We eventually moved into a doublewide trailer, which gave us more space than our apartment, though it started feeling pretty cramped by the time I got pregnant with baby number five. Luckily, Joseph’s maternal grandparents gave us an early inheritance and sent us a generous gift. We were overwhelmed with gratitude because the money allowed us to start building a home for ourselves, with enough room for the many children we envisioned adding to our family.
One of the significant questions that always plagued me about “trusting God” and taking the Quiverfull approach was how we were going to afford to meet our children’s basic needs. Having a baby every year made me feel on edge, and thinking about our financial state would send me into dark bouts of depression. After our home was built, though my physical and emotional pain persisted, my suicidal impulses tapered off substantially. I saw a light at end of the tunnel and it helped me make it through each day.
Before we moved in in August of 2000, older faculty, staff, and administration had often treated us with disdain. But the minute we became homeowners, their attitudes changed. They were more polite and they probed us whenever they had the chance. How much had we inherited? Were we likely to get more? How wealthy was Joseph’s family? It drove them wild with curiosity and their questions never ended. Joseph’s family began cashing CDs annually, and it was their generosity that allowed us to make ends meet despite my husband’s paltry monthly salary. He started at $1,200 a month and, even after eleven years made only $1,700 in take-home pay following health insurance costs, though he was one of the school’s most beloved teachers and got incredible student and administrative reviews. Young academics sometimes joke about living in genteel poverty, but this would have been extreme even by their standards.
Government Aid
Despite the low wages we were paid, the IFB leaders typically disparaged people who used welfare. They also railed against food stamps, Medicaid, and the government’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. After all, our lifestyles had to appear perfect to draw outsiders to God. This left families like ours in a quandary. On one hand, Joseph was paid so little that we qualified for welfare. On the other, we were encouraged to refrain from using the program, lest we appear unable to meet our family’s needs to those on the outside. It was the proverbial Catch-22. In many ways, it was the same strategy my father had used with me as a teenager to keep control. People tended to use food stamps in secret at Northland, and representatives from the college went to the community food bank in Green Bay once a month to get food buckets that contained outdated frozen pizzas, name brand cereals, Pop-Tarts, and other treats the faculty and staff couldn’t afford.
Bad as our situation was, many we knew who had come to Northland from the faculty at BJU assured Joseph that salaries there were even lower. Plus, they said that, almost without exception, BJU required faculty wives to work thirty hours per week for even lower wages than their husbands earned. The joke on campus was that BJU could get “two [employees] for the price of half.” Most faculty members took positions right after graduation, and, with no money and unaccredited degrees, they often had no way to make a new start anywhere else so they became financially dependent and loyal for life.
Cult Leader Tactics
“Dr.” Ollila, the one whose sermons had inspired my brother Jeremy’s apology years earlier, was still president of the college, and it didn’t take us long to realize he had a penchant for stirring up drama. The man fed off negativity. A few years after we arrived at Northland, the school hired a new dean named Pat Griffiths, who found out firsthand how underhanded “Dr.” Ollila could be. In his job interview, Pat had explained that he believed humans were automatically forgiven by Jesus at salvation and that daily confession for every minuscule sin was unnecessary. It was hardly radical thinking in many Christian circles, but Pat soon became a controversial figure among students, because he challenged their thinking. Angry parents called, threatening to pull their kids out of Northland.
“Dr.” Ollila went for the jugular and commanded all the students, faculty, and staff one day in chapel: “I want every one of you to bow your heads and close your eyes. Now raise your hand if you believe that there is a faculty member who is disloyal to our administration in your midst.”
No one raised a hand.
“Come on,” he bellowed. “Be honest!”
Two tentative hands appeared on the front row. (My husband defied “Dr.” Ollila’s orders just long enough to peek from his seat in the back of the church and count them.)
Frustrated at the lack of response, Ollila launched into such a tirade against disloyalty that he scared everyone senseless. Shortly thereafter, “Dr.” Ollila’s right-hand man, Sam Horn, stood up and, in a hushed and reverent voice, gushed about our president’s uncanny ability to “hear from God” on matters like this, echoing the prevailing sentiment at Northland about “Dr.” Ollila’s decisions being “divinely guided.”
Pat Griffiths resigned the day after that chapel service (effective at the end of the semester) and, under pressure, he made a public apology for being disloyal to the school’s philosophy. After we left the IFB, Pat told us that he had been getting ready to defend his dissertation at the time of this incident, and BJU had threatened not to let him graduate because of it, though the university did ultimately grant him his degree.
The Pat Griffiths debacle was far from the only time Ollila stirred up trouble. He liked to instigate an “issue,” then swoop in to resolve it like a fireman who starts his own blaze and accepts a medal from the town for putting it out. Whenever Ollila started asking accusatory questions at a faculty in-service meeting, you could feel excitement crackling through the air like electricity. People would snap to attention, morbidly curious to find out who was about to get a tongue-lashing. Every media specialist knows that controversy sells and nobody was better than “Dr.” Ollila at stirring it up.
