Things That End: Final Judgement

The Divorce

After more than eight years of marriage, I finally felt like I had put in my time, I had battled my demons, and from my perspective, David’s cycle of repentance, dishonesty and unchanging habits would never end. All of the leaders at this point were aware of David’s repeated infidelities and issues with anger and violence. I had once attempted to “Matthew 18” him, for repeated repentance without change, but was stopped in the first step of the process by the first witnesses I pulled in when I was informed that I was not following the correct procedure.

 Once again I wrote a document outlining the biblical reasoning for asking the church for a divorce. I felt a very clear release from God that my marriage was over. I believed I had done all of the work that God asked of me and I was able to finally free myself. The leaders decided to appoint a “peer counsel” to decide my fate.

For some background, David and I were never legally married since my parents and Marble leadership were in agreement that state marriage licenses were unconstitutional and unbiblical, and Washington is not a common law state, so if I was to be divorced, it would have to be through the church, a release from David as my spiritual authority.

The peer counsel convened with myself and David, as well as Jim and Ronnie Buck and Steve and Cheryl Melzer. The group included my sister and her husband, my close friend Tamara and her husband Trent, Judson and Anne Carleton (David’s sister and her husband) and more.

After David and I were given an opportunity to present both sides of the issue (David was not in favor of the divorce), the counsel asked for a few days to pray and discuss the appeal that I had submitted. When we reconvened, they had drafted a document that outlined the requirements I needed to fulfill in order to garnish their support of a divorce. My brother-in-law Judson read the judgement out loud to the group.

I was asked to stand up before the entire congregation and publicly repent for a laundry list of sins that went on for pages. It included things like “rejecting my role as a mother,” stating an instance years earlier when I called my sister out of frustration, telling her I was on the verge of strangling the herd of small children I was dealing with. I was asked to repent for “flirting with married and unmarried men,” “dressing immodestly,” “not stewarding my home,” “dishonoring my husband,” “rebelling against spiritual authority,” and of course, infidelity, along with much, much more.

I was shocked. I asked if I could take the list home and pray about it. I was told no, that they did not trust me to take the written format, fearing I would disseminate it among Marble’s enemies, which at this point were growing and looking for evidence of just this type of spiritual abuse.

Once again I felt utterly betrayed and alone. These people - my best friends, my sister, my confidants - leaders whom I had trusted and who had all of the biblical justification of infidelity and abuse in front of them, were still seeking to control me as I begged for release from my own personal hell.

I remember standing up at the end of the meeting, feeling a strange sort of out-of-body sensation. “I never thought I would say something like this, but I am glad that I can at least turn to the state for a divorce,” I told all of them. And then I walked out.

I wrote my parents a letter with the same request, asking them to release me from the hell that I had been in for almost nine years. Their response was in keeping with the deeply held belief that marriage is a sacred vow and as a woman, I needed to have a spiritual covering. They would not support me in my divorce.

I am sure at this point, especially for my parents, it seemed like the worst storms of my marriage had subsided and they didn’t understand how unchanging my husband had been through the years. I had learned to carry the pain, or bury it, and govern my own emotions to avoid being disqualified from everything I wanted to be a part of. I was wearing my trauma better, so maybe it appeared that I had healed. I had not.

As I filed for divorce through Stevens County, I had never felt more alone. I had no one behind me, no one supporting me, except for one friend at Marble who could never verbalize his support publicly. I had asked David to move in with his mother when the whole process started, so I was living alone with the girls in our little hay house, smack dab in the middle of a community that continued to heap judgement and condemnation my way.

I had taken a summer job with the Forest Service as an archaeology technician, and I was finally making friends in the real world. As I told them my story, they voiced their support, and I grew a little braver every day. I knew I needed to get out of Marble, so I rented a spare bedroom from an older woman in Northport where I lived for the summer until I found a farmhouse to rent just north of town.

As I moved ahead with the divorce, I was told by leaders at Marble that they were concerned that I was an unfit mother to my children. They knew I had made outside friends and had started dating and there was talk of supporting David to get custody of the girls. When I heard these thinly veiled threats it lit a fire in me and I made sure that David and everyone at Marble knew exactly what lengths I would go to if they tried to take my girls from me. Knowing the illegal nature of so many of the violations they had allowed in my life, they opted to stay out of the legal battle, David and I signed papers out of court and I had primary custody rights.

Given the nature of David’s issues,  I had conversations with my sister (who by this time was married with her own child), and some of David’s own family about the dynamic between him and our four girls. Never at any time have I had the slightest sense that David was a threat to our daughters (other than his violent temper, which I never saw him unleash on the girls physically). His sexual predilections, while questionable, never gave me any indication or gut feeling that he would harm our children or any others, but I knew my kids were under the watchful eyes of many family members on weekends and during the summer while I worked on fires. I have come under criticism for co-parenting with the girls dad, but I will still maintain that it has always felt like the right thing to do, and my girls, as adults, would probably all agree with me.

My children have never, at any point, displayed any indicators that David has subjected them to physical abuse (sexual or otherwise), and now as adults, most of them still have some level of positive, or at least non-antagonistic relationship with him. Until I began to write these words, I have never told my girls the reasons that our marriage fell apart. When I left David and Marble, he told the girls that I was having an affair, and other members of Marble fed into that narrative as well.

I started dating in the fall of 2004, about the time I appealed to the church for a divorce. It had been more than a year since the first time that I had asked David to move out of the hay house. The divorce of course wouldn't be finalized for many months, and that gave David’s infidelity claim against me some validity, and to this day my choice to date put the moral responsibility of the divorce on me in the eyes of most of my friends and family.

I believed firmly that the girls would understand someday, based on observing their father's character over the years, the real story. And now, for the most part, they do. I cannot speak to who David Glanville is now. He may be a completely reformed version of himself. He has been a stranger to me since 2004. We have formed an amicable co-parenting relationship that has always put the needs of our children first. I have never intended to cause a breech in the relationship between my kids and their father, although I have been questioned and I have questioned myself whether he was a better father to them than having no father at all. I believe he was, and he tried in his own imperfect way to become a better father as time went on.

If David was not surrounded at all times by other family members I would have felt more trepidation about leaving the girls with him. I know for many readers, the idea that he has contact with my children, or any children, seems ludicrous, but from where I stand, David was a far, far better father than he was a husband and I do not believe he would ever hurt a child intentionally or has ever had sexual proclivities towards them. He is many things, but mercifully not that.

Understanding as I do now the prevalence of hidden sexual abuse in not only Marble, but churches everywhere, it chills me as I become aware of other cases of sexual abuse that transpired at Marble, and I am grateful that to my knowledge, my children were spared that horror. I would offer encouragement to other victims from Marble to seek help - reach out. None that I know of have felt able to speak openly about what happened to them, and it is time for the blinds to be pulled back on the dark corners of this church that proclaimed the authority of God in their cover up of horrific crimes.

For anyone who still lives under the weight of spiritual control and abuse - there is life and hope outside in the clean, fresh world of your own choice. God created you and you don't need a middle man to find your way with Him. Be free.

Summer, 2004. Lake Ellen

Things About Faith: The Danger of Presumption

MacKenzie and the HIB 

My girls were not immunized as infants. I don't remember even discussing the prospect of immunizations with David. There was a general sense in my immature mind that if the system was pushing it, it had to be wrong. David and I hadn't applied for a marriage license before our wedding and the girls didn't have birth certificates or social security numbers for several years until we realized the long term implications of these choices for our kids.

I vaguely remember the midwife mentioning inoculations because the law required her to at least verbalize the availability of vaccinations at birth. It was our personal decision (albeit uninformed) to withhold all immunizations. When MacKenzie was two and a  half, she became ill. It was the fall of 1999, and David and I had just moved into what was the beginning of a straw bale house that we were building on the property we had purchased from the original investors at Marble.

When we moved in the pole structure consisted of posts standing on a cement footing, dirt floor, with exposed straw bales stacked on the first story. The second floor had no walls at all and while the roof was constructed, it was covered only in sheeting and tar paper. In the late summer we slept in a tent on the second floor of the house. We eventually got straw bales stacked for the second story walls and covered with plastic before fall hit. The only running water we had was a hose threaded through an unfinished window opening into the kitchen sink. Our toilet was an outhouse next to the building.

When MacKenzie got sick, I was about six months pregnant with my fourth baby. After several days MacKenzie seemed to be getting worse. Dr. Currigan (a member of Marble) checked on her a couple of times and reassured us it was a flu bug and just needed to run its course. After nearly two weeks MacKenzie was listless and struggling to breathe.

Dr. Currigan came to see her again and recommended that we take her to the emergency room after the church leaders came and prayed for her. Looking back, with the limited medical training I have had since then, I know that what he saw that day was a very sick baby. MacKenzie had Haemophilus Influenzae Type B, a virus that was once a frequent killer of babies before immunizations became commonplace.

By the time we took her to the emergency room she was on the brink of sepsis and had double pneumonia. She was transported by ambulance to Sacred Heart in Spokane where we spent two weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. MacKenzie almost died. I don’t think that reality actually dawned on me until years later.

I sat next to her day after day, with tubes piping volumes of bloody puss out of both of her lungs, and watched and waited for the wild-eyed redheaded spirit to come back into her frail body.

 My journal entry following the incident was trite. I mentioned trusting God and how I knew it would be fine, even when she needed a blood transfusion and our own belief system (supported by leadership) dictated that she not be given a stranger’s blood. David is a universal donor so he donated blood. It miraculously passed the first screening so MacKenzie was able to receive his blood within hours.

My words seem flippant when I talk about the community rallying around us and taking care of us during this time. When I mention the medical bills that we had no insurance for but how “God will provide” (ultimately the state footed the bill since we were penniless) I see the presumption and entitlement of a naive fool. Looking back now I understand the doctors and the concern with which they held the young, willfully ignorant couple that we were.

In spite of the rift in my family at this time, my parents and other extended family, including David’s dad, all reached out in support and unconditional love during the two weeks we spent at the NICU. MacKenzie left the hospital with a central port for the antibiotics that she was still receiving. We went home to the unfinished "hay house" as my kids would later call it as soon as MacKenzie was able to eat on her own again. The less-than-sterile surroundings we were living in make me shudder now, but at the time, I was just happy to be home.

As the years went on and I had more children, I became firmly convinced in not only the reality and science behind immunizations, but more importantly, on the need for well-balanced education about inoculations. Moving forward, we chose to give our babies most routine immunizations, withholding certain ones for the first few weeks to allow some natural immunity to develop.

Neighbors pitch in to help build the

On a positive note, what I can say about that time in our lives was that a fairly large group of community members (led by a neighbor) spearheaded a work party to come and stucco most of our house to enclosing it before the winter. This is an example of the beautiful side of a community. To this day I am grateful for the good people (some of whom still live at Marble) who contributed time, materials, and energy to making our home safer for my small children as the weather changed. Many of the homes on Marble were built debt-free, one work party at a time, with the support of cell groups and neighbors. For clarification, individual families purchased lots of the Marble town site from the original investors and owned their property separate from the community.

But these efforts could also be exploited. It was always impressed upon us the importance of community service. We spent many community work days contributing to projects at the church or barn even when our own homes were barely fit to live in. Leaders would commandeer work parties for their own homes, remodels and landscaping jobs, usually comprised of young people who were impressed upon to honor their spiritual authority in such fashion.

Christmas Child 

My third baby would also be born at home, supervised only by a community member (who also happened to be one of my best friends)  who felt like the Lord was calling her into midwifery. She  had worked as an apprentice under the first midwife who had left Marble by this time, but had no formal training or experience outside of our little community. At the time it all made sense in the world that she would deliver my baby. Looking back, we both shake our heads in wonder that the adult leaders in the community allowed this to happen. We are also both extremely grateful that there were no complications in labor. At the time I was 23 and she was 24. Looking back I understand now that a midwife (trained or not) was a necessity in their minds  for the self- sustainability that Y2K would demand from Marble.

