JC Says You Can't Get the Big D: Evangelical Traumatic Flashback Corner

Angie's Story: 

 

Evangelical Wedding Ceremony (minus the Unity candle)

One of Jake’s constant refrains in Waterfalls is that marriage is a commitment, an unbreakable contract signed in the Blood of the Lamb to bind you for all eternity to your mate. While Christians have similar or even higher divorce rates than the general, hell-bound public, many are hardliners when it comes to breaking that unbreakable vow. My seventh grade Bible teacher was so smug when she recounted the story of her daughter-in-law sittiing her down before the wedding and saying, "Just so you know, 'divorce' is not a word in my vocabulary," which even as a seventh grader, made me think: why are you using a word that isn't in your vocabulary? We both know that you know what the word means, homegirl.

Technically, according to Le Bible, the only legitimate grounds for divorce is adultery. So some people upon hearing about a marriage dissolving for another reason, like a spouse being physically abused, cluck their tongues and say that divorce is not biblically sanctioned. (In case you were wondering these people are definite, 100% jackasses.) I've heard that this biblical standard was actually included to protect old timey Jewish women since they would be ruined if their husband divorced them. (Back then, they did not have a kicky First Wives Club to get you through your marriage ending). According to one of my teachers, divorce in the year of our Lord was as simple as a man turning around three times chanting, "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you." And just like that, BAM! with no legal fees, you were back on the Jersualem market, along with the fish, loaves, and myrhh. Does this sound

made up? You betcha. But so do many of the "facts" I learned Evangelical school.

Jewish divorce circa 50 BC

When I was a junior higher, trying really hard to make corduroy overalls happen, our high school youth pastor had an affair with a high schooler. (I’ll wait until you’re done dry-heaving). He ended up leaving a wife and four kids in the lurch (and he was not the only pastor affiliated with our church/school to go down that carnal path). While everyone felt terrible for his wife, there was also an underlying sense of relief. Like, well, she gets a free pass on the big D since her husband gave her a biblical out with his a-lyin’ and a-cheatin’. 

 

Take your holy pass and run, beyotch!

Now if you aren’t as fortunate as this poor youth pastor’s wife, you might find yourself screwed by this strict, black-and-white interpretation of biblical divorce:

Dear God, my spouse, while remaining physically faithful to me, will not stop hitting on my 87-year-old GramGram. His ribald comments are making her very uncomfortable and when confronted about his behavior, he invites my entire family to: “Eat my shorts, dillholes!” Can I get a divorce? GOD SAYS NO!

Dear God, my spouse collects human body parts in the freezer that she keeps chained shut in the basement. She left it unlocked one day and there must be at least ten different people’s torsos, feet, and arms in there. They seem to be all different ages and races but I can’t find any of the heads. Can I get a divorce? GOD SAYS NO!

Dear God, first thing every morning, my spouse makes herself vomit directly onto my sleeping face. I’ve asked her why she does this, is it involuntary, does she have some sort of tic or past trauma that would cause her to do this to me every morning? All she says is it makes her giggle and she needs a joyful start to her day, so she’s never going to stop. Can I get a divorce? GOD SAYS NO!

Dear God, my spouse has replaced me with our golden doodle, Mitzy. She has taken my spot on the bed, and I’m relegated to the floor. He dresses Mitzy in my clothes, and when I complain, he just nudges her collar and leash in my direction. It’s been ten months now, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I actually am a dog. Can I get a divorce? GOD SAYS NO!

Marge, I believe you and Mitzy have already met.

Commitment is great and important. Breaking up a marriage is no joke and should be done with care. But if you staunchly cling to that stipulation adultery is the only grounds for divorce, you are asking some people to live as a dog because their spouse prefers the company of their golden doodle. Don’t do that, ya dillhole!

WATERFALLS: Anything Can be Pickled if You Just Believe

Synopsis:

What even happens in this book?

Waterfalls begins with an unusual meet cute. Meredith, children’s publisher, white sweateshirt purchaser, and sister of Clouds flight attendant, Shelly, is staying at rich Jessica’s Victorian Inn when Jake, an incognito actor and Shelly and Alissa's former condo neighbor, accidentally crashes on her bed. Unfortunately, Meredith discovers hot Jake when her face is slathered in an avocado mask, making this an ugly meet cute. Somehow, celeb-addict Meredith does not recognize Jake the actor but hikes with him to a waterfall (that he is secretly scouting for what appears to be a truly craptastic rip-off of Narnia) and flirts with him by shoving a muffin in his face (literal muffin, not innuendo). Eventually, Meredith places Jake as the hot famous piece he is and embarrasses him by making a big scene in front of a crowd. They awkwardly go their seperate ways until Jake apparently decides it's time to use his connection to Meredith to get his book series published in a rush to coincide with his terrible Narnia knockoff. (I cannot emphasis enough how much this fake video/book series sucks). 

