by Cindy Kunsman cross posted from her blog Under Much Grace
Continuing on with Cindy Kunsman’s series on dealing with Mother’s Day outside of the Quiverfull bubble. All images and screen caps by Cindy Kunsman and Under Much Grace used with permission.

Museum of the Bible invites all people to engage with the Bible through museum exhibits and scholarly pursuits. Dedicated to the history, narrative, and impact of the Bible, the museum, located at 400 4th St. SW, will open in 2017 three blocks from the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
The sad thing of it is that a big part of me would love to do this for my mom – provided that I knew more about the endeavor itself.
I love my mother. If I could choose to be like anyone in this world, apart from the unhealthy ways she’s learned to survive complex trauma, I would choose to be like her — more than anyone else I know. And I do celebrate her and all that she’s done and sacrificed for me to have the better life and the better opportunities that were denied her.
On good days, Mom is one of my most favorite people in the world, and I miss those days with her more than I can say. But I haven’t seen much of her good days in fifteen years, and they had already begun to be less frequent. I wish that I could express to her how precious and valuable she is to so many, but ironically, I understand from afar that this was denied her when she needed it most. She either won’t or can’t receive that love from me.
We don’t really do much with it, either. I especially don’t care for the whole mother’s day themed service, with the traditional recognitions, mama songs, and the cursory sermon on motherhood.
I feel that when you take the time set aside for worshipping God and use it to place emphasis on another, you’re committing idolatry, regardless if it’s a person or “God and Country” Sundays.
Though I still feel embarrassing twinges of affection for that song, it’s got to sound completely nuts to people on the outside of that religious bubble of that era. Lewis who hosts The Commandments of Men blog made his living as a musician in that bubble for many years and was basically booted out of it because he became a dissident to the idolatry of family. He said that people just love to “eat up” the Christian nationalism stuff, just as I did as a kid. He said that “they like the cheese.”
I’ve learned to pass on the cheese. But people love it, and I guess that some have to give the people what they want. (The analogy drawn between both foci of liberty wasn’t so bad, but the theology of the thing when you pull apart the words is just bizarre. At least it is when you’re on the outside of the bubble, looking in.) But I am unashamed of my Faith in Jesus, and I am grateful for the liberty that I will always have in Him. And I am grateful for my liberty as a citizen for as long as it lasts.
At least one more post to come this year
Post Script about Politics:
It sounds like Lewis has had a belly full of the cheese, too. He’s started a new blog about the admixture of religion and politics – to keep it from clouding the focus on his writing about family idolatry. He called it Palinitis, and you can venture there at your own risk! (I would have called it Parah Salin, but I want the credit for that. I came up with the term on my own, so far as I know!)
Cynthia Mullen Kunsman is a nurse (BSN), naturopath (ND) and seminary graduate (MMin) with a wide variety of training and over 20 years of clinical experience. She has used her training in Complementary and Alternative Medicine as a lecturer and liaison to professional scientific and medical groups, in both academic and traditional clinical healthcare settings. She also completed additional studies in the field of thought reform, hypnotherapy for pain management, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that is often associated with cultic group involvement. Her nursing experience ranges from intensive care, the training of critical care nurses, hospice care, case management and quality management, though she currently limits her practice to forensic medical record review and evaluation. Most of her current professional efforts concern the study of manipulative and coercive evangelical Christian groups and the recovery process from both thought reform and PTSD.
She blogs at Under Much Grace and Redeeming Dinah.
Stay in touch! Like No Longer Quivering on Facebook:
If this is your first time visiting NLQ please read our Welcome page and our Comment Policy!
Copyright notice: If you use any content from NLQ, including any of our research or Quoting Quiverfull quotes, please give us credit and a link back to this site. All original content is owned by No Longer Quivering and Patheos.com
Read our hate mail at Jerks 4 Jesus
Check out today’s NLQ News at NLQ Newspaper
Contact NLQ at [email protected]