Powerful Books and Marriage Minutes

When I started writing this blog, I hoped to change the problem of spiritual and related domestic abuse in certain Evangelical churches. I didn't think I'd manage to do much. Still, I felt responsible for doing what I could to voice my experiences and offer some good reasons and resources to help people reconsider allegedly Christian ideas that both actively and passively facilitated these abuses. 

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A Study of Galatians for Those Who Have Exited Cults

 

One of the wisest men I know finally finished his book on Galatians.  I've read sections of the Bible Study a few years ago, and it was brilliant.  I just downloaded the very affordably priced Kindle copy from Amazon.com, and I look forward to delving into it.

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Lamenting Labors and Legacies

I always find great pleasure when speaking with Dr. John Weaver. As he waits for the upcoming release of his latest work, Technology, Management and the Evangelical Church, he's busy thinking about his next book – all of which became necessary for him to write after learning more about the complicated tapestry of abuses within the modern Evangelical Church in the US. I love how he sets me thinking about the language that I use, his rich sense of scholarship that drives questions about the origins of terminology, and how it affects us. 

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How “Marriage Minutes” Helped Me Let Go of the Hunger Artist

Allegedly a book review of Gerald Ford's Marriage Minutes

,

it ended up becoming a celebration of my egalitarian marriage with my husband and about the unexpected the effect that the book has had on my life.

The first time that I ever heard anyone use the term “egalitarian” in a conversation was my husband, just after we'd first started to date. I seemed to prefer the patriarchal approach, even though I grew up in a church that ordained women. My church had more female elders than male ones, but as a daughter of sock hop era parents, I was quite comfortable with patriarchy. 

As a child, I also watched some of those women elders inappropriately reject and strongly criticize pastors in conversations to which I never should have been privy. When the spiritually abusive church that my husband and I would one day join preached that women were meant to be reigned in and ruled over, I was willing to play along. I thought of the errors in judgement made by two women – events that were filtered through my poor understanding as a child. Patriarchy provided a very simple answer to a terribly complex situation.

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Daffodil Season Ends but Recovery Continues

More than a month ago, I learned about some cruel gossip that's being spread about me and it triggered a host of complicated hurdles for me. The questions of others sent me back to revisit my history of hopping around through some truly fringe varieties of cultic Christianity, but I also found myself more affected by the deep personal losses that are all wrapped around that history, too.

Ironically, I'd just started blogging about the stages of recovery right before this happened, but I suddenly realized that I was living an experiential reminder, too. Stage One persisted for a good two weeks before it faded into decrescendo, mostly because I still can't understand that if people took issue with me that they didn't feel comfortable with approaching me. And the truth is that there may be no rational reason behind their actions.

Concurrent with seeking stability came the grieving of Stage Two (Part 2) as did remembrance (Part 3). That grieving involved identifying and expressing my anger in a healthy way – once I was able to identify it as anger. Some Stage Three surprised me pleasantly in renewal of old friendships. Elements of safety in recovery emerged, too, for I found that while I was coping with my own emotional soup, those who love me also became offended on my behalf. At times, I had to juggle their responses when I wasn't exactly in the best form myself.

Integration and Reconnection

Though I hate to realize it, this challenge did affect me strongly enough that I've recoiled in constriction. Though a string of my own illnesses and my concerns for my aging cat's health have added to stress, I realized that I'd fallen into my familiar old pattern of retreat. Friends have been calling, wondering where I am and whether I still love them.

As my shock and awe abates, I'm now faced with connecting again with those things and people from whom I've backed away. Social isolation never helps, and I find myself working hard to pull out of it. Time with others heals me, but I feel weary. I've neglected self care along with my friends. I struggle to attend to work projects as the stress of the conflict seems to run at a low level, but constantly in background in my mind.

Then there are other things that leave me weary like the announcement that CJ Mahaney was speaking at The Gospel Coalition. I also look forward to writing about Eric Pazdziora's the beautiful lament that he composed for Lydia Schatz which was recently featured at a Chorosynthesis event. (Lydia was the Liberian adoptee who died a few years ago due to beatings according to her parents' observance of Michael Pearl's teachings.) John Weaver's excellent new book about the New Apostolic Reformation brings up another set of ideas and history that I must revisit as I read.