I went into false labor on New Years eve of 1999. There had been such a build up for Y2K at Marble. Anne and Barry believed strongly that it was the opportunity they had been awaiting - a chance to move into power in the larger community when the established infrastructure fell. We stood in the church together as a community on New Years Eve waiting for the moment of imminent collapse. The excitement was palpable.  Leadership and much of the congregation were crestfallen when nothing happened and had to begin looking for a new moment to build toward.

The stockpiles of dehydrated foods came in handy for us even though life remained the same since we were still living well below poverty level. When Nat was born our “straw bale house” was in the same condition it was when MacKenzie was hospitalized. With some improvements of straw bales stacked for the second floor walls and an indoor toilet surrounded by hanging bed sheet walls. A luxury I demanded giving birth at home without medical support in January.

Natalee's birth in the very unfinished "hay house"

Natalee was born on January 5th in the year 2000. Her name (which was also my great-grandmother’s) meant Christmas Child. My pregnancy with Natalee was the only planned one of all four. In the year leading  up to her birth there was a strong push in the community toward re-establishing the covenant that had been “violated” by members who had left. Many of them family.

I  had tackled the issues in my marriage with new zeal and I was determined to become an integral part of the kingdom, not allowing conflict with David or my own discontent to hold me back. Having another baby seemed to be a good buy-in to the lifestyle. My drive carried me through for some time, and Natalee's early years are not shrouded in the same fog of pain that memories of my first two babies bring. But my journals are still fraught with turmoil about the lost relationship with my parents and dark days of questioning everything that I wanted so badly to believe in.

Rebel With a Cause

Shortly after Natalee was born I wrote a long, well thought out, and biblically researched appeal to my husband and church leaders to begin taking college classes online. I had done my homework. I could get enough financial aid and student loans to buy a computer. I wouldn’t have to leave the kids but I could start studying at home. In my appeal I offered to teach the homeschool students and contribute to the Prep School with my eventual degree in hand. I had already been offering drama and literature classes for the younger grades and doing the majority of the script writing, directing and choreography for productions during Marble’s 4th of July God and Country Days and other events in the community.

I had a ten year plan to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology. Leadership shot it down before they got through the first paragraph. Barry told me that I hadn’t demonstrated submission and contentment at home. They didn’t “witness” to my plan.

Regardless of leadership’s decision, my husband was actually supportive of the idea because the financial aid and student loans meant a hefty supplement to the work that he was doing for Jim Buck at sub-par wages. I defied the counsel of leadership. I bought a brand new Gateway Computer. The boxes it was shipped in were black and white like Oreo Cookie cows.

I can still taste the joy of that whole experience like it was yesterday. I was connected to the outside world. I was using my brain. I felt alive for the first time in years even though I was in rebellion to spiritual authority. I started communicating through email with my parents on a more regular basis, even though they were still supposed to be cut off. Higher education was the beginning of the end for me at Marble. I think leadership saw that writing on the wall. I was already questioning enough without any new ideas from the outside.

Things That Shatter: Family Ties

My Family

My parents, who had moved to Marble after my wedding and become fully involved in the community, decided to leave Marble in February of 1998. My mom asked in a community meeting if there was any sort of budget for the tithes, restitution and other income for the church that could be shared with the congregation. She was immediately condemned for daring to question the word of the lord (through Anne Byrd), and called out for a spirit of Jezebel that would sow seeds of mistrust in the community. 

The final straw for them came when another family at Marble (which happened to be Anne Byrd's brother and his wife) dared to question Anne and Barry and were formally excommunicated. We were told we could have no communication with this family or hear their side of the story. Their confessed sins were recited by Anne and Barry for the entire congregation to cast judgement and vote for excommunication, guided carefully by leadership. We were told that Anne's brother carried a spirit of Absolom, a character from the bible who was King David's third son, a rebel who set himself against his father and was killed.

The vote was almost unanimous, with a few abstentions from families who would leave Marble shortly thereafter. Community involvement in processes like this were a way for leadership to disperse responsibility for actions taken across the congregation so that no fingers could point directly at them. The guilt of our involvement in these events is the overwhelming reason that most of us who have left Marble have not told our stories. We all live with the burden of shame for our participation. After the excommunication, my parents had had enough, and they made plans to leave. 

When it became clear that my parents were making an exodus, Anne Byrd cautioned them that if they chose to “slander” Marble to the outside world that they, as leaders, would be forced to share with the community the sins that my parents had confessed to leadership. This was a reference to my father’s “confessed” lack of strong leadership and my mother’s insubordination to spiritual authority.

Shortly after this meeting, my dad was called into a meeting with some of the male leaders (my mother was not invited) and was told that he needed to get his household in order and bring his wife under submission. When leadership found little traction in this approach, my mom was counseled to “Matthew 18” my dad for his lack of leadership and apostasy of his spiritual authority over her.

My sister, who was turning19 in April of 1998, was desperate to stay in the community where she (as I) had found a network of peers were she felt that she belonged. The chronic church-hopping of our childhood and being homeschooled made us hungry to connect and belong in one place with people our own age.   

Even though she was legally an adult, the strength of belief in spiritual authority that both my family and the church carried meant that she could not stay on her own independent of a male covering. This was one thing that my parents and leadership agreed on. Until she was married there was no question in my parents' minds that our father would be the only appropriate covering for her. They would not give their blessing for my sister to stay.

My sister wrote a letter of appeal to Anne and Barry, requesting to be allowed to stay at Marble. In her letter she wrote that she felt called to Marble and that she couldn't follow my father away from the church because she lacked faith in his spiritual leadership. She wrote that she feared spiritual death if she would be required to stay with my family. 

The men then called a meeting and were required to vote either for or against taking ownership of my sister’s spiritual covering. My sister was planning to go into the Prep School and would be living in Steve Parker’s house and under his authority. Steve Melzer also took personal responsibility for her spiritual covering and after Prep School she would live with the Melzers until she was married.

At the meeting, her letter of appeal was shared but my parents were not given an opportunity to give their side of the story, nor even allowed to attend. Later, long after my dad requested a meeting with Barry about the issue, Barry responded with a scathing letter to my dad telling him how rebellious and insubordinate his spirit was in the request and how he couldn't think of indulging such a spirit. Having read both my father's letters to Barry and Barry's response recently, my stomach turns at the outright and oppressive bullying tactics that Barry employs in his response.  

It was made clear to the men that were gathered in that meeting that my father refused to hear the Holy Spirit regarding his daughter, basing the accusations once again on my dad's confessed weakness in spiritual leadership, and every man in the meeting (except for one) voted in support of the church assuming the role of her spiritual covering against my parent’s wishes. This was another example of the Byrds systematically use of the congregation to pass down decisions which they impressed upon members as revelation from god. 

The Shunning

After my parents left, momentum was building among families who had also cut ties with Marble, including my father-in-law, Paul Glanville, Anne’s brother and his family and several other people who departed from the community after the excommunication. From these families, letters were written to leadership, and up the accountability line to Dennis Peacocke and the Fellowship of Christian Leaders, the authority council that Anne and Barry claimed to be submitted to, as well as several letters sent to community members, pointing out damaging leadership style if not calling Marble out as a cult. 

My parents wrote a letter to Barry in defense of Jay Grimstead, a philosopher and pastor of some repute in the theological circles that we belonged to. Jay had made a public statement decrying Anne and Barry’s lack of accountability, controlling leadership style and the warning signs he saw during several months at Marble when he and his wife lived there during a sabbatical. Grimstead, along with other former members who dared to speak out, or "slander" leaders at Marble, was heralded as heretics and false prophets, according to one of Barry’s sermons. Slander became one of the hottest buzz words at Marble during this time, used liberally to refer to anything said about Marble that leadership didn't agree with. 

We were warned to keep our distance from the dissenters and the spirit of rebellion that was seeking to destroy the work of the lord. At the end of 1998, it was determined that all relationships with slandering former members should be cut off. They should be “shunned” from fellowship, with the intention of using “tough love” to bring them back into covenantal relationship. For me and my sister, this meant that we needed to tell our parents that we could not longer have relationship with them until they repented for the slander and rebellious attack against Marble.

We wrote letters to them, delineating the trespasses that they had committed against us and our covenant family and casting judgement on them for their spiritual rebellion. 

Until my sister married some time later. My dad could not bring himself to recognize the newly, self-appointed spiritual authority in her  life and the rift was painful. When she married her husband (who had come to the prep school from a sister church in Zillah), she was walked down the aisle by Steve Melzer. My parents were invited at the last minute through a special dispensation of grace from leadership, but they decided against coming to bear witness to the rejection of their role in her life. 

The repercussions of this process on our family would last for years. My journal is filled with entries crying out about the deeply conflicting thoughts, beliefs and feelings about cutting off relationship with my parents. In one journal entry I list off several repentances I needed to make, including one to Anne Byrd for "Unholy loyalty based on uncovenantal relationships and damaged trust." I remember having several conversations with Anne and Cheryl about how wrong it felt, how dishonoring I thought I was being. The response was sympathetic but staunch. Anne had, after all, excommunicated her own brother and his family. 

Excerpt from a letter to my parents, dated May 4th, 2002: 

    “Today is Emily’s wedding, and the place that only you can fill is painfully empty, but I believe God has a plan for all of us in this. Emily has so much to learn, and many of life’s lessons require the pain of many people. I am thankful for your willingness to endure the pain for the sake of growth. 

  "I confidently speak for Emily when I say that you are the best and only parents that we could have asked for, to raise us into our destiny and make us who we need to be to maximize God’s plan for our lives. We love you, and we thank God for you.”

Things About Being Chosen: Hierarchy, Elitism and Playing Favorites

Disqualified

Throughout my time at Marble I had frequent head-butting sessions with Anne and Barry Byrd’s daughter, who was a few years older than I was.  As time went on at Marble, she would single me out to "hold me accountable" for an ongoing barrage of character flaws and trespasses against the community.  Being the presumptive leader of every prep-school or youth related activity, Dannie would send me home if she didn’t like what I was wearing, or tell me I was disqualified from performing because my home and/or my marriage wasn't in order. The hypocrisy of her treatment of me was absurd and profound. 

The Prep School spent several months one year, planning a trip to Washington DC (American Constitutional history and government was a big part of the academic focus of the Prep School curriculum), and I offered my services to help prepare a script and choreograph a performance that the students would share at churches and other organizations while they were back east. We spent weeks rehearsing. Dannie and I served as ad-hoc directors of the program. I was happy to be involved, even knowing I was not qualified to be invited on the trip. 

During one rehearsal, Dannie sent me home to change my shirt when I came wearing an over sized white t shirt (chosen because it was not form fitting), with big black letters “FBI” printed on the front. My dad bought me the FBI shirt when I visited them in DC the year before. She was insistent that the letters stood for “Female Body Inspector,” calling in one of the male Prep School student leaders to validate her claim. Whether or not he agreed with what she was claiming was irrelevant. Nobody argued with Dannie about anything during this time period. It was far too likely that she would call Anne in to "mediate" the conflict and the reprimand for dishonoring her daughter would be relentless. Dannie demanded I go home and change. The situation was so absurd that I didn’t return to rehearsal that day. 

While I was pregnant with MacKenzie, a closed-door Core Group meeting took place which we found out later was a shotgun wedding for Dannie and a local redneck. Not even into the beginning stages of  what Marble called the “courtship” process (a holy substitute for dating), Dannie had gotten pregnant and they were quietly married. The hush-hush meeting was followed by a community celebration which included a baby shower for the couple. 

Halle's first Christmas, 1996. I was pregnant with MacKenzie.

I remember sitting in the party feeling guilty that I noticed the disparity in public retribution for their fornication when I had suffered so greatly for mine. I kept reminding myself of the parable of the workers, who were all paid equally for an inequitable amount of work, and how the ungrateful ones complained that they were not paid more even though it was the agreed upon amount. And like Jesus said, the last will be first… etc. 

