My first memory is of corn.
Chunks, golden and whole, floating in a sour puddle.
My first memory is three concrete steps and a landing, slick with dew.
A door that opened. A mother’s voice, sharp.
Not my mother—someone else’s.
Disappointment.
I wanted to play. I wanted to laugh.
Instead:
A swing, alone.
Then my mother’s face, storming through the park.
Hands pulling.
The walk home.
Do I remember the spanking?
No.
Do I remember the corn?
Always.
What You’d Never Guess Just by Looking
Does it have to be just one? There are a few secrets I keep.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I gave birth to 11 children. One at a time. However, that’s no longer really a secret. It is information I usually do not tell people. Not because it is such a big secret, but because their brains cannot seem to comprehend how one woman gave birth to that many children. Or why. Now that is the true secret.
Why? Why did I have that many kids?
Well, first and foremost, because we were in a religious mindset that allowed God to choose how many children we have. But I will tell you that when I was 40 and pregnant, I chose for myself to get that fertile tube tied up, or cut off, or whatever they do, so I cannot get pregnant again. (I only had one tube and ovary by the time 11 came around.) Another reason I had 11 children was that, with the birth of each new baby, came another person/soul who would love me unconditionally and make my fractured life feel whole, even if only temporarily. I desperately longed for someone to love me. And when a baby looks up at you and smiles because you are their entire world, you get the feeling.
Love. The missing piece of me.
Maybe it sounds selfish, but I wanted someone to need me the way I had needed others who didn’t show up.
Another secret I keep is about my oldest son being in prison. He was a highly respected individual. Everyone loved him. So, for the longest time, whenever anyone asked me where he was or how he was doing, I would answer, “I don’t want to talk about it.” But the bigger secret in that is why he is in prison.
Why?
Because he was so traumatized as a child that he sexually traumatized a child, that’s why. It’s not an excuse, just a truth I’ve had to live with. Pain that isn’t healed will try to find something — or someone — to break.
A third secret I don’t tell anyone: I was a pastor’s wife for 20 years. I never really asked myself why I was, so the “why” in this situation is: why do I keep it a secret? Good question, good soul search here.
Why?
Because I do not want anyone to ask me what I believe now, I am still trying to figure all that out. Like, do I still want to use the term “God,” or is it the Universe, or is it just Spirit? None of those feels right. The closest to feeling like my truth is Universal God or Universal Spirit. But like I said, I am still working that out. I keep it a secret because I do not want people trying to persuade me back into church, back into conformity. I do not want to go to church every Sunday and Wednesday. I don’t want to go door-knocking, soul-witnessing, or whatever they call it. I cannot sit in a service without being overcome with anxiety. My nervous system shuts down, and I usually fall asleep. But I sit there and feel like a ghost of myself, singing words that no longer have a place to land inside me. I know this because I have tried. I tried to find a church so my youngest son could get a taste of religion and decide for himself whether it is something he wants. It’s a secret because I probably disagree with 90% of what they might be talking about if you tried to strike a spiritual conversation. I have read the Bible cover to cover multiple times. There is nothing they can say that will get me to see things differently. It’s a secret because I have not yet dared to share my beliefs with the world.
But here’s a start.
I believe God was female in nature. I believe the Bible is a history book. I think every religion has its great “man of the hour.” The Christians had Jesus. The Muslims have Mohammad. The Jews have the Messiah, and so on. I believe it’s the same thing, just described in a different style. Reaping what you sow is the same thing as karma. The Ten Commandments do not differ much from the Delphic maxims. Maybe the real secret isn’t what I’ve kept — it’s how long I’ve waited to say it out loud.
And the last secret I keep is my age.
They say you’re only as old as you feel. Some days I think I’m 37. Other days I feel 57. It changes with the weather, the weight of the day, or the way my knees sound when I stand up too fast. People often tell me I look so young — thankfully. And I want to keep it that way. Because age isn’t just a number, it’s a perception. It’s the difference between someone listening to your story and brushing it off. So I let them guess. And I let myself believe it too, some days.
I don’t remember the exact year or even where we were living at the time. But I know it was somewhere between 2007 and 2009 when I picked up a book that would change everything: Families Where Grace Is in Place by Jeff VanVonderen.
I didn’t know it then, but those pages were about to unravel everything I thought I believed about parenting, marriage, and faith.
At the time, I was a stay-at-home wife and a homeschooling mom of ten. Number eleven would arrive later. I was also a preacher’s wife. My husband and I were fully immersed in Independent Fundamental Baptist ministry. We pastored churches, traveled as evangelists, and held revival meetings across the country.
