New Blog: Anna & Mary to take over Ma's (Teri's) chores

[Guest Anonymous]

What caused Teri's depression, has it ever been disclosed?

I'm gonna speculate that it was caused by being married to Steve, in a nutshell.

Snarking aside, I really think she hates herself, and it's sad.

[emmiedahl]

My impression is that his job involved sales. A few years ago, my husband's company decided to merge management and sales. My husband had to take on sales (with quotas in the six figures selling lawn services every month in a tiny area... per manager. No one made their quotas so the owner fired all of the management which is how we ended up poor) in addition to his regular duties and he hated it. He felt squicky because he was being asked to convince people to purchase more services and products than they needed and in many cases it was bad for their economic health.

[VodouDoll]

Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I got the impression it was postpartum imbalances, combined with and exacerbated by being married to Steve. Her youngest kid is a teen by now, though, so it's been going on for quite a while. She's got addictive tendencies too, which probably don't help much. If you ask Steve, on the other hand, he would tell you her depression is caused by God to teach him patience and to pick up after himself. It's great that God has given Teri a serious and terrible illness so that Steve can learn to be tidy and not act like an ass to his wife. (titus2.com/corners/9-00-d.htm)

She had a post once about how she cured her depression by taking vitamins and keeping obsessive lists of her sins. If you asked her, she would probably tell you that she used to be depressed but isn't anymore. (titus2.com/corners/9-00-m.htm)

[Guest Anonymous]

What caused Teri's depression, has it ever been disclosed?

Steve has said her depression is postnatal - in fact it was because of her severe PND that they initially chose for Steve to have a vasectomy (which they later reversed when God told him to). However, her youngest child is 14 now and she still suffers, so I'd guess she has suffered chronic (possibly sub-clinical) depression for most of her ault life, with particularly acute PND around her births.

I'm convinced they both have serious issues stemming from childhood that they brought into the crazy mariage.

I would guess that Terri has some kind of anxiety/OCD type disorder, which she manages by excessive scheduling and unnecessary cleaning, amongst all else.

I am just reading the archives and found the blog where she describes how they spend 8 woman hours, 3 times a year just on applying polish to the kitchen cabinet fronts. 8 hours polishing varnished wood! I spend 1/2 an hour, 3 times a year, wiping Danish oil over all the worktops and wood furniture in my house and it is all in pretty healthy condition...

[Letgo]

Have the Maxwells ever explained exactly how they came to leave mainstream Christianity and become so isolated and extreme? I know that Steve read the Bible and decided that limiting family size was a mistake and sinful, but what was the motivation for such enormous overall change in their lives? Did he just keep reading the Bible and gradually become convinced that God was speaking to him about eliminating all fun and normalcy? Or did something specific happen? I don't ever recall any involvement with a cult-and they do their own church in a nursing home in order to avoid all contact with others who might contaminate the children, all but two of whom are legal adults. At least that is why I think they do the nursing home church. What made Steve, and, to a lesser extent, Teri, change so drastically? (I think much of Teri's change is due to her depression and pressure from Steve.) Something caused this man to go to such an extreme and it does not appear to be from contact with another extreme fundie or church. So what was it?

On the subject of Steve's former job and what he was asked to do that was so terrible...I had a family member who was asked by his boss to arrange get-togethers for visiting salesmen at topless bars. This quickly progressed to setting up the salesmen with prostitutes. He refused, quit the job, sued the former boss for breach of contract, and won. There was a lot going on in that business that was not legal and above board.

[fundiefan]

There are a whole slew of corners that are not available on their website. I wonder if any of the ones that aren't there explain anything about the decision to leave church? Since Nathan met Melanie at church, they were still attending in 2002. There are only three corners available for all of 2003 - considering they are monthly things, it seems they are intentionally not available rather than not written at all. Especially since there are many that are multi-parts and some parts are there but others aren't. Parts 5 and 6 of Dad's influencing kids spiritual outcome are there, but no other part. 2001-2004 are, as a whole, sporadic with obvious 'parts' missing.

Anyway, my speculation is that leaving the church played out in the corners during those years and at some point Steve didn't like his words being available anymore.

[Eclipse]

Every time I see a Dad's corner that is for men only and telling wives not to read it, it makes me want to read. So can I blame Steve for corrupting my heart?

