you had absolutely no access to modern medicine in any way.) ↩︎
9. “We Should seek to completely remove lust from our minds.” Direct quote from Joshua Harris “I Kissed Dating Goodby” p147. ↩︎
10. I’m thinking of thought stopping techniques like snapping a rubber band on your wrist every time you have a sexual thought. “Bouncing your eyes” away from anything or anyone you found sexually attractive. Another technique was actively making the thought seem so disgusting and deplorable that you would feel repulsive if you thought about it. ↩︎
11. Remember my mom’s lecture about gluing the paper hearts together?
    Joshua Harris and Elizabeth Elliot also both cautioned against letting yourself feel romantic feelings. Instead, the reader is instructed to direct those feeling towards god and wait patiently until it’s time to marry.
    P144 and 145 of I Kissed Dating Goodbye
    “When we find our hearts lipping into the fantasy world of infatuation, we should pray, ‘Lord, help me to appreciate this person without elevating him (or her) above You in my heart. Help me to remember that no human can ever take Your place in my life. You are my strength, my hope, my joy, and my ultimate reward. Bring me back to reality, God; ‘give me an undivided heart’ (Psalm 86:11).” ↩︎
12. Joshua Harris states that crushes and romantic attraction can become idols. (p145 I Kissed Dating Goodbye) And within that Christian culture anything that is more important than god is viewed as an idol and therefore as sinful. ↩︎
13. Total depravity. Many Christians believe that “sin nature” in inherited by birth (Link will take you to my old post on Original Sin and Total Depravity). With the belief that humanity is totally wicked at their core. To sum it up, your humanity means that you are sinful and wicked at your core. ↩︎
14. Matthew 5:27-30 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.” ↩︎
15. The church was dealing with the theft of thousands of dollars at the hands of one of the church treasurers. This problem they did bring before law enforcement, and the individual did end up serving time because of it. (A stark contrast to how my mother was treated.) ↩︎
16. This wasn’t a super large church either ↩︎
17. https://mdocweb.state.mi.us/otis2/otis2profile.aspx?mdocNumber=781763 Found him now. Apparently, he’s in jail now for SA of a child (this is years after what happened to my mom). I want to fucking scream sometimes. This is why the church cannot ignore sexual abuse! Hold your abusers accountable. Shame on you Deckerville Bible Church. ↩︎
18. Please see my previous post for a bit more about my mom’s exposure to alternative medicine at homeschool conferences. ↩︎
19. What I was allowed to play was extremely controlled. But it’s hard to control exactly when a handheld video game console is being played. ↩︎
20. This would have been more. But I had a very scheduled time to visit the library and had set limits on checkouts. We routinely visited the library every two weeks. Mom and dad didn’t really have a budget to buy books for us. And if we were bought books they were for indoctrination or educational. “Christian Heroes: Then and Now” or Kingdom’s Dawn by Chuck Black would be a great example of the types of books we would get for holidays. ↩︎
21. My mom also tried to force me to read classics instead of the fiction I enjoyed. She would describe the fiction as “fluff.” And would force me to checkout a classic book and read it every other week if I wanted to continue to check out fiction. ↩︎
22. I saw Ken maybe once a month. We would try to plan more visits. But my family wasn’t able or willing to let us just hang out. If I was a more rebellious kid I would have just biked the mile to his house and just hung out. But I stayed within my parent’s guidelines. ↩︎