All of this took place not long after Dannie was caught embezzling from the ambulance service where she worked in Colville, using the ambulance fuel cards to fill her own gas tanks. She spent three days in jail (these records should be available on request from Stevens County) and told our cell group that she was away at an EMS training. The disparity in treatment among community members was remarkable. In recent conversations with other former Marbleites, this preferential treatment has come up often. Anne and Barry had specific favorites (including of course, their daughter) singled out for a different level of privilege and an entirely revised gradient of consequence for sin.

When I finally began to challenge Dannie on her abuse of power and arbitrary judgement, I was met with surprise and fear. She knew that I was a threat to her role in the community and I brought at least as much experience, intelligence and talent to all of our team undertakings as she did, if not more. Her personal vendetta toward me kept me constantly in a humiliating checkmate, and many of our peers at the time can attest to her bizarre contempt for me. 

Anne Byrd focused much of her energy on the young adults in the community. She created the Banquet & Ball - which was a sort of prom substitute that allowed all of the young people (high school - marriage) to dress up and dance according to historic rituals and carefully choreographed performances. Dance lessons were required leading up to the ball, as well as etiquette classes for  both the young men and ladies. 

David and I at a "community ball" that followed the prep school banquet but  was open to everyone in the church.

In addition to teaching the young ladies the horrors of sex, the young men were instructed on the vulgarity of peeing while standing up and were required to use the toilet sitting down (another of Anne Byrd’s ideas). This new culture of etiquette was enforced up the age ranks throughout the community for several years before the men got sick of it. For all of the patriarchal rumors that circulate about Marble, the place was run without question by Anne Byrd. A male member of the congregation speaking up against Anne was rare, if it ever happened at all. Anne publicly and contemptuously rebuked Barry in front of the congregation on many occasions when he misspoke or she took exception with what he said.

Anne invited me to sit in on the training and the banquet and ball the first year as a sort of scribe/journalist, to take notes and pictures and write about the event. Being married and pregnant and my life all out of order, I wasn’t “qualified” to participate fully, so I sat in a corner of the Byrd’s house where the training took place and the elegant dinner was served and took notes quietly. 

Eventually I was cut off from all involvement with the Prep School and I began teaching Literature and theater classes to elementary aged students at Marble, as well as taking Irish Dance lessons in Kettle Falls and teaching students at Marble Irish dance along with a couple of other girls from the community. Going through my binders of material from the teaching and investment that I put into Marble it boggles my mind. Even so, I was never regarded as a key player in Marble's destiny for dominion, something that was made very clear to me over and over again by leaders in the church.

That's me on the far right.

A Visit to the Outside World

A group from Marble went down for a conference in Spokane at Harvest Christian Fellowship, a sister church that was hosting a worship event. I was enthralled with the big city church and the young couples and families who all seemed to be Godly, upright followers of Christ but also fashionable and pretty chill. I remember coming home from the conference, sitting in a vehicle next to Cheryl Melzer and talking excitedly about how nice all the people were and how fun it would be to do more things with them. Cheryl’s response was a resigned pity for their watered down version of Christianity that precluded them from the grandiose Kingdom plans that Marble was called to. This was typical of Marble’s elitist dominion mandate. 

Inquest

During the Prep School years, Anne held “inquests” for most of the student. It was an intensive rooting out of issues and speaking life and destiny into each individual. It was a spiritual prophesying of future kingdom roles, responsibilities and giftings. 

I desperately wanted an inquest of my own. I wanted to be spoken into and envisioned by leaders and my peers. My journals capture the excitement I felt when I was finally going to be allowed an inquest of my own. It's clear that I wasn't qualified to go through that process with Anne herself, but Steve and Cheryl Melzer were willing to stand in and humor my request. It was cancelled at the last minute thanks to some errand the Melzers had to run. I am grateful now that it never happened. 

Speaking with former Prep School students who did receive them, they might have been one of the more severe forms of spiritual abuse that happened during that time at Marble. I narrowly escaped. 

One of the most vivid dreams of my entire life was about the inquest I never had. It took place on a dark night at the Melzer’s house (as they often did), and the power was out from a violent thunderstorm outside. The oil lamps and candles around the room gave the whole thing a seance-like aura. I was sitting across from Anne with all of the prep school students around me, as well as Steven and Cheryl Melzer. Everyone was laying hands on me and praying for clear word from God on my behalf. Suddenly, Anne opened her ice-blue eyes and her face went pale. “I’m sorry,” were the first words she said. “I am sorry, but you are not one of the chosen. You don’t make it and there is nothing you can do.” 

“The chosen” refers to the few that are selected by God for the kingdom on earth, based on the scripture about the wedding guests who are thrown out for wearing the wrong garments. The most terrifying thing about this dream is that it is eerily close to what many young people experienced in an inquest. At one meeting, Anne Byrd actually did tell me that I was not wearing the proper garments for the feast of the bridegroom. It was a reprimand to get my life in order at a time when I was striving with everything in me to meet all of the  unreasonable demands placed on me by Anne and Dannie, and still dealing with hell in my own marriage. 

One of my very last conversations with Anne happened years later over lunch at the Mustang Grill. Lunch with Anne was a privilege reserved for either the very anointed or the very messed up, and it’s a safe bet that I was the latter. I am sure it was a last ditch effort to give me a chance to save myself on the way out. 

Somehow we began talking about a girl my age who had recently defected to the real world from Marble. She had moved to the coast and was going to church (at a church loosely connected with Marble, no less), and Anne was grieving over the loss of Melissa (who was one of the select favorites) for the kingdom, and how she was throwing away her destiny. 

I challenged Anne with the idea that Melissa’s destiny might lie outside of Marble, where God still lives and works. I suggested that maybe it looked totally different than Anne imagined and that perhaps Melissa would find her own way with God. Anne looked at me like I had three heads, and that was the moment that I saw her insanity for what it really is. The Byrds have always held, and as far as I know, still hold, the ideal that they have been called - or drafted - according to a sermon by Barry Byrd - to an elite ruling class that most other Christians will never attain, let alone non-believers.

Things About Dominion: Control and Intimidation

"God isn't concerned with your present happiness." - Anne Byrd

Stealing Their Joy 

My second pregnancy was overshadowed by a deep depression that I could not shake. Reaching out to my sister and friends for support resulted in a meeting at Anne Byrd’s house. There all of my peers, my sister, best friend, sister-in-law and more all took a turn telling me how my self focus and sloth (the biblical term for depression) had been disillusioning them about marriage and the futures that they were looking forward to. That I was destroying the hope of many young women at Marble. None of these girls were married yet or had any children. We were all around the same age. I had gotten an early start on this “ideal” lifestyle and I think some of them were even jealous of my new family and felt like I was being ungrateful.

Keep in mind, these young women did not know the details of what was going on in my marriage. All they knew was that I was feeling sorry for myself because my life wasn’t the fairy tale I had dreamed of. In that meeting I was asked to repent to all of them for stealing their joy and robbing them of hope for the future. I choked out the words of repentance through blinding tears and went home even more devastated than when I had arrived.

Interestingly enough, not long after this meeting in one of the “training sessions” ahead of Marble’s annual Banquet & Ball event, Anne Byrd herself would warn all of the young ladies that sex was a drudgery that they would be required to perform at some point for their spouse and the greatest gift a husband could give his wife was abstinence. She repeatedly shared her disgust with sex and mocked Barry and other men for their buffoon-like need for it.

My journals during this time include a daily repentance for “self focus” and a constant travail about the self absorption that was holding me back from my place in the Kingdom. This spirit of sloth, self focus, as well as a handful of other random sins, were touted as the disqualifiers for me to be involved in various activities and projects in the community. As time went on I would be accepted into and then removed from Anne Byrd’s newly beginning Prep School. First a “drama instructor” and then as an auditing student.

I wanted so badly to immerse myself in the learning and the social life that I saw my peers enjoying, but I was repeatedly “disqualified” when my house was not kept well (another frequent repentance in my journals), my t-shirt was deemed too tight or I had had an episode of self-pity, crying with a friend, who would promptly report it to Anne. When the sins of my husband and my subsequent self-focus came to light, Anne decided I was no longer qualified to help instruct since my “home wasn’t in order.” She considered letting me audit some classes but after meetings (like the one with all of the girls) she decided I might bring the class down and I wouldn’t be allowed to sit in.

Still intent on staying in the loop, I got some of the teaching materials that Anne was using and did some of the bookwork on my own, including one of her favorite texts to teach from, Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde. Written by a former Marxist, the book outlines the strategy of the party in recruitment and how to strategically maneuver people, applying principles of psychology to manipulate a population into compliance with a specific agenda.

The Secondborn

I wasn’t ready for another baby. I barely knew what to do with the one I had. Halle was such a good, happy girl. Without the support of David’s mom, who lived next door, and Halle’s own resilient personality, I am not sure how I would have taken care of her.

I was confronted again by some members of my Cell Group of  young married couples for my rebellion against God and rejecting the baby he had given me. They held a “prayer counseling” session over me and the baby,  casting out the “spirit of rejection” and my self focus and prophesying an embrace of the new life growing inside of me in spite of my unworthiness. I wept and repented to God for my rebellion against his will.

MacKenzie was born in July. My journals paint a happier picture than I remember, but I was intent on capturing in words the gratitude that would kill my spirit of self focus. The same midwife that delivered Halle was on hand for MacKenzie’s birth. Throughout both pregnancies I had never consulted with a doctor.

MacKenzie came into the world on a blazing hot day. She brought with her a fiery personality to compliment her strawberry blonde hair. She and Halle couldn’t have been more opposite in their demeanors, but both were very good babies, which I count as a mercy being barely 19 years old with a newborn and a one year old.

James Buck and Sons

After a year or two bouncing around between part time and minimum wage jobs, David was hired by Jim Buck, who was a licensed contractor. David had no building experience so to be expected he started at the bottom of the food chain, slightly above minimum wage. After some time on the crew the Bucks pulled all of the families who worked for them together and pitched a proposal to change their corporation into an LLC, with each crew member owning 1% of the business.

They preached an opportunity for us all to become “sons of the vision” and invested in the business, telling us we’d get our percentage of the profits at the end of every year. The only downside, they said, was that we’d be on our own for any L&I, unemployment, and other insurance etc, since the guys would now basically be working for themselves. Being young and naive and wanting to buy in as “sons of the vision” we all agreed, and the business was re-branded James Buck and Sons.

Never once (as far as I know) in the following years did any crew member see a percentage of the profits. Ronnie Buck artfully “reinvested” the profits into “gifts” she could write off and presented us at the end of the year with a selection of crappy items from Walmart. Meanwhile, the young and inexperienced crew had no worker’s compensation coverage, and when work dried up in the winter time, no unemployment benefits. It was brilliant on the part of the Bucks, and the cost to us was on our own heads for foolishly buying in.

As far as ownership or any autonomous perks in the business go, the one time that I tried to appeal a decision that Jim and Ronnie made denying a day off that David and I had requested, I was met with a wrath unlike anything I have ever seen. We caught the Bucks after church and I asked why we were not allowed the day off, and if there was a way around it. I don’t remember why it was important to me now, but I believe there was a family event happening with my parents and siblings.

Ronnie burst into tears and told me that she had never felt so dishonored by someone under her leadership and spiritual authority in her life. She went on a tirade about how much she had laid down her life for us while Jim went and pulled Anne and Barry in to reprimand me for “biting the hand that feeds” us. I was shut down. Hard. It would not be the last time that I would face that kind of fury from a “dishonored” leader.

Core Group members would frequently meet any question of their authority or decision making with an outrage at being “dishonored.” Toni Parker (Steve’s wife) once railed on me for dishonoring her when I asked her son to leave church early to make it on-time to a practice in Kettle Falls (which he had committed to) where a handful of us were studying Irish Dance with Deirdre Abeid. Her reaction was so off the wall outrageous that another leader (again Jeanne Ochs) stepped in and stood her down. I believe we had a “meeting” about it later at which I was required to repent to Toni for dishonoring her.

