I was often asked as a young child if I was, “choosing to disobey”, which was the highest form or rebellion in our home. I remember feeling so confused by the question; I was clearly doing something upsetting to my parents, but I think that’s all I thought obedience was, breaking a rule, even the ones I didn’t know about. I would almost always answer “yes” after an internal struggle because I knew lying was bad. My parents would take my response as evidence that I was doubling down on my rebellion and “discipline” would follow. Now, I have such an ache for that little girl who was caught between needing to be good and staying safe.
My mom had to have a talk with my sister and I after we saw the little mermaid because Ariel disobeyed her father and it all worked out for her - and that’s not how life is… my dad told me a about a friends kid who was hit by a car cause they didn’t listen to their parents when I asked him why he spanked me. Immediate obedience was THE value in our home. It was fiercely guarded at all costs.
DL , I saw your IG picture with Mary Oliver’s words, “you do not have to be good”… those same words sit on my desk and Wild Geese has become a sort of scripture for my soul as I untangle and heal.
I remember “O-B-E-Y, obey your mom and dad, O-B-E-Y, it makes them very glad. Listen to the words they say, obey your parents every day. O-B-E—Y, obey your mom and dad.” (Chorus) “When your parents say ____ (the verses were a variety of examples like brushing your teeth and going to school), say “I will.” (Followed by an enthusiastic chorus of kids saying) “I will.”*
My siblings and I joked about it when we got older and sang it to each other sarcastically, but the message sunk in early as part of our childhood soundtrack.
*The above is from memory and may differ from the actual song, which I don’t care to look up. I did look up who sang it, and it was The Donut Man. That brought back a flood of memories! We had his tapes and videos. Anyone else a Donut Man family?
There was this set of books of animal stories, and I think it was a young squirrel was going to get hit by maybe a train, and the papa squirrel said Come here NOW! And thankfully the baby squirrel did, and didn't get hit. So that was supposed to teach instant obedience. Because otherwise you die?
I still had trouble with it and got in trouble for not coming immediately when called, not obeying immediately, because I wasn't good at transitions. But I didn't know that until relatively recently. My most hated word as a child was "dawdling" as it got directed to me with high frequency. As if it was intentional. I wish I knew then that it wasn't, but c'est la vie.
Dr. Dobson uses this story often -- but he says his mother explained it to him as a mother bird and a baby bird. Lot's of stories of baby animals getting crushed / eaten if they didn't listen to their parents in these kinds of circles!
yeah, I totally feel that -- the transition piece was really hard for me, too, so I just felt hyper alert. all the time. And oh my gosh, the morality tales. We read a lot of Adam Raccoon which was always about obedience or facing mortal peril
I heavily relate to the instant obedience with a good attitude and the anxiety you felt around that as well. And I remember trying so very hard to do so. I now know that I’m AuDHD but I remember feeling like I couldn’t get it right. I’d do well one day and the next be so overwhelmed and disregulated that I felt like a failure. I remember doing everything I could to avoid spankings; even blaming things on other siblings. I remember feeling like it didn’t matter what my side of the story was or my opinion was. I struggle with thinking for myself now and it’s been detrimental in my career. I often don’t ask why someone wants me to do something and don’t think to push back, ask for clarification, or share why I think a different approach might be better. Deep down I’m still afraid I’ll be punished for it.
I think it's been SO overlooked regarding the long-term impacts into adulthood. Also, Dobson talks about a lot of kids that are clearly neurodivergent and it's just so heartbreaking.
Speaking of church, you are spot on about the judgment. When I was a teenager, there was a period of time when I would get nauseous during Mass every Sunday. I would quickly walk down the long aisle, everyone quietly eyeing me as I hurried out to vomit. I hit the steps the first time, not being able to make it to the bushes. How mortifying! After a few weeks of this, my mom took me to the doctor. I realize now she probably thought I was pregnant. I thought that a demon had possessed me and was torturing me when I went to church. The doctor said it was likely hormones and the heat, so I shouldn’t kneel or lock my knees when I stood. However, that would make me stick out and look weak, so I figured out how to appear perfect and not vomit.
oh my gosh, such a clear example. Also glad to hear from a non-evangelical experience -- I know that these dynamics are so common throughout various religious communities.
It is not lost on me that we are fighting a “common enemy,” and I am accepted in this space when I was raised to believe non-Catholics were the enemy (or at the very least woefully unintelligent). What crap. It was an effective way to discredit any pointing out of flaws in the Church, though, yeah?
