My partner knows of my love for studying history and culture and looking into my family lineage, so for Christmas he bought me a 23andMe membership. I was already fairly certain of the geographical roots of my ancestors and had only one small surprise. What I wasn’t prepared for were some of the physical and behavioral characteristics the geneticists could predict through my genetic code: my misophonia for one.
Misophonia is a condition in which the hearing of normal sounds, often not even noticed by others, causes an emotional reaction in an individual. As a child and teen this was something particularly difficult for me: especially while having to listen to others chew. And, as children often do, I thought that everyone experienced what I experienced. So in an effort to be sure that no one else felt as miserable as I did when eating a meal, I tried to discipline myself to chew so silently that not even I could hear it. Of course this was impossible, but it didn’t stop my attempts. My misophonia worsened as a teen then tapered off in intensity as I aged. But, if I am in a room full of people eating together, my ear still picks out the food-slopper almost immediately.
More shocking to me was the genetic code that predicted my weight. They told me what a woman of my ancestory, height, and age would weigh on average. Then they told me that my genetic code indictates that I would naturally carry 8% more weight than that average.
I thought, “Nah!” They couldn’t predict that. So, I found the calculator on my smart phone and did the math.
Every year my weight fluctuates almost the same amount. In the summer, when I feel like I can live on melon, zucchini, and tomato sandwhiches, I generally weigh the average for my ancestory, height, and age. In the winter when hearty foods are staples, and melon and tomatoes are relatively tasteless, I generally fall into the eight percent above average range. Then I checked my Google Fit and the difference is exactly eight percent this year between July and January.
Eight percent above average weight is hard wired into my genetic code. My mother’s voice, the Weight Watchers of my youth, and Noom (decidedly better than WW) of my present have tried to tell me that it is my food choices or willpower or activity level or even my unhealthy emotional relationship with food.
But is isn’t!
It’s genetics.
And also seasons.
Summer heat and activity and produce produce a leaner me. Winter inactivity and seasonal starches produce a heartier me. And both of them are perfectly fine versions of me.
This could have been very helpful knowledge for me twenty-four years ago when I found Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down Workshop. It became one of the most physically and emotionally unhealthy times in my life as Ms. Shamblin taught what was essentially starvation for the sake of spirituality and managed to build a cult around it.
I got out before getting all the way to the cult part but not before I hurt myself and the baby I was carrying in the year 2000.
Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
Recently there has been reporting that famed purity culture guru, Elisabeth Elliot, was less than honest in her writings about her relationship with her first husband, the missionary martyr, Jim Elliot. The information is not entirely new but is disturbing, nonetheless.
In another life, Elisabeth Elliot was one of my heroes. I suppose many women in my generation who were raised in fundamentalist or evangelical churches might say something similar. Then, many of us within the homeschool movement raised our own children on her writings and ideals.
I listened to her radio program daily through college and in my early marriage. As a matter of fact, everywhere I went I scanned the dial for Christian stations and often locked in on the one that ran her program. Even after she retired, I found a station that played old episodes of Gateway to Joy, rather than listening to Nancy Leigh Demoss after she slid into Elisabeth’s seat.
Elisabeth was very firm in her views of just how much skin a woman should show when in public and she became the public voice for Christian modesty and female sexuality for generations. I remember well one of her broadcasts when she was describing a lunch meeting that she had at a beach, and how she was unable to concentrate or enjoy her meal because of all the scantily clad people proudly “schlepping” by her table. She talked with open disgust and self-righteous assumptions, as if she knew the minds and intentions of those who had passed by.
Reading the new reporting stirred my memory and so yesterday, I pulled out an old journal and looked up some entries that I wrote while on vacation in Aruba in 2021. My writing had centered on how Elisabeth Elliot had influenced me.
Spending a week at a resort in the Caribbean after more than a year of pandemic turmoil was fantastic! But there was something consuming my mind while there. I noticed a big change in my thinking since leaving the church.
During my lifetime, I was surrounded by people who thought like Elisabeth. And my body was a near constant topic of derision in my family. As a child I was mocked for my skinniness. As a young teen I was mocked for my physical development. Then as a young adult, I was mocked because I was a curvier build than my mother. My bra size was a far too frequent topic of conversation. Growing up, my body was a source of confusion and shame to me.
And so, I was comfortable in college I first heard Elisabeth and her admonishments to cover up that body and, then later, easily adopted the views of the Christian homeschool movement on modesty and female sexuality. In my thirties, I refused to even wear swimwear for a handful of years and then, when I did choose to venture into the world of beaches and swimming pools again, I wore suits with substantial skirts and high necklines that were rather heavy in the water and took forever to dry. But I was fine with the annoyance and discomfort because I had become one of them through and through – obsessed more with how much skin was showing than with how I treated my neighbor.
But by 2021, after more than three years outside that system, my mind and whole body had relaxed, and I was able to enjoy the beach and water as I once had as a young child.