Restitution

The principle of restitution was visited upon community members in many arbitrary ways. The most bitter memory for me was after my husband and I had moved into our house on Marble Flats proper, we had enough money from our tax return to buy a brand new washer and dryer from Sears. I was so divinely happy. That set was the nicest, newest thing I had ever owned. My first real appliance. Shortly after we bought and installed the pair a member of our cell group, called a meeting with David and I and Steve and Cheryl Melzer. She told us that while MacKenzie had been hospitalized (more on this later), and she had been “serving us” by doing our laundry, my husband had neglected to clean everything out of his pockets and some nails had made her washer begin to spit rust into loads of clothes, ruining several items.

For restitution, she felt that the only thing that would remedy the distress she experienced would be a brand new washer. The machine I had was identical to hers, only newer. Steve and Cheryl asked if a lesser form of restitution would work, such as us paying for repairs, but the other woman didn’t want to have to deal with fixing the washer and it potentially having problems again. So in order to “restore relationship” I was required to trade appliances with this person.

When we took apart her older washer to fix it, we found no nails - only gobs of rusty bobbi pins (I had never used a bobbi pin in my life and the other woman was an ad-hoc hairdresser at the time). After we cleaned it out it ran like a charm for the rest of my time at Marble. While her brand new washer turned out to be a lemon that she had to pay hundreds of dollars to repair repeatedly. She called a meeting and tried to force me to trade back but the Melzers shut her down.

David’s $9.00/hour salary was also garnished (I don’t remember the amount) when he had to pay “restitution” to the community for sins he confessed to. This restitution went straight into the non-accountable church fund managed by the Byrds, and came straight out of the mouths of my children. This “restitution” went on for months, if not years. Many other individuals and families had to meet similar requirements.

There are endless stories from survivors of Marble about arbitrary restitution, including one family who “donated” thousands of dollars to pay the cost of drilling an unsuccessful well after the head of the household confessed to some sort of transgression and they were accused of bringing "sin into the camp." This violation was thought to have dried up the well site that had been selected based on a word from the Lord. In another instance the theft of a candy bar from the small mercantile was repaid to the tune of $500. Another community member was required to give her electronic keyboard to the church because she had no money to pay restitution for whatever sin she had confessed.

Headmaster Parker

Another involuntary offering that we were required to pay came when Steve Parker and other leaders at Marble decided he had been called to start a high school for the home schooled students of that age. With some teaching background (I have no idea where or what he taught), leadership ordained him as “Headmaster” and required each family at Marble to pay a portion of the amount that Parker deemed necessary to maintain the lifestyle he desired. The total amount was divided equally between every family at Marble, regardless of the age or number of children, or if they had any. I had two small children and the time and our monthly income was already being tapped for “restitution.”

It was during this season that Steve Parker oversaw the high school boys’ fundraiser to build a basketball court at Marble. The young men worked all summer to raise enough to pour a concrete slab, rounding up somewhere in the area of $6000 with car washes and various efforts. A member of the community donated materials to build concrete forms. When all the work was done and the boys needed money to pay for the concrete pour,  Parker sidestepped their request, making them instead rewrite their “mission statement” for the project and rejecting several drafts. After weeks of this type of avoidance, two of the young men leading the charge requested to address the issue in a community meeting.
 At the meeting, Parker opened it with the announcement that two boys were being expelled from the high school after they had been caught looking at porn online. Using this as some sort of verification that the collective of the young men had “disqualified” themselves from the privilege of a basketball court, he went on to claim he expended the money they raised on textbooks. Students who were attending Parker’s high school at the time contend that the handful of books purchased were far from equal to the amount of money raised. When one of the young men stood up and questioned this, he was immediately met with outrage from another leader for “dishonoring” Parker’s decision. The meeting escalated to a shouting match which Barry Byrd shut down with an admonition to the youth to respect and honor their elders. Not another word was to be said about the basketball court.

The details of this incident can be elaborated more eloquently by several of the men that were students at the time. There was some speculation about where the money went, but most of the students in the high school were keenly aware of a new shop being constructed on Steve Parker’s property since they were conscripted to “volunteer” their services to help build it out of respect to their headmaster. This was only one of many free labor projects that the young people were required to perform for leaders.

Looking back through my journals where I kept monthly budgets and expenses, there are hundreds of dollars every month paid to various entities set up to manage “utilities” on Marble. In addition to Marble Utility District, we were paying a decent sized chunk to Marble Flats (which I think was some version of an HOA) and some other bills for which I cannot pinpoint a purpose. None of the budgets for these various funds were available to community members for many years and they were, to my knowledge, managed exclusively by the Byrds and Rick Johnson.

Things To Hide: Deep, Dark Secrets

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. - Proverbs 28:13

The Husband

Halle was three months old when one of the “winds of the Holy Spirit” blew through Marble. The leadership told us that if we wanted to survive to the next level of the kingdom we had to confess ALL of our deepest, darkest sins and repent publicly. These prophetic winds came arbitrarily according to a word from the Lord through Anne Byrd. This one was impressed upon the congregation as a sort of “do or die” to make it as a chosen one. Leaders and laypeople alike were confessing on an almost nightly basis at community meetings of every variety of trespass. Common offenses were looking at pornography, a spirit of rejection (this was manifest in defensiveness when leadership confronted someone), a spirit of sloth (depression), and other garden-variety transgressions.

My husband came to me first to beg forgiveness before he brought his sin to bear in front of the community. He told me that had been having sexual relations with the horses he was training. This activity was on top of the 3-4 times each day that we were having sex. This was also in addition to the odd deposits of semen I would find in the car, or the dirty laundry, which I would come to understand later were from his compulsive masturbation. I had no idea what it was I was finding everywhere until he told me, masturbation was a term I had read in Dr. Dobson’s 1980s era sex-ed book called “Preparing for Adolescence,” but his vague description still left me in the dark.

It’s easy to imagine now that my my former husband's lack of impulse control was related to some undiagnosed addiction or other illness, but at the time, I had no frame of reference for any of it. My first response to his confession was grace. The first thing I said to him after he told me was that I was relieved it wasn’t another woman. Then, as I processed and asked questions, I felt the whole world going dark around me.

I had followed the rules. I had done things the right way. I had saved myself. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. How was I not enough?

The Aftermath

The trauma of those hours and days are more fresh in my mind than the birth of any of my children. That was the time of my birth. It was the moment that I became aware of darkness and evil. My eyes were suddenly open to the possibility that I had not been granted the desires of my heart. I had been robbed. It was the first time that I questioned my marriage as God’s will.

My husband and I went to our cell group leaders. Mark and Angela Black were understandably shocked. I just remember Angela smiling. Smiling awkwardly. Smiling always. I remember sitting there with a tiny baby in my arms and my heart in a thousand pieces as she smiled. They said they’d have to get counsel about it and get back to us. Later we got a call saying that we were being moved to Steve and Cheryl Melzer’s cell group and they’d help us walk through it. I guess I was relieved. Maybe I thought there would be an end to the pain. A solution. I was wrong.

Steve and Cheryl were pragmatic about our problem. The message to me was consistent: this is what God wants for you for some reason. It is part of your process. Honor your husband. Get out of this whatever you need to. Leadership decided that my husband could not confess his sin publicly in front of the community like the rest of us. It was too much. Too sordid. I was told to not tell my friends or family as to not disillusion them. So no one knew.

I remember explaining to Cheryl the deep sense of betrayal and injustice I felt, and asking for help. She asked me what would help to ease the pain, pointing out that there was no feasible resolution. Separation wasn’t an option that was ever discussed. I do believe Cheryl felt empathy toward me. I think she wanted to help, and her experience in the outside world taught me something about cynicism and the fallacy of fairy tales.

Leaders at Marble came from many different backgrounds and operated out of many different motivations. Steve and Cheryl labored under what I believe is misplaced loyalty to the Byrds but were honest seekers of truth and redemption. I do not believe the same about other leaders. I saw many who were motivated by greed and power and a sense of self-importance in their Kingdom of God fantasies.

At some point, some late night, I packed Halle up and drove to my parents house and asked to stay there. I wasn’t allowed to tell them what the issue was. I just felt like I couldn’t be there with him. My dad said if I stayed with them, if I left the covering of my husband’s home for any length of time, I needed to submit to him and I would be treated as one of the kids. I would have a chore list and would not be treated as an adult. He didn’t know. They had no idea what I was facing at home, and the 'sanctity of marriage' is something that my parents value highly. I gathered Halle up and I slept in the car that night. Grimace, the car that had broken down repeatedly and betrayed me in some of the worst moments of our honeymoon had become my only safe place.

Finally, leadership arranged a meeting with our parents and the other Core Group leaders of the church. my husband’s parents, my parents, Rick and Vicki Johnson, Jim and Ronnie Buck, Steve and Cheryl Melzer, Anne and Barry Byrd, Steve and Toni Parker. Troy and Dannie Hopkins were there as well, which struck me as odd since Troy was very new to the community and in my mind they didn’t represent the mature leadership that I expected at this meeting.

Later, my father-in-law would tell me that when my husband made his confession to that group, he thought that he heard his son say that he had had sex with a whore, not a horse. Or maybe, he said, that’s what he wanted to hear. It wasn’t until later that Paul found out what his son actually said that day. 

The Process

I think nobody knew how to deal with the issues my husband had. I think I was an emotional, hormonal, teenage wreck, and no one knew how to deal with me. I do know that at that meeting, and every one before it and after, I was told by every leader I talked to that that was WHAT GOD WANTED FOR ME. The message was consistent and repeated. For some reason, for some future plan, he wanted me to go through this pain.

I understand now that they were wrong. I know that they were as capable of failure as I was, or my husband, or any of us. I know that God doesn’t appoint leaders who don’t make mistakes (if he appoints any at all) and I refuse to believe that God wants any of us to live in pain, day after day, without end, without empathy, without comfort. This is why there are laws, commandments, for restoration and healing. I do believe that everything happens for a reason, that there is purpose in everything, but I believe that abusers should be called into accounting for the harm they have caused others, and no church should shelter them from consequence.

After the deep betrayal that I experienced from my the man that I married, who was supposed to be my god-ordained authority and protector, the injustice propagated by the leaders at Marble, these self-proclaimed ministers of God’s will in my life is one of the more egregious violations by leadership at Marble.

I was not the only victim of this ambivalence toward abuse. There were many more cases of individuals who suffered worse abuse than I did and saw their violators go happily about the community, protected by leaders who enjoyed the power they wielded over them. I also know that this enablement of abusers isn't a unique story to Marble. Many churches have sheltered perpetrators in the name of biblical redemption while victims are left floundering for healing. My hope in sharing these stories is that other victims can reach out and find the healing they were denied, as I am doing now.

My panic attacks had devolved into a dark deadening of my soul. I remember sitting in the corner of my bed. Rocking. Just rocking. Staring at the wall while Halle kicked in her crib next to me. I started to become paranoid about getting pregnant again. I was terrified of the physical process knowing I couldn’t use birth control. I couldn’t stop my husbands’s advances. Especially now that I lived with the constant fear that if I couldn’t meet his needs he would take them elsewhere.

I lived my days in terror and my nights in pain. I talked to a few of the women in leadership and found little to no empathy or support until Jeanne Ochs heard me talking about my terror of another pregnancy. She looked me dead in the eye and said “Livia, you are NOT a broodmare. God did not give you that body and the brain you have to just crank out babies. Go find some form of birth control.” I cried tears of relief and made an appointment with the midwife - the one who had held us accountable for our fornication - to be fitted for a diaphragm. Shortly after that appointment, I found out that I was already pregnant with MacKenzie.

Things That Break: Desires of My Heart

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Psalm 37:4

The Fornicators

I was pregnant. Doing the math, it must have happened on or near the first time we had sex. I didn’t do the math until long after we returned home. The rest of the honeymoon was a series of nightmares. Grimace broke down in Omaha for a week and we didn't have any money left. My husband's parents and my parents took turns wiring us enough money to cover a hotel room each night as we were waiting for the repairs to be finished.

Our friend Rod loaned us the $1500 it cost to get the car running again. We checked out of the hotel every day hoping the car would be done and sat at a Denny's restaurant with no money to order food. One day we got a side of green beans because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. Another day an old man asked us what our story was, paid for our dinner and encouraged my husband to get a job with the railroad. The waitress overheard our story and the manager footed the bill for our next meal.

