Ep 745 ｜ Life as a Duggar & Letting Go of Legalism ｜ Guest： Jinger Duggar Vuolo
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Summary
Ginger Voorhees, a daughter of the Duggar family and star of the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting, joins Betsy and Amanda to talk about her new book, Becoming Free From Fear, which is about disentangling her faith from the principles that she grew up being taught.
Transcript
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you know ginger volo from reality tv she is a daughter of the duggars the tlc show 19 kids
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and counting and she is here today to talk about her new book becoming free indeed which is about
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disentangling herself her faith from the principles that she grew up being taught whether
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it was extremely strict modesty or different forms of legalism that caused her to live her life
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in constant fear as an adolescent she is talking about how the holy spirit has sanctified her
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and used different experiences conversations people in her life to show her what the true
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and liberating gospel is you are absolutely going to love this conversation really interesting really
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encouraging this episode is brought to you by our friends at good ranchers go to good ranchers.com
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use promo code ally at checkout good ranchers.com code ally
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ginger thank you so much for joining us i'm so excited to have you um we're going to talk about
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your new book becoming free indeed um so just tell us before we get into all of it just give us a
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little summary what is this book about why did you write it yeah thanks for having me ali um i'm so
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glad to be with you uh yeah so becoming free indeed is the story of my faith journey i grew up grew up
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under some harmful teaching that threatened to leave me fearful and confused about who jesus is
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and it this is the story of how i've had to disentangle faith from fear yeah and you're the
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dedications as to those who have been hurt by the teachings of bill gothard i think that's how you
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pronounce his last name or any religious leader who claimed to speak for a god but did it i don't i
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don't know who bill gothard is i'm sure a lot of my audience does but a lot probably don't can you
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just tell us what you mean by that yeah bill gothard came on the scene in the 1960s and 70s
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whenever um sex drugs and rock and roll were um a big concern for parents yeah and he came on the
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scene saying that he had the answers to life's problems and he came on saying that if parents
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followed these principles that he would lay out that their life would be a success and god would
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bless their life but if they didn't then their life would be one disaster after another so oh god
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yeah so he set up all of these guidelines that he thought would keep kids from getting into sin
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and parents were looking for answers and thought well of course everybody wants a black and white
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answer of what that looks like so he started hosting seminars that filled stadiums across the
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country and many people came from all different backgrounds and fill up those stadiums and then
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he started after that many conferences and programs for kids people from all different countries would
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come in to attend and what were some of the rules or principles that he told parents you have to
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abide by these if you want your kid to grow up to you know be on the straight and narrow
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i think some of the more outward stuff i mean a lot of it most all of it was outward but it would be
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like if you go into debt at all for any reason that god's going to bring destruction on you if you
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listen to drums and music wow then god will well he would tell crazy stories about like like a young man
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who listened to music with drums and was killed in the car accident because he had that on
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um and he would talk about modesty in a way that was outside of the bible and he would put on
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restrictions and specifics of what you had to wear and couldn't wear um and so those types of things
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is what he based his teaching on yeah and here are some of the things that you listed which you just
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said but putting it in your words in the book um fastidiously obeying the modesty guideline so
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again not just modesty but no shorts or jeans only dresses eagerly submitting to the umbrella of
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authority any disobedience of parents would place her outside of god's protection promoting the
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relationship standard of courtship avoiding any music with a worldly beat among others so it's not like
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these were just hey you know these are suggestions that kind of worked in my own life but this was
