Poor Sarah (Maxwell)

[terranova]

Quote

If I ever doubt why the right guy hasn’t come yet, the Lord gently reminds me of how He has used me for the Moodys at the moment. So, whether Mr. Right is just around the corner, or not for another year or two, I’ll continue on!

 

Does anyone else feel like this is the announcement of a failed courtship?

I know this has been said and we will surely say it again in the future, but poor Sarah.

 

titus2.com/blog/

[clibbyjo]

I don't think there was a courtship yet. I think at this point if he has a pulse she would have married anyone who asks. I don't think anyone is asking . She is past her fundie prime and there are not many Cleve types in her small circle who will chose an older woman.

[Miranda]

God kept her single so she could write the Moody books? She couldn't continue to write if she were married? If she can write as a SAHD, surely she can write as a SAHW/M. She's just rationalizing why she has no life outside of her family so maybe she can feel a little less miserable. And yes, poor Sarah.

[Jessica]

Those books are a pretty damn crappy reason to stay single. If He were going to keep someone single so they could focus on writing, they better write the Next Great American Novel ... not weird boring books about perfect KJV-only children who constantly apologize to each other for chopping too many strawberries for the fruit pizza.

[holierthanyou]

Question for the hive: Has anyone else here actually read the Moody books (completely read, not just flipping for "highlights" lol)?

[Koala]

I am torn on Sarah. I feel very sorry for her because I know she has been brainwashed. On the other hand, I realize that she has to get up and walk away. I hope she doesn't get married anytime soon. If she does it will just be some asshole who buys far enough into the patriarchal bullshit to convince Steve to "give" Sarah to him. She needs time to find out who she is when she's not being controlled by Steve and Terri. She needs to see what it's like to make her own choices and call her own shots. Marriage involves a lot of compromise, but I'm afraid at this point Sarah wouldn't know how NOT to just revert to being a doormat. I wish Sarah freedom.

[FloraDoraDolly]

Question for the hive: Has anyone else here actually read the Moody books (completely read, not just flipping for "highlights" lol)?

Yes. I haven't read the whole series, but I have read four or five of them.

[terranova]

Question for the hive: Has anyone else here actually read the Moody books (completely read, not just flipping for "highlights" lol)?

I've only read the excerpts on their site, but that was enough. :sleeping-sleep:

[eineAnanas]

Question for the hive: Has anyone else here actually read the Moody books (completely read, not just flipping for "highlights" lol)?

I've only read the excerpts on their website, but I'm slightly curious to read the actual books and see how much worse they could get.

[FloraDoraDolly]

I've only read the excerpts on their website, but I'm slightly curious to read the actual books and see how much worse they could get.

Imagine a 1940s kid book, the kind where each chapter describes a different incident in the life of a child. Got it? OK, now take out everything in the 1940s kid book that involves friends/school and substitute grandparents and elderly neighbors. Other aspects of the 1940s kid book-- doing chores with siblings, taking care of pets, baking cookies-- remain unchanged.

OK, now add some ingredients that you would not find in a 1940s kid book-- a pregnant Mom, homeschooling, lots of prayer and Bible study.

You're not done yet. Now it's time for various Maxwellian intangibles that you will recognize immediately if you've read their blog or the Mom and Dad Corners.

And voila... You have a Moody book!

[Daenerys]

Imagine a 1940s kid book, the kind where each chapter describes a different incident in the life of a child. Got it? OK, now take out everything in the 1940s kid book that involves friends/school and substitute grandparents and elderly neighbors. Other aspects of the 1940s kid book-- doing chores with siblings, taking care of pets, baking cookies-- remain unchanged.

OK, now add some ingredients that you would not find in a 1940s kid book-- a pregnant Mom, homeschooling, lots of prayer and Bible study.

You're not done yet. Now it's time for various Maxwellian intangibles that you will recognize immediately if you've read their blog or the Mom and Dad Corners.

And voila... You have a Moody book!

You forget: imagine that the children have absolutely no spirit to do anything even the slightest bit against what their parents say... it's creepy as hell

[WanderingStar]

You forget: imagine that the children have absolutely no spirit to do anything even the slightest bit against what their parents say... it's creepy as hell

Ooh, now all of you are making me want to read the series just to see if I can catch the parallels between the Maxwell clan and the Moody clan. I've read some of the excerpts myself but don't really remember anything that jumped out at me except that I recall having a snicker at "I was meaning the tortilla chips"...that was the line, right? All I know is that both my inner grammar Nazi and my context Nazi were nitpicking it thoroughly while I was giggling.