And with both Eric and John who could almost be my sons age wise, in my joy over their recent accomplishments, there is a tinge of melancholy. I planned on having my own children but I didn't get the life I ordered. In this season of remembrance for me and as I approach my fiftieth birthday, the subject of opportunities lost takes on greater significance. Eric has also been a kind ear and encouragement for me as I set out to reclaim my connection to music which I largely buried after I left my church nineteen years ago. (That's part of another aspect of my ongoing recovery that finally emerged about a year ago.)

Reconnection and Moving On

So here I am, waiting to see what unfolds regarding my relationships with people who are claiming that there are elephants in the room. I have a talent for pointing out the fact that naked emperors have no clothes, often at the worst possible moment. I have to interact with many people involved in the telling and in the hearing of the elephant tales before we all have a good opportunity to address these matters.

I must make it an adventure of learning not to care too much about those things which I can't do anything about. I may ultimately just chose to walk away from the endeavor that links me to these critics. I might stay involved but just suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous ideas because it's just not worth the effort of opposing them. I can't end them, either, but I can address them assertively. Not knowing more about how the conflict will end doesn't feel very comfortable for me.

Climbing up to the High Road

I saw a meme the other day that was meant to encourage children of narcissists to choose healthy ways of dealing with the difficulties that such relationships create. It affirmed a strong internal locus of control – to focus on that which one can do and to accept what is outside of one's influence – but it became rather snide. It said that you can't control what other people think or the lies that they tell or whether people believe them. But a person can sit back and “laugh at the lowlifes who have nothing better to do” than gossip.

On the surface, it sounded good, and a part of me said, “Yeah!” But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was wrong to foster more division by essentially returning cruel behavior with equally cruel behavior and condescension. Two wrongs don't make a right. While the person who lies about someone deserves to face thos consequences, responding in kind doesn't solve anything. It only fosters more conflict, and it feeds into the power struggle that the first party tried to establish.

I must choose whether I want to stoop to returning evil with evil or whether I want to “take the high road.” When I read the “lowlifes” moniker, I decided that I didn't want to feed name calling. Ideally and while it may be too much to ask, my ultimate goal in these relationships in particular aspires to reconciliation. I have to follow that course for my own sake, so I need to climb up out of the hurt and think about walking the high road.

In the next post:

How I found a map to the “high road.”

For further reading until the next post:

• Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery
• Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
• Bessel Van der Kolk's The Body Keeps Score 

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Commonalities Between Shirley Taylor's New Book and the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate? A Review of “Women Equal – No Buts”

I've just read Shirley Taylor's newest book, Women Equal – No Buts: Powered By the Same Source. I spoke to Jocelyn Andersen a few days ago who said the book would be ready in about a week. I was thrilled to find it several days early! We talked about Shirley, and we spoke about how God has put fire in her belly for the cause of equality for women within the church. I'm humbled by her witness and her perseverance for this cause, and No Equal Buts is yet another passionate effort to advance true, functional equality for women within Christianity. Unlike Dethroning Male Headship (her previous book published by One Way Press), this new work demonstrates how some of the male headship doctrines “flesh out” in real life. (I don't use the term “flesh” as a pun, for that is exactly what much of complementarianism really is.)

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Kathryn Stegall's Book Addressing the Gender Debate

A few months ago, Kathryn E. Stegall shared her new book with me. I keep sitting down to write a review of her book, but I have such a plethora of thoughts, memories, and passionate emotions that I had trouble sorting through them to figure out how to start.

I will finally start here!

Her book presents the power of the Gospel more than anything else, simply by focusing on Scripture, and the doctrines shine through in the process. Though the declared subject of the book concerns this modern gender debate that has come to the forefront in the Evangelical world, I think that it's really more of a book about soteriology: what salvation is, how it is obtained, and what it does for those who put their faith in Jesus. I imagine that as a Christian writer, one couldn't ask for more. Through a focus on Scripture, the book dispels competing and idolatrous doctrines that rob God of His glory, power, authority, and ongoing works that belong to Him alone.