We were loyal. Passionate. Zealous. And convinced we were right.
We preached that having a television was sinful. That women wearing pants was sinful. That too much makeup was sinful—though a little was allowed, so long as it didn’t “draw attention.” I sewed all my own dresses and wore my hair long—though thanks to my hormones, it rarely got far past my shoulders.
We were strict with our children. They had no phones, no TV (because we didn’t own one), no outside friends, no sports. We believed all of those things would lead to sin. We even pulled our oldest son out of college once, convinced he was living “outside the umbrella” of parental authority.
We spanked often. Sometimes for small things. Sometimes for nothing more than an attitude. Every day, we sat our kids down and taught them right from wrong. We drilled obedience into them—not from a place of love, but fear. Fear that if they messed up, it would reflect badly on us. That we’d look like failures. That God would be disappointed.
When we lived in Iowa, I made my girls wear skirts over their snowsuits just to play outside. When we went swimming, it was always in remote places. The girls swam in culottes. The boys wore jeans. My children weren’t allowed to have their own opinions or make their own decisions.
They were born walking on eggshells—and we made sure those eggshells never cracked.
I don’t recall how I ended up with Families Where Grace Is in Place. Maybe someone passed it to me. Perhaps I picked it up on a whim. But as I began reading, the words leaped off the page. Sentence after sentence felt like someone had opened a window I didn’t even know was there.
The book talked about how families fall into cycles of control, pressure, and manipulation—often in the name of love or righteousness. It spoke of the deep weariness that comes from trying to meet impossible standards. The perfectionism. The fear of failure.
That was us. Especially with so many children, we constantly felt watched, judged, and evaluated. Our theology was built on performance. And we were exhausted.
Then came a line that hit me in the chest:
“We are responsible to each other, not for each other.”
It undid me. All at once, I saw the truth. I wasn’t parenting out of love—I was parenting out of fear. I wasn’t guiding my husband—I was trying to control him. And he was trying to control me. Together, we had built a family that looked good on the outside but was suffocating on the inside.
The book painted a different vision: one where grace replaced fear. Where children were free to make decisions and mistakes. Where love didn’t mean control. Where acceptance was not conditional on perfection.
And something inside me shifted.
As I read, I had one aha moment after another.
I realized we were trying so hard to protect our children from the world that we were crushing their spirits. We didn’t want them to sin, so we removed their freedom. We didn’t want them to mess up—so we made every decision for them. We called it holiness. But really, it was fear.
Even our decision to homeschool wasn’t about education. It was about control. About keeping their behavior within a bubbl,e we could manage.
After trying to “homeschool with grace” for a while, I finally admitted the truth: we weren’t equipped. So we enrolled our children in public school.
It wasn’t a seamless transition. One of my daughters started school in her junior year and had to double up on math to catch up. Thankfully, Arkansas accepted her science, history, and English credits. One of my younger girls had to repeat kindergarten because I hadn’t finished the year—we had opened a daycare in our home, and it consumed my time and attention.
My third daughter and fifth son—only a year and a half apart—both entered fourth grade the same year. He had fallen behind under my teaching. I warned the principal to separate them; I knew she’d do all his work if they stayed together. They listened, and the school helped bring him up to speed within that year.
During this season of change, I was also starting to rediscover my own worth. I filed for a restraining order against my abusive husband. For a time, I let him come back—still caught in that old belief that if I just tried harder, he would change. That if I prayed more, obeyed more, submitted more, he would become the man I needed.
But I was beginning to see: you can’t change someone by controlling them. You can’t fix someone who doesn’t want to be fixed.
It’s been over 16 years since I read that book. My baby is now a junior in high school. The way I parent him is entirely different than how I raised the others—especially the oldest ones.
I’ve apologized to some of my children. I’ve told them I wish I could go back and do it all differently. And I mean it. I see some of them now, parenting the way I once did—out of fear, trying to control everything. But I don’t lecture. I offer gentle reminders. I try to model something different.
Our family structure isn’t perfect. Our children aren’t perfect. I’m not perfect. One of my sons is in prison. That hurts to say. But even in that, grace remains. We no longer try to control each other. We don’t panic when we see a child or sibling making choices we wouldn’t make. We offer love. We offer space.
And we let go.
Letting go is hard. Watching someone you love repeat mistakes you’ve already made is hard. Trusting grace instead of fear is hard.
But control?
Control is harder.
“Oh my god what have you done! This is all your fault! You are such a fucking idiot! You’re such a dumb fuck! You fucking bitch, how could you do this?” His anger was strong, his face was red from screaming. His eyes bulging, as he paced back and forth flaying his hands in the air.