And people say that Elsie Dinsmore had no spirit. Shit, Elsie has more spirit than any of those Maxwell/Moody kids just by actively practicing Christianity, which was going AGAINST her father!

[Vex]

I remember reading some fundie masterpiece where some kids got together to surprise their parents by washing the family van, and the kids were all super polite and super apologetic - then they encountered a man (a neighbour, maybe?) who they basically got into an age-inappropriate theological debate with. Is that Sarah's work?

[WanderingStar]

I remember reading some fundie masterpiece where some kids got together to surprise their parents by washing the family van, and the kids were all super polite and super apologetic - then they encountered a man (a neighbour, maybe?) who they basically got into an age-inappropriate theological debate with. Is that Sarah's work?

I think you may be right.

Oh, and in other news, Sarah updated the blog and said that she's working on another Moody project, but surprisingly it isn't Spring Days (even though that's in the works). Wait, does that make me sound like I'm actually curious about it? :oops: I think I'm going to rectify that by getting my Nintendo DS out and playing a video game that's utterly sinful to the Maxwells and will lead me on the fast track to hell--Pokemon!

[Vex]

I think you may be right.

Oh, and in other news, Sarah updated the blog and said that she's working on another Moody project, but surprisingly it isn't Spring Days (even though that's in the works). Wait, does that make me sound like I'm actually curious about it? :oops: I think I'm going to rectify that by getting my Nintendo DS out and playing a video game that's utterly sinful to the Maxwells and will lead me on the fast track to hell--Pokemon!

Thread hijack (sorry!): Which game? I loves me some Pokemans.

I'm kind of curious about Sarah's projects too. Mostly, I'm curious to see if her prose has improved (if what I read was actually her work) with time. If that was her book I'd like to know how old she was when she wrote it, because it was... childlike? I'm not saying it was terrible, just that it seemed like it was written by a young girl.

[Whydoyouask]

You forget: imagine that the children have absolutely no spirit to do anything even the slightest bit against what their parents say... it's creepy as hell

So this is not the 'Judy Moody' series? Or Moody's Investors? :lol:

[WanderingStar]

Thread hijack (sorry!): Which game? I loves me some Pokemans.

I'm kind of curious about Sarah's projects too. Mostly, I'm curious to see if her prose has improved (if what I read was actually her work) with time. If that was her book I'd like to know how old she was when she wrote it, because it was... childlike? I'm not saying it was terrible, just that it seemed like it was written by a young girl.

Soul Silver :D I restarted it earlier this month (after trading/transferring quite a few Pokemon off of the cartridge of course). And I'm impatiently waiting for new info on Black 2 and White 2.

Well Winter Days was published not too long before Christmas last year and so Summer Days, the book that I found the excerpt from, must have been written at least a couple years ago. I agree that judging from the excerpts alone, they do seem childlike. I realize that it's a children's book series and therefore needs to be kind of simplistic, but I couldn't help but notice that even the summaries seem a bit awkwardly drafted. Didn't someone here once note that even though Sarah knows some slightly difficult words, she doesn't really seem to get the proper context to use such words in? Of course, it probably has a lot to do with what she was taught in her homeschooling about writing. If she were writing young adult fiction, it'd be easier for me to determine how much the material needed improvement, and that's kind of odd coming from me because at one time I did consider writing children's fiction. Actually, I'm still thinking about doing so.

[Justme]

Also, they were invated by termites! I didn't know there were termites in Kansas. I though they were found further south. Maybe Stevies large, well stacked wood pile attracted them. :shock:

[Patsy]

Now it's time for various Maxwellian intangibles that you will recognize immediately if you've read their blog or the Mom and Dad Corners.

Can I request an example?

[Guest Anonymous]

Can I request an example?

There are some quite bizaare parts of the free sample text where Sarah seems to include in-jokes from the Maxwell family house , forgetting that you usually had to have been there in order to find the re-telling funny. I remember an episode over a bean burrito dinner at the Moody's, where everyone takes great delight in remembering an occasion when Max had an accident and ended up with beans over his hand... it is sort of weird and unfunny, in the same way that it was weird and unfunny when Sarah told the tale over and over on the Titus2 blog about the time Teri ate a piece of processed cheese and got halfway through the slice without realising she was eating the wrapping paper too.... sort of funny but nor really hilarious enough for others to care about it.