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A Review of Shirley Taylor's “Dethroning Male Headship” (Celebrating the Third Anniversary of the Demand Letter and the founding of the Freedom for Christian Women Coalition)

I so often pray that the eyes of the Lord will look to and fro about the earth, seeking for one to whom He can show Himself as strong, and that, by His help, I will be fit for Him to notice. I pray for his help to enlighten my understanding so that He will show Himself strong to me, in all His depth and width and height as my life unfolds, being gentle with me as He brings me deeper into that sweet fragrance of the knowledge of Him. But I find that I also look to and fro, looking for people who will have the strength and the willingness to step forward to speak the truth, and I pray that God shows Himself strong to them, too. We have too few of them today.

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The Exploitation of the Traditional Use of the Term of Headship (A Prelude to a Review of “Dethroning Male Headship”)

 Before venturing into a formal review of Shirley Taylor's new book, Dethroning Male Headship, I wanted to comment on the use of the term itself. She recently posed the question about when the term became popular and with whom it originated. (I first heard it in Presbyterian churches which I started attending in the '90s, and no one with whom I've inquired can remember “male headship” as a term before this time either.) Though the concepts of subservience and scapegoating of women have been with us for a long time, the term is a relatively new. The points I make here are not part of Shirley's book, but I think that they are worthy of consideration.

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Role Models, Books to Read, and Big Shoes to Fill

I find it amusing that I'm probably most known among evangelicals for challenging the doctrines of complementarianism. I grew up in a denomination that honored women and one that was spearheaded locally by a woman in the town where I was born. During the first decade of the 20^th Century, this woman's husband encouraged his wife to establish the denomination's first church in my state. Both husband and wife together were sent by the denomination to the local Lutheran seminary so that they would be prepared to teach at the Bible College that they would later establish. One of their family members who bore their name would become one of my first role models – a resource for people of all ages at our local church, and I'm proud that she was my first piano teacher.

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Good Books and Resources that Explore Forgiveness

This list is by no means exhaustive but includes some of the best titles that I've encountered on the subject of forgiveness. Most of the books listed here address matters from a Christian perspective with primary authors on the subject listed first (but not in any particular order). Take note of the book lists that already appear here at UnderMuchGrace.com, listed near the bottom of the page, as well as titles concerning manipulative relationships. Enjoy!

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Loved Ones Who Repeatedly Hurt Us: Landorf Heatherly's “Irregular People”

Joyce Landorf Heatherley wrote a wonderful book about those loved ones that seem to have a way with wounding us, over and over again. The previous post describes how she came up with the title of the book: “Irregular People.”  

They don't necessarily have to be family, but they usually are – those people we can't easily avoid and are in our lives whether we want them to be or not. (They probably wouldn't be if we had that choice.) They can't be reasoned with, they disappoint over and over again, and when you really need them, they are usually not supportive. They break our hearts through rejection and poor consideration. 

Things get even more complicated for us if these irregular people happen to be our parents who offer us some support. This reminds me of the relationship that a battered wife has with her husband who supports her and is often quite demonstrative with gifts and loving gestures, making the physical violence harder to put into perspective. The good is supposed to compensate for the very bad. (Susan Forward calls this the “FOG” in Emotional Blackmail, an acronym that stands for “Fear, Obligation, and Guilt.”) Much anguish and confusion results within these relationships with "irregulars."

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When Your Family and Loved Ones Offend You

Both offending and forgiving our loved ones poses one of the most difficult challenges in the Christian life. We never intend to hurt those whom we love, and because we love them, sorting out offenses amidst that love becomes quite complicated. As the old saying goes, however, the “road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Hurting those we love can be our worst nightmare, especially if we did all that we could to work the opposite.  Voicing those offenses to resolve them and move into forgiveness and greater love and intimacy can even offend the person who caused the first offense.