[twin2]

There are a whole slew of corners that are not available on their website. I wonder if any of the ones that aren't there explain anything about the decision to leave church? Since Nathan met Melanie at church, they were still attending in 2002. There are only three corners available for all of 2003 - considering they are monthly things, it seems they are intentionally not available rather than not written at all. Especially since there are many that are multi-parts and some parts are there but others aren't. Parts 5 and 6 of Dad's influencing kids spiritual outcome are there, but no other part. 2001-2004 are, as a whole, sporadic with obvious 'parts' missing.

Anyway, my speculation is that leaving the church played out in the corners during those years and at some point Steve didn't like his words being available anymore.

There is a Dad's corner, one of the ones about "worldy friends" where he talks a bit why they left the church. I remember he mentioned the attire of the congregation. He also went on a rant against youth groups. He was upset that the youth group leader would usurp his authority and a youth group may *gasp* expose his kids to Christian rock.

[VodouDoll]

On the Wayback you can see a nine part series from 2003 called "Can Dads Influence the Children's Spiritual Outcome?" where he mentions pastors having affairs in practically every essay. It might be nothing, but it might be something. It seems like a weird thing to go on and on and on about in a series about his children's spirituality if they didn't have direct experience with something like that. And given his rather strong feelings about adultery....

I don't know. Like I said, it might have nothing to do with why they left their real church for the nursing home. I just thought it was interesting.

He also writes admiringly of a man who posted on Steve's Father's Forum about raising his kids in extreme isolation, so we know the idea really appealed to Steve as early as November 2002:

A dad writes, "We live a pretty controlled life. We dress plain. We built ourselves a small cabin to live in, in order to 'owe no man anything, but to love....' My wife homeschools, and we keep our kids with us constantly (we can't even trust either set of grandparents to maintain our level of protection). No TV, etc., although we do take the kids shopping and to church (only three families in the church, including us [and no other children]).

"The brethren in the church we fellowship believe that you can't really guarantee that your children will be saved. Both of them, godly men, have children that don't follow the Lord (one of them had all his children slip away). They even have a grandson who was homeschooled, but went away when he got into the work world." (Continued next month.)

Praise God for the heart of this dad! Did you sense the love he has for his children and that he is willing to live any way necessary to raise men and women of God? No wonder he is concerned by what he is being told.

Fun fact, log cabin fundie isolation dad went on to explain his brilliant idea for raising kids who abhor the world: bring his sheltered children to a prison and traumatize the hell out of them.

It seems to me that it would be best to expose them to the results of sin (chapel for recovering addicts, jail, etc.), as compared to them seeing 'all of the pleasures and none of the guilt,' such as is seen at the mall, etc.

[Sydney Fox]

Does anyone else see parallels between Steve's handling of Teri's depression/insisting they have more kids and Rusty and Andrea Yates? Rusty Yates insisted on having more kids even though Andrea was cautioned not to because of her severe PPD.

Despite the fact that Teri suffered severe PPD with the first three kids, Steve felt he had disobeyed God by having a vascectomy and so chose to reverse it. God's (and Steve's) will was more important than Teri's mental well-being. They had five more kids after the reversal. I'm surprised that Teri was able to manage without harming the children - physically at least. I'm sure she harmed them all emotionally/psychologically with her depression.

[QueenMother]

From Dad's corner Sept 1997:

In January I told my boss I could not do what they were asking me to do. As a Christian it would violate my conscience and as a result I expected to be let go. There have been many interactions since then over this and nothing has happened yet even though I have stood my ground. Two weeks ago I met with the company president and told him I thought my position ought to be eliminated as no one should be asked to do those things. He gave my boss until the end of the month to resolve the situation. So will it be resolved by then? Only the Lord knows.

My emboldening. Steve refers to the Company President as 'him' but his boss as 'they'.... yeah, it looks very much like his boss was a woman. This corner came just a few months after the May 1997 entry where he refused to have business lunches with a woman sales rep. At first she laughed, then he explained and she seemed to back off.....

Friday I was invited to go to lunch with one of my suppliers. If that was you, would you go? Next let me tell you it was a saleswoman. Would you still go? Mixed lunches are the accepted norm these days and so are close working relationships. Might someone who didn’t participate be looked on as an old prude?

......

