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The role of perfect daughter didn’t feel like a role at all. It was who I was, who I wanted to be.
In the world of IBLP, it was never okay to say you were proud of anything or anyone, no matter how godly the person or righteous the decision.
Sweet Jilly Muffin had grown up, but I was still terrified of conflict and would do anything I could to avoid it.
The world was dangerous and full of peril.
you know, Jesus, he talked to people one on one too. I think that’s still vitally important today.”
If I knew that the Lord wanted me to go talk to the one instead of the thousands, then I’d have to obey.”
“Little is much when God is in it,”
“We don’t always see how God is working.”
I was a normal girl interested in romance and love like anyone else.
When you’re in the world of reality TV, everything has a cost.
some things are not worth the cost. Some things are not for sale.
this isn’t normal. This is insane, Jill! I don’t like being a dancing monkey who has to perform at these stupid photo shoots. And I don’t like having to bend to the demands of when and how we’re going to post our own family announcements!”
IBLP teaching was clear that his authority over me would never diminish. If I disobeyed him or didn’t honor his wishes and stepped out from under the umbrella of protection, I would be exposing myself to potential harm.
The umbrella principle had sounded harmless enough when I was a child, but it was a brutally effective means of instilling fear and controlling behavior in the lives of others, regardless of whether they were adults or children.
I’m an avoider by nature,
I was being paraded through the streets, my sexual abuse being served up as nothing more than entertainment.
I’d spent much of my life listening to IBLP teaching on the “umbrella of protection.” When I’d needed it most, it had failed me.
“If you don’t come back for this filming thing, everything’s going to get messed up. We just got the show back up and going again, and we need to be real careful not to rock the boat with the network. They can’t film the promotional material for Jill and Jessa: Counting On without you, Jill. Just think about it, if you don’t come to this shoot and TLC cancels the show again, everyone is going to look at you and know that it’s your fault and that you could have stopped it. Are you gonna be okay carrying that burden?” “Hey…,” Derick said, stepping in to defend me. “Let me talk to you for a
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THE GUILT TRIPPING?!
“Let me tell you something now! You’re gonna get sued! You’re gonna need whatever money you have, because you’re going to be sued!”
From guilt tripping to threats. This is crazy!
To me, at that time, the level of secrecy and control that Pops exerted on us felt normal. We had been conditioned to obey, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to see the hypocrisy in the fact that he would warn us against stirring up contention among the brethren while also using us against one another and duping us into signing contracts.
I was going to give Samuel what I didn’t have myself when I was younger.
It turns out that living with fearful thoughts is a lot like living with hornets and garter snakes. Once they find a way in, you can block as many holes as you like, but the struggle to keep them out will require constant vigilance. And when they do get in—which they will—the memory of all those previous attacks will make whatever you’re facing so much worse.
Growing up Duggar had left me paranoid about people.
At the time when I needed friendships the most, I realized that I didn’t know how to talk to people. Sweet Jilly Muffin had been a gold star kid in the Big House, but out in the world without any Duggars around, she was just a hollow, lonely, scared girl.
To people in IBLP, it might have been “a worldly church,” or as my dad once said, “a two-kid church.” To me, it looked like a healthy church with a more balanced view of freedom in Christ.
Why couldn’t he see that by deciding to wear pants, I was doing exactly what he’d taught us?
Because he lost his control babes
Pops wasn’t just disorganized or forgetful when he had me sign the contract without seeing it. It was a deliberate deception.
“You want to know why I’m crying?” My voice was cracked, my eyes burning. “It’s that you think I’m some kind of horrible person just because I wear pants and have a nose ring, and yet you see that girl outside and praise her. That’s why I’m crying, Daddy. I’m evolving and changing, just like that girl out there, but you can’t see it. You treat me like I’m a prodigal who’s turned her back on you. You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother.”
TELL HIM OFF QUEEN! THE DOUBLE STANDARD IS DOUBLE STANDARDING!
“You can’t put a timeline on healing,”
God was always there for me.
“What do you want people to know?” Derick asked.
“That we have been lied to so much. But that finally, today, we got the truth.”
You can recognize the beauty and happy parts of your story while also recognizing the more difficult parts. The two can coexist. The highs aren’t automatically erased or invalidated by the lows.
Decades of fear and paranoia didn’t unravel overnight.
“Sometimes you have to be okay with other people not being okay with you. And you have to be okay with you not being okay too.”
standing up for myself or others isn’t a sin or an act of disobedience. It’s a mark of freedom, of self-respect, of dignity.
