Control and Intimidation

I have given you a glimpse of me, from the inside, from my childhood. I want you to understand that I had an awesome childhood. I had not only a lot of fun, I had awesome, caring parents! I had a Spiritual upbringing the like of which most do not understand. I learned to love God from an early age. Most of my childhood was pure joy!

Some of the parts that I have shared with you that were not pure joy were my own insecurities. My cousin Paul called them “Lies that we tell ourselves”. That would probably be an accurate description. You see, I believe that there is a great controversy going on in this world between good and evil, God and Satan. God has our best interest in mind and Satan would love to destroy us one way or another. God wants joy and peace for us. He wants us to know his love for us. He will do all in his power to bring us to an understanding of his eternal purpose and he polishes us like rough stones into shining ones. He molds us like clay into useful vessels. He refines us like gold with fire so as to fit us to reflect his perfect character. And as we allow him to work in us, to change us will we ever come to an understanding of God’s love.

When I was three years old and hit by a car. I could have been easily killed, but I believe God intervened on my behalf. If the devil couldn’t get me one way, though, he would try another. He placed in my heart lies that I believed. Insecurities arose around how I looked, how I couldn’t keep up and compare to my sister, and I believed I was deficient and inadequate. I told you about those things in detail and how they played out in my heart. But, I told you those things so you would know that it was those very things that I had come to believe, that the Devil used against me in one mighty swing, one mighty blow that very nearly destroyed me completely the year I went to school. It was there that he used other people to confirm what he wanted me to believe. He drove it home while I was alone and had no one to understand or listen to me. It was when I was most vulnerable, that He tried his hardest to bring me down.

Remember, I was leaving school in Africa to go back to the school I loved in Canada. My memories of that place were of fun, classes, good grades, lots of hiking and camping and choir. I had lived with my parents there before. We had a house load of kids, 18 teenagers at one point. We had big meals with always plenty of food for all. We had basic rules for guidelines but there was always a little give and take. My parents were neither controlling nor legalistic. We had wake up times and bed times. Lights-out was not enforced if we really needed to study. We were expected to keep our rooms clean, but it was never made into a big issue. We had study hour often around the table and everyone would help each other. We laughed a lot and sang a lot and told stories. We had major snowball fights in the winter and even more major water fights in the summer. My parents were often also involved in the fun. (It was my dad who threw water all over the piano in the living room, trying to douse my roommate as she ran by.)

So with those memories and expectations in my mind, I looked forward to returning!

The day that my mother and sister left me at school, I stood in the driveway watching the car move away. I felt very, very alone! Tears ran down my cheeks and I waved and forced myself to turn away. I felt like a ton of bricks and alone. I trudged up the hill to the house that was to be my home. I had asked if I could live in this house. It was where I had worked and cooked and babysat when I went to school here before. They liked me before and I figured that they would like me again. But now, I let myself fall unto my bed and sobbed my eyes out.

Other students soon showed up. The school was filling up and the program was about to begin in earnest. I got a roommate, I met new friends. I liked them all!

Then the program began. It all started easy. School was easy, choir was fun! Work on the farm was fun! Then, something happened. When I reached for bread at the table, I was asked, “How many have you had?” Huh? Ok. The same went for the milk. It was rationed. I had no idea! The butter, the peanut butter, and more. It felt very demeaning! I had never been piggish before. I never hogged food. I knew my manners but I guess it was assumed that this was necessary to keep all students in check. I didn’t say anything. I just understood it to be degrading.

One day, my friends and I asked if we could make our own cookies. We had gone down to the commissary and purchased some carob chips and things. We were granted permission but our homehead (the Mrs.) was very unhappy. “You don’t like my cooking?” She stomped off. All the fun was gone from the idea and I can’t remember whether we made them or not. I do remember that we put our names on our goodies and placed them in the pantry. We would take a handful now and again but this made our homehead angry.

