Child Groom

For all of these posts, there are some things to know:

• I am the middle child of three boys.
• We were all home-schooled.
• My little brother and I were home-birthed.
• My family owns and operates a company that makes and distributes fish stink bait. My father, grandfather, and several other family members have worked there for as long as I’ve lived.
• My father was the first in his family to openly believe in Christianity, with the rest of them following suit soon after.
• My father, and subsequently the rest of my family, became avid followers of the "Word of Faith" sect of Christianity, particularly its teachings that focus on material gain.

I will probably repeat myself a thousand times about these facts, but they are pertinent to all of this. They might help people understand the headspace a child would have when born and raised in this kind of environment. It’s hard to describe it in words.

I, along with my brothers, was raised to believe what we were told. It wasn’t a choice; what my father said was simply fact. When he told us stories at night, we believed them entirely. If we asked him if he could pick up a car, he said yes, and we imagined it. If we asked if he could lift our house and he said yes, we were in awe and saw it in our minds as truth. If we asked if he could win a race between our old van and a race car, he’d say he could win in anything he drove because he knew the secrets. We marveled at what those wondrous secrets might be.

When I was 8 and asked if Santa was real, he said yes. I took the evidence I had gathered to the contrary and buried it deep in a mental box labeled “sinful doubt.” At 9, faced with additional & undeniable evidence and trembling with the fear of rebellion, I asked him again. This time, he admitted that Santa wasn’t real—that my parents had let me believe because they wanted me to. Then they encouraged me to keep believing and to “preserve the magic.”

When I was 14, during a moment when it was just me and my father, he asked, “Do you still believe in Santa?”

I wasn’t sure what to make of the question and said, “No.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because… you told me. I know it’s made up,” I replied.

He paused. “What if I told you to believe in him?” he asked.

I didn’t understand. “Hmm?” I mumbled.

“If I tell you to believe something, you need to believe it,” he said firmly.

Before I could respond, my mother walked in, and he never mentioned Santa again.

---

I’m trying to paint a picture of the dynamic between my father and us boys. For as long as I can remember, my father instilled in us the absolute fact that he knew what we were thinking—not in the way an older, wiser adult might infer with some accuracy, but as an unassailable truth: he could literally read our minds at all times.

When we got into trouble, we got spanked with a 1" wooden paddle that was custom-made for him & this purpose. The resulting monologue after that from my father was loud, intense, and of epic proportions. These lectures were never less than 20 minutes and often stretched beyond two hours. They were a torrent of accusations, declarations, and proclamations. Certain phrases came up every time and are burned in my memory:

• “I know what you’re thinking.”
• “God tells me everything you do.”
• “I know all your secrets.”
• “You have no right to an opinion.”
• “I know you better than you will ever know yourself.”
• “Children have no rights.”
• “I own you.”
• “God has shown me the plan for your life.”

His word was reality. It wasn’t enough to obey. We had to believe and we had to feel; to "control our emotions". If he thought we didn’t feel properly sorry, properly grateful, properly anything, he’d start over, forcing us into another round of submission until we gave him what he wanted, or at least convinced him we had.

This was what happened when any of us got into trouble. The rule was that until we were 16, we got spanked. After 16, we would get knocked out. It never came to that but the yelling never stopped.

An Arranged Covenant

In Christianity, God makes a covenant with humanity through Jesus Christ. A divine covenant is like a contract you are obligated to fulfill. God made a covenant with Abraham and his lineage, and through Christ's sacrifice, that covenant was fulfilled.

Similarly, scripture describes marriage between man and wife as a covenant made between them and fulfilled through walking with Christ and honoring each other with a lifetime of commitment.

According to scripture, there is also a covenant between parents and their children, via the continuation of the covenant of Abraham. All Christians are a part of the covenant of Abraham, be it in blood or spirit.

This is true to Christian doctrine and as a man of Christian faith, I believe it. This was also used as a tool my father used to harness control over us.

Among the many doctrines of our household, another core item was that my parents were in a covenant with us, and also how we were in a covenant with them. About how scripture commanded children to obey their parents, in the Lord, for this is right. How scripture commanded children to honor and respect their parents in all things. Disagreement was disrespectful. Anything we did my father didn't like was disrespectful.