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basically if you don't follow these things you are going to fall out of the favor of god and your
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life will be in turmoil right right exactly and i think that that type of teaching it was so based on
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fear superstition superstition manipulation and control so as a kid growing up in that it was
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interesting i really thought that god was either pleased with me because of what i did um if i followed
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all the guidelines and if i didn't i really thought that god was just out to get me even as a believer
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once i was saved at the age of 14 i knew the true gospel was not by salvation by works but the way that
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played out um bill gothard multiple times would give a scenario and say well before you come to christ
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do xyz and it was totally wrong but i never said that salvation was by works but i viewed god
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in that way like he's either pleased with me or not pleased with me based on and a secondary issue like
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a standard that this man set up yeah and i know that you say in the beginning that this is not a book
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and it's not it truly isn't a book about um you know uh slamming your family or trying to say that
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you don't love your family or your parents didn't do a good job but i am curious like okay you didn't
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pick up a gothard book so like how did this teaching kind of infiltrate your life what did that look like
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growing up my parents um got into bill gothard they were introduced to it as a young couple
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and i think since this was all i knew um this is how i viewed the world around me was
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i thought other people outside of gothard circle just didn't know the truth they didn't have the
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handle on truth and their life wasn't going to be blessed because of it so i was like you're just
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waiting for disaster to strike in their life because they're outside of this and so i would have pity for
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anyone who had not been exposed to his teachings so you knew his name growing up it wasn't just that
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your parents were saying okay this is what modesty looks like etc you knew they talked about bill
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gothard yes so i i wasn't um i guess in the younger years i kind of just we would take in all these
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teachings and so it was often what we would watch for church because we were in a home church um
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and that was a whole nother side so my parents wanted to give us the best life which is what i said
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this story is my story of how the lord has led me to where i am theologically out of that um harmful
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theology but my parents did teach me the gospel they shared with me about salvation um not being by works
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and even though it was more like decision-based you pray a prayer and you're saved they still
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really sought to point us kids to the true gospel of jesus christ and so i'm so grateful for that to
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this day and at the same time i would say the theology of that and being in a place where we
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thought okay well we have to start a home church because no one is believing the exact same things we
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do in every place so we can't go to a normal church so-called normal um we need to start our own
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so we would watch a lot of bill gothard's seminars um he has like 60 plus hours of these specific
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seminars to like learn his teachings we would watch those a lot of sundays for our um sermon
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and so that is the teaching i grew up under i would go to his conferences his seminars his girls retreats
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all of that i attended so i knew very well where the teachings came from and i knew bill gothard
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personally as well and i want to get more into that but i also want to get into some of the chapters
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that you talked about because you really do back up and give some context about it's not really just
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about gothard's teachings it's also about kind of growing up in front of the camera and how all of
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that kind of led you to where you are now your first chapter talks about um kind of being in a fishbowl
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and the story which i did not know that someone stole your diary when you were little from your
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house tried to sell it for a hundred thousand dollars i just can't imagine as like a little
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girl i mean i'm sure there was nothing really but like you know you're writing in a way that you feel
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like it's very vulnerable i think when you're little and someone steals that and threatens to
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make it public i mean tell us a little bit more about that
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yeah being in such a public place is interesting um for an adult but then even more so for kids
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because that's all i knew i grew up on tv my family had a tv show reality tv show um from the age of 10