It was very jarring — painful — to be pulled from my monotropic focus (usually reading or being immersed in an imaginary world) to meet an angry mom ordering me to do something NOW.
All suffering was to be lifted up to God for those poor souls in purgatory. There was no compassion for my suffering — to suffer is good and holy. The saints suffered, Jesus suffered. We hold them at the highest esteem. Plus, my parents didn’t want to spend money on doctors. They grew up in poverty without doctors. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Blah blah blah.
I, at first, told myself. I’m not hypervigilant. But ha. Yeah, I am.
this is a weird, deep cut, but Billy Graham told his version of The Prodigal Son story at one point, and in his version, it's about a kid who doesn't obey his dad to get wood for the stove because he's engrossed in a novel and doesn't hear him (but the dad is in the right, the son is in the wrong), and then he kicks the kid out and the kid leaves (instead of the original where the son leaves on his own)
The Prodigal Son story gets twisted to fit a lot of agendas. My sister just called me the Prodigal Daughter the other day to guilt me into seeing our mom. I think she was using it to make the point that Mom would be happy to see me, but I was like, have you even read the story? The only person any of us resemble might be the jealous brother!
As a kid, I would have internalized that so deep. As an adult, I’m like: Woah. It’s almost laughable except I know the impact on me and my siblings as kids and the lingering impact even now.
Yes, i remember the hymn “obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. Doing exactly what the lord commands, doing it happily. Action is the key, do it immediately, joy you will receive. Obedience is the best way to show that you believe…”
To obey was to be pleasing and acceptable, to be loved, to maintain connection. If there was disconnection(from sin, lack of obedience), bottomline that meant hell. Disconnect from God/not acceptable in his sight? Hell. Disconnection from parents/not acceptable to them? Hell on earth. You always had to be obedient, be acceptable, submissive. You neeeeeeeded to maintain connection to the authorities for mere survival.
And by god, that has messed me up becoming an adult and unknowingly subjecting myself to different abuses.
Wow. I remember the Keith Green song about complaining. We also had an Integrity music cassette that I listened to that had songs about anxiety, etc. Diagnosed as an adult with OCD, much of my childhood anxiety related to the sinners prayer and if I was “saved” or not. Turned out to be an OCD theme, in my opinion. As a parent now, I really see that expecting instant obedience is wild, and really about control. I always had the threat of spanking hanging over my head, in a ministry family who also happened to be military.
The religious trauma to OCD pipeline is real (waves in existential and ethical OCD). Also . . . Keith Green seriously was the king of guilt trips. Have you heard of The Feet of Clay podcast? They did a really difficult few episodes covering their time in the Last Days Ministries working for Keith and what all happened when he died. It was super eye-opening to me.
Truthfully there are huge swaths of my childhood, particularly before the age of 9 or so, where the details have been lost - I think due to PTSD. But I do recall clearly that not obeying was never an option. Delaying obedience was not an option, because that was "being bad" too. Another big issue was the expression of any kind of negative emotion - frustration, anxiety, sadness, and heaven forbid anger. Part of this had to do with the appearance of being a good subservient child, absolutely, and part of it had everything to do with the fact that my parents just were not equipped to handle little kids (Let alone teenagers) and their big, messy emotions, because they never learned to do so themselves. So it was perhaps easier to utilize this type of parenting to try and squash all of those expressions down into nothing so that they didn't have to deal with them all together. My brother and I were very much shamed and disciplined for everything from not obeying "fast enough" to not doing so with the sort of mindless happy placidity that was expected of good little Christian anklebiters. I learned very quickly to simply not express and bottle up complex emotions (I still struggle with properly working through them in a healthy way to this day) and was basically in Fawn my entire growing life. My little brother, on the other hand, was pure Fight - Every step of the way. Honestly with as hard as that must have been for him, I admire that little boy's tenacity. He fought so hard against a system that was entirely stacked against him. And I wish he could have won.
Holding space for you today Mel. I see you fighting for your brother (and so many kids like him) by choosing to allow yourself to be a human full of complex emotions.
