My experience with Children of God/The Family, part X

Part I : Part II : Part III : Part IV : Part V : Part VI : Part VII : Part VIII : Part IX : Part X : Part XI
 

One of the most important things about this part of the story, about the birth of my baby in a hospital, is that it gave me two weeks out of the commune and in an uncontrolled setting with ordinary people. When I say a normal setting, I mean regular people who are going about ordinary working lives. It gave me the chance to be around other new mothers my own age, who were experiencing the same thing as me but with a different psychological attitude than mine.

When the other mothers' babies cried a lot, they did not react by praying for the baby and immediately assume a devil was attacking it, or that they were doing something wrong or thinking something wrong.

In the COG, everything your child did was a direct result of your relationship with the Lord. If the child was believed to be under attack by or possessed by Satan, that too was because of some sort of rebellion on your part against the leader, who was following the Lord.

Even if your child was sick, it was due to your disobedience or rebellion against the Mo letters, and therefore the child was not being protected any longer. It was as if your obedience to the Mo letters, hence to God, directly insulated your child from everything bad, and your lack of obedience dissolved the ring of protection keeping the child from evil and sickness. So you can imagine the terror and strain on a parent whenever a child got ill or misbehaved, or even was cranky or cried.

Being with these other mothers who calmly asked the doctors questions about the baby's health and reacted by simply giving them the vitamins or a shot or putting cream on the rash, made me feel that perhaps, at times, I was overreacting.

Aside from that, there were a few events that were so funny I was actually allowed to laugh at them without being rebuked for foolish, unspiritual behavior, or "Thinking like a systemite!"

One of these events involved a woman who would wheel a cart full of crying babies down the hallway, to deliver them to the mothers for feeding. I thought it was funny because they were all in little cubicles as if we could choose them to eat for lunch, instead of the other way around.

One day one of the babies was squealing and squealing at an unbelievable high pitch. The lady wheeling them down was Italian with a loud voice and she yelled out, "For lunch today, a squealing pig!" It was perhaps not so nice for the mother but I found it hilarious.

Then the same lady caught me one day hiding pillows to place under me to cushion my hips. She told me off and said, "You, you's the one what stealing my pillows, I gonna get you." The next day I was constipated. She came in and pressured me into eating a whole jar of prunes. Oh my goodness, what a problem. She got me back. I laughed about it. I actually got a kick out of her. What a character! What unrevolutionary behavior!! How normal!

Without knowing it, she was part of the pattern in bringing me back to my old personality, eventually. I used to love people with strong personalities and a great sense of humor. I used to be like that.

Having this time away from the COG influence, even though it was short, caused me to question some things about what we believed. She was helping me without knowing it.

When I got back to the colony I had a nice little room waiting, where I had put up flowery wallpaper and was about to begin life as a mother in the Children of God.

We had specific books to read on the subject, recommended and followed my Mo's ex-wife, Mother Eve, and his eldest daughter Deborah. I believe Deborah had something like six children of her own.

The books ran through everything from cleanliness, to feeding, to teaching, to discipline. We had a very tight schedule to adhere to. Breastfeeding was absolutely the most important thing at this time. The mothers were to take a one hour nap each day, eat three good meals a day, and drink one quart of milk and one quart of juice per day. I must say they were great on caring for the babies when they were very little. We were absolutely to have no alcohol or anything that would upset the little one. For this I am forever grateful to Mother Eve and Deborah for the wonderful things I had learned.

During this time my job was to raise donations over the phone, for whatever the colony needed.

Amaziah told me that he believed God had given me a great gift of provisioner. He believed God had given me a special dispensation of faith that God would provide the needs for his family. Quite honestly, I believe in this one thing. Amaziah was right. I do believe God takes care of us. I have today become one of the best salespeople at the company I work for. I must say also that they were the ones who got me started believing I could provide this way.

So during the next couple of months, I would feed my baby and sit him down in his little chair beside me and call the local businesses. I would tell them we were a group of young Christian missionaries who were raising funds to help missionaries overseas or help young people get off drugs. They donated free carpeting for the downstairs, wood and everything we needed to redo the kitchen floor, enough plastic to cover the windows of the whole house for winter, and material to put curtains on all the windows.

On and on it went. Amaziah was very surprised. He even made a point one day of visiting with Keziah and their two little girls to congratulate our colony on how much money we were bringing in from literature sales and donations of other goods.

Of course, privately, afterwards I was given the complementary rebuke about pride and vanity.

All seemed to be going well. I was actually fairly happy here in spite of having some problems getting along with the leader's wife. I liked being a mother, too.

My parents even came to visit once, and it was a pleasant visit. I went to see them with my son at Christmas time and they were pleased to see the baby.