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um all the way up until just a couple years ago ended so most of my life was spent on tv and
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that um it definitely shaped the way i viewed people too because i think whenever my diary was
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stolen um from my room somebody had visited our family and taken it i share more about this in the
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book it was crazy like it disappeared from my nightstand so they went into my nightstand and took
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it wow and that really made me think oh maybe not everyone's has my best interests in mind and i we
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had so graciously welcomed this guest into our home for all day um and it really was interesting because
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i thought why would somebody do that like i thought that people were nice and um but being in the public
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like that it definitely made me more guarded and i thought now i feel like i can't trust a lot of
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people um and so that was definitely a challenge as a young kid yeah and so that was actually my
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mistake that was actually in chapter two but it does kind of all fall under the same thing like you
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are being so publicly scrutinized how um how old were you when um i think it started was it did it
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start as 19 kids and counting so it started with a couple of um pilot like documentaries 14 kids
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and pregnant again um that's how it started and then that was when i was 10 so a couple documentaries
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the reality show started later um but still all of those years we were on tv and so um and also
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another side fact we didn't watch tv we didn't have tv in the home so yeah like we were on tv
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but we didn't really know like what it was what people were seeing so you you know you're videoing
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you know you're giving this footage but it wasn't until years later where my mom couldn't go through
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the store without getting stopped at every turn and just basically like she would sometimes say how
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about you guys go into the store get the groceries because she knew it would take her an hour or an hour
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and a half to get through because people would be stopping her stopping her and that was at the height of
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the show for sure but we started realizing okay this is this is not just um this footage is going out and
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then it's coming back and we're like oh no one really sees it like we didn't even know the scope
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were you surprised when you were 10 or a little older than that i guess when it kind of became big
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that your parents decided to be a part of a television series just given that you guys didn't
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watch tv yeah it definitely was something that i remember we prayed about as a family um and we
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didn't know what reality tv was like i said we watch tv so we had a certain level of understanding being in
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the public space because my dad was in politics he served two terms in um the house and so we were
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used to that life in a sense like going out in the arkansas state house right yes so we were um at
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the capitol all the time there were reporters there as there always are just for political stuff and
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they would sometimes take pictures but it was on such a smaller scale so whenever my parents prayed
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about that they said they wanted to share this message with the world that children are a blessing
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from god and um so that's why they decided to start the show was as a ministry at that point
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gotcha and then i'm sure that they didn't even have the vision to see how much it would grow and kind of
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the position that it would put you know a lot of their kids in and just kind of being scrutinized
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having your diary potentially sold on ebay and you talk about how in the second chapter i guess the
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combination of kind of feeling like you're in a fishbowl and then also a lot of the principles
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that you had been raised with this kind of legalistic if you don't do this this bad thing
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will happen to you created just like a spirit of fear in you that's how you characterize yourself
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primarily it's just a fearful young girl so tell us a little bit more about that yeah walking through
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my younger years i remember 10 11 12 i struggled so much with fear to the point where
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i would get up so many times in the middle of the night and i would go to my parents room
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and they were always so gracious to um spend time talking with me even if it was in the middle of the
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night and seeking to pray with me point me to god's word i just didn't know where those fears were
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coming from and what they were based in why they wouldn't go away and that was before i was genuinely