The car was fixed after seven days. We loaded up and went to leave only to find the freeway was closed due to a blizzard. I wept as we rolled back to the hotel and checked in again.

The next day we left and drove straight through to Cheney where the alternator (which had not been correctly installed) rattled off and the engine blew up again. I called my parents and they came and picked us up. I will never forget driving past the farmhouse where I grew up, crying silently, and wishing to God I could go back to that pink room and undo the last month.

It was almost December. We had a 16-foot camp trailer to live in. The cabin deal had fallen through. I was still miserably ill and exhausted. As we passed through Colville my mom told me that they and my in-laws had pitched in to build an apartment for us over the shop on the Glanville's property for us to live in. We had no furniture, but I cried tears of relief to have a warm roof and four walls with a flushing toilet.

I had my first appointment with the midwife (who was also a member of the community at Marble) shortly after we returned home. She said that I measured too large to be correct about the dates, and asked if I could have possibly gotten pregnant before we got married. I told her no, insinuating how ridiculous the thought was. She asked if we had had sex before we got married. I blushed and admitted we had, but that there was no way I got pregnant because we weren’t even trying. Once again, I shudder when I imagine what she must have thought of my naive perspective. She measured me again and told me when I had most likely conceived, and then she informed David and I that we had two options: either we tell the church leaders or she would.

When we sat down with Anne and Barry Byrd to tell them about our fornication, Anne looked me in the eye and told me that “what usually happens in these situations is that the young lady seduces the young man and it’s nearly impossible for him to help himself.”

Maybe I liked the sense of power that gave me. I don’t know. What I do know is that when we were told to repent to the community at a public meeting, I stood forward and took responsibility for seducing the man I was betrothed to and causing this failure. For undermining him as my spiritual authority. The leaders nodded their approval and forgiveness as my husband stood behind me at the pulpit of the church.

Fitting In

We were assigned to a “cell group” with leaders who were only a couple of years older than David and I. The leaders thought we’d be a good fit since Mark and Angela Black were busy cranking out babies too, and they’d never even imagine fornicating. Maybe they appeared similar to David and I based on some perception of us being into gardening and trees, etc. I guess David was, and I was into whatever my husband was, so it looked good on paper.

They weren’t particularly helpful when we would talk about issues that young married couples have, like people punching holes in the wall and other violent outbursts. I remember a lot of concerned looks, odd smiles and “hmm, let us get some counsel on that,” from them.

Truth be told I never had much respect for the Blacks because Angela was still rocking the denim jumpers that I thought Marble had freed me from. Maybe that’s why we were in their group. Maybe that’s exactly how the leaders saw me. It would be years before I would have a conversation with Anne Byrd and tell her that having babies and a garden was never on my bucket list, that I would have liked to have gone to college and traveled the world. She was absolutely shocked. I don’t know why that surprised me. I have since learned to be more vocal about who and what I am to avoid confusion like that.

Pregnancy was hard for me. It was even harder since the man I married was so far from the one I had fantasized about. All of my friends were still doing teenage things, school, friends, jobs… the ones I left behind in Colville had moved on with no hole left where I used to be. It filled in like quicksand. Like I had never even been there.

I tried to throw a party in February of ‘96 near Valentine’s Day at our apartment. I was so lonely. I designed Walther PPK silhouette invitations for a James Bond themed movie night. I made cakes and hors d'oeuvres and found a delicious pink brocade dress straight out of the 60s that just fit over my pregnant belly. I mailed out invitations to all of my old friends. I decorated the house in pink and red hearts and James Bond girls and villains. I frosted cookies and made fancy appetizers. Not one showed up. Not one. I was alone. All of my friends at Marble were younger than me, none married, certainly none pregnant. I was no longer the barefoot-soccer playing old-movie-buff-Shakespeare-queen. I was no one.


The Firstborn

Hallelujah Margaret was born on June 15, the day before my dad’s birthday and three days after I turned 19. I delivered at home, naturally, in our small apartment over the shop. I don’t remember much, other than the endlessness of it and then the relief of it finally being over. It was less than 24 hours before it was expected that I resume my wifely duties to the man I married. I remember that pain like it was yesterday.

I hated breastfeeding. Looking back now, I understand that some of what I was going through was symptomatic of sexual abuse and trauma. I was having panic attacks when I nursed Halle. I felt like I was going to explode out of my skin because I loathed my body so much. I despised my breasts, my bleeding and broken teenage body. I had massive stretch marks on the lower part of my abdomen that I hadn’t been able to see until after Halle was born.

The panic attacks started happening more often than just when I was nursing. My husband was the only one I had to turn to. He would hold my hand and I would try to remember how to breathe. I began to view him in some weird, holy and fearful light. I was afraid of him, and I revered him, and even though he inflicted pain on me there was never a moment that I questioned it as part of my duty to him.

I knew nothing else. I had no idea what healthy love looked like. My husband was condescending and narcissistic. Everything was my fault and I found myself perpetually repenting to him for a million petty things as he raged around our small apartment, punching and kicking holes in walls and doors when things didn’t go his way. But that wasn't even the worst of it...

Things That Bind: The Marriage

The Betrothal

I became a member of Marble a few days before my 18th birthday when I was betrothed to David Glanville on June 6, 1995, shortly before my homeschool-high school graduation party. My “betrothal” was sanctioned by my parents, his parents, and the leaders at Marble before I was aware that there was a proposal coming. Of course I said yes.

I was not quite 18 and college, according to my dad was “no place for young ladies.” David was the most sophisticated, worldly and formally educated of all my teenage crushes. In truth, earlier in 1995, I had been grounded for writing letters to another boy I liked, a redneck who lived in Oregon and whom I had denied a kiss the summer before at a church camp. I had kissed one boy before I became betrothed, shortly after my 17th birthday, in the parking lot of the Subway in Colville where I worked.

I know my parents were concerned about my “boy-craziness” and how to best direct me toward a righteous pathway. If you asked them later, they would contend that I was enough of a free spirit that if I had not been allowed to marry David (remember, again, I had no idea he was proposing) they feared I would run away and elope with him anyway. Maybe they gave their blessing out of resignation, or from my perspective, a sense of relief in passing the baton of spiritual authority and responsibility for such a flight risk to a husband.

Hindsight is 20/20. Or in this case probably not that clear, but I want my readers to know that my parents did what they thought was best in raising me, and I love them for that. It is important to understand that in their quest, my parents took unconventional pathways that led us to where we are now but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the choices they made were done in love, if slightly misled, and their hope was always for my happiness and holiness. I have never, for one second, believed that they had anything but my spiritual well being and success in mind. They believed, as I did then, that all of my dreams were coming true.

David and I had been confronted (Matthew 18-ed) by a leader in the church for what she perceived to be us spending too much time together. We had been co-directing a production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Marble, which was a ploy I had come up with to spend more time there and with him after taking an English class with several other homeschool students at the church. The English teacher, Angela Black, also a member of core group, felt that David and I were spending too much time together and called in my parents and other church leaders to address the issue.

I was deeply mortified to be in trouble at Marble before I was even a full-fledged member. In the middle of the meeting, which involved most of core group after a Sunday church service in early June, David jumped out of his chair and asked if he could speak to my dad. He and dad walked around the side of the building and came back after a few minutes, when my dad addressed the group and indicated that the issue would be dealt with in the "family government sphere" and the meeting was over. Unbeknownst to me, David had asked my dad if he could court me.

Mom, Dad and David had lunch at Rancho Chico in Colville the next day, where my dad told David that if he was truly hearing from the lord about me as a potential bride, he didn't see the need for courtship since I was already in love and the most logical step, in my parents' minds, was betrothal, which Dad felt was a less "worldly" term than engagement.

From my perspective the leaders at Marble were supportive of the union between David and myself. The Byrds had long been trying to get my parents to buy into Marble on a deeper level and my marriage offered that connection. My whole family began attending church regularly and my parents bought property and began construction on a house not long after I was married. David’s family had been at Marble for a few years before he came along to join them, only after failing out of college in one semester and spending some time back east training horses on a ranch.

He finally made his way to Marble in the winter of ‘94, where his four younger siblings and parents were. He lived in the dingy basement of the old house they had purchased, along with his twin brothers who are five years younger than he was (and the same age as me), younger sister Anne and the baby of the family, Peter, who was a couple years younger than I was.

David’s college experience (as minimal as it was) seemed exotic and worldly to me. He had been an English Lit major, and even though his grades ruled out a return after one semester, he was the first person I knew who had actually gone to college. I met him briefly at a conference about “Restoring American’s Biblical Foundations” put on by a pastor named Paul Jehle in Boise with several other youth from Marble and a few of my own homeschooling associates.

I was instantly enamored with David. He was five years older than I was and the coolest thing I had ever seen. His wavy blonde hair and knee high combat boots were complemented by a ratty, fatigue green ensemble which gave him a Kurt-Cobain-meets-Fidel-Castro sort of appeal, if I even knew who those people were back then. He was undeniably handsome and an unmistakable renegade in our prudish circle of denim skirts and crisp button downs with only one allowable buttonhole freed. I was crushing hard. For all of my goody-two-shoesness, I had a thing for the rebel without a cause. I had a map hanging over my top bunk in the room I shared with my younger sister Emily. I had a thumb tack placed in the state of Virginia, where I knew he was training horses. Every night I would pray that he would come back and notice me. Eventually he did.

The Fall

Shortly into our betrothal period, David began to tell me that he would not be able to wait until we were married to be physically involved. He didn’t think he could control himself and told me he shouldn’t be around me or we would both be in trouble. During one conversation (as I repented to him for the one kiss I had outside of our sacred relationship) he admitted to me that he was “not as pure as he should be.” I took this to mean several kisses, maybe even copping a feel or two. I quickly forgave him and insisted that we were both sinners but all was forgotten. Later, I would learn our perspective on purity was vastly different.

I lost my virginity to David a few weeks before our wedding in his filthy basement room after we had rationalized together that betrothal, in the biblical sense, was the same as marriage, as Joseph and Mary were betrothed and they lived together. That term gave us all the room we needed to fail. As an interesting side note, when I researched betrothal later, I learned that what distinguishes it from engagement is the cultural assumption that it’s an arrangement made without knowledge or consent of one of the parties, usually when one of them is still a child, by the families. Our physical relationship was at once non-stop, aggressive, and became all consuming leading up to the wedding. All of this I attributed to a passionate love, but as I would learn over time, David’s passion rarely extended beyond a compelling urge for physical gratification and rage-filled outbursts.

The Wedding

I was married October 7th of that year. The plan for a year-long betrothal dissolved as David and I pushed against the standards my dad had set for consistent employment and a place to live. At the time, those things seemed like small problems to solve, and in my naive mind, we had more than enough love to fix them. David, who had some background as a professional horse trainer, was waiting for a fall job grafting trees for a local nursery. I had been working at Barman’s lunch counter in Colville, along with some house cleaning and other side jobs. David worked a deal with a property owner to deconstruct and move a small log cabin for us to live in. The deal ultimately fell apart but the plan was enough to get the stamp of approval to move ahead with the wedding.

The wedding was an odd outdoor affair in early October with leaves on the ground and two bonfires to light the ceremony. I wore the satin dress that my grandmother wore in her wedding in the late 1940s. David’s dad, Paul, played his trumpet to announce the arrival of the bridegroom. I was escorted by a “cloud of virgins” to the wedding canopy, representing spiritual authority and covering, held by our brothers and one of my closest (obviously male) friends. A bit of Jewish tradition sprinkled in throughout the ceremony paid homage to David’s eccentricity, the importance of symbolism in the community, and my naive intrigue with anything exciting and new.

On our wedding night, I tasted wine for the first time when David and I took wedding communion. I hated it. The wedding reception would later cause a major scandal and a series of community meetings at Marble which I would miss while on my month-and-a-half long honeymoon. I was obsessed with the movie “Swingkids” in the mid 90s and all of my dorky homeschooling friends loved pretending to know how to swing dance. So of course my reception playlist included several swing hits. We all threw off our shoes and went wild. My grandmother even demonstrated some of the spins and rolls that she remembered from the actual era.