Cheerful obedience and/or immediate obedience was not really enforced in my childhood home, but a "bad attitude" was very sinful! Voice that you don't want to go to school because you were afraid of a bullying classmate? Bad attitude. Unable to deal with the noise of your sisters - pre-Walkman - BAD attitude. Wanting to disappear and read when your dozens of loud relatives descend upon your house? BAD ATTITUDE!! I was constantly being punished for failing to be the type of child that they wanted me to be, even though I was overall a well-behaved child. I could ultimately do the things that I was told to do, but if I did it through tears as my poor little dysregulated body tried to find stasis, it wasn't good enough, and I was punished for my attitude.
My little sister married a guy who is the poster child for RAP. When I'm around them, he is constantly punishing my younger nephew for his "bad attitude" as the kid has a hard time with directions and transitions. It makes my guts churn every time he takes my nephew out of the room for a "talk" that lasts too long and almost certainly still involves spanking.
I was definitely expected to be obedient and to come when called but in my family, it wasn't tired at all to God. My mom was the ultimate authority and she just expected us to obey her. To not obey was to face physical and verbal beatings. I too am recently diagnosed as having ADHD so now know why transitions are difficult and hyperfocus is a thing. I am thankful for growing up in a time where kids were left alone a lot because that freedom of being in a house alone with a book was perfect for me. Even though my parents sent us to public school and allowed us the freedom to watch, read, and listen to pretty much anything we wanted, I was all in on fundamental Christianity and evangelical Jesus. It's taken me a long time to deconstruct and I'm still working on what I believe now.
I definitely got in trouble for not having a good attitude about helping. I remember my mother telling me she wanted me to want to help but I couldn't make myself do that. There was a big emphasis on obedience to parents training you to be obedient to god.
(I didn't have the Steve Green cassette but we were big on GT and the Halo Express in our house. Those songs/verses were insanely catchy)
Yes, obeying your parents was obeying God, disobeying your parents was disobeying God. But my primary personal motivator for obedience was not loving God. It was avoiding punishment.
We had GT & the Halo Express for several of our school musicals. I can't read those verses without singing them.
And so, in my child brain, which read and memorized and took Scripture seriously, my inability to desire immediate obedience meant I probably wasn’t saved! Leading to an internal cycle of scrupulous self-surveillance and repentance over my thoughts, again and again.
I didn't grow up in a get saved/born again church (infant baptism took care of all that), so I didn't know I was supposed to be in the panic-about-salvation cycle until adulthood, being around people who were 'believing & interpreting the Bible correctly.' So I dutifully joined them.
Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe.
Action is the key.
Do it immediately.
Joy you will receive.
This weekend my mom told my husband how my first grade teacher asked them if they were putting academic pressure on me because I would crumple up and throw away any paper below 100%. They said it didn't come from them (my siblings didn't care about grades) and that I did it myself. I wonder where the pressure to be the best boy in the world came from for a young, queer kid in the 80's?
Years ago, my daughter made statements to me such as “it’s going to be a tough day when you realize the magnitude of what you did, said and required”. I am very grateful that the two of us have been in therapy (individual ) for years. I am also thankful that now we can talk about those years and environments with complete honesty.
I was born in 1950 which tells you exactly where I landed in all of this. I am heart sick as I read writings such as yours, and realize the magnitude of hurt and toxicity that I have inflicted on many people - especially my daughter. Above all, I am grateful that people are beginning to write and talk about the ugliness, the judgment, and the narrow mindedness. It is wonderful to see the confidence in people as they begin to take their voices back and speak out.
Really resonated with Kristin’s account of his childhood. Similar here. I always hated being told what to do and the focus on obedience but I also felt like I had to. I often tried to do hints around the house before I was asked so k wouldn’t be triggered. We had the Bible verses taped up around the house, and similar songs, like Psalty and GT and the Halo express. Definitely went into people pleaser perfectionist achiever mode to survive it. The indoctrination was so complete that like Krispin I rarely felt like I could relax. I remember the time I chose doing devotions over watching my favorite Saturday morning TV show where I did feel relaxed. It felt like God required that of me.
I was often asked as a young child if I was, “choosing to disobey”, which was the highest form or rebellion in our home. I remember feeling so confused by the question; I was clearly doing something upsetting to my parents, but I think that’s all I thought obedience was, breaking a rule, even the ones I didn’t know about. I would almost always answer “yes” after an internal struggle because I knew lying was bad. My parents would take my response as evidence that I was doubling down on my rebellion and “discipline” would follow. Now, I have such an ache for that little girl who was caught between needing to be good and staying safe.
