LINDSAY writes:

I have sent another donation to you today. Upon sending the first one a few days ago, I failed to read the entire post until after donating. Returning to finish reading, I found that you intended to decrease your involvement with the site. Here I am again to reiterate my support. The import of The Thinking Housewife cannot be overstated in words or dollars.

My previous communications to you, for privacy and brevity’s sake, did not do justice to the impact of your writings on my life. Mine was more than just a mother needing encouragement. I knew that family and children should come before self but in the cold reality of everyday life, that knowing was becoming numbed.

It was true that for most of my child’s life I had felt the call of “doing my own thing.” For me this meant a magazine focusing on our state’s culture, history and natural history. Pursuing this from home, I took my child along when researching stories. The magazine did come to fruition, but I stopped doing it because of the realization that it made me resent my duties as a mother. It was unsuccessful by monetary standards, as advertisers were never sought. Even after giving it up, I wanted it back. That wasn’t all I wanted.

An exciting marriage with a soulmate seemed to be something I deserved. How could I help that I grew up to be so ignorant as to choose the wrong man? That’s what I told myself. Raised in poverty with an abusive father, a depressed mother, and brainwashed from childhood in Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, could it really be wrong for me to finally break free and find what could have been mine?

A counselor helped me to see that yes, I deserved better. She helped me to stand up for what was right. But she did not try to help me preserve my marriage. She even said that I would be justified to get out. By God’s grace, I did not act on that. Contemplate it for months, I surely did.

Adding gasoline to the fire, was this moral relativism I had ambled into. I read Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, anything by C.S. Lewis and others. While still very much a Chesterton fan, at that time I became enchanted with the idea of paradox. I think it is a dangerous idea when it becomes obsession. I still read Chesterton, just not with New Calvinist ideas clanking around in my head. Not that I was ever a New Calvinist, but it seeped in somehow.

One day, searching for sites where conservative, philosophical minded mothers might post writings, into The Thinking Housewife I tumbled. It is Alice in Wonderland reversed. Things became crystal clear. No more moral relativism. No more matching or upping misery for misery. No justification for the hollow crutch of sin. That is not to say I am a sycophant, blindly agreeing with all utterances. I do agree that Protestantism is nonsensical with its endless denominations and non-denominations, but am studying on Catholicism.

And that’s it. Life is still not perfect. Much improved, yes. The husband I thought was too set in his way to improve, has. We may not have a lot in common, but we are bound in our devotion to family. Even if things had not improved, there is the conviction that preserving family is the right thing, easy or not.

If not for your site, I don’t know if I’d found that moral clarity to do right and stay in the marriage. Probably it would have come after the sins committed in the process of getting that life I “deserved” made it too late to remedy. Another possibility is that I would have grudgingly continued. My child deserves better than a grudging mother.

Anyway, thank you, thank you, and thank you again! Donating to your site is a small cost compared with the $100 plus per hour charged by a counselor.

Incidentally, I too love the east coast of Maine. Though born a Southerner, I am a New Englander at heart. Of course, if England could be an option, then I don’t know about that. I say that if I could move anywhere, it would be to the Eastport or Lubec area. An island would be best. For five years, I have subscribed to the Quoddy Tides, Eastport’s bi-weekly newspaper. I sigh over the beautiful acreages that sometimes come up for sale. Two hours from the nearest Target and three from the nearest Walmart sounds just divine to me.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your beautiful and thoughtful note. It means more than all the donations.

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