Escape by Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer

Author:Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography, Sociology, Social Science, Polygamy, Arranged marriage, Mormon women, Christianity, Religion, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), Jessop, Utah, Mormon fundamentalism, Mormon women - Colorado, Women, Cults, Religious aspects, Marriage & Family, Family & Relationships, Personal Memoirs, Marriage, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Carolyn, Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), General, Biography & Autobiography, Religious, Biography, Women And Religion (General)
ISBN: 9780767927567
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-10-16T07:00:00+00:00

Resound of Music

My sister Linda had moved back into the FLDS community with her husband because they were broke. She was pregnant with her second baby and didn’t have a lot of options. Linda also missed her family terribly.

Linda was having a hard time in her marriage, which made her precarious life even harder. My father said he would help her financially, but there were strings attached. Linda had to agree to leave her husband, since he had refused to swing to our side of the religious split. She also had to agree to be reassigned in marriage by the prophet to another man.

Linda had no other cards to play, so she agreed. She was assigned to marry a man with three children. Linda was told that if she kept herself in harmony with her new husband, then her life would be perfect in every way and God would bless her with everything she needed.

This philosophy of “perfect obedience produces perfect faith” began sweeping through the community. Warren was assuming more control of the FLDS, claiming he was acting for his father. He began promoting the doctrine of perfect obedience. He preached it and talked about it on tapes, and laminated handmade signs proclaiming it were hung in nearly every home. We were told that every problem a woman faced was because she was not being perfectly obedient to her husband. Women were being instructed to listen to the whispers of God and pray to know their husband’s hearts. A wife’s goal was to be able to meet his every need without ever being asked. If she asked questions when her husband gave her an order, it was only because she still had contamination in her heart. If she was in harmony with him, God’s whisper would have made it precisely clear what was expected of her.

But even if a woman did exactly what her husband demanded, he could still find fault with her and accuse her of still not being in perfect harmony with him, because otherwise she’d have understood what he really meant.

Linda and I had grown close again after she returned to the community. We’d had almost no contact for nearly five years. Linda was now twenty-seven and was raising five children—her own two and her new husband’s three. She’d managed to get a nursing degree but had to quit working to take care of five preschoolers.

Linda’s husband traveled a lot and she began inviting women over for coffee some mornings to break up her loneliness. These became rare forums to talk about what we felt was happening within the FLDS. Had it been known that we were meeting, we would have been reprimanded and seen as being out of harmony with our priesthood training. We kept our coffee parties secret.

This was a radical departure for me. For the first time I had women friends outside my family. Compared to Merril’s other wives, I was running in a rowdy crowd and was being exposed to new viewpoints and controversial ideas.

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