I sat sobbing, my face in my hands, heart broken for my daughter.
I had no idea the puppy would jump off the porch. I tied her there so I could clean the laundry room, where we kept her. I didn’t know she’d jump, didn’t know it was a life threatening action.
He continued screaming.”you fucking bitch! I hate you! Everyone hates you! Ahhhh! All of this is your fault! This is a sign from God that you’re living in sin, your not right with God! You better listen! You better wake up!”
Now he is within inches of my face. I could feel the heat from his words and smell the morning coffee on his breath. Flicks of spit were hitting my face with each word he muttered.
I had ceased to hear what he was saying. I had gone into my catatonic self preservation state. Staring through him, at nothing. My own thoughts screaming in my head, “Why God, WHY would you let this happen??”
It all started with my daughter wanting a yellow lab puppy so bad.
We couldn’t afford one. Every time she would ask we would tell her to pray for one because she was determined to have a yellow lab.
Finally she decided to do just that, she began praying. I instructed her on how to pray and how to ask God for a promise. She had her bible verse promise and she prayed daily for that puppy. I told her “sometimes God might give us something a little different then what we pray for”. So not to expect it to be a lab.
One day one of our church members heard she had been praying for a puppy and said their daughters dog had a litter of pups and asked if we were interested in the last one. When we asked what kind they were Mrs Kennedy said that Lynettes dog had a litter of full blood yellow labs.
My heart fluttered and a small tear entered my eye. God was answering my daughters prayer exactly how she wanted! But there was still the issue of money, Pure Bred dogs are expensive. We didn’t say anything to Lydia, we just told her to keep praying that God would “give” her a puppy.
Later that evening Mrs. Kennedy called Phil and told him that she and Ed wanted to give it to Lydia as a gift.
I could not contain my happiness!
The next day Ed and Bonita brought the puppy to our house. We kept it a secret. When they handed the pup to Lydia she burst into tears. Dottie was absolutely everything she had been praying for.
I felt such accomplishment. We had taught our daughter to pray for the things she wanted and also taught her that God answers prayers.
He has turned his anger up and out yelling and screaming at God, “where are you? You don’t exist!” Then he’d turn and scream into the air in front of him, “Satan I hate you! Get out of my house!” As spit fell down his chin. He gripped his grilling spatula and started beating his brand new grill. A fathers day gift from all the children. He beat it over and over repeatedly until it was nothing more than a curled up jumbled mess.
I’m thinking past all the screaming words and violence. I do not care what he’s saying about or to me or to God, Satan or that grill.
Where is my daughter? Is she ok? Her gift snatched from her in just a few short days – what kind of God does that? What kind of God answers a prayer exactly the way you prayed it and then suddenly takes it away? Who does that? Why?
I never received an answer that day. My daughter has pushed the incident to the back of her memories calling her the “dog who committed suicide”.
I wanted to die that day. It wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last.
“”Wow! You should write a book!” He shook his head in amazement mixed with bewilderment and perplexity.
I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath and looked up. I Shook my head in agreement. (If I had a dollar for everytime someone told me that, I would have enough money to actually publish the book!)
He continued, “No, I’m being serious.”
Tears started to fill my eyes, I didnt even want to come into his office today, but my daughter requested that I be in there this time. I laughed mockingly and said, “Yes, I know, but I’m not ready to revisit it.”
His face cringed as he realized that my daughters therapy session could easily turn into my therapy session. “I understand, but just when you think that MAYBE you can, then that is the percise time to do it. It may even help you get some closure.”
“Closure” But I am over my ex! or at least I thought I was. MAYBE it is time.MAYBE this is it. MAYBE this is the beginning, to the end.
That day.
I remember exactly where I was standing.
The time of day, the lighting in the house.
It was evening, so, the sun was lowering in the sky casting shadows in that kitchen.
I stood by the enormous stainless Steel fridge.
I was wiping the microwave when I asked her, “so you saw it?”
She shook her head “yes”.
I said, “ewww… Gross! That must have been scarring! Those things are ugly!” (Referring to her oldest brothers penis).
Right then I knew I had to ask the next question, even though I didn’t want to know the answer.
“So, did he try to stick it in? In you?”
Her eyes never looked up at me, as she said, “yeah, I told him to stop because it hurt but he said he was ‘almost there’. ”
I know my facial expressions changed.
I now had information that could put my son away in prison for years.
I am in shock.
She still isn’t making eye contact with me, but she trusted me enough to tell me the truth. I couldn’t let her down. I didn’t.