My father took a scriptural truth and twisted it to serve his desires. This resulted in a tumultuous childhood that felt like an arranged marriage with only dread in my future.

When it was good, it was great. On the weekends we would go to Movie Gallery and we would get a few movies, and sometimes I'd get an N64 game. We'd get pizza, I would have sleepovers, and my mom would always make intricate & ornate birthday cakes based on whatever theme we wanted that year.

As long as everything was in harmony we were good. If we got into trouble, or my father came home in one of his moods, or we didn't say the right thing in response to something, things would get bad quickly and the only way out was to satisfy my father's requirements.

My Marriage Means Divorce

As a teen, I tried a little bit of the usual rebellion but that didn't work, at all. So I put my head down and I followed every rule to avoid getting in trouble and being noticed as much as possible. I went above and beyond the call of duty in my teenage years; I never stuck out, partied, drank alcohol, or did any drugs. When I got married we were both virgins and the only drama that happened during our courting years was that we initially committed to not kiss each other until we were married, which we broke after a year.

In a sense, I felt I was paying my dues. I had hoped that once I was married and moved into my home everything would change, and I would finally be out from under my father's thumb.

Instead, things got worse in ways I was not expecting. In the months prior to my wedding, my father was going through a laundry list of things I needed to do in preparation. These were things such as explaining to me how he had to condition my mother on how to be a good wife for him and how to go about doing that myself. How my wife will likely want to spend time with her mother and sisters, and how I'll need to make sure that doesn't happen.

"She'll come back influenced by them with ideas you don't want her to have" he would say.

There were a lot of things like that. I was expected to not let her spend time with her family. I was told about all the times we'd be coming to my parent's house to visit them once we were married. About how we would still be using up all of the year's PTO and joining on the annual family vacations (which were half spent testing fishing products instead of vacationing). How my father was looking forward to us having kids right away and being tight on money so that we'd take work home, just like he did with us.

Par for the course and things I again was blindly hoping would go away soon. We got married in the middle of summer on a Thursday, and on the following Monday, we were both back at work making catfish bait. That morning my father asked if I'd taken care of the holidays yet. He'd been telling me that I needed to make sure my in-laws understood who gets priority.

"Our family is number one. We're the most important and we get all the holidays and birthdays" he would say. "I had to do that with your grandparents."

This was one of his favorite stories.

"After your mom and I got married her parents wanted to do their Christmas with us on Christmas morning. I said no and they kept trying to change my mind for weeks until at one point they asked us to come over so they could figure it out once and for all. Well, when we got there I told your grandma immediately that my parents will always get priority for every family event. Your grandpa didn't even say anything, he just walked out of the room. It ended with me having your grandmother on the floor crying. Your grandfather left her by herself, alone, because the men on your mom's side of the family are weak. I told them that my parents get every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, and every other holiday and event. I never compromise my family. You shouldn't either."

He would tell me that little story many times. It was a shining example of how strong we needed to be for "our" family, which in reality was only the family that shared the same blood that my father had.

He was expecting me to give my in-laws the same treatment; however, up to that point, I had evaded ever giving him a real answer about it.

"I'm not going to do that," I told him. "Honestly I don't see why it's so important to celebrate any holiday on the day of if everyone has multiple groups of family to celebrate with. I would much rather have a relaxed Christmas the day or even a week afterward instead of trying to stuff everything in one day to make everyone happy. I think we're just going to have to alternate years if everyone's going to expect to have us for Thanksgiving & Christmas. There are too many moving parts in the family now."

This was certainly true; at that time my older brother had been married for several years and every holiday season was a juggling act for them, usually resulting in at least one night of splitting an evening in half so that both groups of family could get their specific celebratory day. Which just seemed to stress them out and make both sides feel rushed, so I didn't want to do that.

I thought it was a reasonable proposition, to either not worry about the specific day or alternate which side of the family gets "the" main day for the holiday. However, this pissed my father off. He gave me his signature glare, flung his half-empty coffee cup (and its contents) into the corner of my work area for me to clean, and walked away in a huff without saying a word.

He didn't talk to me at all for the rest of that day or the following. Giving us the silent treatment was somewhat regular when we did things he didn't like. After a few days of this, I wanted to set the record straight and hopefully clear the air. I waited until a day when he came in as early as I did - right at 5:45 AM, before the rest of the crew arrived, and met him in his office.