Lights out time was strick! Room check was regular. I remember one day, feeling rather nauseated and cramped from, well you know, I was a girl and that happens once a month when you’re young. I came back to the house from work and curled up on my bed. My homehead questioned me and I told her I was not feeling well and why. A couple hours passed and I felt a lot better. Getting up, I ventured to go back out to work. Unfortunately, I was stopped and told that if I was going to say that I was sick, then I needed to be in bed and expected to stay there all day. I was taken aback. I apparently was pretending to be sick. I was mortified. I had only done the pretending thing once in my life and I was in grade two. I went back to bed but why did everything have to be this way?

I began to melt. I began to retreat inside myself a bit. I tried to talk to my homeheads (the Mr.) one day as we walked back to the house from classes, that I felt very restricted and distrusted about a lot of things. I had not broken any rules, nor did I plan to. This only made things worse. The Mrs. was angry. Angrier then I have ever seen. She saw us come up on the porch and she shouted at me through the open window. She forbid me from ever talk to her husband again. I was causing problems, big problems! I was so confused! I didn’t want to cause problems. What did I do wrong?

One day at breakfast, the morning after staff meeting, I asked the question, “So what happened, that we should know, in staff meeting last night.” There was always something more to know, a new rule, a new idea. I was cheerful!

“The new rule is that the Principle of the school will be doing room checks from now on. You better have them clean. He will be checking everything. Have your bed, drawers and closets clean!”

I sat there dumbfounded. “You mean, He, a man, is going to be checking my room like that?” I stood up. I burst into tears. “Have I no privacy?” I didn’t feel it was right. I felt invaded. I had no room for individuality or personal choices, though, so what was to be was to be.

I had never been rebellious before. I had never felt a need to be. My parents had raised me to obey, but they gave me freedom of choice and wisdom to know right from wrong for the most part. Now, in my heart rose for the first time, a bit of angry rebellion. “Fine, I will clean my room for some man to exam!”

I remembered all the rules. “No food in your room!” “Do not bring any walk-mans to school or tapes to play” “keep a tidy room and so on!” I cleaned my room all right (It wasn’t messy in the first place), every nook and cranny, every drawer and shelf, my desk and under my bed. Then I sat to write a note.

Dear Mr. Principle,

Welcome to my room! I hope that upon entering that you find it completely satisfactory!
If you do not and you’re feeling your blood pressure rise, feel free to grab the tape that you will find sitting on the top shelf of my desk. It is all about hypertension! Take it and place it in the walk man that you will find on the top shelf of my closet, way in the back. Then feel free to lay on my wrinkle free and clean bed and catch your breath. If by chance this whole thing has worn you out and your sugar levels have dropped, then open the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out a bag of carob chips that I have put there for just such an occasion. Eat all of them if you need to. May your next visit prove more successful!

Sincerely,
Julie

That was a bit of a paraphrase. Sarcasm took over! I decided to expose all my sins. I had a walk man because I had brought all my earthly possessions with me from Africa. I reserved a box in my closet for the items I didn’t touch. The walk man was one of them because, for one, I only owned one tape, which I found on the road. It was all about hypertension and I didn’t listen to it. The carob chips had been a birthday gift to me from the other girls in the house and I had not yet brought them upstairs to share, nor had I eaten any myself.

I had eventually regained my composer about the whole room check thing. I still felt it was an invasion of personal space but I had said I felt trapped and I said no more.

My homehead was angry with me though. Now, she knew how I felt and she decided I was a bad influence on her children. When I walked into the living room, the children were called to be in the kitchen. When I walked to the kitchen the children were told to go to some other room. I was obviously a burden to this lady. It was as though I had leprosy. I decided to ask if they would consider letting me move. They were not liking me and it was obvious that my very presence was just a little more then irksome to them. I personally felt very distressed.