There is an ideal about resort life presented on TV, film, and in commercials in America, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect once I got to the real thing. But I didn’t see (at least enough to notice) that perfectly shaped woman with an even more perfect tan in her bikini and her perfectly tanned partner in his Tommy Bahamas. With Aruba’s significant European influence, the reality was quite different from our American Sandals Resorts image.
View from the bar on the beach, personal photo
Just outside the resort there was a great little open bar that served food at meals, and it became our spot. Almost every morning we took a leisurely walk to that bar and ordered a substantial breakfast and then watched the turquoise waters and the pelicans and Caribbean pigeons and the people walking by. I wondered at their variety: young, old, middle aged, Dutch, German, French, Carib, Canadian, American, and as I watched, I found myself able to view them without judgement.
As the equatorial sun toasted their skin, they walked, not schlepped: some with canes or strollers, others with toddlers on their hips or lovers on their arms. Resort guests with old joints slowing their movements or long limber limbs seemingly gliding along were headed to the beach, or breakfast, or just taking a morning stroll. Some were gorgeous specimens, and perhaps they knew it, but most of us were mediocre to downright unattractive and completely content with our lot.
On our last full day there we took a morning snorkeling cruise – something I recommend everyone try at least once. On board were a few Arubans and perhaps an equal number of Americans. Many were Dutch, German, and a couple from Brazil. It seemed all the Dutch women wore bikinis. It didn’t matter whether they were young or old, stout or trim, rolling or sculpted, shaved legs or hairy, and their partners sat beside them as if unfazed by it all.
Some sat demurely by themselves and others sprawling with a drink in their hand. A group of middle-aged women, bearing all the signs of their age and motherhood, perched on the netting at the bow discussing pandemic politics with their American counterparts.
We ate and drank and bumped fists and my partner made acquaintance with many. I donned the ugly snorkeling gear and eagerly jumped into the sea and spent a couple of hours swimming and bumping into others in the water with nothing but joy and peace and the excitement of a child who was watching the urchins creep along the bottom or imagining the lives of the people from the shipwreck beneath me.
Personal photo
As we gathered on the deck for the trip back to the dock, I realized that just four years prior to that event, I would not have been able to enjoy it. I would have been self-conscious, self-loathing, and, therefore, others-loathing. I would have been so concerned about what others were thinking and seeing that I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on the real value – the people and the experience itself.
On the last morning, as we sat at breakfast, I watched a barrel-chested older gentleman in a speedo and his equally aged wife take a stroll on the beach. They appeared to be new arrivals and were vigorously discussing what they were seeing as they gestured toward the beautiful water. And I realized that my mind had totally shifted. I was able to view these two people as human beings enjoying what days they have on this planet. And I thought, why should the young not enjoy their youth and the pleasure of the warm sun and sparkling waters and ocean breezes? Why should the older ones not enjoy the same thing without the judgement of others? They have surely earned it.
What right did I ever have to think otherwise?
Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
Though I was once ardently anti-abortion, my views have shifted. As I dared to step outside of evangelical dogma, I allowed myself to study things I would have never studied while still under the gaze of authoritarian preachers. When a person does that, they quickly learn that their preachers and teachers are not always completely honest. And I learned that abortion is one of those issues that evangelical leaders have not been completely honest about. I also lived long enough within the movement to observe that their drive to shut down all abortion has much less to do with their faith and ethic than it does with their considerable obsession with political power. The history of that has been detailed by researchers.
Through my 40 years in the evangelical movement, I have known those who are genuinely pro-life. They put their money where their mouth is. I have known good, honest, incredibly caring individuals who have adopted and been foster parents. But these people are very rare. Far more frequent in the church are those who might save their pocket change to support anti-abortion ministries or get on their soapbox and post to Facebook, but look down their noses at young single moms and complain (it would seem incessantly at times) about their tax dollars being used for SNAP, TNAF, WIC, Medicaid, “Obamacare”, public housing, and public education. In fact, I don’t know if I have been part of a church where condemnation of government social care wasn’t commonplace and often straight from the pulpit.
With the publicity of the recent SCOTUS ruling, public conversations about abortion and just what it entails have been more frequent and some may be questioning just what they helped put into play by behaving as single-issue voters. I know that I have been full of regret for my part after spending the first two decades of my adult life voting only for the GOP and only for candidates who vowed to do everything in their power to end abortion.
The recent publicity has also brought to the surface memories of women who have had abortions, miscarriage, and traumatic pregnancies of all varieties. The medical term for miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion” and it is believed that between ten and fifteen percent of known pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. The percentage would be higher if it included those that occur among women who do not realize they are pregnant until later in term. Spontaneous abortion is traumatizing enough without the new stress that necessary medical procedures to treat it may not be available to all women or may require extraordinary and expensive travel to receive.