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a believer i prayed a prayer at the age of six with my sister who had just committed her life to jesus
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she just prayed a prayer so i just did the same thing and yeah i didn't even think about that
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um throughout the coming years until i was faced with all of this fear and then it kind of was it
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just shook me because i thought why am i so fearful if i'm if i already prayed that prayer i shouldn't be
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scared what were you fearful of just kind of everything i'm fearful of everything around me
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and my view of god i think at that point was one based on um stepping outside of the box like if i
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step outside of this box god's gonna he's gonna take his hand off of me or smite me yeah i can't
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outside of this box of authority at all or i'm opening myself up to the devil's attacks so i viewed life
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like that and it wasn't until the age of 14 where i was genuinely converted and i remember very well
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talking to my mom again for like all those months leading up to it i had talked to her but at that
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point the lord opened my eyes to show me that i can't perform and i can't continue to try to please
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god by my good works and so i was so broken i i was like a good kid in a sense like i didn't get in
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trouble a lot i didn't push you know any boundaries um the lord just exposed to me my heart and i've
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been trying to like read the bible trying to do all these things but i had no heart for it i i didn't
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love god so the lord changed my heart at that age and then those years following my love for god grew
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and my fear of death vanished but what happened was my perspective on why those fears were there
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um fears of like okay should not should i now stay at home and read my bible yeah and go out to play
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sport with my siblings even though i already read my bible for like an hour that morning i would start
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to become terrified thinking i don't know what god expects of me i want to honor you god but what do you
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expect of me why can't i figure this out so i remember multiple times because of the umbrella
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of authority bill gother would teach like you have to stay under your parents authority they are
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basically like i guess you'd say almost like a priest right like they're you go to them to confess
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every little sin every little detail of your sin um and then god will forgive you so interesting um
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i i kind of had this perspective of like okay well if i think i'm supposed to stay home and read my
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bible if i think i'm supposed to fast today which would come up like often i kept thinking i don't
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know god what do you want what do you want i would go to my mom and dad and say like they they noticed
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like why aren't you going to broomball it was my favorite sport and i finally told him i was like i
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don't i think i might be supposed to stay home and read my bible like i don't know what to do my dad
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would pause and he said no i want you to come with us that totally took away that fear because i thought
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now i'm obeying my authority so god's going to protect me i'm not going to die in a car accident
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on the way there because i'm um my dad gave me permission so it was that type of fear that really
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um kept my heart in a place that wasn't good because i really genuinely as a believer wanted to
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know the word of god love the word of god please god in everything and yet i had an unhealthy view
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of who god was yeah and you also talk about um an eating disorder and just like hearing kind of your
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mentality one i can like i can really relate to it in so many in so many ways like growing up in the
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church i didn't have the same kind of principles taught to me and things like that but just as a
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young person trying to like navigate the will of god and am i really saved and was that prayer that
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i prayed seven times when i was eight years old like did that really count like i totally get all of
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that but it's also making me wonder if that kind of like mentality is kind of what exacerbates or
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enables things like eating disorders i also struggled with one when i was in college you struggled with
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one too um tell me a little bit more about that and just kind of what you think led you there
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i think um for me it was probably more so comparing myself with other people and not feeling good enough
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wanting to be accepted um wanting to be pretty and i was already thin and so it wasn't like i mean
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naturally i wasn't probably gonna gain all of this weight even though i thought i was and it was
