And We'll Teach You How To Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate, Hate...

      If I ask you what the most common teaching and principles of Christian churches are based upon, many of you would probably list "Love one another" or "God is love" as some top answers. These are things I often heard growing up in church, and my mother probably has countless Sunday School craft projects of mine proclaiming these statements still in her basement (Mom, please feel free to toss those, I no longer need an empty toilet paper roll glued to tissue paper to tell me how to love). As I look back, I realize that I heard these statements over and over again, but this is not what I was taught. I learned that I should love the other members of the cult, whether ATI or my parents' church. It didn't matter if these members were guilty of crimes from car theft to child molestation, if they said that they had repented, that was good enough, and they should be welcomed into our homes.
     I can remember at least two men (a low number, but still above zero) who were close friends with my parents who would visit our home often. There was something about these men I didn't like, and while they never hurt me, I did not trust them. I would be told to be polite and give them hugs to greet them and bid them adieu, but I hated to do so. When I was a slightly older child, one of the men went to prison and was convicted of child molestation. This man continually testified how much he loved and wanted to serve God, so, regardless of his sex offender status, he was still a trusted friend of the family. We would write letters to him each week and he would write back. This went on for years, but I stopped writing to him after his trial and medical proof of guilt. Recently he sent my mother a letter actually confessing to the molestation, yet because he "loves God", it's ok.
The other man had become an active part of my parents' cult and he was recently investigated by the FBI for selling child pornography. He is also now in prison, but emotionally supported by my father and the cult because he is a "devout Christian". Those are just the two who were most often in my life and in my house. I can go on and on about all of the other criminals I know who are openly mentally ill and violent, (They need a great deal of help, but the cult does not encourage them to seek such help from a secular source, such as a Dr) but welcomed around 200+ church members and their children. But why shouldn't they be? We are told to love one another, and they claim to believe the same as the cult.

       Bill Gothard, the founder of ATI would send updates to ATI families each month. In his update from April 1997 he writes "Being an exhorter, I tend to overlook the negative and concentrate on the positive. This approach to life gives me continual energy and encouragement. In recent weeks, however, two events have stunned me sufficiently to realize that conditions in our country are far more desperate than I had realized...(The first event is about non-married heterosexual couples living in sin) The second incident also occurred in Chicago. The city council voted to extend medical insurance and other benefits to the live-in partners of sodomite city employees despite the outcry of many community groups. This horrendous decision was announced on the radio the next day along with ridicule for those who opposed it and a closing blasphemous statement: 'God was not available for comment.' The fact is that He has already given comment in both Scripture and history. Whenever a civilization accepts sodomy as a way of life, severe judgements follow." Didn't God also say to love one another?

        In 2005 when hurricane Katrina struck I was 17 and very, very involved in the cult's activities, and wanted nothing more than to be part of the team of young people who would go into ministry services through ATI. That was the only world I knew, and I wanted to be a big part of it. I trusted almost anything that I heard from the preacher or leaders. There were so many chances to donate to the people of New Orleans but I didn't give anything because I had been taught that Katrina was God's way of cleansing out the "horrendous" sin in their city and if I gave to them, I was only working against God's will and encouraging them to live in sodomy and practice their ungodly ways. Looking back, I can see how terrible of a person I was to think that over 2,000 people deserved to die and so many others lost all they had. I was brainwashed into being an asshole. Several years later I went to New Orleans with some friends. Many areas were still marked with signs of devastation. The people I met there were wonderful and  friendly. I felt so guilty for ever believing that these lovely people should be punished as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

        You may have noticed from my other posts that the cult strongly believes that women are inferior to men. In another update from Sept. 1997, Bill Gothard introduced CharacterLink, an internet filter to block sinful websites at home and work. He decided ATI needed their own internet filter because "the world's" were still sinful. He writes: "We discovered that present systems try to block out bad sites, but with an estimated two hundred or more pornographic sites being added every day, this approach is ineffective. We further discovered that one of the most widely used protection services has, on its board of advisors, representatives from militant sodomite groups and NOW (National Organization of Women)."
 I looked up NOW and I see why ATI didn't want anything to do with them. From the NOW website: "The National Organization for Women Foundation (“NOW Foundation”) is a 501(c) (3) organization devoted to achieving full equality for women through education and litigation.
The Foundation focuses on a broad range of women’s rights issues, including economic justice, pay equity, racial discrimination, women’s health and body image, women with disabilities, reproductive rights and justice, family law, marriage and family formation rights of same-sex couples, representation of women in the media, and global feminist issues." Yes, it would be terrible to associate with a program who fights for the equal rights for women and would assist in any type of service that would allow a women to make a choice about her own fertility instead of letting God tell her husband that they need to have as many children as possible. Why on earth are we leaving these choices in the hands of emotional women who shouldn't even have jobs in the first place?! Professor Harold Hill would have no issue starting a boys' band at an ATI conference.