Evangelical Star Wars

Meredith puts her business bitch hat on and signs Jake but lets him know his story is subpar right now. He initially throws a hissy fit at Meredith’s note that maybe there have been enough fantasy series with white, male protagonists, but he comes around. They eventually bond over two week editing period where they make his script/book series slightly less awfulby adding a female sidekick (aka the Hermoine factor) , but Meredith finds out that Jake is anti-love. Jake believes that marriage is essentially a contract that two people agree to honor even after the honeymoon period is over, and he conveys this in the most dead-eyed, serial killer way possible. Remember, Jake is the sensitive guy who tells Alissa during Sunsets that her dead parents are roasting in hell, so he knows a lot about maintaining positive relationships with people. Meredith is obviously grossed out by Jake's life philosophy and also by her attraction to this unfeeling, marginally-talented monster. Her lady boner for him leads her to make a series of thirsty decisions, including: rewriting his shitty book, agreeing to star in his shitty movie, agreeing to pretend to date him to keep away his non-existent admiring fans, and jumping into a lake with her clothes on (which all ladies know is the classic “I’m a sexy free spirit with boobs” move). Fortunately, Meredith's perky muffin-smushing antics eventually win Jake the handsome sociopath over and they decide to give this crazy love game a shot, evangelical-style (chaste, closed-mouth kiss).

Wait, Whaaaaa????

There’s a lot of questionable behavior in Glenbrook. This is where we judge it all.

How, how in God’s name could Shelly the flight attendance conveniently forget to tell her sister that her former neighbor is now an action film star? Hard-to-believe sister fail. Sandra Oh from Grey’s Anatomy, once walked past me on a sidewalk in LA, and I’m pretty sure I texted Elise about while she was still in my eyesight (I was also screaming, "Grey's Anatomy! Grey's Anatomy lady!" and pointing because I'm from Indiana, obvs.). . 

Pass. Hard Pass.

Meredith finally realizes that “Jay, bed sleeping bandit” is actually “Jacob Wilde, brand new movie star” by seeing the name Jacob Wilde embossed in gold on his LEATHER CELL PHONE POUCH.

While Jake’s anti-love affect gives him a Ted Bundy flair, Meredith is also someone to keep a close eye on if neighborhood pets begin disappearing. After playing the classic, “let’s throw grapes at each other and try to catch them in our mouths” game, Jake leaves a single grape on Meredith’s pillow at rich Jessica’s Inn…which she proceeds to pickle and keep in a jar in her fridge, presumably waiting for a convenient time to make a bone broth out of Jake’s femurs and garnish with said grape.

Precious Moments:

Our favorite quotes.

Meredith joins the rest of the Glenbrook ladies in throwing shade when describing Jessica: “She was a tender-hearted woman with fair skin, a regal look about her, and a half-moon-shaped scar on her upper lip. She hadn’t yet lost the weight after her son[‘s birth].

Jake about to take Meredith out to a fancy Hollywood dessert: “The only place I know…is the Cheesecake Factory in Hollywood. I hope you don’t mind that’ it’s a bit of a drive.”

Conspiracy Theory:

We tell you what’s really going down in Glenbrook.

A night out on the town with Fred.

Angie: Meredith and Jake are both sociopaths who form a strong bond over their ability to mask their true selves to others and reject all manner of normal human emotions. This is evidenced by Jake’s commitment to the idea that all marriages are loveless, and Meredith’s only companions are a goldfish named Elvis and a blowup man-doll named Fred. She can only forge relationships with inanimate objects, of which Jake is one. 

Elise: Robin Jones Gunn has infiltrated my life. Her description of Meredith's birthday dinner she cooked for herself (fettuccine alfredo with fresh pasta, roasted broccoli and raspberry cheesecake) inspired me to completely recreate it despite having “high cholesterol” and “a need to reduce fat intake” according to THE GOVERNMENT OR SOMETHING. I have bought frozen tamales, Dove bars, fresh German pears and choked down Irish breakfast tea during this project. I want to go to Germany, Hawaii and stay in a cute cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest. I want to crash an elderly couple’s wedding in southern California and dodge used condoms on the sidewalk while commuting 30 minutes to go to the Cheesecake Factory, I WANT WICKER. RJG, you have weaseled your way into being my lifestyle inspo, and I, for one, am loving it.

Just because you ain't blood, don't make it right, y'all.

Final Judgment:

Is it worth the $0.01 on Amazon?

Did you enjoy watching deeply troubled Deb fall madly in love with her serial killer adopted brother, Dexter? Then Waterfalls is the book for you. A lot of this book is entertaining. You’ve got the Hollywood factor, Meredith actually liking her job and excelling at it, two weirdos bonding over their fake Narnia project. The part that was a little “meh” was Jake’s anti-love diatribes. He seems like a normal, fun-loving guy, so those parts felt like forced conflict.