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Journaling for Personal and Spiritual Growth

 A good counselor will tell you to keep a daily journal. There are many articles online that talk about the new data which shows the mental and physical health benefits of the practice, in addition to the sage old advice about the benefits of the discipline. Google puts them right at our fingertips, so I won't spend much time here on that subject.

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Journey Out of Shame: A List of Resources

Original post 19Jun08;  Update Jan2012

Almost four years has elapsed since I first developed this list of helpful books and information for coping with shame -- specifically the type of toxic shame in adulthood that results from deficits in emotional development.  If you found the discussion of the characteristics of a child and how immature parenting affects adults, you will benefit greatly from these resources.  Explore the whole series about the childhood roots of victimization HERE.

I've broken down the titles into Christian resources and secular ones.

CHRISTIAN RESOURCES

Concerning Emotional Developmental Deficits and Recovery

From Shame to Glory  by Kathryn Chamberlin, LCSW-C

Buy the Book on Amazon

Audio and Video Presentations

Kathryn attends the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, a church that is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination, following the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism.

As you are free to note on her webpage, she holds a nursing degree from University of Virginia, a Master's Degree in Social Work from The Catholic University and certification in Biblical Counseling. She practices Christian counseling with the Bethesda Counseling Group, offering services to those in the Baltimore-DC Metro area.

Kathryn's presentation, “From Shame to Glory” is perhaps the best place to start a journey out of shame and into the liberty that is afforded to all believers in Christ Jesus. She has several other audio resources available, and I would also recommend considering these additional presentations as well:

• Shame versus Worth
• The Approval Addict
• The Performance Trap
• Hurt Trail to Idolatry
• The Door Metaphor

Books for Christians in Recovery  (In descending order of importance)

• Love is a Choice.  Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier's book examines the problem of persistent shame in the Christian's life. Christ saves us from the shame of sin and restores us, but for those of us who have been raised in families that were lacking the support we desperately needed, we tend to get stuck in patterns of shame that can prevent us from fully embracing the fullness of our forgiveness and liberty in Christ. Their ten step program teaches about how we can get caught up in repetitive patterns of shame and how we can be liberated from shame.  ** They also offer a companion workbook (which I have not read).

• Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves.  The book that I believe helped me the most during my own recovery has been David Stoop's book, Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:  Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families.  The aforementioned book (from the same publisher) presents an overview and an introduction to the topic of the less than ideal emotional development of a child, but Stoop's book takes healing to the next level and explains more specific information about how to heal.   I found myself in its pages in a deeper way, amazed at how accurately it described the patterns that I'd lived.

• Boundaries.  As mentioned in recent posat and featured in this blog post concerning a child's characteristic of vulnerability, Townsend and Cloud's book explores the issues concerning boundaries from a Christian perspective.  In addition to their landmark book, you can also find a host of resources and video clips on important topics at Cloud-Townsend Resources online.  The authors also adapted their message about boundaries and authored subsequent books which focused on particular types of relationships, and they are worth considering as well, though I am partial to the first book because it reviews boundaries quite extensively.

• The Lies We Believe and the companion workbook which adds significantly to the material in the book.  The author, Dr. Chris Thurman, explores the false ideas that we hold about the world -- ideas which only serve to set us up for heartache.  I think of this book as a more structured way of looking at spiritual warfare and bringing every thought captive to the truth, but it is focused on the issues of shame and negative emotion.  Through this book, I learned that what healing professions call "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" or working through negative emotion by exploring unrealistic expectations and false ideas about life was essentially the same thing that the Bible teaches by renewing the mind and bringing thoughts captive to Christ by using the Bible as a standard.  David Stoop also has a similar book dealing with the topic called You Are What You Think, presenting the same approach to right and healthy thinking -- renewing the mind with healthy thoughts and ideas.

• Lewis Smedes' many books on the topic of forgiveness.  I cannot recommend the writings of Smedes more highly enough on one's journey to better understand forgiveness in a healthy way and from a very Christian perspective.  He has a host of titles, and I've found them all equally helpful, even though all of the aforementioned authors and books listed here touch on the subject.

