My response to "Steadfast Daughters"

 When I said something online about my reaction to Stacy McDonald's new endeavor to attack Hillary McFarland's book, one of my friends reacted strongly and said: (in part)

 ...as believers, however, God has called us to a higher plane. We are to take every thought captive. We are to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. Whether you agree with the author or not, you are to do good to her.
I guess my question to you is what is the root cause of your anger? Anger merely shows us that something is wrong, out of balance. When we respond to the emotion of anger in a Christ-like manner it allows us to grow in Christ.

I responded:
I am not too holy to admit that I want people to hurt and suffer! 

It may be a wrong wish, but I know that even God hates it when children are taken and enslaved and traded like chattel.
I can wish that every single modern-day slave owner got an instantly fatal heart-attack.  It may not exactly be fair and pretty to think about, but it is without question a logical emotional response on the part of a human who loves justice and wishes for all things in the world to be fair and good.

I am angered by what she says, and how she carried out what she did, and the general slimy nature of her and her kind.  I am angry because almost literally I can hear my father using the same language, and way of speaking, and better-than-thou-Christianisms, and I know what bondage her words will be to young women (specifically those who read her stuff).  I am angry that she would underhandedly pit one sister against another and then PUBLISH such material.  I am angry that she then calls herself a chrisitan and claims to be the "biblical" way.  I think she should be ashamed, and I am aghast by her fierce agenda to bring down such a grace-filled and healing book like Hillary's.  I am angry because she is upholding abusers.  I am angry because her response to me was to tell me that I was wrong and lying and that everything I know is actually just a simple sin problem.  I am angry because she claims that God's way is this way and I know that it is actually a way that leads to death.  (my sister and I both fought with suicide)   It is pretentious at best and downright evil and nasty at worse.  And that makes me very angry.

I am angry at myself for reading her books.  I am angry at myself for following her writings and that of similar ladies like Jennie Chancey and others.  I am angry that they still have the power to use words to bring me in.  I am angry that I almost want to agree with her.  I am angry that I am not free from the effects of brainwashing yet.  I am angry that I can't understand a God of love and grace and unending forgiveness because of the way I was taught.  I am angry that I live by works because of the model I was presented.  I am angry that I wasted years and years in all this.  I am angry that just when I finally found someone who loves and cares deeply for me and for girls like me, who has gone through so many of the same things, who wrote a book that inspired me to live and keep living, that a woman like Stacy would find it her calling to smear it in all manner of ways.  That she would make a WHOLE WEBSITE dedicated to shooting it down.

I am angry, hurt, upset, and a general basket case right now.

Then, after I sent her that response, I though of a deeper reason.
Just the other night I watched a video by a Christian band that broke my heart.  God whispered to me that He loved me.  I fought.  I cried.  I was shaking all over and I told Him that if He knew what was good for Him he would leave me alone and go find better people to give grace and help to.  I curled up in fetal position in a corner and sobbed.  But when I looked around He was still there.  He sat beside me, and when I pushed Him away He held on to me.And then He held me while I cried.  He didn't say anything else, just stayed there and refused to leave.
I have "known" all my life that I was not a good person.  That I am a broken, wreak of a could-have-been that is not worth saving.  I don't think anyone necessarily told me that, but it was one of the most important life lessons I learned nonetheless.  Instinctively, I push people away when they get too close.  And it is for their own good.  In the back of my mind there is a knowledge that I will abandon everyone.  That no matter what words are coming out of their mouths, no matter what they have done for me in the past, no matter how strongly secure I might feel in that moment, that it will come.  That I will do something so terrible and so hurtful that no one will ever want me ever again.  So why let anyone near now?  I will only break their hearts later.  I will be a disappointment, disgrace, and shame.
So leave me alone.

Be better off and happy without me.
Please!


Things like that music video are like hammers, beating on the sides the iron box around my heart.  Or things like Hillary's book are a welding torch slowly tearing apart the seams of my prison.


For Stacy McDonald to dedicate a whole blog to keeping this away makes me very angry. Yes.
Like refusing to stop the bleeding of a dangerous wound.  Like blocking up the exits to a burning building.  Like adding insult to injury.