The Problem Is Not Us, It’s You
Vice President Sam Horn was even worse. In meetings he would rail against things like “women spreading rumors on the phone all day.” He seemed to have a particular loathing for me, and glared in my direction after every one of his snarky remarks. One day, my best friend Dee Dee called to tell me she had just come from a meeting with thirteen other secretaries in which camp director “Dr.” Jeff Kahl had said “Dr.” Ollila was retiring. I started crying at the thought of losing our campus icon. No one told me the news was confidential, so I called to share it with my friend Vivian, who had been on staff at Northland, but was now living in Michigan and had idolized Ollila like the rest of us. Unbeknownst to me, Vivian’s husband was picking Sam Horn up from the airport that night in Detroit for a revival meeting at a local IFB church. He asked Sam if the rumor about Ollila was true.
The next morning, my husband got an angry call from Sam.
“Tell your wife to keep her mouth shut!” he yelled. “She’s telling everyone that ‘Dr.’ Ollila is retiring and he’s not!”
Joseph tried to explain that the information had come from a college administrator, who had stated it in a public meeting, but Sam would hear none of it. “I don’t care who said what, tell your wife to stop talking!”
Soon the school announced that Ollila would become chancellor, which meant he would preach in chapel but not run the day-to-day administration. I should have known, IFB leaders never really retire. They just give them impressive new titles that justify a paycheck.
By that point, Joseph knew Sam was gunning for me. He worried that his job and, by extension, our family’s financial future, might be in jeopardy. So he told me to let the answering machine pick up whenever a call came in and to stay off the phone unless he was in the room. This left me even more isolated while Joseph was at work all day and it meant I couldn’t even talk to my friends without being censored. That wasn’t Joseph’s intent. He just figured that if he heard everything I said, he would be able to refute any accusations Horn made about my gossiping in the future.
I should neve
r have expected privacy or respect in the IFB. I got a stark reminder of this when my old pastor Les Heinze came to Northland to give in-service sessions. There was a lot of excitement over the fact that the leader of a huge Colorado church was gracing us with his presence. But he was only a few minutes into one of his first sessions when he brought up my name. To my horror, he told everyone that I had been kicked out of high school. I knew instantly where he was leading. He was dredging up my decade-old scandal under the pretense of illustrating God’s benevolence. In essence, he was telling everyone how God had allowed a disgraced and impure girl like me to walk to the altar just like a virgin. I’m not sure if he saw the expression on my face, but he refrained from giving details. Even so, I knew I would be bombarded with probing questions by the other faculty and staff the minute he was done speaking. Horrified, I held my emotions inside, then ran to the restroom to hide the minute he finished speaking. Even as a mother and wife of a respected IFB loyalist, the man was determined to humiliate me.
Joseph came to find me and took me home. Later that night Sam Horn called, ostensibly to offer his sympathy, though I suspected he wanted to pour salt in the wound. Sam had a tendency to pry into our private lives, and his comments about my “emotional reaction to Heinze’s words” also suggested to me that he was hoping for some juicy details. I ignored this and shared nothing personal.
Even though almost a decade had passed since I first arrived on campus at Northland as a freshman, I knew I was still on spiritual probation in their eyes. That meant even Joseph was at risk. Our family’s stability would depend on me keeping my head down and being the perfect IFB wife from now on.
9
THE HOMESCHOOLING MOM
It’s God on the phone for me? How did he get my number?… Yes, Lord? And you want me to deliver a message?… We know you don’t take sides at the election, but if you did, we kind of think you’d hang in there with us.… A whole army of people out here, we pledge we’ll do our very best.
—Mike Huckabee, Republican Governors Association, 2004
From 1995 through 2004, my days were filled with pregnancy, nursing, struggling to lose weight, and then rocketing back up the scales with yet another pregnancy. The clothes in my closet ranged from size 2 to size 14. I always forced myself to drop back down to 115 on the scale before I became pregnant again, which meant I had to shed all my baby weight in the twelve weeks following a delivery. Six weeks after each baby was born, I would start running four to six miles early every morning before Joseph left for work. I rode the scales just as I had as a teen, going from a petite size 0 to a pudgy adolescent with my sudden thirty-pound weight gain, and then whittling myself back down to a 0–2 again.
My drive to slim down came partly from the fact that I knew at the rate I was going I could have as many as sixteen to eighteen kids and I knew I needed to keep my body in good shape. But another driving factor was the incredible pressure IFB leaders put on wives to maintain their looks so their husbands’ eyes wouldn’t wander. After my mother gained extra weight, my father bought her a Nordic Track and treadmill, and demanded she discipline herself enough to lose the extra weight.