• This is Your Brain on Joy.  If you've followed this series and found a great deal of benefit through the focus on brain as an organ of the body that deserves special care and consideration, I highly recommend reading Earl Henslin's Christian book which presents not only a plan to help balance mood and restore brain health, but also focuses on spiritual growth.  His balanced, Christian approach makes the topic very understandable and practical, taking into consideration the concerns that many Christians have, promoting good stewardship of both mind and body.

• Quivering Daughters (for women).  Though Hillary McFarland's book focuses on the plight of young women who grew up in the radical end of the homeschooling movement, I believe that any young woman who grew up under shame-based and enmeshed parenting as an Evangelical Christian will benefit tremendously from this book.  I am an example of those who can identify with the patterns of enmeshment, though my parents were neither radical conservatives nor was I homeschooled.  The patterns of enmeshment do convey, and I believe that any woman from a background of religious condemnation and shame can glean a great deal from the book.

• Make Anger Your Ally.  Neil Clark Warren's book (published by Focus on the Family) explains anger from a Christian perspective, focusing on the benefits of anger as a protective mechanism and how to deal with the triggers of anger in a healthy way that we might all observe the Apostle Paul's admonishment to "be angry and sin not."  There is also a title on anger in the Minirth Meier/New Life series of books, though I have not read it.  Some might find this helpful, as understanding anger presents a significant challenge for many who were raised in evangelicalism that perceived wrongly that anger itself is sinful.

• The Enmeshed for Jesus blog!  Read many excerpts from these titles on this site's sister blog, which deals directly with the topic of shame-based parenting and enmeshment as it relates to the patriarchy movement.

• Other Christian titles on the subject of emotional developmental deficits. Hurt People Hurt People (Wilson); Families Where Grace is in Place (VanVonderan);  Hiding from Love (Townsend);  The Healing Path and and companion workbook (Allender).

Online Recovery Resources (some of which are free!):

• Check the National National Association for Christian Recovery website site for searchable archives, their blog, and list of constantly growing resources
• NACR online video workshops
• Free library of articles from back issues of STEPS magazine
• NACR audio workshops (for a nominal fee)
• Meier Clinics' list of online articles discussing a variety of topics
• The (aforementioned) Cloud Townsend Resources site with topical videos

Devotionals:

• Rooted in God's Love (NACR, available as a book and as a free daily email)
• Meditations for Christians who Try To Be Perfect  (hosted on NACR by Joan Webb (available as a book)
• Northstar Devotional Blog (online resource)
• 12 Step Life Recovery Devotional (Arteburn and Stoop)

Online Forums:

• Christian Recovery International Forums  (Both NACR forum and a spiritual abuse forum)

SECULAR 
RESOURCES

 Depending on how the first two resources minister to you, and depending on the nature of the areas that God begins to heal in your life, I would recommend choosing between a Christian and a secular resource.

Overview,  Introduction, and Healing

If you find yourself very compelled by this series and are at ease exploring secular writings, I would consider reading some secular material concerning shame and recovery. Though any book on the subject of shame or codependency as it was once popularly called would be appropriate, I find that these titles have been very good. These have all been time honored and standards in the area of overcoming shame.

• Codependent No More, Beyond Codependency and Codependent's Guide to the Twelve Steps (Melody Beattie)
  
• Facing Codependence and the companion workbook Breaking Free (Pia Melody)
• Compelled to Control (Miller)

Enmeshment
 

If while reading this series of posts, you identified with the subject and experience of enmeshment and the information on the Overcoming Botkin Syndrome blog, there are titles that specifically deal with that subject.

• The Emotional Incest Syndrome:  What To Do When A Parent's Love Rules Your Life (Patricia Love)
• Facing Love Addiction:  Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love (Melody)
• Toxic Parents (Forward)
• Silently Seduced. . .Understanding Covert Incest (Adams)
• When He's Married to Mom:  How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men... (Adams)

Etc.

