Maxwells 59: On the Road Again

[Baxter]

Thank goodness for Chelsy's updates however sporadic they may be. It made me really happy to see Ellie at the Christmas. I guess it makes sense Sarah would bring her. But that was a nice surprise. And Gigi still looks like she is doing alright. 

[SassyPants]

NOOOOOO- these folks can’t intermingle families in photos. I don’t know them well enough to separate them out for identification purposes. Teri’s hair is great and look at how cute Sarah and Kory are; they look so happy. EFF Steve and all his absurd rules.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

3 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

I just skimmed her blog posts to catch up.  No reasonable person would think twice if their family was complete at three.  In fact, I expect most people would think that a wise decision.  She's been through the ringer.

This wouldn't stop a lot of the Catholics I know. 😝

[Coconut Flan]

I'm Catholic/Orthodox and know no one who is Catholic who would likely continue having children and only one Orthodox family who might.  Oddly BC is not a sin for Orthodox.  They're just weird people.  They were infected by religious ultra conservatism and instead of going fundie, they went orthodox.  

[SPHASH]

Maddy is wearing a Kansas City Chiefs shirt gifted to her by Uncle Kory and I'm totally here for it.  Suck that Steve!

[JermajestyDuggar]

Chelsy bugs me so I’m no fangirl. However I very much appreciate that she and John have seemed to draw boundaries. They don’t seem to be completely enmeshed with the Maxborg. They have their own distinct little family with their own rules. And some of them are completely opposite to Steve’s. And I appreciate that. 

[hoipolloi]

Anna seems to be enjoying work & life: 

[SPHASH]

Holy shit I went back to get a better look at the group family pic.  Kyle, son of Joe who called sports filth and trash and said he was glad he wasn't a sports fan is wearing a Chiefs sweatshirt!

[kpmom]

7 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Anna seems to be enjoying work & life: 

Anna looks so happy and pretty in that picture.
I don’t think that sleeveless top would have  passed muster during those trips the girls made to the airport with Teri to criticize other  women’s immodest clothing. I’m very happy for that!
 

I googled the M80s and they are an 80’s cover band. Not a Christian song in sight. 
 

Edited August 11 by kpmom

[GreenBeans]

On 8/1/2024 at 12:35 AM, SisterCupcake said:

OMG you guys! I had my own (literal) Terri Maxwell cheese paper moment! 
I’m camping with my wife and daughter and made cheese and hummus sandwiches for my wife for the next day.
 

She took one out for lunch, took a bite, and discovered I had left a piece of the paper that separates the cheese behind!

I literally had a very similar thing happen to me yesterday! We were on a road trip and had purchased bread rolls and some bacon/ham type stuff to put on it. It was sliced really thinly, so I decided to put two slices into my bread roll. I only realized after the first bite that the individual slices had been separated by thin, see through plastic sheets. 😂

 

 

[Bluebirdbluebell]

17 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Anna seems to be enjoying work & life: 

She looks great and seems to be having fun! 

Being able to go to a concert like this shows she is able to make her own decisions and she's her own headship. 

[Bethy]

11 hours ago, SPHASH said:

Holy shit I went back to get a better look at the group family pic.  Kyle, son of Joe who called sports filth and trash and said he was glad he wasn't a sports fan is wearing a Chiefs sweatshirt!

I'm glad Joe is showing growth. So I don't always like to pile on things like this. That being said, he was one of the most outspoken, smug voices of Maxhell in their day, so it's weird to see him do such a 180 on something like this that he specifically spoke against. (Kind of like my HS youth group leaders who told us movies were sinful and bad and then a couple years later hired me as a babysitter so they could go to a movie.)

1 hour ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

She looks great and seems to be having fun! 

Being able to go to a concert like this shows she is able to make her own decisions and she's her own headship. 

Even if it's "a work event," can you imagine if one of the Max kidults had been asked to attend such a concert 10-15 years ago? I'm sure Steve would've expected them to quit that sinful job on the spot. 

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

Perhaps Joe never believed sports were filth and trash and he wasn't a sports fan. Maybe he was just parroting Stevehovah, because he knew he could never say what he really thought/ felt.

I firmly believe that if any of the Maxwell kids and Teri ever thought differently than Stevehovah, they knew better than to ever, in any way, express it. Even a look or an eye roll or body language would have earned them punishment.

Knowing you will never have something you want, never be allowed to do something you want, never be allowed to pursue an interest you have warps a person.  It leads to people convincing themselves and saying out loud the exact opposite of what they think/want/feel. The exact opposite -- Sports are filthy trash. Never wanted to be an EMT. Etc. etc., etc. A fox and the grapes situation.

Couple that with Stevehovah's iron fisted rules about everything, his fun is evil practice, the isolationism he enforced, his belief everyone except him is wrong wrong wrong and going to Hell, his belief showing a collar bone or a kneecap is obscene, Pepsi is an idol .......

You get 9 Maxwells (counting Terified) who knew that no matter what nothing would ever change. That they had no agency in their lives. They only have the ability to parrot Stevehovah, live as Stevehovah, dictates, believe what Stevehovah tells them to believe,  They know that Stevehovah controls every single minute, every tiny aspect of their lives. And they believe there is no way - ever - to have any say for themselves.

It's a recipe, a plan to to induce depression in 9 people.  I'm not saying that Stevehocvah planned to create a depressed family, but it worked out that way.  Think of the old sad half smile photos of Sarah.

TL, DR -- That's why I'm so thrilled that some of the Maxwell kids/ Teri have broken away from Stevehovah's controlling ways and are, slowly but surely in small ways, assuming control of their own lives.

I hope with all my heart that it is driving Steve mad, and that he lives in a constant unrelenting state of seething impotent anger.