After many observations, I believe that individual (even small group) time spent with women other than our wives is like playing with fire. I know this statement can evoke some interesting responses, but I am convinced it is true. Let me illustrate this further.

If David, a man after God’s own heart, could fall into the trap of adultery, because of being where he shouldn’t have been, then why do we who are less spiritual, feel we couldn’t fall into a similar trap?

......

I told the saleswoman I couldn’t go as I’m determined not to go to lunch with other women. Before I could continue, she laughed and said she wouldn’t bite and could even bring a male sales engineer along. I explained that with all that aside, what if someone who knew Teri and me saw us together? What might they think? She said, "Wow, do you really mean that?" I said I did and she said she now understood and that was great.

Enough time between entries for her (and/or others) to have put in a formal complaint?

Steve was an engineer at Boeing. I suspect his manager was female, and he refused to work with her. He had been with Boeing for a number of years, in fact several of the children were born in Western WA. He may have been offered the opportunity to resign or be fired. He resigned. They relocated to a more conservative area of the country, Kansas. I do wonder how Anna Marie is handling it all. Her family, will isolating, is also very physically active (I assume this from the slide show at the wedding.) I know they kayak on the Sound and various lakes around the area. They live in gorgeous area on the water. I can't imagine her life in Kansas.

[Guest Anonymous]

I didn't know where he worked, thanks!

If he had worked there a while, I expect it took the HR department a while to work out what to do with him. He says in a later corner that he had 'taken a stand' and had worried about being fired but was eventually was laid off with a payoff, I'm sure it would have taken a while to negotiate the amount and the confidentiality agreement that went with it. I don't doubt he would have played every power game in the book with them to get a good payout.

[liltwinstar]

Sooo...going to the mall will land you in jail??? WTF.

I, too, wonder what caused the family to become so isolated...what authors, groups, etc. I mean, I can guess the big ones (Mary Pride, Jonathan Lindvall, etc), but most people who read those guys don't take things *quite* this far.

[Guest Anonymous]

I feel very much for Anna (Marie) too.

Christopher, from his postings on the blog, seems to be a chip off the old block in terms of his 'death ministry' and a complete bore to boot.

Nathan, although a clear partner in crime with Steve, seems to have a much more human side. His posts have been quite tender in part, he admitted to feeling sadness over the years of Christmases spent without children, and he asked, very respectfully and discreetly, for prayers for Melanie when she suffered with PND after her difficult births. He seems emotionally more intelligent than the rest of the family and I have hope for him and Melanie.

Christopher seems like an emotionless evangelist-robot and I fear for Anna. She seems to have all but disappeared from the blog and I suspect that there are marital troubles that she will be suffering alone.

[Justme]

Wow!! Just "Wow!!"

Remember, he was in the military too. From the picture Sarah posted, it looked like he was in "Nam. He said he wasn't Saved at that time. Maybe he was a "bad boy". Lot's of servicemen left the local women pregnant. I would find it hard to believe he was a virgin until he met/married Teri.

If he was asked to do something at work he didn't "believe" in, he should have pulled up his Big Boy Pants and resigned. Taking a company payout is a copout.

I too, have hope for Nathan & Melanie. I could see them living fundie-lite. Christopher, he is trying SO HARD to please his father he's lost his soul. :(

[twin2]

I too, have hope for Nathan & Melanie. I could see them living fundie-lite. Christopher, he is trying SO HARD to please his father he's lost his soul. :(

Yeah, when reading the blog, I've always got the impression that Nathan is the favored son. Also, even though we haven't heard much about Anna*, from what I can gather Christopher seems to have married someone just like his mom.

*I refuse to refer to her as Anna Marie, the Maxwells do not have a patent on the name Anna, or Sarah for that matter

[JennJenn]

Steve has said her depression is postnatal - in fact it was because of her severe PND that they initially chose for Steve to have a vasectomy (which they later reversed when God told him to). However, her youngest child is 14 now and she still suffers, so I'd guess she has suffered chronic (possibly sub-clinical) depression for most of her ault life, with particularly acute PND around her births.

I'm convinced they both have serious issues stemming from childhood that they brought into the crazy mariage.

I would guess that Terri has some kind of anxiety/OCD type disorder, which she manages by excessive scheduling and unnecessary cleaning, amongst all else.