There are also a host of titles that concern intimacy and specifically delve into issues of parenting.  I cannot begin to list them all, and my personal journey is unique, but I found these secular titles particularly helpful to me in my own journey of recovery.  **Highly recommended**

• **Trapped in the Mirror:  Adult Children of Narcissists and their Struggle for Self (Golomb)
• **Who's Pulling Your Strings (Braiker)
• The Drama of the Gifted Child:  The Search for the True Self (Miller)
• The Gifted Adult (Jacobsen)

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Who Won a Copy of "When Sparrows Fall"? (and win a copy of Jon Zens' "No Will of My Own")

Today's post is just a tad silly!

I guess when you have cats help you, that's what tends to happen.  ;)

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Listen to Blog Talk Radio to Win a Copy of Meg Moseley's “When Sparrows Fall”

I've decided that every so often, I will raffle off a book or two to those people who send me an email with an appropriate answer to the mystery question of interest or other stated response.

How It Works

This time around, I'll collect responses until May 3^rd (the day that Meg Moseley's book officially launches), and from the best responses, I'll have my husband or maybe one of my cats select two names at random.

To whomever gets selected, I'll send a copy of Meg's new book, When Sparrow's Fall.   Read my review of the book HERE.   So send me your name, address, and your response to the email address listed in the picture below, and I'll send off a book to you. (I'll delete/destroy the contact info after the raffle! I just want to have it for the sake of expediency.)

Also let me know if you'd like me to post your response here at UnderMuchGrace.com after the raffle.

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The Aim of Every Artist: Meg Moseley's novel, "When Sparrows Fall"

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."      William Faulkner

Every new generation experiences life uniquely, rising to meet new challenges in a new ways. Though the basic responses are not generally unique, each generation strives to make their efforts uniquely their own. In an attempt to solve the host of problems created by government schooling and while achieving many good ends at the same time, the '70s and '80s birthed the homeschooling movement. It is an excellent option, though public schooling was once what many believed to be an excellent option which solved a different set of problems for them in their day. How each generation or group of people solves their problems creates their history, yet because we are imperfect human beings, new problems always arise with those new solutions. We demonstrate our true character as we acknowledge, take responsibility for, and confront what we've created. To avoid our responsibility, sometimes we even go back to resurrect or reinvent some old solution that worked for a previous generation, losing sight of our own specific purposes.

Meg Moseley, an experienced homeschooler, sought what Faulkner says every artist aims to do: to capture a moment in time, not only to preserve it for years to come, but she also introduces the daily life of a homeschooler to those who live differently. As Faulkner suggests, a stranger can look at “When Sparrows Fall” and gain a realistic and entertaining glimpse into the life of the protagonist, but I believe that homeschoolers will also benefit in a host of ways.

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Meg Moseley Points the Way through Hardships in Homeschooling into Pathways to Peace

About 20 hours ago, I laid in the dark, wondering what goodness could come out of my immediate state.  In the expanded passage that Reinhold Niebuhr penned from whence the “Prayer of Serenity” originates, he petitions God to help him “find hardships as a pathway to peace.”  I’m stuck in bed for the next day, though I want to be up, feeling better, and attending to all sorts of important and sundry things.  I found it much easier to connect with hardship than with peace.  Uncomfortable as well, I can’t even find my attention span in order to figure out where that pathway might be!

In the mail today, I received a proof copy of Meg Moseley’s new book, “When Sparrows Fall.”  It’s due for release on May 3, 2011 from WaterBrook Multnomah.  This novel tackles the spiritual abuse experience through the eyes of a widowed homeschooling mom of six on her way to reclaiming “freedom, safety, and love ~ for herself and for her children.”   The cause of my temporary sedentary status comes as a blessing in disguise just a few hours after my sad lament, and my pathway suddenly seems far more clear.  I have a chance to read the book!  It is my hope and prayer that this book will prove to be a great instrument of help and healing on the pathway to peace for the many others who will read it in days to come.  Though I appreciate all of the important work that has emerged on this subject, I’m especially excited that another resource from a devoted Christian with some twenty years of personal experience in homeschooling will soon be available.