My mom had to have a talk with my sister and I after we saw the little mermaid because Ariel disobeyed her father and it all worked out for her - and that’s not how life is… my dad told me a about a friends kid who was hit by a car cause they didn’t listen to their parents when I asked him why he spanked me. Immediate obedience was THE value in our home. It was fiercely guarded at all costs.
DL , I saw your IG picture with Mary Oliver’s words, “you do not have to be good”… those same words sit on my desk and Wild Geese has become a sort of scripture for my soul as I untangle and heal.
I remember “O-B-E-Y, obey your mom and dad, O-B-E-Y, it makes them very glad. Listen to the words they say, obey your parents every day. O-B-E—Y, obey your mom and dad.” (Chorus) “When your parents say ____ (the verses were a variety of examples like brushing your teeth and going to school), say “I will.” (Followed by an enthusiastic chorus of kids saying) “I will.”*
My siblings and I joked about it when we got older and sang it to each other sarcastically, but the message sunk in early as part of our childhood soundtrack.
*The above is from memory and may differ from the actual song, which I don’t care to look up. I did look up who sang it, and it was The Donut Man. That brought back a flood of memories! We had his tapes and videos. Anyone else a Donut Man family?
Wow I had to go google it but yeah this one was big in my childhood too.
It was more my younger sibling's timeframe, but I guess I learned the songs too because I was singing along!
It stuck hard lol.
I was also a Donut Man family!
my grandma had one Donut Man tape (the one about waiting for the Holy Spirit at Pentecost), so that is emblazoned in my mind!
There was this set of books of animal stories, and I think it was a young squirrel was going to get hit by maybe a train, and the papa squirrel said Come here NOW! And thankfully the baby squirrel did, and didn't get hit. So that was supposed to teach instant obedience. Because otherwise you die?
I still had trouble with it and got in trouble for not coming immediately when called, not obeying immediately, because I wasn't good at transitions. But I didn't know that until relatively recently. My most hated word as a child was "dawdling" as it got directed to me with high frequency. As if it was intentional. I wish I knew then that it wasn't, but c'est la vie.
Dr. Dobson uses this story often -- but he says his mother explained it to him as a mother bird and a baby bird. Lot's of stories of baby animals getting crushed / eaten if they didn't listen to their parents in these kinds of circles!
yeah, I totally feel that -- the transition piece was really hard for me, too, so I just felt hyper alert. all the time. And oh my gosh, the morality tales. We read a lot of Adam Raccoon which was always about obedience or facing mortal peril
I heavily relate to the instant obedience with a good attitude and the anxiety you felt around that as well. And I remember trying so very hard to do so. I now know that I’m AuDHD but I remember feeling like I couldn’t get it right. I’d do well one day and the next be so overwhelmed and disregulated that I felt like a failure. I remember doing everything I could to avoid spankings; even blaming things on other siblings. I remember feeling like it didn’t matter what my side of the story was or my opinion was. I struggle with thinking for myself now and it’s been detrimental in my career. I often don’t ask why someone wants me to do something and don’t think to push back, ask for clarification, or share why I think a different approach might be better. Deep down I’m still afraid I’ll be punished for it.
I think it's been SO overlooked regarding the long-term impacts into adulthood. Also, Dobson talks about a lot of kids that are clearly neurodivergent and it's just so heartbreaking.
I totally agree!
“Delayed obedience is disobedience” is something that has taken decades to unlearn, even though as a child I knew it was untrue. This really hits.
Speaking of church, you are spot on about the judgment. When I was a teenager, there was a period of time when I would get nauseous during Mass every Sunday. I would quickly walk down the long aisle, everyone quietly eyeing me as I hurried out to vomit. I hit the steps the first time, not being able to make it to the bushes. How mortifying! After a few weeks of this, my mom took me to the doctor. I realize now she probably thought I was pregnant. I thought that a demon had possessed me and was torturing me when I went to church. The doctor said it was likely hormones and the heat, so I shouldn’t kneel or lock my knees when I stood. However, that would make me stick out and look weak, so I figured out how to appear perfect and not vomit.
Oh, and now we know about POTS. Huh.
oh my gosh, such a clear example. Also glad to hear from a non-evangelical experience -- I know that these dynamics are so common throughout various religious communities.