I am just reading the archives and found the blog where she describes how they spend 8 woman hours, 3 times a year just on applying polish to the kitchen cabinet fronts. 8 hours polishing varnished wood! I spend 1/2 an hour, 3 times a year, wiping Danish oil over all the worktops and wood furniture in my house and it is all in pretty healthy condition...

I love how God told Steve to reverse the vasectomy after being home sick and reading just exactly what the Bible had to say on children. Hey, your wife shouldn't have more kids because her depression is so crippling but you want them. So instead of supporting your wife in her health issues and realizing you have three kids already you decide to guilt your wife into reversing your vasectomy and having kids like rabbits because you tell her GOD told you to. How selfish. How uncaring. I am sure that when Jesus was turning water into wine and loaves into fish he never foresaw that his name would be used like this. Steve, you are a Grade A jerk.

[fundiefan]

I love how God told Steve to reverse the vasectomy after being home sick and reading just exactly what the Bible had to say on children. Hey, your wife shouldn't have more kids because her depression is so crippling but you want them. So instead of supporting your wife in her health issues and realizing you have three kids already you decide to guilt your wife into reversing your vasectomy and having kids like rabbits because you tell her GOD told you to. How selfish. How uncaring. I am sure that when Jesus was turning water into wine and loaves into fish he never foresaw that hHs name would be used like this. Steve, you are a Grade A jerk.

Yep. He is.

He then proceeded to seclude his family from other people and life almost methodically; one step at a time, one person at a time, one situation at a time. What do you do when someone suffers from depression? Why, you isolate her, that's what! You keep her tied to the babies at home and then take the kids out of school and sports so there are no other families or mom's for her to talk to or even teachers to go to parent teacher conferences with. You put her in the position to be overwhelmed and unable to cope because she is responsible for all the babies 24 hours a day, and that responsibility includes educating them! Eventually, you even keep her from church. By that time, I'm sure she didn't even notice that aside from her immediate family the only conversations she had were with older men and women in a nursing home, some of whom no doubt couldn't clearly communicate in the first place.

He needs to be strung up by his balls and drawn and quartered.

[JennJenn]

Yep. He is.

He then proceeded to seclude his family from other people and life almost methodically; one step at a time, one person at a time, one situation at a time. What do you do when someone suffers from depression? Why, you isolate her, that's what! You keep her tied to the babies at home and then take the kids out of school and sports so there are no other families or mom's for her to talk to or even teachers to go to parent teacher conferences with. You put her in the position to be overwhelmed and unable to cope because she is responsible for all the babies 24 hours a day, and that responsibility includes educating them! Eventually, you even keep her from church. By that time, I'm sure she didn't even notice that aside from her immediate family the only conversations she had were with older men and women in a nursing home, some of whom no doubt couldn't clearly communicate in the first place.

He needs to be strung up by his balls and drawn and quartered.

He is the Maxwell cult leader. How in the world the Hamilton's ever "turned over" (pardon the pun...not how I really look at marriage AT ALL) Anna to them is beyond me. Seriously, your daughter is going to be a shell of who you knew in no time. Keep the photos and remember the stories Mom and Dad Hamilton, you won't see much of her in the coming years.

[FloraDoraDolly]

Yep. He is.

He then proceeded to seclude his family from other people and life almost methodically; one step at a time, one person at a time, one situation at a time. What do you do when someone suffers from depression? Why, you isolate her, that's what! You keep her tied to the babies at home and then take the kids out of school and sports so there are no other families or mom's for her to talk to or even teachers to go to parent teacher conferences with. You put her in the position to be overwhelmed and unable to cope because she is responsible for all the babies 24 hours a day, and that responsibility includes educating them! Eventually, you even keep her from church. By that time, I'm sure she didn't even notice that aside from her immediate family the only conversations she had were with older men and women in a nursing home, some of whom no doubt couldn't clearly communicate in the first place.

I know a woman who is doing something similar with her mentally ill daughter. I don't know what exactly is going on or why, since the daughter rarely talks to old friends like me anymore. From what limited contact I am allowed to have, I perceive a vicious cycle where the more the daughter is isolated, the sicker she gets, and so the mother isolates her even more. Something like this may be happening with the Maxwells.