      The concept of loving one another is clearly not shown when a leader uses such hateful language towards those who are transgender or homosexual. But raping  children or your sisters gives you no label. Maybe if they got to click around on the internet a bit the incest wouldn't be as prevalent. There is an ATI song we all learned, "The Ten Unchangeables". One unchangeable was if you were a boy or girl. I later learned that you can change that, with the right amount of medical treatment. We were taught that people who are trans are much more blasphemous than homosexuals because those who were trans were rejecting the way that God made them. But they aren't. That IS who they are!  I was actually surprised when I got older and found out that there are a high percentage of homosexuals and transgender who actually go to church and are far better Christians than the ones I knew.

       I have recently become very close with a woman who was born a man. I have never met her in person, but we "met" and talk thanks to mutual family and friends. I "knew" her as a man at first, but we never really talked until she told everyone that she was going to become a woman. Now I talk to her almost every day and I am fascinated by her transition and her journey. 10 years ago I would have probably ignored and just prayed for her, which makes me sad and ashamed that I was ever like that. I was taught that I should hate what she is doing and who she is. I can't tell you how happy I am that I no longer think that way and I have the privilege of being a part of her life. She is such an amazing person. She is hilarious and we are able to compare stories of breaking away from who we were once told we should be. We compare outfits and tales of dating nightmares. I love her, she has become like a sister to me and I am excited to have her as a huge part of my girls' lives. She has been a huge support to me in overcoming the lies and hatred I was taught, and now I can't imagine my life without her.

        If I followed the teaching of the cult, I should forgive and trust my father for the physical and emotional harm he has inflicted on my family and me. He is active in church and reads the Bible every day. I should have no problem trusting someone who has an abusive nature, as long as they proclaim their love for God, and let him see my girls anytime, yet I am to keep the girls far from anyone who would partake in any act of "sodomy" (I am not a fan of that word, but I'm quoting)  among consenting adults that has no bearing on my life whatsoever.. I'm sure the cult will strongly disagree with my choice to limit the girls' time with their grandfather yet encourage their time with a girl who was not always such. Just because someone is different than you are doesn't mean they are wrong. It doesn't mean we should shut them out of our lives and rejoice when disaster befalls them. That is not love, that is a cult of malicious hatred.
       

A New Perspective

    It has been quite a bit since I have been blogging. I have missed it, and I must provide a few updates in order for this post to make sense. Life took some very interesting turns. As it turns out, when I wrote "We can't all have a full quiver" I was 5 weeks pregnant...with twins! This gave Dreamy Eyes and I the shock of our lives. So much for "Hooray NuvaRing". You may also have noticed that I have a new name. As many of you were assuming would happen, I am also now Mrs Dreamy Eyes. There, you should be just about caught up.

     A few days ago Dreamy Eyes showed me a video that he thought was just stupid, but from my perspective it was very, very real. Here is a link for you so you may follow along.
Terrifying, not funny video

       If you watch this from his perspective, you see a father of a newborn girl who is freaked that she will grow up to be hot. We are having identical girls, so he found this more amusing. As an X-ATIer this video provoked dozens of terrifying thoughts. If you watch this as an ATI girl you see all the things that the daughter is doing wrong. She is obviously wearing too short of a skirt, her shirt is much too small, and she is dressed to defraud and tempt men. She is doing nothing to bring attention to her countenance. It is not the fault of the brother or father at all that they find her attractive, and if either of them were to take action on their thoughts, it would be completely her fault for defrauding them. She is disobedient to her father when he says not to hug him. She has no business being a cheerleader and defrauding other men. Who knows why she even owns a bikini when everyone knows that she should be wearing a one piece, covered in a dark t-shirt and gym shorts. She tells her father that a body is nothing to be ashamed of, which means that she has not been reading her Bible. If she was, she would know that Adam and Eve had to cover their nakedness because they were ashamed. Her father and brother should have prayed about their feelings of lust towards her. According to Dreamy Eyes, the girl does nothing wrong. Her father should be helpful to her with her rash by getting some cream or considering her allergies. The idea that the father would be attracted to his daughter is preposterous to him, let alone the entire thing is imagined at her birth.
 
      He realized as soon as I watched it that I was about to start on a roller coaster of issues. Never once have I been worried that Dreamy Eyes would ever harm our girls or be less than the most caring, protective father that ever lived. However, some things are just drilled into my brain. Seeing as this vision of the hot daughter came to the father at her birth, I asked if Dreamy Eyes would be uncomfortable seeing the girls naked. He found this question ridiculous, but this is a very real concern for someone with my past. I asked if he would be comfortable bathing them and sometimes applying diaper cream, because he would actually need to touch them in sensitive areas. Some ATI fathers and brothers don't change daughters and sisters so that they avoid temptation, especially during the post partum recovery period when the wife can't fulfill her duties of pleasing her husband. Again, to be clear, I have no worries about him as a father, these are all just real issues from my cultish past.