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something that i was so afraid because i think when i opened up to my mom i started talking to her and i
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said i'm struggling with this like i would try to get up as late as i could sleep in as long as i could
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so i could skip a meal and eat as little as i could at a meal because i didn't want to get fat
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and i talked to my mom who had also um she shares this story she had struggled with an eating disorder
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and so she started talking with me um about my view of even myself like i i just would compare
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myself to other people all the time she helped me work through that prayed with me and also um helped
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me with accountability so i was grateful for that because she would be like text me what you eat text me
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what you know um you're doing and it was so helpful and at the same time i see like man i don't know
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exactly how i got to that place but definitely focusing on myself and what others thought of me
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instead of what god thinks of me and how he made me and created me to be um that's what i think led me
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there um is the fear of man and tell us a little bit more about how that kind of affected your life
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this idea that i can't do anything outside of kind of reading my bible unless my parents go tell me to
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do it so i can't have fun unless my parents go like what did that look like and kind of how long did
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that season last for you it's hard to say exactly how long it lasted because it felt like it was such a
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long season uh looking back i just remember multiple times like my grandma was always about
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going out to thrift stores and i would want to go with her but then i would be like no maybe i should
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stay home because i have a feeling everything you know like i lived by my emotions and my relationship
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with god which is not healthy because i think whether i was trying to make a decision about whether or not
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i should spend this time working out or if i should go and spend time with my siblings play with
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them um i would put so much guilt on myself because of a feeling instead of basing my my life on the
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word of god and going to god's word and saying okay my emotions will go up and down but god's word
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will never change so of course i want to be in the word of god but i'm not going to sit here for three
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hours every day reading my bible because that's just not healthy and so um i think some of that
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like my siblings probably would look back at that and say oh yeah we remember ginger in that season
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yeah um i was just trying to be like all spiritual even with my words i would try not to laugh because i
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thought oh maybe that's not so spiritual and it was whatever i felt is what i tried to act out and live
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um and looking back i'm like oh man i would tell my younger self like okay you're not even living out
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the word of god because i don't i'm not doing the one another's if i'm just at home how am i going to
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share the gospel with my friends at broomball if i'm sitting at home reading my bible 24 7 and not
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speaking to my siblings not helping with housework whatever it is you know it's not what god has called
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this to do yeah and i can see that fear would kind of motivate you so scared to fall outside of like
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god's favor or what you believed was like the tiny circle of acceptability to god and so it's like well
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you know that reading the bible is good and so you know i'll just stick with that but you're right you
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miss out on like so much growth and so much pleasure and so many good things that the lord has for us
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which i mean it's a little bit of a tough balance because on the other side of that there are
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obviously people who are like well i never feel like reading my bible so i never do and you know
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so um tell us a little bit about like how you figured out okay it's not one of these extremes like
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this is what the gospel actually means and this is how you live it i think it came down to once i
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realized the theology i was in i think it started to um a lot of those external things in my view of god
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changed that's when my life began to fall into more of a balance because i wanted to read the word of
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god because of course i loved god so i wasn't going to neglect the word of god in prayer because i was
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a christian who loves jesus one you know and but viewing god as a friend i think as a believer was
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something that took me many years to to start to realize and and think okay i love god i i love him
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and of course i want to read the word of god but if i am allowing myself to be consumed with fear and