I’m curious and perhaps excited to see what will happen with my new relationship with “When Sparrows Fall” between now and an appointment I have tomorrow afternoon. ( I suspect that I will magically find my lost attentiveness hidden within it tonight.)  While reading only the first ten pages, I stopped to read three short quotes to my husband. (Naturally, he followed with sarcastic eye rolls and sardonic comments such as, “Well, I’m glad we’ve never heard anything like that before!”)  By page ten, I think I’d had about 25 flashbacks to things that were said to me in my own spiritually abusive past, and I’ve found two phrases that I’ve used as either titles or subtitles in my own blog posts.  [I’ve learned that common phrasing is quite a common thing.  Stated another way, the late Dr. Paul Martin said that though the sheep’s clothing that wolves wear changes, the way that they attack their prey and the wounds that they leave do not vary.  The works of the flesh always look like the works of the flesh, especially the tactics that are dependent on language.]

Still, I’m amazed at how much spiritually abusive vernacular Meg has artfully encapsulated within her book’s first few pages.  I find most books in the Christian fiction genre “force” too much of the jargon into the narrative, even when I am intimately familiar with the subject matter, situations, and language.  (That is to say, I don’t believe that the lacking spontaneity comes from lack of experience on my part but from a writer that lacks the necessary skill of translating their ideas into something very readable.)  I found the first few pages of “When Sparrows Fall” to be refreshingly different, as though the words were pulled directly from countless conversations that I’ve had or witnessed or suffered myself.  Understanding that Meg and I share some similar experiences with similar groups and individuals, that may account for the intense sense of familiarity her writing evokes for me.  I’m curious to discover whether people from other types of spiritually abusive backgrounds find it as equally perspicacious, especially as the plot unfolds.

Since my attention span does seem to be hidden where I left them on page 15 of Meg’s book, I’m going to get back to reading, holding down the bed so that the cat who patiently waits can use me as her bed for the evening.  


More to come about this exciting first of it’s kind -- a novel about the experience of spiritual abuse which has been woven into too many sectors of Christian homeschooling.

Visit Meg at www.megmoseley.com and on Meg Moseley’s Blog.   Or better yet, unless you’ve got a frequent flyer card with Family Christian Bookstores, Mardel, or Books-A-Million and want to wait to purchase your copy there, go pre-order the book from Amazon.com.  You can look her up on Facebook, too!

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My First Entry in my Quivering Daughters Diary

Post originally published at UnderMuchGrace.com June 2010 as :

My First Entry in my Quivering Daughters Diary

Embarking on the Journey through Hillary McFarland's New Work 

"Quivering Daughters:

Hope and Healing

for the Daughters of Patriarchy"

I started out the day and kept checking the door to make sure that the "UPS man" had not escaped my attention, and maybe he came and left my book at the door without knocking.  Hopeful that my book might arrive yesterday, I checked the UPS tracking number that I'd received from the bookseller by email.  It was in Pennsylvania at 7:36AM , at least a ten hour drive away at that point, so I was sure that it would not arrive that day.  (I was excited and obsessed enough to actually go to the UPS website to see where the book was.  Am I nutz?  Rhetorical question.. Please don't send me emails.  We already know.) 

I'd made several trips down the stairs to check my doorway for the book by the time the knock came!  The only time I've ever been this excited about something coming in the mail has been when I received my Nursing Board results in the summer of '86, and I kissed the mailman when I opened the letter!  I also watched the mail like a hawk for my engagement ring that my husband sent via regular post from half-way across the country in '88.  (He didn't insure it, and it took over a week to arrive.)  Rather than kiss the UPS man today, to express my excitement and gratitude, I gave him a pretty little gift box of Choxie candy that I'd picked up at Target (on clearance, of course ;). 

I’d called Hillary on the phone, as we’d arranged in advance to open our packages while we had each other on the phone, acting like excited, silly school girls.

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