Having babies one after the other naturally took a toll on our sex life. The fear of pregnancy made me worry that I would conceive too soon, so if Joseph caught a glimpse of me undressing and got that look in his eye, an overwhelming dread would rush through me. I knew choosing not to use birth control was playing with fire, and I feigned a headache as often as I could get away with it, just to give myself time to regain my strength before another round of morning sickness. But often when I demurred, Joseph would recite Bible passages and warn that he could be “tempted with ungodly thoughts” if his “needs” weren’t met. The following passage from Corinthians was a favorite in the IFB: “Do not withhold yourself sexually from your spouse, except when both of you agree for a brief time, so you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; then have sexual relations again, so Satan does not tempt you with a lack of self-restraint.” The verse made life sublime for libidinous husbands in the IFB; it meant they could get sex whenever they wanted it. One pastor’s wife, who was a close friend of mine, told me that her husband demanded they make love every night, sometimes more than once, and she had dutifully met his needs for more than twenty years.
Whenever Joseph gave up, rolled over, and fell asleep, I would lie awake, struggling with guilt for hours, eventually waking him with a hug and kiss. Other times, I would cave in and robotically go through the motions, but it was out of duty, not passion. I had no time or energy to even consider sexual fantasy or foreplay—I was just fulfilling another responsibility to my husband.
I was adamant about feeding my kids organic foods, so after waking them all up with hugs, kisses, and songs I made up, I would blend barley juice, carrots, and Granny Smith apples in a juicer and serve it to them for breakfast with oatmeal. I made all our dinners from scratch and filled the pantry with lentils, brown rice, black beans, grains, and other healthful foods bought in bulk from the local food co-op to save money.
After years of being beaten for sloppy chore work as a child, I was fanatical about keeping our house immaculate. I labeled everything from our kitchen shelves to the bins of seasonal clothes in our garage. Anything that smacked of disorder—even mismatched plates—drove me crazy. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” as our pastors were always reminding us, “and God requires us to be excellent in all we do.” Like everyone else in the cult, I thought mental illness was a myth and psychology was the devil’s work, so I had no idea I was suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Having grown up in an unpredictable, menacing environment with no way to protect myself and being trapped now in a lifestyle where the church and the college dictated every move I made, I was using organization to give myself a sense of control over my life.
Determined to Create Superkids
If Joseph had taught at Bob Jones University, we would have been required to put our kids in the Bob Jones elementary and high schools, but Northland did not have a Christian school directly associated with it. Almost everyone chose between nearby Pioneer Christian school and homeschooling. A few families put their kids in public school, but it was generally frowned upon. We opted for homeschooling because with less than $1,500 a month to live on, tuition for eight would have been prohibitive. Besides, I was convinced I could give our kids an outstanding education.
In order to homeschool my children, all I had to do was fill out a form for the state of Wisconsin listing how many hours I planned to school them. There were no state inspections, no credentialing requirements, no mandatory curriculum assessments or tests. For all the state knew, I could have been an illiterate parent, running a child brothel in the middle of the woods. Or I could have been a paranoid schizophrenic, hiding my kids in a tunnel under our home because I thought the world was coming to an end. As long as I crawled out of the tunnel long enough to turn the form in, I satisfied Wisconsin’s homeschooling requirements.
Fortunately for my kids, education was important to Joseph and me. We loaded up with Christian homeschooling curricula, using materials from BJU Press, A Beka Books, Rod and Staff, and Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). Eventually I added the Bob Jones University satellite program and Saxon for math, which I deemed the best programs available.
Like a number of other moms in the IFB, I was determined to raise super-children whose achievements would put public school kids to shame. Even that wasn’t enough; I planned for them to outpace all their IFB peers academically too. My kids would learn several foreign languages, read classic literature for hours every day, and master at least two musical instruments. I set up what I called “stations,” play centers in various parts of the house with dollhouses, puzzles, Legos, and other educational toys from the Learning Center. I allotted each child thirty minutes per station before rotating. In short, I brought the same obsessive-compulsive approach I used in housekeeping to homeschooling. Being a driven person, who also happened to
be female, the greatest thing I thought I could do for God was to raise as many children as possible to grow up to be mighty warriors in His kingdom.
Using a Christian homeschooling Web site called Titus2.com, I purchased materials that helped me schedule our days in half-hour segments. A typical day looked like this:
5:00–6:00 A.M.:
Mom jog/spend time in prayer
6:00–6:30 A.M.:
Mom get ready
6:30–7:00 A.M.:
Mom personal prayer/Bible study
7:00–8:00 A.M.:
Kids up, dressed, hygiene, bedroom cleanup
8:00–8:30 A.M.:
Breakfast/kids listen to Bible on CD
8:30–9:00 A.M.:
Bible memory verses
9:00–9:30 A.M.:
JoJo reading lesson with Mom/kids play at stations
9:30–10:00 A.M.:
Selah reading lesson with Mom/kids play at stations
10:00–10:30 A.M.:
Mom reads group story
10:30–11:00 A.M.:
Kids listen to Children’s Story Hour tapes (character stories)
11:00–11:30 A.M.:
Clean up and prepare for lunch
11:30 A.M.–12:30 P.M.:
Lunch/Bible memory verses
12:30–1:30 P.M.:
I Fired God Page 17