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thinking i can't do anything else outside of that that's in balance and so realizing that um the word of
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god is very clear when it speaks about um things that are even sinful right and i would think okay
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well is going to broomball bad because you have unbelievers there or maybe i'm going to talk to
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someone who says bad words maybe my mind will be polluted but at the same time i think once i realized
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who god is that he is a loving and kind savior and he does punish sin because he's a holy god
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but as a believer when i come to him and say um like lord forgive me for this sin like that's how
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he forgives my sin it's not by me doing these acts thinking i'm going to gain favor with god or reading
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the bible is going to make me closer to god because of what i've done not because god changing me from
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the inside out and so that was the perspective that took me many years to figure out but it just
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happened by reading the word of god and by being in a solid church that taught me that
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so when did you start going to that different church i was in um i was in the same church for
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many years uh with my family and i did not leave until like two weeks before um i was married and
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part of that was due to the authority structure i felt like i would have been sinning if i did anything
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different and i probably looking back i probably could have asked my parents hey could i go over to
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my brother-in-law and sister's church which is an awesome reform church and solid preaching but i just
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another another layer of that was like am i going to be under god's authority and protection um or am
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i dishonoring god by by doing that um because adult kids even women can't ever have a job outside the
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home you can't um like well you can't work outside the home but you can't live outside of the home
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either until you're married until you're married then that turns to your husband even if you're 40
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no even if you're 40 you you should remain at home and otherwise it's this umbrella of authority
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that bill gother taught is that god is here he's up here and then your parents are here and you're
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below that umbrella if you come out from under their authority by moving out of the home by getting a job
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then you're opening yourself up to satan's attacks because you don't have an umbrella
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so that's what i believed wholeheartedly and that's why i stayed and i think once i got to a
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solid church it was actually my husband jeremy was preaching because he was a pastor i married a pastor
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who was pastoring in um laredo texas and i went and joined that church and yeah there were there i write
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more about this in the book the challenges i had relationally with people just trying to figure out
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um how to be real and honest and vulnerable and open up to those people was a challenge but the word
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of god that i was hearing was different than what i had heard at my previous church or in bill gothard
00:27:58.800
seminars because it is the word of god is not based on um like oh i'm just gonna go to this to get
00:28:06.480
whatever can help me today but it's like what does the word of god actually say what is the context in
00:28:11.700
this passage preaching through the bible um from like an expositional standpoint where you're going
00:28:18.280
through verse by verse through the bible and seeing oh man this story is the story of god's work in the
00:28:26.060
world it's not all about me and like it does affect us and god does use that um to like show us our need
00:28:32.840
for him to show us our sin all these things but it's amazing the theme of the story being about god
00:28:38.360
and not about like oh i'm gonna pull out a verse to improve my life for today and then i'm gonna move
00:28:42.840
on it that's how i always view the bible and so my view of god completely changed once i was in
00:28:49.160
that solid setting yeah and i'm sure jeremy played a big part in that because he didn't come from your
00:28:55.740
same background right jeremy grew up in a reformed home his dad is a faithful pastor um loves the lord
00:29:03.500
and so he was raised in that he did have some years where he um kind of went off and in in the college
00:29:11.540
party scene lived his life like that but he knew the gospel and the lord never let him enjoy any of his
00:29:18.500
sin so jeremy came to know the lord um and had that foundation of truth and solid teaching that
00:29:28.560
as soon as he was a believer it was like oh i know all these answers because i've been solid church since
00:29:33.900
i was a baby so he came from a setting where they take the word of god um and hold it up as the highest
00:29:40.920
authority and man's traditions and opinions are not important on like these issues where the bible
00:29:49.340
is silent they're silent and when scripture speaks they speak so that's kind of in reference to a lot
00:29:55.320
of different things that gother taught but one of them would be like oh women can't wear shorts or they
00:30:00.640
can't wear pants those are kinds of rules that he imposed on the bible that aren't aren't really there
00:30:06.800
and i'm curious i i'm sure like it took a little bit of time to let go of some of those things that
00:30:14.200