It is not lost on me that we are fighting a “common enemy,” and I am accepted in this space when I was raised to believe non-Catholics were the enemy (or at the very least woefully unintelligent). What crap. It was an effective way to discredit any pointing out of flaws in the Church, though, yeah?
I journaled a lot while reading this chapter.
It was very jarring — painful — to be pulled from my monotropic focus (usually reading or being immersed in an imaginary world) to meet an angry mom ordering me to do something NOW.
All suffering was to be lifted up to God for those poor souls in purgatory. There was no compassion for my suffering — to suffer is good and holy. The saints suffered, Jesus suffered. We hold them at the highest esteem. Plus, my parents didn’t want to spend money on doctors. They grew up in poverty without doctors. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Blah blah blah.
I, at first, told myself. I’m not hypervigilant. But ha. Yeah, I am.
Same - to being pulled from somewhere in my head to anger.
this is a weird, deep cut, but Billy Graham told his version of The Prodigal Son story at one point, and in his version, it's about a kid who doesn't obey his dad to get wood for the stove because he's engrossed in a novel and doesn't hear him (but the dad is in the right, the son is in the wrong), and then he kicks the kid out and the kid leaves (instead of the original where the son leaves on his own)
Heaven forbid a child, even in a parable, have agency apart from the express will of their parents.
The Prodigal Son story gets twisted to fit a lot of agendas. My sister just called me the Prodigal Daughter the other day to guilt me into seeing our mom. I think she was using it to make the point that Mom would be happy to see me, but I was like, have you even read the story? The only person any of us resemble might be the jealous brother!
As a kid, I would have internalized that so deep. As an adult, I’m like: Woah. It’s almost laughable except I know the impact on me and my siblings as kids and the lingering impact even now.
Yes, i remember the hymn “obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. Doing exactly what the lord commands, doing it happily. Action is the key, do it immediately, joy you will receive. Obedience is the best way to show that you believe…”
To obey was to be pleasing and acceptable, to be loved, to maintain connection. If there was disconnection(from sin, lack of obedience), bottomline that meant hell. Disconnect from God/not acceptable in his sight? Hell. Disconnection from parents/not acceptable to them? Hell on earth. You always had to be obedient, be acceptable, submissive. You neeeeeeeded to maintain connection to the authorities for mere survival.
And by god, that has messed me up becoming an adult and unknowingly subjecting myself to different abuses.
Yes, so many times you hear, "Jesus did it all! You don't have to do anything to be saved." Except for this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.
100%
That song is seared into my brain.
Wow. I remember the Keith Green song about complaining. We also had an Integrity music cassette that I listened to that had songs about anxiety, etc. Diagnosed as an adult with OCD, much of my childhood anxiety related to the sinners prayer and if I was “saved” or not. Turned out to be an OCD theme, in my opinion. As a parent now, I really see that expecting instant obedience is wild, and really about control. I always had the threat of spanking hanging over my head, in a ministry family who also happened to be military.
The religious trauma to OCD pipeline is real (waves in existential and ethical OCD). Also . . . Keith Green seriously was the king of guilt trips. Have you heard of The Feet of Clay podcast? They did a really difficult few episodes covering their time in the Last Days Ministries working for Keith and what all happened when he died. It was super eye-opening to me.
Oh now I need to check out that podcast! Thanks.
Brittany, so much of this is resonant with my experience. You are not alone!
Truthfully there are huge swaths of my childhood, particularly before the age of 9 or so, where the details have been lost - I think due to PTSD. But I do recall clearly that not obeying was never an option. Delaying obedience was not an option, because that was "being bad" too. Another big issue was the expression of any kind of negative emotion - frustration, anxiety, sadness, and heaven forbid anger. Part of this had to do with the appearance of being a good subservient child, absolutely, and part of it had everything to do with the fact that my parents just were not equipped to handle little kids (Let alone teenagers) and their big, messy emotions, because they never learned to do so themselves. So it was perhaps easier to utilize this type of parenting to try and squash all of those expressions down into nothing so that they didn't have to deal with them all together. My brother and I were very much shamed and disciplined for everything from not obeying "fast enough" to not doing so with the sort of mindless happy placidity that was expected of good little Christian anklebiters. I learned very quickly to simply not express and bottle up complex emotions (I still struggle with properly working through them in a healthy way to this day) and was basically in Fawn my entire growing life. My little brother, on the other hand, was pure Fight - Every step of the way. Honestly with as hard as that must have been for him, I admire that little boy's tenacity. He fought so hard against a system that was entirely stacked against him. And I wish he could have won.