We Can't Legally Drink, but Let's Get Married, Baby: Evangelical Flashback Corner

Angie's Story:

In Clouds, Shelly scores herself a marriage proposal at the ripe old age of eighteen. While a tempting offer for a lass circa 1937, Shelly, being of sound mind and body, realizes the batshittiness of this life decision as the proposal came with the fun little caveat that Shelly would have to abandon her dreams of being a flight attendant to wash out her betrothed's bowl of Easy Mac while he attended college. Did she gracefully reject her neighbor-boy lover? Of course not. Because she’s an eighteen-year-old idiot. And yet as an evangelical survivor, a proposal at eighteen was rather unsurprising. Evangelicals marry young. We just do. There are plenty of articles about it, but I have loads of anecdotal evidence. I attended my first "friend" wedding a year after graduating high school. 

I took Elise as my plus one, and we made the above face the whole time.

At my Wesleyan college, they had super sad married housing section on campus. Most students managed to make it to graduation unwed. But a few decided that they just couldn’t wait and decided to play house in between intramural soccer and Biblical Literature 101. And so they had a foot in two major life stages at once, and I can’t imagine that would be terribly fun. Senior year, I was hanging out with a young wife acquaitance at her off-campus house that she shared with her equally young husband. I remember looking around her cutely decorated living room thinking, "I think I'm supposed to be 'Christian girl jealous' right now, but damn, I'm glad I'm not you."

At least we don't marry this young. Looking at you, Jerry Lee!

The simplistic answer for why baby marriage happens is “dat bootay.” When sexual relations are off the table until you get that ring that is a mighty powerful incentive to sprint toward the altar. But there’s more to the story. Successful relationships are meant to progress, to move forward. So if you’re an evangelical who happened to find your person when you were a freshman in high school, what are your options? You delete a step that the rest of society relies heavily on—moving in together. Even if you were able to get the courage to say, “Hey, I’m not ready to make a lifetime commitment as a junior in college but let’s try sharing a lease,” your Baptist grandmother would burst into shame-flames. 

There is also a different sort of social pressure—female competition. Many will deny this exists, but it so does. To be married in the evangelical world is to have a privileged status. To be married with children is to have a privileged status. Don’t believe me? Ask a single church lady in her late 20’s or *gasp* beyond. They are either explicitly or implicitly objects of pity, curiosity, or even suspicion. Is this a sexist pile of turds? Oh yes, but that doesn’t negate its existence. 

Pumped to be splitting TP costs.

I strongly believe that a person should buy their own toilet paper before getting married (The day I became a woman was the day I bought my first 24 pack of Angel Soft. While I was annoyed to be buying such an unfun purchase that I would literally be flushing down the toilet, it was nice to know that tush paper was allll mine). Experts agree with me. When you marry before your brain has fully formed (around age 25), things can go very, very wrong. But of course, I know happily married people who tied the knot just out of high school (including my own parents) and I know couples who are divorced or should be who got married when they were twenty-five or older.

Evangelical culture is starting to take its cues from secular society a bit more when it comes to appropriate marriage age, and I think nothing but good can come from that. Maybe I won’t be trying to set my daughter up on blind dates when she’s twenty-one like my mom tried to do for me. Maybe married housing will be bulldozed to make way for, oh, I don’t know, a library that contains more than just theology books and the biography of the founder of Chick-fil-a. And any rate, remember kids, there’s no need to walk down the aisle before you’ve reached your permanent cup size (James 7:34). 

My college's library contains busts of "World Changers" including the Chick-fil-a founder, Ben Carson, James Dobson and YEP! Kirk Freaking Cameron. I know Growing Pains and tasty chicken changed my world.

Elise's Story:

Here is what I did the spring and summer of my senior year of college:

I hope this doesn't read as snark directed towards my lovely bridal-tastic friends pictured above, just evidence that evangelicals do things fast, maritally speaking. I myself got married at the ripe old age 24 (multiple by 1/3 and add that to the original number to get the age in normal people years), after being engaged for 2.5 months. 

We dated for one year before getting engaged...

LONG DISTANCE!

We became exclusive on...

OUR SECOND TIME MEETING EACH OTHER

I met his parent's on...

THE THIRD DATE

I know to some people outside of evangelical culture it might have seemed too fast, or kind of strange, but we really really wanted to get married so we did. Looking back, we often laugh about how we had no idea who each other really were yet. Our honeymoon was in a remote cabin in the woods, and at one point I had to spend 10 minutes mentally convincing myself that my new husband probably wouldn't murder me in my sleep. That's how well I felt like I knew Kyle "mostly sure he wouldn't murder me" well. It's worked out pretty great so far, but I don't think it's right for either of us to take credit. Who knows if we got married "for the right reasons" or what the right reason even is. Did we just meet the right person, and if yes, whose to guarantee that we'll stay the right person? All I know is that if Kyle is going to murder me, at this point I respect his dedication to the long con.

We kept saying "I can't believe people are letting us do this!":)