had just been a part of your life so like what was that like even you know obviously you're a believer
00:30:19.460
you're married you were married to jeremy and all that good stuff your eyes were starting to be opened
00:30:23.860
but do you feel like it still took time after that to kind of let go of some of those principles you
00:30:28.160
have been taught yeah ali i think it was it was a long process for me because we did start
00:30:36.020
talking about a lot of these things when we were engaged especially since jeremy came in not
00:30:41.160
knowing really anything about my family he had seen like one or two shows in passing when he was at a
00:30:46.880
friend's house and they turned it on he was like oh that's through a friend sorry i just want to like
00:30:50.820
insert y'all met through a friend right yeah so my brother-in-law um ben he met jeremy at a fellowship
00:30:58.320
in texas and they connected exchange numbers and then they introduced us okay not really setting us up
00:31:04.700
but maybe they were setting us up yeah it did work right um but ben and jeremy like i saw ben's
00:31:14.860
family did things differently than us my brother-in-law and then jeremy when he came on the
00:31:19.000
scene we started to discuss a lot of these seminars when we were engaged because my dad said okay well
00:31:25.200
you know i want you to listen to all these seminars before you get engaged of build author
00:31:29.020
60 plus hours jeremy was he started to roll through them and it was then that he noticed oh wait wait
00:31:36.680
what what do these people believe because on the out it looks like christianity um as he would know it
00:31:43.380
like it's like oh yeah you can do a couple things differently like maybe you hold to courtship or maybe
00:31:49.760
you wear dresses but like you love jesus so that's a thing but once he started to realize the why behind
00:31:59.240
why i did everything that i said was a conviction from scripture he began to pause these videos we
00:32:05.600
started watching them together on um on like zoom because we were long distance and the lord used that
00:32:13.300
in such a good way because i was able to sit down play a clip from bill gothard where he would say
00:32:20.040
okay man does not live by bread alone and then he would say the next verse so therefore we need more
00:32:27.020
fiber in our diet we need all these health things and he would like jump off on this crazy rabbit trail
00:32:34.320
talking about why we need this specific kind of bread the specific bread mixer to make our lives
00:32:39.880
wow wow so i was like why didn't i ever realize this why just seeing this now after going to these
00:32:49.400
conferences every year listening to these seminars every single year and then we started going through
00:32:54.300
every area like if it was modesty um he would go down to some really terrible details we won't talk
00:33:01.320
about but with that time of the month this single dude who never had kids never married would go into
00:33:07.160
details about there never had kids and never got married never i did not know that but that kind of
00:33:14.260
honestly makes more sense yeah yeah it's crazy so he had all the answers to everything how you were
00:33:20.560
supposed to live your life down to every medical issue that he thought could be caused like if you
00:33:25.820
have cancer maybe you did this if you have this issue i have a cure for it so i started to realize
00:33:32.460
when we were going through those that wow this this guy is not a bible teacher like this is so
00:33:39.500
shocking to me to even question it because bill gother would even say of himself he would say
00:33:45.240
once i teach you these um principles it would have been better for you not to hear these principles
00:33:51.640
than to hear it and depart from it wow it's like i mean it's like a cult leader yeah it is i you know
00:33:58.440
i can't say like oh it was a cult but i can say very cult-like in in nature and um kids would be
00:34:05.600
terrified to leave because they thought well what is god gonna do to me even as a believer like that
00:34:10.880
took time for me to focus on truth because i would be gripped with fear throughout those um years of like
00:34:19.780
doing things differently as i saw it according to the word of god my life would change but i would still
00:34:25.800
be hit and gripped with fear a lot and so jeremy was so kind to come along and say okay well here's
00:34:32.920
a text you know run to this text and just saturate your mind in the word of god because that's what is
00:34:39.100
going to release the relieve the fears so the lord was doing a lot of work in those years but it took
00:34:45.980
so much time to like get to a point where i was where i had a view of god as a loving loving heavenly
00:34:54.300
father but then also realizing god is just he does punish sin but what does that look like in the life
00:35:00.340
of the believer like it took me so many years to um realize that god was a good and loving heavenly
00:35:06.180
father not waiting to punish me at every turn for some sin maybe i forgot to confess a bad attitude i
00:35:12.540
may have not confessed to god he wasn't going to just kill me because of that right wow what a blessing
00:35:18.320
that your dad told jeremy that he needed to go through these videos and that you were able to go
00:35:23.780
through them together i mean honestly what an incredible opportunity to go through each teaching
00:35:29.900
you had been taught and for jeremy to pause and for you to just kind of think about well hang on i always
00:35:34.960
accepted that as true but maybe it's not really honestly a much more efficient way of going about
00:35:39.640
that than like that kind of process being spread out over many years even though it did ultimately take a
00:35:45.140
long time still just that kind of concentrated analysis of those principles that's a pretty
00:35:51.460
amazing thing that god did it it was i look back at that with just such gratitude because i i i think
00:35:59.620
what if we got into those like i don't i don't think it would have happened because jeremy's pretty good
00:36:04.360
about like talking through stuff and he would have initially like i mean he would have eventually got
00:36:09.800
down to like why do you do what you do um before we were married but but the level like you said the
00:36:16.160
level of knowledge like quickly like oh why do you believe this okay well it's in the bible jeremy
00:36:22.580
it's in the bible and then i'm like oh wait no it's not in the bible it was like the lord allowed it
00:36:28.420
to be more of a light bulb moment like oh wow i see god's word um totally different than i did before