"Good morning," I said. "I wanted to talk to you for a minute before everyone got here now is a good time?"

He was sitting at his desk with a cup of coffee, looking down at his keyboard. He raised an eyebrow as if to signal "I'm here aren't I?" without looking up at me.

"I just wanted to say, I've been married for a few months now, and it's the first time I've ever been outside of your umbrella and on my own, so I think things feel a little weird. But the first thing I want to do is thank you for how you raised me. It's allowed me to try and be the Godly man you want me to be, and I hope to continue that even though I'm now the head of my own house."

He sipped his coffee.

"The second thing I wanted to say was how now that I'm the head of my household I'm trying to take up that responsibility. I love you and I respect you. I'll always listen to you when you have something to say; you have a lot of valuable experience."

He again sipped his coffee, still looking down at nothing in particular.

"But..." I started. I was nervous and trying to appeal to his good nature. "I'm not under your roof anymore, so if you tell me to do something, it doesn't mean I'm automatically going to do it. It's my duty now to do what's best for me and my new family, which consists of, my wife and any future kids, and that's between me and God."

I remember my voice trembling a little bit at the end of that. My father liked to stay silent in moments like these; he said insecure people would fill in the silence and he used that to his advantage.

He took another sip of his coffee, nodding his head slowly. I shuffled my feet but didn't say anything more, waiting for him to respond.

"I'm beginning to think I raised you incorrectly," he said.

"What do you mean?" I said. I wasn't expecting that as a response.

He just shook his head and repeated himself.

"I'm beginning to think I raised you wrong."

I wasn't really sure how to respond to that, so I think I just said "OK" and left his office to start the work day.

He made his usual rounds a few hours later, walking around the building and talking to people as he saw fit. He made his way back over to me and started trying to explain what he meant. This was how it always went with any kind of disagreement as I'd gotten older; he would come back to my work area and talk endlessly at me, explaining why he was right about whatever the topic was and he would not relent until I agreed. He wore you down until you submitted to defeat, whether that took an hour or weeks.

"What I mean by that was that your definition of your 'family' is not how I raised you," he said. "I'm your family. Your mom and your brothers are your family; we're your blood. Your wife is also your family, but that doesn't change anything between us. I'm still your father, and I'm still your parent, and you still need to honor your parents."

He said this as if it would be relieving to me, but it was just confirming my worst fears about how this was all going to be now.

"You know it's possible to honor you without obeying you right?" I said.

He started to give me another signature glare. "Excuse me?"

"What happens if you're wrong? Should I follow you or God?" I said.

He shifted his jaw to the side. "You think that God might be wrong?" he said.

"I think that every person alive can be wrong, including you. That's why I can't just obey you anymore, and it's between me and God."

Now he was fucking angry. "You're on a dangerous road. You just got married and you're already listening to the devil."

The next few months were more of the same with that. It was a battle of wills; my father tried to bring me back in line, and I refused to.

There's a lot that's happened between then and now, but the overarching premise is the same. After my son was a year and a half, I felt that my only option was to pull way, way back. Not to fully cut off all contact yet, as I still had hope things could be different, but I saw my son was already being affected by my family in a way I couldn't accept.

When I told my parents that, due to repeatedly breaking my trust and refusing to attempt anything resembling self-reflection, we were setting some explicit boundaries regarding our relationship and our son. These included there being no unsupervised time between them and my son.

This was devastating news to them. My mother mourned as if she'd lost a child. My father said many things in response to this, but one of the most surprising was that he said we were divorcing the family.

Goodbye Brothers

My brothers demanded we meet in person after that. We met at a public park. Both of them wanted an explanation. There was nothing I could tell them now that we hadn't talked about for years before then, but I tried to explain anyway.

They both knew about the struggle between me and my father. About how I hadn't trusted him for a long time and refused to talk to him without a third person I trusted there as a witness to keep him from using his devilish, gas-lighting tongue. Nevertheless, they both insisted that I mean my father in person, just us, for a man-to-man talk. They also insisted that I keep my mother out of all of this.

Ultimately, when I declined to do either, they in turn said they didn't want me around their kids and wouldn't be talking to me either. They blamed my wife for all of this and said they'd be waiting for me when I came back.