One weekend, there was a campout. Everyone was busy loading the trucks and getting ready to go when I heard screaming. I looked up the hill and saw the little girl from the house where I lived, crying her eyes out. She was calling “Daddy, Daddy, don’t go or mommy will leave and never come back!” Mr. _________ was angry and marched off in anther direction. While we waited for him to come back so we could find out if he was coming or going, I remembered something I had forgotten and ran up to the house. I opened the door just in time to see the little girl have a door slammed in her face and she ran to her bedroom crying. I tiptoed up to her room against my better judgment, placing a hand on her shoulder, I quietly said, “Your mommy is sad right now, but she will be better soon and then she will be ready to see you and talk to you! Just hang in there. Everything is going to be ok!” Then I tiptoed out, retrieve my forgotten items and left.

Campouts were not what they used to be. We used to let our hair down and have fun and be free. We ate when we were hungry and rested when we were tired. We played games, told stories and sat up late around the campfire.

Not these campouts. We got up at the morning call. We ate in the allotted time. We hiked with the group and went to bed, lights out as usual. I remember a friend of mine had managed to slip in a small chocolate bar and invited me to share it with her. She told me, though, that we must go for a little walk away from the rest or we would be caught.

Camping is not comfortable even at the best of times but when all the fun is sucked out of it too, I didn’t care for camping at all! Oh, for a bite of sweetness. I enjoyed one bite of chocolate. Too bad I felt sneaky to get it.

When we returned home, I was in big trouble. I was always in trouble, no matter what I did, but this time I got called in to a private setting. I was asked if I had talked to the little girl before the camp out. I told them I had and just exactly what I had said. I was told, I had no right to talk to their children. I understood. I apologized. I felt that I had not done wrong but I certainly COULD not do right!

The Mrs. then told me. “You know Julie, we were all until you arrived here!!”

Quietly, and with measure words, I asked, “I don’t want to be a burden to you, Can I move to a different house then?”

The answer was and emphatic “NO! You have not learned your lesson yet!”

“Why?” I cried. I was so confused. I did not know what lesson I was suppose to learn. So far, I’d only learned that I was in a prison like situation.

Time passed and things did not improve. Every word had to be measured. Every word was on eggshells. I begged to be able to move. I was not happy here either. It is hard to be happy where you are thought of as a bad person, where the children are called away from your presence, where every word you say is taken as a threat. I not only wanted out. I needed out!

I asked again to please be considered for moving. The answer was always a resounding, “NO!” Until one evening, I got called down to staff meeting.

I was scared; I didn’t know why I was called. I only knew that I was in trouble, without having broken any rules.

I was puzzled when I arrived at the classroom where the meeting had taken place. All the women had been asked to leave. The desks were being arranged in a circle near the entrance of the room. One desk was in the middle. I was asked to take the middle seat. The other desks were quickly closed in all the way around me, corner to corner. There was one man to every desk. I was trapped in the middle of a circle of men with a plan and I began to shake. My whole body was trembling. Homehead #2 addressed me.

He said, “Julie, You are a very miserable person! I want you to know that you will never be happy in your life! (OK, now I’m bawling while I write this.) You are impossible to live with, and nobody can be happy around you!” They let that sink in. For a minute I sat their shaking. Then they continued. “We are allowing you to move from the top of the hill down to the ________house. But it doesn’t matter where you go. You will always be the same. You are a miserable person and will never be happy!”

I don’t know what they expected of me but I was shaking so badly that I could hardly talk. I managed to whisper “Thank you!” So, I was moving to the house of homehead #2.

I asked, just last year, one of the staff that I had trusted to be there for me, why he, of all people, had been part of that exercise. Why did he participate in the circle of intimidation and fright. His reply was that he didn’t know. Everyone just followed the leader. I asked if I was they only girl that happened to. Again the answer was no, there were others.

I’m sorry to anyone who had it rough that year. I don’t know what happened to anyone else. But, I left that place totally shaken at the end of the year. That was 20 some years ago and I am finally telling how it was now. It took me a long time to forgive. I’m sorry that it did. I am now telling the story not to expose people but rather to share what it does to a person to be treated in such a controlling manner. I am so glad that God is a God of freedom and choice. It makes me appreciate him all the more now.

This story of this year in my life was crippling and sad but I will tell finish it. To be continued.