Holding space for you today Mel. I see you fighting for your brother (and so many kids like him) by choosing to allow yourself to be a human full of complex emotions.
Cheerful obedience and/or immediate obedience was not really enforced in my childhood home, but a "bad attitude" was very sinful! Voice that you don't want to go to school because you were afraid of a bullying classmate? Bad attitude. Unable to deal with the noise of your sisters - pre-Walkman - BAD attitude. Wanting to disappear and read when your dozens of loud relatives descend upon your house? BAD ATTITUDE!! I was constantly being punished for failing to be the type of child that they wanted me to be, even though I was overall a well-behaved child. I could ultimately do the things that I was told to do, but if I did it through tears as my poor little dysregulated body tried to find stasis, it wasn't good enough, and I was punished for my attitude.
My little sister married a guy who is the poster child for RAP. When I'm around them, he is constantly punishing my younger nephew for his "bad attitude" as the kid has a hard time with directions and transitions. It makes my guts churn every time he takes my nephew out of the room for a "talk" that lasts too long and almost certainly still involves spanking.
I was definitely expected to be obedient and to come when called but in my family, it wasn't tired at all to God. My mom was the ultimate authority and she just expected us to obey her. To not obey was to face physical and verbal beatings. I too am recently diagnosed as having ADHD so now know why transitions are difficult and hyperfocus is a thing. I am thankful for growing up in a time where kids were left alone a lot because that freedom of being in a house alone with a book was perfect for me. Even though my parents sent us to public school and allowed us the freedom to watch, read, and listen to pretty much anything we wanted, I was all in on fundamental Christianity and evangelical Jesus. It's taken me a long time to deconstruct and I'm still working on what I believe now.
I definitely got in trouble for not having a good attitude about helping. I remember my mother telling me she wanted me to want to help but I couldn't make myself do that. There was a big emphasis on obedience to parents training you to be obedient to god.
(I didn't have the Steve Green cassette but we were big on GT and the Halo Express in our house. Those songs/verses were insanely catchy)
Yes, obeying your parents was obeying God, disobeying your parents was disobeying God. But my primary personal motivator for obedience was not loving God. It was avoiding punishment.
We had GT & the Halo Express for several of our school musicals. I can't read those verses without singing them.
And so, in my child brain, which read and memorized and took Scripture seriously, my inability to desire immediate obedience meant I probably wasn’t saved! Leading to an internal cycle of scrupulous self-surveillance and repentance over my thoughts, again and again.
I didn't grow up in a get saved/born again church (infant baptism took care of all that), so I didn't know I was supposed to be in the panic-about-salvation cycle until adulthood, being around people who were 'believing & interpreting the Bible correctly.' So I dutifully joined them.
In Sunday School, we used to sing:
O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E
Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe.
Action is the key.
Do it immediately.
Joy you will receive.
This weekend my mom told my husband how my first grade teacher asked them if they were putting academic pressure on me because I would crumple up and throw away any paper below 100%. They said it didn't come from them (my siblings didn't care about grades) and that I did it myself. I wonder where the pressure to be the best boy in the world came from for a young, queer kid in the 80's?
Years ago, my daughter made statements to me such as “it’s going to be a tough day when you realize the magnitude of what you did, said and required”. I am very grateful that the two of us have been in therapy (individual ) for years. I am also thankful that now we can talk about those years and environments with complete honesty.
I was born in 1950 which tells you exactly where I landed in all of this. I am heart sick as I read writings such as yours, and realize the magnitude of hurt and toxicity that I have inflicted on many people - especially my daughter. Above all, I am grateful that people are beginning to write and talk about the ugliness, the judgment, and the narrow mindedness. It is wonderful to see the confidence in people as they begin to take their voices back and speak out.
Really resonated with Kristin’s account of his childhood. Similar here. I always hated being told what to do and the focus on obedience but I also felt like I had to. I often tried to do hints around the house before I was asked so k wouldn’t be triggered. We had the Bible verses taped up around the house, and similar songs, like Psalty and GT and the Halo express. Definitely went into people pleaser perfectionist achiever mode to survive it. The indoctrination was so complete that like Krispin I rarely felt like I could relax. I remember the time I chose doing devotions over watching my favorite Saturday morning TV show where I did feel relaxed. It felt like God required that of me.