It was one of the best memories of the wedding. Perhaps even of the marriage. But later Anne Byrd would call the young people at Marble into accounting for the disorderly and chaotic dancing. Apparently line dancing and some country swing were allowable, but this type of anarchy was a disgrace. Hearing about the meetings was my first exposure to the type of subjective tyranny that I would find everywhere at Marble, and I was shocked.

When I got home I repented for my involvement in the chaos and leading others astray. This type of taste-based judgement was commonplace with Anne. During one meeting I remember her publicly declaring Hawaiian shirts to be effeminate, completely disgusting, and saying that any male who would wear one probably needed to examine his perspective of his role as a man in the Kingdom of God. This incident stands out to me particularly because it’s the first time I heard another leader challenge Anne. Vicki Johnson told Anne that growing up in California, all the manliest studs wore Hawaiian shirts, and it was completely a matter of subjective opinion. Anne was shocked, both with Vicki’s public challenge and her (clearly deviant) taste.

My parents had given me a 1972 Volvo that I had seen in someone’s backyard and fallen in love with for my graduation present that summer. The dark blue paint had oxidized to purple and it didn’t run. Before it was fixed, I bought paint and painted flowers all over the sides and named it “Grimace.” We got it running (barely) and planned a honeymoon road trip all the way from Marble to Wisconsin to stay at a lake cabin that belonged to David’s aunt and uncle after a few days on the Oregon Coast, where all of my best childhood vacation memories had taken place.

Some of my best friends had snuck out of the reception to decorate Grimace for our departure, using spray bottles of whipping cream to write epithets on the windshield, and every other surface. Melting whipped cream was dripping from the car when we clambered in with me still clumsily lumbering around in my grandmother’s antique satin wedding gown. We drove toward Chewelah where David’s mom, Donna, had booked us a night at a bed and breakfast well off the beaten path. The melting fat on the windshield was smeared like frosting by the crusty old windshield wipers. It turns out that windshield wiper fluid wasn’t a thing in 1972.

A mile from the church, David had to pull off to the side of Highway 25 and use the only liquid in the car (the remainder of our communion wine) to clean off the windshield. Following tradition, a few cars of well-wishers were behind us, honking and waving and shooing us on our way. One of them pulled up alongside to make sure that we weren’t having any serious issues. Before they could even offer help, the innocent family friends of my parents stopped and rolled down their window and were introduced to David’s short temper. I sat mortified in the front seat.

“Go back to hell where you came from,” he screamed in frustration at them. I sank down into my seat and fought back tears as I watched them huffily roll up their window and take off. 40 minutes later, we coasted into a gas station in Colville where Grimace’s battery died. David was forced to ask for help from the only other vehicle there, which happened to be the nice family he blew up at. He offered some form of apology, which in David’s repertoire always includes a justification, and they gave us a reluctant jump-start while I cried.

I wish I could say there was a happy moment on our honeymoon. That first moment set off a chain of events that went from bad to worse, and I had my first encounter with David’s potential for violence soon after we got to the Oregon Coast. All of my childhood memories on those beaches began to fade as they were replaced with the seared images of pain and confusion that I was faced with for nearly a week there. David’s demand for sex was non-stop. I wasn’t feeling well, and I was in pain. Once, when I asked him to stop because something was hurting me, he punched the pillow right next to my head and shouted at me that I was his wife and I was not allowed to defraud him. I rarely tried to stop him after that. I was devastated.

We went on to Wisconsin, and the most poignant memory I have of the trip is the sense of abject misery. I was sick. I was battling a terrible yeast infection, and bladder infection, and who knows what else. With no way to see a doctor, we called David’s dad (a medical doctor) who recommended some yogurt. I was so exhausted and completely disillusioned. My laid back, knight-in-shining-armor now seemed like a nightmare to me. Shortly after we got to Wisconsin, I was in bad enough shape that his uncle, who was a pharmacist, suggested I take a pregnancy test. I scoffed. There was no way. We hadn’t even been trying to get pregnant. How ignorant I must have seemed to those nice people. How naive. How broken.

Things To Explain: A Glossary

It was mentioned to me that as this story that I am telling unfolds, it might be helpful to identify some of the key players and define some buzz words and phrases that were in common use at Marble, for the uninitiated. So here is a break down of the authority structure at Marble during the time that I lived there (1995-2004), and some terms you will see used throughout the narrative. This blog entry may be edited over time to add or update.

Key Terms/Phrases

Matthew 18: Refers to the process of confronting another individual that you perceive to be in sin. This process is based on Matthew 18:15-17: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

Covenant: Marble had a formal covenant that had been signed by members before my family came to Marble. During the nine years I was at Marble, there were continual talks about a new "covenant signing" for families who had proven themselves to be covenant keepers, but if that ever happened, I was not involved or invited. The covenant bound members to accountability and subjected them to ex-communication if the terms were violated, among other things. I was never allowed to read the covenant, being "non-covenental" in my messy life.

Courtship: "biblical" substitute for dating, usually requires socializing in a group setting, no real basis in scripture other than the intent to preserve chastity.

Called vs. Chosen: Based on Matthew 22:14 "For many are called, but few are chosen." The idea that everybody might be invited to the banquet of the king, but only the ones who show up wearing the right garments get to stay. For everyone else: "Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," (verse 13).

Self-Confrontation: A textbook that was required study for every member of the community. Based on the principles of looking inward and rooting out impure motives and unbiblical reactions. This exercise is one of the skills that I developed at Marble that I am actually grateful for.

The Process: Refers to the refining of an individual through hardship, imposed internally (see self-confrontation) or externally (Matthew 18). Any life events that caused pain or strife were also part of "the process."

Pressing In: The active role an individual was expected to take in his or her "process" leading toward being a "son of the vision" and proving dedication to the mission. This would include "falling on your sword" (taking responsibility beyond your own fault at times), and seeking out opportunities to die to self in order to serve the community vision.

Inquest: A process used primarily in the Prep School that involved all of the students and a few leaders praying intently over and into the life of a specific student, seeking very detailed words from the lord for that person. Inquests usually involved intense confrontation and revelation of new callings from the leader(s) to the student. Adults in the community other than Core 1 leaders were excluded from these exercises.

Restitution: Based on Leviticus 6:1-7,2 ("If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour; 3 Or have found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: 4 Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found, 5 Or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering.") is the principle that a sinner should repay his trespasses to the victim of his sin, which at Marble, often meant the church, since bringing "sin into the camp" affected the blessings/cursings on the whole congregation. This money was paid to the church with no accountability. The scale of restitution was based on Proverbs 6:31 - "But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house."

Cell Group: A small group of church members, assigned according to a word from the lord to leadership, usually consisting of 3-5 families who held each other accountable and reported upline to their cell group leaders, who were often members of core group. Sometimes these groups were determined demographically (ie. the "young marrieds", etc). Here is a great article that describes the cell church structure: Divide and conquer: "Cell Churches" and hijacks

Prayer Counseling: is a practice that seeks to dig out roots of evil planted during youth, etc, that is causing a harvest of bad fruit. It is performed in a small group, usually a pair of leaders and the perpetrator, praying together. The lord tells the leaders what root of iniquity is buried deeply in the subconscious of the sinner and they seek forgiveness for judgements that were made as small children, even in utero infants. This practice resulted in many "reclaimed" memories of community members about abuse that they had buried in their past and other dubious accusations that were hurled around after a prayer counseling session.

Leadership 1995-2004

Core Group 1
Barry & Anne Byrd: Head Pastors - "accountable" to Dennis Peacocke
Jim & Ronnie Buck: Assistant Pastors
Steve & Cheryl Melzer: Assistant Pastors (they were not formally titled this and performed more of a "servant" role to Anne and Barry, as Cheryl explained it to me. They felt called to serve at Anne & Barry's feet.)

Core Group 2
Rick & Vicki Johnson
Steve & Toni Parker (Steve is now a Stevens County Commissioner)
Glen & Jeannie Thompson
Dale & Jeanne Ochs
Troy & Heather Anderson
Mark & Angela Black

Things That Begin: Exordium

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” - Matthew 7:15-20

I’m here to set the record straight. Or maybe more accurately, deliver my version of the record. I won’t tell you this isn’t biased, because everything that we read, and certainly every thing that we write has a bias. Mine has been formed over more than four decades, informed by experiences - some that many people have, and several that very few do. Some of the highly personal things I share here are things I have waited for years to say, to protect my children and extended family, but must be shared in order for you, the reader, the voter, the community resident, to understand the nature of these people who would be our local leaders. Some things in these stories will contradict what you think you know about Marble. Some things will confirm what you have heard. My goal is not to destroy the lifestyle of the people who live at Marble. I support their right and desire to live in a community of like-minded people. Most Marbleites are good people, good parents and good citizens.Whether you agree with their version of citizenship or not, they are for the most part, law-abiding and respectful members of the larger community, and I respect the right they have to live as they have chosen. The leadership of the church there, and their intent to bring “dominion” to the greater community through local government is a different story.

There were enough terrible and wrong things that happened during the nine years I spent at Marble (1995-2004) that I feel no need to glamorize or embellish the story. There were enough weird things that happened that the story is hard enough to believe even without adding drama. I do not claim to have a flawless recollection of my time there, but as I have written this I have been pouring through my journals and church notes, and reaching out to others who were there to compare memories. Most of these people will corroborate my recollection on the record if needed. Some are still too worried about the fall out to do so. Some things at Marble have changed, but experiences I have had in recent years have been enough to convince me that the highest level leaders that are in place there have only learned to mask their holy directive more carefully, for legal and strategic reasons.

In the Beginning

I wasn’t raised at Marble. Most people that I meet assume that I spent my growing up, or formative years, in the small community that sits above the Columbia River just where Lake Roosevelt ends and only a few miles from where the mighty stream comes into the United States from its point of origin in Canada. The truth is that I DID spend some of my most formative years there, as a sheltered young adult with no exposure to real life or "traditional" education. My parents moved to Colville when I was 12, after they found the small-town ideal they had been seeking when they visited some people they met at a home school conference in Portland. Anne and Barry Byrd hosted our family for a visit to northeastern Washington, and once mom and dad figured out the logistics, we moved. In 1987, Marble didn’t exist yet. It was formed a few years later after a group of investors bought the 500 acre site of the town which had died out in the 1960s.

When the church began to establish a community on Marble Flats, my parents visited a few times, but the fact that girls at Marble were allowed to wear tight Wranglers and line dance was a turn off for my family, who at that time was involved in the Advanced Training Institute, and part of that lifestyle included a vow I made to God to never wear pants again (a vow I have since broken, but more on that another time). Marble was simultaneously too worldly, charismatic and, well, just weird, for my parents to fully invest in back then, as were most churches we visited, including many in the area around Colville. We never found a long-term church home that my parents were truly happy with. The lack of social and spiritual connection left me yearning to belong. In some ways I was unintentionally but perfectly groomed to fall in step behind leaders that would manipulate and guide my virgin mind.

The sermon notes in my journals begin in early June of ‘95. I listened with rapt attention as the Byrds and other leaders delivered diatribes against the state of our nation and the broken relationship with God that we all lived in due to lowered standards - “halfway covenants.” I have several notebooks full of very thorough church notes.

From the time I was a young girl, I was in earnest pursuit of a meaningful spiritual walk. In short, I was something of a zealot as a child, witnessing to "park rats" in Yep Kanum and such. The fiery passion that I heard from the pulpit of Marble filled a constant yearning I had, not only for the connection with other people that homeschooling had denied me, but an elite and specialized opportunity to relate to God on a plane that most people would never get to experience. As I learned from the leaders there, I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to be in everything. Every class, every prayer session, every bit of it, and I religiously kept notes for everything I was allowed to be involved in. I say allowed, because even as a card-carrying, newly inducted member of the community, I had to prove myself and be “qualified” to take certain classes and join certain groups, a standard I would soon find myself unable to attain, for all of my heartfelt trying.