[VodouDoll]

Steve was an engineer at Boeing. I suspect his manager was female, and he refused to work with her. He had been with Boeing for a number of years, in fact several of the children were born in Western WA. He may have been offered the opportunity to resign or be fired. He resigned. They relocated to a more conservative area of the country, Kansas.

He took his moral stand at a job in Kansas, though. According to the Wayback Machine, they'd been in charge of a Christian homeschooling group there for years before Steve left his job. Maybe he was still working for Boeing, but there? I wonder if the job had to do with visiting amoral trade conventions in Babylon Las Vegas and similar things. Since he was invited to have lunch with female vendors, it's possible that dealing with vendors was a regular part of his work and he didn't like everything that went with it.

JennJenn hit it on the nose: he's taken advantage of his depressed wife, and with her help, he's formed his own cult. It's highly unlikely any of these kids are going to get away. Imagine if Sarah actually managed to marry a somewhat more normal fundie, someone who didn't mind a game of touch football now and then and told her she could wear knee-length dresses if she wanted. Judging by what these old Corners show about how she was raised, she'd be both horrified and terrified, and probably go right into her mother's "cry out to the Lord to change his heart" routine. They're all so indoctrinated.

[JennJenn]

He took his moral stand at a job in Kansas, though. According to the Wayback Machine, they'd been in charge of a Christian homeschooling group there for years before Steve left his job. Maybe he was still working for Boeing, but there? I wonder if the job had to do with visiting amoral trade conventions in Babylon Las Vegas and similar things. Since he was invited to have lunch with female vendors, it's possible that dealing with vendors was a regular part of his work and he didn't like everything that went with it.

JennJenn hit it on the nose: he's taken advantage of his depressed wife, and with her help, he's formed his own cult. It's highly unlikely any of these kids are going to get away. Imagine if Sarah actually managed to marry a somewhat more normal fundie, someone who didn't mind a game of touch football now and then and told her she could wear knee-length dresses if she wanted. Judging by what these old Corners show about how she was raised, she'd be both horrified and terrified, and probably go right into her mother's "cry out to the Lord to change his heart" routine. They're all so indoctrinated.

You raise a rather interesting point. What would Steve do if a handpicked husband for Sarah (assuming there will someday be one) went astray, i.e. allowing Sarah to have a voice, having his own voice, not following Steve blindly, having a beer after work with his colleagues... I wonder what they would do? Would he still be the authority in Sarah's life? From what I understand of both Nathan and Christopher's weddings there was heavy emphasis on "no divorce." I wonder how that would be dealt with?

[Jessica]

My guess is that he'd cut Sarah and Mr. Sarah off like everyone else in his family and "former life".

[VodouDoll]

And that would break Sarah's heart. But Steve would justify it as Mr. Sarah being a worldly influence on Mary or something, and as her father it would be his duty to "guard her heart" from knowing things like touch football exist.

I also get a warmer feeling from Nathan than from Christopher, who seems like a joyless robot. But Nathan got out and formed his own household like a decade ago. His family was still strict and weird then, but not well and truly off the deep end. He left at just the right time. And he still agrees with a lot of Steve's garbage, like the rightness of having actual qualified tutors for male One Ton Ramp students, but unqualified female "encouragers" for the girls. He's not exactly an enlightened guy.

[fundiefan]

One can hope (and, since it's Sarah's chance at a future, hope and imagination are pretty much the only options) that she will do what her sister in law Anna did. Marry someone from another state, far, far away and go live with her husband's family. At the very least, it will give her some kind of life outside her father's sick & twisted bubble. Even if they find a family and man to meet their standards, I can't imagine anyone being as far off the deep end as Steve is in daily life and rules.

I think Nathan may have been outside the daily life of his dad long enough that he's made his own rules of life for his own home. Heavily influenced by his father, but his own none the less. He is the man of his house, so why would he kiss daddy's butt now that he has his own wife and kids and a decade of his own life and choice making under his belt? He also had something resembling normal for his early years. He was in private school until 3rd grade. His whole life wasn't the insanity. Of course he lived it as it changed and got crazier each year, but he did start life with a little more reality - school, sports, etc. And, the family didn't leave church until after he was married so he interacted with other people - and met his wife. So, he has more real world experience and is probably the most skilled of all in communicating with and relating to other people.

Edited to remove unwanted letters in unwanted places.