Screencap from original site used in this meme.

Granted I have not seen anything to indicate that this blogger, Sheila Wray Gregoire of ‘To Love, Honor and Vacuum’ is Quiverfull. But she lines up with the worst of the female cultural enforcers. She’s a younger, cuter, better dressed, dyed hair with make up version of The Transformed Wife’s Lori Alexander, with the same toxic ideas. Here she is telling a mother who is struggling to be a mother not to be so selfish. Merely embrace motherhood or destroy your marriage?

I will give her a few bonus points. Unlike other female cultural enforcers she does believe that Postpartum Depression is a real illness, not just a lack of Jesus. There is that.

A mother shares that she had children because her husband wanted them, not because she has an desire for children. She’s struggling to be a mother, and clearly Sheila could have used encouraging language without blaming the mother to make her point. Unfortunately just like the hideously hateful Lori Alexander that did not happen. Sheila chose to call her selfish and whiny in a backhanded way before blaming the mother for everything.

But then there is this:

Oh knitter please! (The author really is a knitter so I’m substituting the word I’m dying to use that is better fitting but banned by Patheos.) There was nothing, I repeat, NOTHING in the original letter / statement that indicated that the lady wanted to harm her children or that her husband could not trust her! For Sheila’s mind to go right there says more about her own thoughts on motherhood than a torrent of other words she produces. There is literally nothing indicating this. Spun, or knitted out of thin air. Way to project your own feelings.

No, snarky mean-girl knitter, it’s not a trendy thing to do that complaining. It’s a trend of being honest and real.

Let’s face it, being a parent isn’t 100% of the time a joyous gallop in a rose garden. There be thorns no matter how you spin it. Now I know Christian Evangelicalism is all about suppression of all negative emotions or thoughts until someone has a nervous breakdown. Is it not just better to be honest? Jesus was honest and he wasn’t traipsing around with a excrement dining grin on 24/7. Jesus wept.

There are large doses of parenting that is just not much fun, but you learn to navigate. I remember in particular my daughter being very difficult to be around at night. This started about when she was nine. I’m one of those people that must have a little downtime before sleep. My husband knows this. It wasn’t a problem with any of my other children except my youngest. Whenever I climbed into the bed to read and decompress before bedtime she suddenly started popping up and winding up, getting more and more wide awake filled with questions and the like. It was hard on me to relax after that, and she fought bedtime. I hated it, HATED IT, but figured out a way to meet both of our needs and resolved the issues.

That is parenting. Ups and downs. No pretense that everything is always peachy-keen. Working to better the times it sucks, and make no mistake there will be times it sucks. They’re discussing this same post over at Things Godly Women Say and I have seen several others echoing this same exact thought, talking of tossing the kids into the arms of their husbands as they walked into the door so mom could take a walk, or just go to the bathroom alone. That does not mean they don’t love their children, no not at all, but everyone needs a break.

Which brings me to another point. Someone reaches out, they are in a bad place emotionally and Sheila just piles on blaming her. It seems to me that the original poster was looking for empathy, and understanding. Nothing encouraging there when what was genuinely needed was a kind encouraging word and gentler advice. Not name calling.

The old ‘My pain is worst than your pain so shut the potatoes up!’ as issued by the knitter. Again, hateful, judgmental without anything like the love of Christ in it. And this idea that you must force oneself to feel nothing but happy, happy, joy, joy is one of the biggest and most dangerous lies in any version of Christianity. There will always be times when things go wrong, when we’re sad, or being happy outwardly is just not appropriate. Basically Sheila is ordering this woman to don a mask to cover her inner pain.

How many times in Quiverfull have we seen when the mask slips and people break down? It’s a terrible thing. Be honest, be yourself and do not be so hateful towards others you do not understand.

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