I asked her where and when and got more details.
One thing is for sure, I will never forget that day. The place, the time nor the time of year.
That day. The beginning of many that would send me and my family down an emotional roller coaster of a journey.
That day. That knowledge. We will never forget.
That day.
I’ve been bottled up for quite some timeI was beginning to wonder if I had lost my tears
Or if I’d forgotten how to cry
My daughter said today, “you used to be so happy ”
But I couldn’t tell her half the reasons why I lost my smile
She’d feel guilty and regret her confessions.
So I pawned it off in her two hoodlum brothers who can’t seem to stay off of drugs or out of trouble … Yeah, them… They’re the reason I stay exhausted and emotionless
But the truth is due to a combination of things…
This week I sifted through the belongings of my son… The one in prison… I wasn’t prepared for that walk down memory lane.
This evening I called he sheriff on my 2 “hoodlum” no s for smoking pot out back….
I have so many goals … So many dreams… This is not how my family was supposed to turn out…
I still have more goals and dreams but am finding it harder and harder to see how they can or will be accomplished.
So tonight … It happened…
I cried
Everything bottled up started to ooze out… Just enough so that I could tighten the seal back up.
So
Here I sit.
Emotionless again.
Sitting in a 10×10 room. There are 7 of us. 4 chairs and a table with 2 magazines.
Everyone around me is giggling and laughing tying to make light of a very heavy situation.
I’m sitting on the floor. I feel as though I’m just a fly on the wall. Their antics are not funny to me. Their mirth just irritates me.
I have tunnel vision. It’s as if they are just a fog surrounding me.
My son has just confessed to every crime he has been accused of.
I am numb. I can barely breathe much less smile. The defense attorneys summon me outside the 10×10 box.
They ask me, “would you like an opportunity to talk to your son? You do understand he will be going away for a very long time”.
Emotionless I gaze into their eyes and answer, “yes. Please.”
They lead me into a room where I see my son sobbing on the other side of the glass. His head in his arms.
I place my hand on the glass hoping he would reach out. I sit and watch him cry, tears streaming down my face. He looks up and repeatedly says, “I’m sorry Mom, I’m sorry Mom, I’m sorry mom…” And puts his head back down. I said, “son. Look at me.”
My hand still on the glass. He looks up.
I said, “son, I forgive you.”
He shakes his head as more tears stream down his face.
Then his hand rests on the glass against where mine is.
We keep our hands there in an attempt to feel a hug. This is our goodbye.
I reminded him that I love him, as I walk out of the room sobbing through my tunnel that I can barely see a few feet in front of me. Back into the room of mirth where I sit quietly, agelast.
Agelast – Forget your faith
As I sit upon the witness chair
At the judge I’m supposed to stare
Give my story, my heart I’ll bare
Beg for a sentence long and fair
Explain how hard it’s been to cope
May confess how I’ve turned to dope
Through words of emotion I will grope
Hold myself together, is my hope
I’ll tell of memories I hold dear
Then tell of what I now most fear
All his charges I dread to hear
When it’s over I’ll seek a beer.
I walk in numbness, dread and pain
The thought of seeing him again
Is nothing more than a mental strain
My love for him I need to explain
I just want to hold him one last time
Regardless of the type of his crime
My soul and heart aches and pines
knowing he may be away for a lifetime
Will they let me see him?
I hope
Will they let me hug him?
I hope.
Will he want to see me?
I hope.
I hope.
I hope.
“No, quite honestly, I’m not.”
No, I’m not ‘ok’, I feel like I’m packing for a funeral. Each day draws me closer to the sobering reality of the crushing heart wrenching soul agony I’ve been living in for the past 6 months. Saturday I will drive 10 hours. 10 hours to see my oldest child who I haven’t seen in over 6 months. Who I haven’t spoken to in over 6 months. On Monday I get the awesome joy (sarcasm intended) of witnessing the Court Martial of my first born child. On another day next week I have the grueling opportunity to listen to my daughter as she tells prosecutors and the judge everything he did to her. I never wanted to hear the details. She’s growing into a beautiful young lady. It kills me to know he took her innocence. She knows what’s it’s like to be with a man. She already knows how to where a tampon for Gawds sake! She shouldn’t even be comfortable with wearing one!!!!
Oh my gawd! I hold my chest, it aches. It pounds. It hurts. Tears (as usual) stream down my face.
I’m packing for a funeral. The veiwing of the body, then the burial of my own soul, as I listen to the details then the sentencing.
No. I’m not ok at all.
Yoli's Write To Sanity 