00:36:35.840
and it it was still like something i would come back to jeremy on a couple things even though i saw
00:36:40.940
it in the word of god i'd be like well let me get back to you on that like kids was a huge thing
00:36:46.240
because i thought it was abortion to use any kind of contraceptive like or any kind of like yeah
00:36:52.620
thing not just hormonal yeah oh no no but just even anything i thought it was a sin and i was it was
00:37:01.040
abortion and so i thought i have to have as many kids as possible so we talked about that and he was
00:37:06.820
kind of like oh of course i love kids um and i was like i think i do too but i i mean i just thought
00:37:13.180
i was gonna have 19 kids and so one took me more time because it was so big in my mind and then
00:37:21.260
clothing like i remember we would we weren't allowed to buy shirts that were sleeveless at all
00:37:28.240
but we could roll our sleeves up when we were in the sun that's okay okay so it's interesting
00:37:33.800
the letter of the law that i used to follow and then i started to look back at that and say wow
00:37:38.940
that was so weird why did i do like like why didn't i see this in the word of god before or not see it
00:37:44.020
so how do you explain to someone because i see the difference but maybe there are some people
00:38:00.220
wondering this between kind of what we see in the whole deconstruction movement versus how you
00:38:06.260
describe it which is disentangling i have my own idea of how i could parse that out but i'm curious
00:38:12.140
how you would describe that yeah you might be able to say it better than i do ali but i will say from
00:38:18.600
my perspective it has been disentangling is totally different than deconstruction because sadly i see
00:38:25.400
a ton of people deconstruction deconstructing like joshua harris has started this deconstruction
00:38:32.060
starter pack and it's so sad it deconstructing is like when you rip everything apart tear everything
00:38:40.620
down to the studs and you never build it up again in your faith and it's like we're done like i've
00:38:46.420
i've ripped down all the things that i thought were true but disentangling has been a process that it does
00:38:54.160
take so many years i think even some days where i'll wake up and i'm like oh like i'll be hit with
00:39:00.860
thoughts about like what i used to believe and think okay well i know what god's word says so
00:39:05.500
it's taking years of me saying okay well this is what god's word says and so i'm gonna believe this
00:39:12.960
even if i was twisted warped view of the bible for so many years from what bill gothard said this first
00:39:20.040
means from what this other church said this first means but going back to the context seeing the word
00:39:25.440
of god for what it truly is walking through the bible just verse by verse within preaching teaching
00:39:31.180
all of that has helped me to take apart what's true from what's false separate like if your hair
00:39:37.660
has putty in it you can just cut your hair off or you can take the time to slowly pick out the putty
00:39:44.040
and get rid of the putty and keep your hair that's kind of like this weird it's a funny little
00:39:49.940
um analogy but that's what i feel like i've been doing throughout these years like um even in
00:39:55.460
parenting now like i have two daughters and it's interesting with them i can fall into this
00:40:01.840
well i have the answer for everything and then i realized no i i have to rely on the spirit of god
00:40:08.640
it's terrifying raising kids when you don't have a system whenever it's so easy to think oh man i was
00:40:14.580
raised in build authored system let me just lean in on that but at the end of the day it's not going
00:40:20.200
to lead to a good place and so i know that and it's going back to the word of god relying on the lord
00:40:26.580
um to lead me and to carry me through because it's so easy to like put all of your trust in a man like
00:40:33.900
i kind of did for bill gothard i i would consider him like a grandfather to me and whenever something
00:40:39.700
like that shakes you i remember when i got the call talking about him i was like man like how did
00:40:46.200
he fall and then i didn't believe it for many years that he actually did and what what happened
00:40:52.240
there he was accused by more than 30 women of um misconduct um with him and he initially said well
00:41:03.160
maybe i had handled some things wrong so i was so shook by that because i was like how can he be
00:41:09.980
what i thought was more of a prophet from god how can he say this and let us down so those types of
00:41:18.280
things would shake me but once i realized okay there will be many people who come in speaking words that
00:41:25.800
seem good like that seem true they try to base it on the bible but ultimately at the end of the day
00:41:32.300
i have to go to the word of god for truth and i can only um even though god has like given us
00:41:38.980
teachers and preachers around us um at the end of the day my faith and my trust is unwavering because
00:41:46.100
it's in jesus christ and um god's word is true and that's what i cling to even in the hardest days
00:41:55.040
and it has taken many years for me to come to the place where i say okay i fully under not fully
00:42:04.040
understand but like the love of god for his children is there i'm not like this there's so much grace
00:42:11.840
that i was missing for all of those years being raised in bill bothard's teaching
00:42:17.560
so this disentanglement has just been me seeing who god truly is believing the word of god even
00:42:26.040
when there's been so much confusion confusion and god has continued to because he's given me the holy
00:42:31.860
spirit he has continued to open my eyes every day to more and more of the beauty of christ the
00:42:37.900
loveliness of christ and the truth of his word has just been made known yeah well amen and everyone
00:42:47.080
can read in more detail about all of this in your book free indeed and i'm guessing they can get it
00:42:53.300
wherever becoming free indeed excuse me um wherever books are sold right yes that's correct awesome well
00:43:00.440
thank you so much ginger and thank you for the time that i know it takes to write a book and to speak
00:43:06.880
your story that's not an easy thing to do and um i just i know that this is going to help a lot of
00:43:13.040
people who maybe weren't raised the exact same way as you but i mean we all in one way or another have
00:43:18.280
some disentangling to do and so thank you so much i really appreciate you taking the time to come on