Then something began to change. Our colony was accepted once again as a full time, full-fledged Family of Love colony. I guess we were doing so well financially they wanted part of the goods.

Then it started happening. Amaziah and his wife and children and groups of other disciples were coming to visit more frequently now. We were starting to read all of the heavier, DO letters again. They were all about Flirty Fishing and about people in the Family sharing their mates with other brothers and sisters. They talked about how the end of the world would be just like Nazi concentration camps, where women might have to give their bodies to their captors to save their families.

Two new brothers arrived from Thunder Bay, one of which I became very interested in. His name was Mictam. He seemed to like me too. My son was now about four months old and it was late spring.

Suddenly they decided to send me to the Windsor Ontario commune. There I spent only about two months and then was shipped to the Moncton, New Brunswick commune.

This was a much larger group, 30-40 people. Mictam was there also. They started sending us on the road again in groups of two or three to hand out literature.

On these road trips, I took my son in a backpack on my back, a guitar sometimes, and a pile of literature to hand out. Our food and lodging had to be donated. I remember one week that it was so hot for my baby out in the sun all day handing out literature that I bought a small umbrella and attached it to my pack to keep him in the shade.

The store keepers were very generous with me, donating milk and baby food, and people would let us sleep in tents in their yards, or trailers, or even their houses. Several times motel owners let us have a room for the night. But through all of this, even going on the road alone without anyone else, Mictam and I never got sexual. I kept refusing, saying without permission from the leaders we would be in big trouble.

I felt like Mary and Joseph sometimes traveling around.

In one New Brunswick town I was nearly raped when staying overnight at an aggressive man's place. In another situation by a roadside, hitchhiking, the brother I was with and I were threatened by a guy with a gun. We narrowly escaped these situations, and I was instructed by my road partner never to tell a soul, especially the leaders. Everyone was afraid to have the event blamed on them.

It was a rough way to preach the gospel. If the welfare authorities had seen me living that way with my baby, they would have removed him from me.

I thank God they didn't, because I was not aware enough to realize the kind of danger I was placing my baby in. Now I see that it is one thing to have a religious belief, but it is another to place your child in a dangerous position while you are doing it.

I know that it was not much of a life for a little baby to be on a street corner or standing at the exit of a shopping center for six to eight hours a day in a backpack while his mother handed out literature and asked for donations, sleeping in all kinds of odd places.

I was always fighting his diaper rash and having to deal with teething while doing this. Sometimes I had to go on the road and leave him at home with another sister while he was ill. I should have been allowed to stay home and look after him. But you see, too much of that would not have been revolutionary. It was called caring too much for the things of the flesh. My duty was to God and it was considered a lack of faith in God to tend too much to the child, because He would heal my child.

According to the Mo, the child was considered a revolutionary who belonged to God and not me. It should not matter whether it was myself or another sister or brother looking after him. I was to realize he was not MY baby.

After several months here and a couple of road trips, Mictam and I had become very close, so much that it was becoming obvious to the leaders, although we tried to hide it. Mictam kept saying we should ask Amaziah if we could get married.

I was still not sure I wanted to. Even though I liked Mictam a lot, I still felt tremendous attachment to Leonard. He was still my husband and my child's father.

Mictam was raising his funds to go to the Australian colony. He was trying to get me to go too. I told him to go and we would write to each other, and when it was the Lord's time, the leaders would okay it.

One morning they shipped us off with several other people back to the Montreal home.

In the Montreal home, I noticed Mictam doing a lot of flirting and vice-versa with the leader's wife Sunshine.

A new brother named Aaron showed up at the commune from the USA. He was tall, good-looking, and was talked up to us and one of the best "litnessers" in North America. This meant he sold the most literature or brought in the most donations each week. He seemed quite arrogant to me.


The leaders told Mictam that they were sending him to Australia in the morning. This was a shock to us because he had not fully raised his funds yet. We were whispering in the literature room about how we would write to each other, and Aaron stood there listening.

As Mictam left the room, Aaron grabbed my arm and smiling like a Cheshire cat told me that he was more of a catch that Mictam and he was gonna make sure I went on the road with him so that I could see what a real man of God was like.

I was shocked and disgusted. I felt confused and afraid of the big shot, Aaron. I did not trust him.

Mictam left in the morning, and sure enough that afternoon the leaders decided to send me on the road with Aaron. I tried to find a way to get out of it, saying my son was not feeling good and I had laundry to do. Aaron seemed quite pleased with himself. I think now he must have talked to leaders saying he wanted me to be his road partner.

This lead to a harrowing experience I will recount in the next part of my story.