     ATI girls must always be aware of how they are dressed, even at home. It baffled me that my worldly friends could lounge in sports bras or tank tops, when I wasn't even allowed to have bare feet. I have mentioned before that I hate being tickled. My father never bathed me, but I would always dread my walk from the bathroom to my room (I'm not sure why I never just brought my clothes with me) because he would always catch me, take away my towel and tickle me and pinch me while I was naked. I'm not sure how old I was when this stopped, but I remember it very well. I made it no secret that I hated it. Also, being wet, freezing, terrified, and tickled would sometimes make me pee, but then I would be spanked for knowing better. Being spanked naked definitely didn't spark any additional daddy issues of paranoia and flashbacks in my adult life...
Dreamy Eyes and I both agree that we want our girls to be comfortable in their bodies, and the very thought of a father doing that to a child outrages him.

      I have mentioned in my post about still being single that I don't like anyone else to be home when I need to be in the bathroom for more than 14 seconds. A few weeks ago I was sitting on the couch and I noticed that Dreamy Eyes walked up to the bathroom door a few times, then turned back. I asked why and then he said he had thought I was in there. I told him "That's silly. I would never try to use the bathroom when you are home!" He got stuck on the word "try" and asked what I meant. I didn't want to talk about it, but I told him how I used to be forbidden to go to the bathroom at night after I was put to bed, and the few times I did use the bathroom when my father was home I would be admonished for taking too long and told that if any man ever knew that a girl could smell like that, that I would never be loved or get married. This is why I've had GI bleeds and hemorrhoids since I was 12, and most times I "tried" were not successful. Add on pregnancy, and you end up on a schedule of about every 2 weeks with "threats" of disimpaction from your OB. About a year ago I started going to therapy. When things like this come up, it gets written on "The list of things to tell Andrea". So I mentioned this to her, even though I thought it was a non-issue since Dreamy Eyes is at work about 80 hours a week. Andrea likes to give me assignments to get over my issues. I do not like these as much. This was the week of Thanksgiving and I was planning on going to my parents' for dinner. My assignment was to attempt to use the bathroom there. Worst assignment yet. I would have rather tackled my fear of bats. I tried, but after about a minute I could hear my family (Mostly my very loud grandmother) asking each other "Where is Heather?" "Is she in the bathroom?" "She is never in there this long" "Maybe we should check on her" "Why is she still in there?" "Heather, what are you doing?". I couldn't handle it. Most of the time I spent trying to stop crying and even then I just pretended I took extra long because I was putting on more stretch mark cream. My father hardly spoke to me that day, but even now, I didn't want to hear about it.
Dreamy Eyes and I had a few more chats about future potty training, and while neither of us find bathroom humor funny, we don't want our girls to end up screwed up like I am and possibly very sick. Fathers can do so much more damage than they realize.

      Back to the terrible video, which gave me a non-zero number of nightmares, I had more concerns to address. What types of clothes would Dreamy Eyes forbid, not because you don't want your daughter to look trashy when she goes out, but so that he wouldn't be attracted to the girls. Again, he found this question ridiculous, but from my perspective it was completely valid. He said that if he found an outfit that his daughter wore to be attractive, that was his issue and not hers. This was not my life, nor the life of so many of my friends. As I have mentioned, I was "lucky" not to have a brother, because this spared me from incestuous rape. This was clearly the direction the video would have taken for any normal ATI family. It's only a matter of time before that brother takes his sister and she is blamed for it. I didn't have a brother, but I have a monster of a father. I think everyone has something that they like, bedroom-wise. Liking something does not mean you cannot control it. My father likes feet. I was never allowed to paint my toenails. No anklets. No toe rings. Absolutely no sandals, flip flops, nor open-toed shoes. No high heels. No boots other than snow boots. Socks were to be worn at all times, but could be removed for bed. I know that a bunch of people are into feet (I regretfully googled it), but I feel like one should be able to separate a fetish from projecting it onto your daughter. How little control must one have that they must make their child constantly wear socks in order not to be tempted or aroused? If I pushed the boundaries, he would become very angry at me instead of dealing with his lack of self control.

     I remember once we were staying at a hotel with family friends and one daughter was just dangling her feet into the water when were were all at the pool. When it was time to head back to the rooms, my father stayed back because apparently he enjoyed the foot dangling too much to get right out of the water. I knew what was happening and I was pissed. Of course this was my friend's fault and not his. Nothing is ever the fault of a man in ATI. It is always the girl who should have been more aware of how she was tempting him. If the brother in that video had raped his sister, it would have been her fault for owning a bikini.

     To "normal" people, the video is probably just funny or stupid. I am sure that a majority of my ATI friends will have a similar perspective as I do. It's a whole different view that we all need to overcome before we end up damaging our own kids. Dreamy Eyes wrote a lot of things on my Andrea list after showing me that video.