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 – me. 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 will power 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.
(Part 5. New readers can click here to start at the beginning of the story.)
Caleb was gesturing and speaking with an urgency that made me immediately regret making him wait to tell me.
As I reached out to hug and reassure him, I wished that there was someone there to hug and reassure me. I knew there was no turning back from this and I no longer had the safety of pretending it was not so.
At some point in his frantic talking, I did something that experienced parents and therapists tell you not to do. I said, “I know, Caleb. I have always known.”
“You did?” He stared at me.
Of course, only Caleb could have known. What I had was maternal instinct, not knowing.
That night, as Caleb talked, I learned just what my parenting choices, my dedication to Dr. Nicolosi’s directives, evangelical dogma, and even my determination to keep my unhealthy marriage intact had done to my son.
A couple of years earlier, not long after my ex had left, Caleb sunk into a deep depression. It was something that I watched hopelessly because he was 18 going on 19 and man-sized and I had no control over his choices and behaviors. Our family was in turmoil. He was beginning to learn things about his father that I had protected him from for years, and he was watching it all eat away at me. The whole godly, Christian world he had been surrounded by up to this point was breaking apart.
As he told it, he was broken hearted over far more than the divorce. He was old enough to have memories of the past and some significant trauma from our many family upheavals. I had hoped that I had softened those things, maybe even hid them completely, but I was learning that isn’t how a family dynamic works.
And Caleb was hiding his sexuality, knowing it went against everything that he had been taught and everything that he knew I believed. Caleb was still attending church regularly and hearing our pastor’s frequent condemnations of the gay community. He knew that these people that he had known and loved and been taught to respect would never be willing to genuinely know and love and respect him. And Caleb had always been so dedicated to his friends in the faith, that he was the last member of our family to leave when the church finally pushed us from their midst.
I carried on as I watched him spiral. I tried to keep the lines of communication open, but I didn’t know what else I could do.
Then one day I got a panicked phone call from him. Caleb told me through tears that he had been having suicidal ideation and on his way to work had been contemplating driving off a long bridge that spanned a river now swollen with spring rain. That morning he had almost done it. He was afraid to get back in his car and drive home. I drove to his workplace, reassured him of my love, and told him our family would make it through the current difficulties. I had arranged for him to meet with our pastor to talk and so I followed his vehicle back to town as we talked on the phone and I parked in the church lot as he went inside to speak with the pastor.
It had not occurred to me that that kind of counseling would be bad for him. It was the only thing I knew to do at that time.
In conversation with a friend, I briefly mentioned the events of the week and they encouraged me to have Caleb chat with their husband who was trained and experienced in working with troubled youth.
Within a week, Caleb called me from work again. Again, I went to him, reassured him of my love, and followed him back to town as we talked over the phone. I intended to take him to speak with the pastor again, but he refused. Then, I called my friend and we drove to their house instead.
And so, Caleb began to get some sound advice and, even more, some genuine love and acceptance. It was just the support he needed. As he spent more time at their home over the months, he began to do much better, and when they moved later that year, he planned and took trips to visit them in their new town.
The night that Caleb came out to me, I learned that his suicidal ideation over those months was driven by his desire to protect me from more hurt. He thought that it would be easier for me to have a dead son than a gay son.
I wept.
I would love to tell you that his coming out and my growing understanding of the harm I had caused him made me change overnight, but it didn’t happen that quickly.
Though by this point my mind had already shifted, I was still driven by anxiety. I jumped almost immediately into protective mama bear mode. I wanted to keep the church from hurting him more than it had. I wanted to keep my family from hurting him and I wanted to keep his father’s family from hurting him. I wanted to protect him from the whole community I had chosen to raise him in. I wanted my son to stay at least semi closeted, and I laid in bed many nights worrying about what might happen to him if he didn’t.
I knew well the myths the church would continue to teach that would make many within their ranks imagine my loving son to be a predator – maybe even a pedophile – and it made me sick. I quickly came to understand just how horrid that kind of baseless propaganda is and how dangerous the “studies” done, in the kind of biased manner ministries and church organizations use, really are.
It took months and several very serious conversations for Caleb to talk me down from this protective stance. And then an online friend helped me to find a support group for moms of LGBTQ+ kids and I began to feel that sense of community and hope that I really needed.
The author with Caleb
Since studying and writing have consistently been the way I learn and work through my problems, I began a new learning journey. I started reading history and culture books, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts. I found more online friends and support. And it all helped me out of that bubble of fear. I also began to find healthier ways to deal with my anxiety than those provided by a lifetime of fundamentalist and evangelical teaching.
The changes didn’t come quickly but eventually my fears leveled out to what might be normally expected for any mother when she thinks about her children.
And I watched my son begin to become so many of those things I had always hoped he would be – not because of the church and the faith system we left, but despite it.
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 