I have been reliving my own miscarriage during this time. Then, I didn’t realize that everything surrounding that event had the potential to be controlled by someone with no knowledge of me or my family or my health. It is unthinkable to me that anyone other than myself, my husband, or my doctor might have been able to direct the services I received while going through something that was heartbreaking, excruciatingly painful, and even life threatening. But my daughters will be in that position. Someone else may get to write the rules about how much their lives do or don’t matter and what is the exact point when a doctor will be allowed to treat them. If they’re allowed at all.
During my first pregnancy, somewhere between ten and twelve weeks, I began passing small blood clots and I knew in my whole being that I was miscarrying. I was young, married just about a year, and so excited to be having a baby. The pregnancy had been unplanned but that didn’t matter. Children were a blessing and only a blessing and I was excited.
That evening my husband came home from work and took me to the ER where they examined me and declared that I couldn’t be passing clots because my cervix was intact. That they couldn’t detect a heartbeat didn’t seem to concern them. They sent me home with suggestions that maybe I was exaggerating my symptoms. But early the next morning the cramps and bleeding began in earnest, and we returned to the ER where I was diagnosed with spontaneous abortion. After the nurse counseled me about having a heavy period and following up with my ob-gyn, we were sent home.
What happened as the day progressed was full labor that was comparable to the deliveries of my three children. Having no concept of what was happening to me, being unmedicated, and alone except for my husband, I went through excruciating pain (passing out at one point) and early on Sunday morning passed a fully formed fetus in the amniotic sack. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
It was approximately the size of the plastic fetus models anti-abortion protestors hand out. We put it in a sandwich baggie and placed it in the fridge. I had been advised to follow up with my doctor on Monday and to take any tissue with me. I now know that was because they would be checking to see if I was at risk for infection. My husband then called several friends to let them know that we wouldn’t be at church to teach our youth class and why.
The friends stopped by to visit on their way home. I was in and out of sleep on the sofa and so weak from the previous day’s ordeal that I couldn’t sit up let alone make myself presentable for guests. I was greeted with downcast faces and meek apologies and then the guests paraded past me to the kitchen where they looked at the fetus in the sandwich baggie like it was a museum exhibit. That is where the care and concern ended.
For the next couple of weeks, I received a few sympathetic comments but what I heard repeatedly from all the women I knew in the church was that miscarriage was their god’s way of taking care of those babies who shouldn’t be on earth because of their problems.
Did they realize that they were promoting their god as the great abortionist in the sky? I don’t think so. Instead, I think they viewed their comments as sound and compassionate explanations for why spontaneous abortion takes place. After all, it is so common that many women observe a twelve-week rule during which they tell no one they are pregnant because they may not be in short order. And because they believe life begins at conception, evangelical Christians need an explanation for why their loving god would allow such a thing to happen.
When I explained to commenters that I didn’t pass tissue but rather delivered a fetus, they attempted to comfort me with explanations that my body didn’t know what to do with a baby. However good their intentions, they were saying the problem was me and that always ran through my mind during my proceeding pregnancies.
Evangelicals usually believe that the Bible clearly speaks on abortion. And likewise, that it speaks of life beginning at conception. But, Christian friends, the Bible does not say what you think it does.
Is a heartbeat at six weeks gestation a heart beating and circulating blood through a viable living being, or is it stem cells that have differentiated into cardiac cells and begun to form a heart doing exactly what your cardiac cells would do if we scraped them from your beating heart and put them in a petri dish? Is the woman who carries a fetus with significant physical defects, that will keep it from surviving outside the womb, a murderer for choosing induction abortion at 36 weeks rather than carrying to term and waiting for natural contractions? Either way the delivery results in death. The exact same death. Is the woman burdened with miscarriage really to spend those hellish days of heartache and pain also fearing that she may develop infection and have to wait for her body to reach a sufficient stage of danger so that she can have the necessary medical care? Is the child who has been raped really to carry the fetus to term because your god wills it? Is the woman with an ectopic pregnancy really to chance death or irreversible internal scarring and sterility as my one time mentor did? Should the mother of four, who is diagnosed with cancer at 8 weeks gestation, really sacrifice herself to give birth and then die rather than abort and receive treatment for the disease? Are these things not heartless cruelty by every definition of the words? Are these actions just?
The evangelical church most often tells believers that abortion is about free sex and irresponsible people doing whatever they want and then “killing the babies” to avoid the consequences of their *sin*. They repeat that it is just the hatefulness of angry feminists who want freedom from men like their sister Eve. They discuss medical and biological things but most often with bias and too frequently without the clarity of truth. They claim it is all about god and ignore the history of the GOP and their political maneuverings. In other words, the church doesn’t tell the truth.
As someone who has walked both paths, I cannot tell you the mental torment I have suffered as I weighed just what the truth is. It has not been easy and is not something everyone has the time and desire for. So perhaps our best choice is to trust. To trust the pregnant person and their doctor as we would hope to be trusted with our own bodies and our own families. To take our feelings and opinions out of their decisions. Isn’t that the loving choice?
Does loving my neighbor as myself in this way make me apostate?
Former evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.
Snicklefritz Chronicles 