“Quiverfull” was by far one of the hardest concepts for me to overcome, when it comes to recognizing and recovering from legalism in my own life.
Let me give you a little background. When I was still a child, I always loved babies and deeply desired to have my own someday. I remember coming up with all the names for the kids I would have one day (at the age of 12).
I got married in 1998, and immediately wanted to have a child. It took six months to conceive, but finally I was able to tell my husband one day that he was going to be a father. One and a half years later, we had our second baby. After this, we began using birth control pills, saying we were going to space out our kids. Four years after the second, we had a third. I had not considered seriously having seven children again after we got married because of the financial problems we had had initially.
After our third child was born, there was a documentary show that came on television. It really got my attention. It was called “14 Children and Pregnant Again”, starring the Duggar family, who at the time were not well known. I remember thinking to myself, “Why would anyone want to have that many children? Wouldn’t it be so difficult? How could they possibly make it work?”
I watched with fascination, noticing that the family seemed to work together like a well oiled machine. The children were all so well behaved and seemed to love God, and seemed so happy! I was desperately seeking a mother figure at this time (my mother was not someone I could go to for wisdom or advice) so I saw the way this mother seemed to love her children, calling them “blessings” and lovingly teaching and instructing them. She was so gentle with them – unlike in my childhood experience, which had been extremely different – and I wanted this to be someone I could follow and learn from. I wanted to know the secret of how to raise children so successfully and so happily. I wanted to have the joy they seemed to have.
I began visiting the Duggar family website, and found links to a site, quiverfull.com, and recommendations for a few books. The quiverfull site made a compelling case (in my mind) for the idea that God wants people to have as many children as he will be willing to give them. I printed out at least 20 pages of the arguments from the site and studied them, along with the books I read, and was fully convinced that I had committed a terrible sin by trying to prevent any more children. Why would I deny gifts that God was trying to give me? Why would I try to thwart his sovereign will?
I felt so shameful and sick for throwing away all the blessings I could have had in the previous years. I couldn’t believe that I knew the Bible so well and somehow missed that this was so vitally important.
So I presented all of the information I read to my husband and asked for his guidance. With tears in my eyes, I asked him if he believed we had been sinning by using birth control. And I presented all of the arguments, and asked for his thoughts. He really didn’t know how to defend it, because he was struggling at the time with his faith, so he basically just went along with it. He never told me his thoughts or feelings on it, just said, “Okay, we can do that.” I assumed we were on the same page, and so we stopped using any birth control methods.
After this, we actually had two miscarriages. These were devastating to me, and I couldn’t understand why God would have allowed it to happen right after I had made a decision to give all control to him, to allow him to give me more children. Then I reasoned that He was trying to help me see that it really is about His timing and His decisions, and I reasoned that they were still blessings and that one day I would see them in heaven and would understand the reasons why it happened. I thought that maybe God was testing me to help me have more faith, I thought – to prove that I really did trust in Him.
Three years went by after this, with no conception. I bought packs of 75 pregnancy tests and would go through all of them within a few months. That’s how obsessed I became with becoming pregnant. I finally was at a point in my life by then that I believed maybe God only wanted me to have 3 children, and relaxed about it and stopped taking pregnancy tests. Then, very shortly after coming to this belief, I had a positive pregnancy test. I was ecstatic!
Baby number 4 was followed by baby number 5, 16 months later. Then baby number 6 came in another 2 years. Baby number 7 came another year and a half later. At this point, I began feeling the effects of the stress of having to figure out how to make ends meet with 7 children, and keep 4 children under the age of 5. Even with helpers, it was becoming so difficult that sometimes I couldn’t handle it and I would sink into a deep depression, or I would just start crying for (what seemed like) no reason. I felt so alone, without support, and didn’t know what to do. I watched the Duggar family show and looked for advice in their columns and website, but there was no advice that truly helped me. All of the advice they gave me made me feel worse about myself.
For example, Michelle has one article on her website about how she used to stay up all night doing the laundry and how difficult this was, but one day God helped her by sending an “angel” relative to come and help her do the laundry, and that has been the case for years. But I didn’t have an angel relative who was helping me. So how did this advice help me? I needed to know how to balance cleaning the house, homeschooling, making sure the kids all are clothed, fed, have their teeth brushed, and all of the things that need to be done, and still somehow feel like I have time and energy to just relax and enjoy them.
Michelle seemed to be able to do it all. I wanted to know how she disciplined her children. The advice she gave seemed so generalized but she never gave specific examples of how she would train children, except in small things like teaching them to say please and thank you by bribing them with pennies and skittles. My kids did much worse things than just leave out please and thank you. I needed real help, but I assumed that the problem was with ME. That there was something wrong with me and the Duggars just didn’t have the problems I had because they were better than me.
For years, I would spend time online debating with people who opposed the Duggar family. I had an answer for all of their accusations. Some would accuse them of being on welfare, and I would prove them wrong.They would accuse them of not being able to spend time with each child, and I would counter that with the articles that talk about how Michelle and Jim Bob reserve a certain amount of time per child alone each week. I believed wholeheartedly that the Duggar family was beyond reproach (not that they were perfect, but close as they could be), and was extremely defensive of them if anyone dared to say anything negative about them. I wanted to be like them.
One day, I saw an article talking about Josh Duggar having been touching his sisters inappropriately. I remember reading it to my husband and commenting that the media always tries to do this, to distort and tell lies about people who are truly trying to do good in this world. But the next day, the news was worse. Josh admitted the allegations, and had put up a statement about how he had gone down a dark path, but that God had used this experience to bring him closer to God. I was conflicted. I felt that it was wrong, but he had admitted it was wrong, and had expressed sorrow over it and said that he had overcome it, so I felt that maybe the media was bringing up something from the past just to try to discredit the Duggars work. I thought that technically he was still a child, so maybe it was more like he was just curious and did something without realizing the implications, but wasn’t sure how to understand that. I still defended him as a person, while saying his actions had definitely been wrong.
But then, the Ashley Madison scandal happened. Hackers had gotten into the site and were publishing names of people who had been to the site seeking affairs while married. Josh’s name was in the list. At first, I thought it had to be a lie. Somehow, they were making it up. They couldn’t prove it, could they? I did a lot of research but couldn’t come up with anything until Josh Duggar himself agreed the allegations were true. He had been having affairs throughout his marriage.
My ideas of the Duggar family were shattered. I had imagined they had the perfect way to raise children, and that they were following God and that the worst problems they ever had were so minuscule. I wanted to follow their example and be able to trust that by doing it “Gods way”, I could raise happy and healthy children. But now I had to reconsider my deeply held beliefs. I went into depression over this and much anxiety. If they weren’t teaching the truth, where do I turn? I decided that the Duggar family couldn’t be held responsible for the actions of their son. After all, he was a grown adult and made his own decisions. But at the same time, I kept thinking about it and contemplating, and was very conflicted.
To be continued…
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