To clarify for my audience now, I no longer call myself a Christian. I do have a relationship with God. I do not believe that the bible is our only means of connection to Him nor is it the only moral code available to us, and many ancient philosophers would agree with me. I do believe that a group of leaders who twisted those scriptures to their own purposes and abused so many people psychologically, emotionally and in other ways, should be held to the same brutal and subjective standards which they imposed upon others. 

Things To Say

I've been watching Season 3 of the Handmaid's Tale, and I can probably place direct blame there for the deep, dark funk I find myself in this morning. Or maybe there something more real behind the sense of necessary dread I feel...

If you have never experienced the heavy hand of religious tyranny, the show seems outrageously fanatical, I am sure. I won't claim that I have been subjected to horrors on the level that Gilead has deployed in the series, but last night, when June was given a shroud to cover her mouth, indicating the silence dictated for her role, I felt my chest tighten and bile rise in my throat as I have many times throughout this series.

If you think that there are not people in this world who believe that God has told them the best prescription for your life, you are naive. If you do not know that some of these people believe the Lord has called them to the ruling class and that they are moving slowly, methodically into positions of political power (see Matt Shea), you'd be blind. There are, even among us in Stevens County, in Colville, people who believe that they are empowered by divine right to take leadership in our community to lead us down the path of their version of righteousness. They believe that they have been commissioned to bring the Kingdom of God, as they interpret it from the Bible, to play now, in local government. If you don't believe me, I have the church notes to prove it.

These people preach liberty but believe that LOVE, other than the married, heterosexual type, should be punishable by death or torture. These people preach liberty but would, according to the dictates of THEIR conscience, subject you to MORE LAWS that would take away your freedom to make choices about your own personal life, health, and moral convictions. These people preach God but would insert themselves as intermediaries in any relationship you might have with him. These people would replace Jesus as the conduit of grace in our lives. They speak liberty from their mouths and deliver bondage in their theology. Again, if you need proof, I have it.

I lived in this world for nine years. Like the people who came out of Gilead and lived, tortured by the guilt of things that they were subject to and participated in, willingly or otherwise, I have kept silent about the very real threat to liberty that over-reaching religion brings because of a similar guilt. I have been a part of the shunning. I have stood in judgement of others, believing God called me to that status with the other Elites of the Kingdom. I am guilty.

I believe in liberty. I believe, like our founding fathers did, in the importance of being able to find, serve and worship God on individual terms. Many of us who were raised in religious homes deal with the daily struggle of guilt-driven morality, working to find our own meaning in belief and action, but living under religious leaders who profess to know and to tell you what God wants for you, demands of you, and even will not accept from you, through those leaders as exclusive intermediaries of His will, is a whole different level of spiritual abuse. This, and the intentional, psychological manipulation (based on this book, and others) of young, damaged and malleable souls, is something that leaders of the "Christian Community" to which I belonged will answer for.

I left that place because I could not imagine my daughters growing up and blooming under that tyranny, just like June delivered her baby out of Gilead with the help of her mistress, who acknowledged the same threat to any woman in the Kingdom of "God". My silence has been the red shroud of shame and acceptance of my role and my guilt. But now, I am part of a new community and my silence allows the quiet trickle of this apparently "harmless" disease into the places I live and work.

There is a time for silence, and there is a time for action. More and more I understand that my time to act is coming. The knowledge of what this means for my own life is of very little consequence if it teaches my daughters that there is no price high enough for the liberty to speak, pray, and live as God has given me the free will to do, under no man's interpretation of divine law.

I have more to things to say, but every journey begins with a single step. If you would like to join me on a journey out of my own Gilead, I invite you to follow me here. I ask for your patience and grace as I find my voice along the way.

Things About Chasing Tail(s)

I've figured out that life is a never ending game of tail chasing. Either you're chasing someone else's tail or you're chasing your own tail of self-identity. If you're lucky, the game of chasing tail that does not belong to you will be short lived and the victory will remain for ages. Or, if you're like me, it's an endless game of both. Many of us find ourselves in the confusing world of perpetual self-tail chasing along with the constantly frustrating and disillusioning chase of tail that isn't our own.

I've got no advice to offer on the subject of chasing the tails of others since I have little success from which to draw, but I am gradually learning a thing or two about chasing my own tail. 

Lately (loosely translated: all the time in my whole life), I find myself in the midst of an identity crisis. When I was 19.5 years old it was the teenager fresh from the bunkbeds of a shared room with a little sister to the bumperpad-to-bumperbad cribs of two small infants in a studio apartment with a husband I barely knew. When I was 26 it was the almost-certified wildland firefighter banished from the practice controlled burn because it was "unsafe" for me at 6 months pregnant with child number four. At 32 it was the untapped teenage angst in the body of a single mom with four kids, three jobs and a full credit load of online college classes and a penchant for microbrews. I've always been seeking "myself," but it isn't until I got to be 41 that I realized that my "self" might be just as enigmatic to me as it was when I was three years old and climbing to the top of my Dad's Oak etageres to see if I could fly. But my "self" is also as familiar to me as the pillow I keep tucked between my arms every night. I know who I am. Sometimes, I just can't see the forest for the trees. 

Mark Manson talks about the diversification of identity, and I guess that's what I've always struggled with. I know how many things I am, and I know that a lot of those things don't fit the prescribed mold, or at least, not in the moment. Three year olds don't generally fly, even from a six-foot etagere. 19 year olds aren't the best mothers, unless they're a saint, like my younger sister might have been, or maybe even my Second Daughter given the chance (but thank you for waiting). Pregnant ladies aren't the best suited for wildland firefighters and 32 year olds should just stay away from microbrews, I've learned. 

But through it all I keep pushing, keep seeking"myself." And now I am 41. I am older and wiser and doing 41-year-old things. Going to my kid's ball games and graduation ceremonies. Paying my bills and having a savings account and learning the correct pronunciation for Roth IRA, etc. I wear jeans without holes (occasionally)(unwillingly) and craft lofty and condescending justifications for my tattoos. Deep inside though, I am still chasing my own tail. Trying to figure out just who I am, and the difference between what I WANT and what I NEED and who I AM. Those lines get blurry. But the definitive moment is always just barely out of reach. Like my tail.  

I always imagined that grown ups had no question about who they "are." They are just THEM. Doctors, teachers, mothers, transportation planners, rocket scientists. It seemed so simple. I thought maybe if I decided What to Be, that I would suddenly find this serenity and zen about self-identity that would once-and-for-all end my need to climb etageres. (By the way, if you haven't Googled etagere yet, you can click on the link.) But I've decided at least 23 times what to be when I grow up and I am still not completely sure that I can't fly. Because what IF?

So the tail-chase has continued. Sometimes I thought that if I caught the tail of someone else that I was chasing, I would suddenly KNOW. The epiphany of why I exist would descend upon me in an opaque and irrefutable destiny and all of my seeking would come to an end in the person that I belonged to. I'll admit, it seems to work for a year or two, maybe even close to a decade, especially if you bury your soul in the fabric of another person and/or community who Clearly Know What's Best For You and Don't Mind Telling You. But at the end of the day, or the decade, it's really up to you, or, in this case, up to me, to know who and what I am, and what's best for me, and if I know ANYTHING, it's that nobody can tell me What's Best for Me but my very own self. (I have at least 6 for-real psychologists who will back me up on this in their less-than-helpful-self-help-techniques. For a fee. )

But anyway, here I am, 41 and still chasing tail. Still slightly insecure about what I know about myself, but knowing, deep-down and just-the-same that I KNOW who I am. I am Liv. Not Liv the mom, Liv the firefighter, Liv the Writer, Liv the EMT, Liv the girlfriend, Liv the NOT girlfriend, Liv the former wife, Liv the messy, Liv the teacher, Liv the Cashier's Assistant, Liv the student, Liv the Avett Fanatic, Liv the emotionally unstable, Liv the self-aware (The psychologists told me that. For a fee.), Liv the beer girl, Liv the wannabe... I mean, yes, I AM all of those things... but I am not just one, I am every one, all of the time. And if Liv the writer is feeling angsty at Liv the mom's basketball game, then Liv the self-aware can take the steps to do what she needs to do and get the words out. And if Liv the former wife (please review my stern disapproval of "ex" terminology") is making a mess of Liv the girlfriend, or even Liv the NOT girlfriend, then Liv the self-reliant can make the adjustments she needs to make because ALL of those things in me have given me the tools to adapt. 

Chasing tail makes the world go 'round, as it happens, both biologically and psychologically. It's the ones of us that keep seeking and keep asking questions, like "Why am I cooking french fries at 41 years old?" that make life bigger than a single wide mobile home and a 1992 Ford Escort. Not that there's any shame in starting there, Daughter with said vehicle. 

Mark Manson, whom I clearly revere and tend to overcite, says that the idea of seeking your passion is bunk, because we're already putting our time into the things we're passionate about. For some of us, that's a 9-5 job that gets us where we need to be financially, a legitimate passion to pursue. For some of us, that's hours of journaling hopeless love letters that will be burned, unread at a later date. I know people in both camps - some more intimately than others, and I believe it's true that we put our money (read:time/energy) where our real passion lies. For me, when I get writer's cramp from journaling, it seems to be at the local brewery. I am not ashamed. I am me. And I've got some fine tail to keep chasing. Plus I MIGHT be able to fly. Who knows? 

Did I mention Liv the Whisky Drinker?

Things About This Place

A few weeks ago, in a 30 second news clip on the radio, the newscaster actually spent more seconds recounting what Melania Trump was wearing (or more appropriately, NOT wearing [i.e. stilettos]) on her visit to Houston than he did on the catastrophic recovery Houston was facing. While I am so relieved that our First Lady learned her lesson about the propriety of looking better than everyone else when visiting a disaster zone, can we please just get real as a nation for four seconds? Can we focus on the Good Guys doing the right things and the things that make us different and beautiful and strong?

I am so grateful to live in a country where we have so much liberty. I am grateful that football players have the right to take a knee during the National Anthem and I am equally grateful that the various and assorted teams of the NFL have the right to fire them if they so choose. I would be even more grateful to quit hearing about it, largely because disrespect of our National Symbols is something that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I know that these protests mean something different to the ones engaging in them.

I am thankful to live in a country where every redneck will drag his fishing boat across state after state to jump into chest-high murky water and pull out somebody that probably would have called him a racist any other time. It’s a timely coincidence that the rescue of Texas happened in close proximity to Labor Day weekend, which was originally established to celebrate the hardworking Americans that have built the strength and prosperity of our nation - you know, the ones driving semis full of supplies down to victims of Harvey, and opening their furniture stores to refugees. The legal immigrants who are a vital part of our colorful culture and dynamic infrastructure. The die-hard patriots who have memorized every word of the Constitution as if it were God-breathed. And guys like “Mattress Mack.” I firmly believe, deep down, the majority of Americans are, at their core, the Good Guys.

I am happy to live in a country where we don’t have to go to jail if we question the social value of old statues, and we don’t have to go to jail if we think those old statues tell us where we’ve come from and should remain standing. I am happy that we can ask questions, we can examine the past, and the future, and most importantly the present, to determine what we are doing wrong and how we can fix it. I am happy that we can think thoughts independent of each other, different from the people next door and down the street and across the country from us, but we can all be Americans, and even friends.

I hope to always live in a country where people go to jail for hurting others and violating their rights, not for fighting to protect them. I wish I could live in a country where every cop was good, racism was dead, religious leaders were trustworthy, no Muslims (or Christians) were radical extremists, and our political leaders were more Statesmen than politicians, but I live in a country of humans, so this will never be.

I don’t really like politics, or arguments, which might be two different words for the same thing, but I do like thinking and opinions and, like most people, I consider myself pretty good at both of those, and I am thankful that I can do them without fear. There are many, many things about our country that need to change, and things that are changing, however painful and slow the process seems to be, but I am grateful to live in a place where change is possible.