[browngrl]

Sarah just seems so dipped in the koolaid that there is no way she could ever break free so I do feel sorry for her. In her world she is stuck with the role of spinster and yet if she would enter the wide world she would be in the prime of life. She very much reminds me of a character from a Lucy Maude Montgomery book (character= Valancy, book= Blue Castle). The heroine of this book is stuck at home living a life of mind numbing routine and false piety and propriety. Then she get a health scare and decides it is now or never and leaves home,gets a makeover, gets a job, stops worrying about what people think, asks a man to marry her and basically fixes all the problems in her life. I wish I could give Sarah a copy of this book. Anyway, here is the sentence that I find saddest of all:

"It’s nothing too exciting for most of you, but I’ll tell you all about it in May." :cry:

[Patsy]

There are some quite bizaare parts of the free sample text where Sarah seems to include in-jokes from the Maxwell family house , forgetting that you usually had to have been there in order to find the re-telling funny. I remember an episode over a bean burrito dinner at the Moody's, where everyone takes great delight in remembering an occasion when Max had an accident and ended up with beans over his hand... it is sort of weird and unfunny, in the same way that it was weird and unfunny when Sarah told the tale over and over on the Titus2 blog about the time Teri ate a piece of processed cheese and got halfway through the slice without realising she was eating the wrapping paper too.... sort of funny but nor really hilarious enough for others to care about it.

Ah, thank you, yes, I understand!

[mirele]

You know, I knew a young woman a lot like Sarah Maxwell, but she held an outside job (clerk in what we'd now call a dollar store). But she was the youngest child in her family and lived with her mother and was quite sheltered otherwise. One day, I was astonished to hear that she'd moved out of her mother's house and was living with a 16 YO boy (and she was 22) in an apartment behind the town's coin-op laundry. She'd met the boy at the local fried chicken place, he worked the counter and she bought lunch there. A few months later there was a hastily-arranged wedding, because she was pregnant. (I did not go, I was moving on to bigger and better things.) They had a few kids and, when I checked last year, they were still married, 32 years later.

So don't count Sarah Maxwell out...she might actually meet someone outside of the family circle, unless Steve wraps her totally in a physical and mental trap of his own devising. By the way, Steve, you're running a family cult, not worshiping Jesus, but you. And I despise the way that you treat your family members. As I say about other evil people, hell isn't quite hot enough for you yet, but the ducks in the duck pit are QUITE hungry. Which is to say, if I met you in person, I'd be very tempted to smack the everloving shit out of you. Destroying other people's lives and happiness for the sake of your own ego is evil.

[kpmom]

So this is not the 'Judy Moody' series? Or Moody's Investors? :lol:

And definitely not the Moody Blues, either!

I wonder why Sarah felt the need to reiterate how fulfilling and wonderful her single life is? She wrote the same thing two months ago when she turned 30. I wonder if Steve is getting questions/criticism from fellow fundies about this? I agree in the secular world 30 and single is no big deal. Hell, 60 and single should be no big deal.

The thing is, if fundy parents of little girls see that the Maxwell courtship model doesn't work for their daughters, how is Steve ever going to get people to come to his courtship seminars, and sell the courtship book he is reportedly writing?

ETA: What do you all suppose this not-too-exciting Moody book Sarah is writing is about? Moody Recipes? Maybe we'll finally get that Fruit Pizza recipe we've been waiting for!

[mirele]

And definitely not the Moody Blues, either!

I wonder why Sarah felt the need to reiterate how fulfilling and wonderful her single life is? She wrote the same thing two months ago when she turned 30. I wonder if Steve is getting questions/criticism from fellow fundies about this? I agree in the secular world 30 and single is no big deal. Hell, 60 and single should be no big deal.

The thing is, if fundy parents of little girls see that the Maxwell courtship model doesn't work for their daughters, how is Steve ever going to get people to come to his courtship seminars, and sell the courtship book he is reportedly writing?

ETA: What do you all suppose this not-too-exciting Moody book Sarah is writing is about? Moody Recipes? Maybe we'll finally get that Fruit Pizza recipe we've been waiting for!

What's interesting is how poorly the fundie courtship model is working for so many of these elite families. Look at the Duggars--not a single daughter married off. Same with the Botkins. Same for the Bauchams. We've already been talking about the Maxwells. And given the limited shelf life of the fundamentalist maiden, so many of these women are basically worse than day-old bread. *rolls eyes* I am so thankful my father thought his daughters were just as smart and capable as any boy--and not restricted to wife and mother roles (although, if that's what we wanted to do, he had no problem with that either).