Things About Loving Myself

The Universe has been talking to me a lot lately about self-love. Self-love is a concept, much like self-forgiveness, that has never sat well with me - violating my self-flagellating conscience with associated character flaws such as Pride, Arrogance, Selfishness and Self-Righteousness. But what I am slowly coming to understand is that self-love, and even self-forgiveness, is a much different thing than the justification of flaws. It is the acceptance and acknowledgement of flaws. It is the graceful peace that come with understanding that I AM WORTHY of love because Someone saw fit to breathe into me the Divine Spark that we all possess, each differently and independently.

I am not worthy of love because I am part of creation as a whole, I am worthy of love because I am A CREATION - unique, specific, flawed, imperfect and 100% ME. These are hard things for me. Hard to get past the guilt of perceived failures and sins and hard to see through the ugly opaque sheen of mistreatment and being told for far too long in far too many ways that I am unworthy. But I have been listening to the wrong voices. Certainly not the voices that created me. Certainly not the ones that matter. But the loud, clamoring voices, the ones desperate for power over their own perceived unworthiness.

So here I am, at 40 years old, learning about self-love. Learning about myself, and how to love it. It’s a tricky thing, because for every thing I can find to love, I can find the ugly underside of that same thing to loathe. I have decades of practice at this. I am a professional at self-disqualification. But I am finally realizing that the only thing that has kept me from BadAssing my way through life is this method of self-destruction in my own head, and I am kinda over it.

So here’s to finding all the things about myself to love. And to loving all the things about myself that I find. When I think about how I love other people, it’s all the little things that make them THEM that come to mind. Like how they sigh audibly when they feel content. Or how they drum their fingers when they think. Or that deep-rooted sparkle and wild eyes behind a genuine smile. So I am trying that with myself - noticing the little things and loving that they make me me. Like the fact that I don’t like to write with my shoes on because it makes it hard to think, or that I feel a compulsion to rinse my hair in cold water, or that my laugh sounds a little like a sea lion with a head cold. Once I start to love the little things, maybe I can move on to the bigger things - like my hard headed unwillingness to ever settle for BLAH. Or the way that I can feel the pain of other people, physically, really, truly. Or the gift of childlikeness that I know I possess when I am not murdering it with cynicism.

Back when I was a kid and believing in all of my fallen darkness, I also believed so much in the redemptive power of faith. I BELIEVED in things unseen. I believed in the Desires of My Heart. I believed in Happily Ever After and True Love. I got bitter when all my believing took a little longer than I expected to pan out (still waiting?), but bitter isn’t a good fit for me so I think I will go back to believing, and it seems like the place to start is learning how to truly love myself. There’s a lot more life in believing. There’s a lot more life in hope and love than there is in fear and loathing. Feels like an upgrade for sure.

what's not to love? amiright?

Things Unseen - Why to Believe, and Why to Push It

It isn't just that I've had a couple of gin & sodas. It isn't just that it's The Holidays. It isn't that my good friend who really couldn't afford it footed my bill at the bar, or that by some weird God-related coincidence some random weird guy at the bar knew that this entire day swirled around and came back to It's a Wonderful Life and referenced it to me. It isn't because I am a spoiled brat and throw a lot of fits. Even if all of those things are true, that's not what it is.

What it really is, is that It Matters. No matter how much I feel like in any given moment, that it doesn't matter what I do, what I say, who I see or talk to, it really does matter. Just like if George Bailey had never been there for Mr. Gower, you never know when just being there matters the most. And you never can tell how the one time you made cookies with somebody, or read them a book, or made them watch a ridiculous Christmas movie, could be something So Big in their lives that they never fully recover.

Tonight I was feeling sorry for myself after sending my kids off to their dad's house for a Christmas celebration, and then I got into an argument with kids that aren't mine about Santa Claus and Christmas and believing. Even my own kids chastised me this holiday season about being too relentless with the Christmas Movies and the Christmas Music and TRADITION. Other kids think I am just plain nuts in my Santa Claus dogma.

I don't know how to say all of the feelings in my heart. All of the frustration for the 8 year old who tells me Santa Claus is a lie, because his parents believe in the importance of  teaching him to thank them for the presents they paid for. Or because perhaps they are afraid that as he grows older he will think that his parents lied to him about a mythical being. Or the 17 year old who doesn't even the know the name of Santa's reindeer because no one ever bothered to tell him. I probably sound petty when I say that it seems horrific to meet someone who has never seen White Christmas or Holiday Inn, or who has never laid awake all night listening for reindeer hooves on the roof of their house.

What baffles me is how you can expect your child to believe in a God that you cannot see or hear but banish so completely the wonder and faith of believing in Santa Claus. If there is anything of value that we can give our kids, it has to be the richness of believing in what we cannot touch or see. It has to be the mystery of Christmas Eve and the wonder of Christmas morning.

Years ago, as I slogged through the mess of my own spirituality in the wreckage of my soul as I was living in a hell on earth, I wrote a poem for my mother. It was shortly after my Grandma had passed away, the Grandma who had told me stories of brownie kiss freckles, mermaids at Twin Rocks on the Oregon Coast, and stories of fairies dancing in the ferns around Multnomah Falls. She told me the legend of The Bridge of The Gods, the ancient Klickitat brothers who fought over a fair maiden and wreaked havoc on the villages and lands of their people, ultimately destroying the naturally formed bridge over the Columbia River. In Punishment, their father, the Great Chief, struck all three down and they became the mountains: Adams, Hood and St. Helens, standing as mournful sentinels of caution to the native people. My grandma, with all of these stories, taught me faith in ages that have gone by before me, belief in knowledge that can not possibly be proven, and she is the reason I will always love, and always believe in Santa Claus, and even more, God. Don't tell me that there is an unseen world but that you are the only one with accurate information about it, according to your badly translated book of stories.

Christianity is in such an all-fired hurry to shun traditions and legends that originate before the advent of Jesus, because of their "pagan" roots - which interestingly, are ALL of our roots. There is history before Christ, y'all. Deal with it. There were miracles and mystics, and if God is yesterday, today and always, then most likely he was hanging out with the pagans before Jesus wandered along. Our little box of religion that is a few thousand years old puts a lot of limits on an omnipotent God, who, incidentally created all of the cultures behind all of the legends and stories and mysteries.

Here is the poem I wrote, and the belief that I feel compelled to share with my children and any others that I come into contact with. Because this is faith. Because it probably matters. Because I think my grandma had it figured out.

I believe in things unseen

In brownie kisses and faerie rings

I believe in gnomes and elves

And pixies that disguise themselves

I believe in sprites and nymphs

Mermaids and mischievous imps

Little things we never see

That hide in toadstools, rocks and trees

I believe there is a world

Of unseen things as we’ve been told

With lots of different creatures there

Irksome ones, and some that care

Now I think I understand

Why Grandma told me faerieland

Was not something I had to see

But trust my heart and it could be

Although this world I cannot see

I know it is as real as me

This trust has grown throughout the years

Throughout the joy and all the tears

And things unseen have grown beyond

Faeries dancing on the lawn

To faith in God and heaven above

And giving unconditional love

for Grandma Schiffman, 1997

Things About Time Travel

Yesterday I drove over Sherman Pass to Republic for a cello concert. The concert was amazing - more about that to come. But the drive...

Ten years ago, I made that drive a million times a week. Sometimes twice in one day. The memories of that summer wash over me like a rough cold wave on the Oregon coast, taking my breath away. The songs, the sights, all flash through my mind. The Forest Service campground where I spent weeks excavating. The creek bed where I waded up to my waist on survey. The brilliant smile of a beautiful boy with a soot-blackened face. Camo pants, Dollar Bets, karaoke at the Hitching Post. Sweet Home Alabama, Tim McGraw and Watching The Wind Blow By, rope swings and watermelon. Falling asleep in an exhausted pile of over-sung, over-danced, over-worked and over-funned boys and girls still wearing nomex and boots.

The memories make my heart race and my stomach flutter like it hasn't in years. Funny how a drive can transport you back in history to a different time. Every curve of the road had a different memory, a conversation, a song - this is the spot where I lose cell service, and this is the other spot where it comes back and 37 text messages from a waiting boy flood my screen.

I remember a little blonde baby and a 4 1/2 year old who ate so much watermelon that she threw it up all over my car.  An 8 year old tomboy and a 7 year old fairy princess. Missing plenty of teeth but not one minute of life. I remember liberation from the tyranny of a terrible marriage. Years of pain washing off of me in the lakes of Ferry County. I remember stepping off of the blind precipice that is leaving A Religion behind, to find out if there is really A God instead. I can still feel the freefall into learning that absolute truth is defined in the burning trees and tumbling rocks of nature. I can still taste the tiniest trace of unconditional love on my lips. Love without judgement, only curiosity and the desire to Know Me. I can feel the wonder of being my own person, valued and sought out and enjoyed, finally escaping years of condemnation and failure and never, ever, ever Getting It Right. For a little while, I didn't have to. I just had to be. Honest, open, trusting, seeking, learning.

That drive was my road home. My pathway to freedom. To knowing my own soul and who I was Created To Be. That mountain pass was the crossover from incarceration to liberty. I learned to fly on that road, and not only when I was going 75 MPH, trusting in the false security of friendship with the county cops and the entire staff of the Colville National Forest. After an insular life of overprotection and sheltering, I finally found a safe place in the wild country over the hill. I fell out of the nest and into a whirlwind of freedom and grace and learning. My instructors were rough and clumsy. My classmates were unruly and uncouth. And I loved them all. Still do. I am thankful for that summer. For all of the steps leading up to it and away from it. For the memories and the baggage that it gave me. I am thankful for that time machine of a road.

Things That Are Dramatic

You say drama like its a bad thing. You tell me I'm too much drama - and you're damn straight I am. I'm a single mom with four daughters on a shoestring budget. Too many hats and jobs to count, volunteering, dedicating, overloading. Emotions are always high at my house. Even if I was an amoeba there would be drama. If I let the girls walk all over me and didn't get back in their face for the disrespect and insolence they throw at me. If I didn't send my 17 year old to live with her dad there would STILL be drama. The toilet would overflow. The flu would come. The fleas won't stop. And I will tell you about it. Because I am too much drama. 

You know what else is drama? The bald eagle that just dive bombed my windshield. The monster buck that stepped in front of my car out of the mist on Boulder pass. The raging inferno of a forest fire. The mighty Columbia River. All drama. Too much drama. Extremes of hot and cold, gentle and cruel, bad and good. 

Life is drama. Without drama, life is passionless. Blah. Sane? Perhaps. Boring? Absolutely. Without drama there is no passionate love song. No gut-wrenching tear-jerker. Without drama, who cares if some Dude died on a cross, or rose again. Who cares if He was ever born? Who cares about anything? Drama makes the world go 'round. 

The silly mystery of Christmas presents wrapped up in shiny paper is drama. Drawn out traditions and advents and pilgrimages are drama. Hanging on to family memories and paying hundreds of dollars to see loved ones for few days is straight up drama. 

Every bit of my life plays out like the worst soap opera you might imagine. You can't dream this stuff up - but it happens. Every day. Between real people. Silly fights and hopeless romances. Highs and lows. Ins and outs, feuds and alliances. Life ebbs and flows around us and changes and only the most detached are not touched by the pain and the joy and the DRAMA that is LIFE.

Could we stand for less weeping and gnashing of teeth? There's no question. Do I need to talk about every dramatic thing that happens to me? No. But I do, because that's how I deal. If I can't make fun of the drama in my life then it might eat me alive. I can't avoid it - it won't go away. And it's not only because I have terrible taste in husbands and some sort of aversion to gainful employment, it's because I believe in living life - chasing it down and wrestling every bit out of it. Life is short, and full of drama. Good drama, and bad drama, and excitement and grey times. I don't want a day to go by that I haven't seen for every hour that it is worth. I want to wring the life out of each minute, because someday they will all run out, and you never know if the most fun is hiding in the last drop. 

So I will take the drama, and the judgement that comes with it. I will go on living my life and enjoying it, enduring it, hoping it, believing it until the clock runs out. We only get one shot, and I want to make mine worth every second of the drama that it brings.