 

Edited August 11 by Red Hair, Black Dress

[Bethy]

5 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Perhaps Joe never believed sports were filth and trash and he wasn't a sports fan. Maybe he was just parroting Stevehovah, because he knew he could never say what he really thought/ felt.

I agree about the parroting. He might actually not have known what he himself thought, because I'm sure well up into his 20s, he hadn't realized he COULD have a thought that conflicted with his father. Kind of like Mary's heart hands, but in an ideological way. 

5 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

TL, DR -- That's why I'm so thrilled that some of the Maxwell kids/ Teri have broken away from Stevehovah's controlling ways and are, slowly but surely in small ways, assuming control of their own lives.

A lot of people want to minimize the pants, especially on Chelsy, saying she's still just as fundie, but these are slow but sure steps toward knowing their own minds and acting on their own convictions. 

[Melissa1977]

They all look healthy and happy! Anna looks radiant in the picture with the orange top, radiant, modern, fresh looking... a self-confident woman not ashamed of her body. I remember her with 2 layers and long heavy skirts in very hot summers.

Chelsy and NR-Anna look fine. I hope they won't have further health problems. While I'm sure NRAnna will have more kids (how old is she?), I hope Chelsy gets satisfied with the three she has. I also hope that she is getting softer, she was apparently very strict because she wanted a very big family and being very strict was the only way her mom could cope with that many kids... Well, Chelsy has 3 and had endured too much pain... Maybe it's time to enjoy motherhood in a relaxed way.

Jesse and Anna have hipster vibes. Nice to see a different style in such an uniformed family.

It's been a ling time following Maxwells. I am genuinely happy for them.

[Bethy]

6 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

Chelsy and NR-Anna look fine. I hope they won't have further health problems. While I'm sure NRAnna will have more kids (how old is she?), I hope Chelsy gets satisfied with the three she has.

NR-Anna was 24 when she married Christopher, so she is 38 or close to it now. 

I believe Anna's youngest sister is adopted. I wonder if adoption is something she and Christopher would consider to add to their family, or something John and Chelsy would consider? We've seen other fundie families do it - the Smiths, for sure, and aren't the younger Craig kids adopted? I don't know how that would work for them financially, though, as Christopher has never seemed to be particularly well-off, and Chelsy's deep drive to find bargains makes me wonder if that's just deeply ingrained in her or if they are doing okay financially. International adoptions are pricey just for the plane tickets even if there were no other costs, and private domestic adoptions through an agency are also really costly. Foster-to-adopt doesn't cost the family as much but would invite CPS oversight and for sure they would not be able to spank any foster children in their home. (I don't think we know much about the Maxwells' discipline, but from the other visible facets of their lifestyle, I would be considerably more surprised if they DIDN'T spank their kids than if they did.) Plus in terms of placement and home study and all the assessments that go along with that, I'm not sure if a parent with a fairly recent cancer battle or potentially-fatal heart condition would count against them.

***Note: I'm not saying they SHOULD adopt. Adoption comes with a lot of inherent trauma that I think a lot of fundies downplay. I'm just pointing out that they seem to want an enormous family, and since Chris/Anna haven't even achieved the number of kids that Christopher grew up with in his family of origin and Chelsy only has a fraction of the number she grew up with, and also there are adoptive families within their close circles, I wonder if it's been considered. 

Edited August 12 by Bethy

[JermajestyDuggar]

I wonder if Steve and Teri would have considered adoption if the vasectomy reversal didn’t work. Not all reversals work. Maybe they would have eventually adopted so they could still show off a large godly family.

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

I wonder too -- but Steve strikes me as the kind that must have bio children, because adopted ones aren't "real" children.

They could have adopted rather than reversed, but Stevie-boy was hell bent on the reversal.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

11 minutes ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

I wonder too -- but Steve strikes me as the kind that must have bio children, because adopted ones aren't "real" children.

They could have adopted rather than reversed, but Stevie-boy was hell bent on the reversal.

Considering he took his stepfather's last name, he doesn't seem like to type to be anti-adoption imo.

However he considers all birth control a sin. When people leave their family "up to God", they tend to have enough children without adding more. He and Teri had 8 kids, Nathan and Melanie have 6 living children, and Anna Marie and Christopher have 7 kids. I don't think any of them need to adopt since they already have large families. 

If John and Chelsy are really done, then I think they might adopt if they can afford it.

[Bethy]

21 hours ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

Considering he took his stepfather's last name, he doesn't seem like to type to be anti-adoption imo.

It might depend how much Gothard philosophy he absorbed. The airport eye-trap trips just reek of Gothard so I suspect they are influenced by him. And Gothard is anti-adoption.

[Bassett Lady]

13 minutes ago, Bethy said:

Gothard is anti-adoption.

If that was the only thing I knew about him that would be enough for me to find him despicable and detestable. 
 

Two of my kids are adopted and three of my kids are biological. They are all my kids. I love them all, and the only difference is that two of them didn’t give me morning sickness and stretch marks. 

Edited August 13 by Bassett Lady

[Baxter]

Were the Maxwells against music with a back beat? If so, I wonder if Steve was unhappy about Maddy getting a little drum set for Christmas. 

[theologygeek]

On 8/8/2024 at 3:04 PM, Coconut Flan said:

I'm Catholic/Orthodox and know no one who is Catholic who would likely continue having children and only one Orthodox family who might.  Oddly BC is not a sin for Orthodox.  They're just weird people.  They were infected by religious ultra conservatism and instead of going fundie, they went orthodox.  

Same.  Not sure what Catholics they are referring to.  Italian American here, so my circle since childhood was primarily other Roman Catholics.  I grew up with a large family down the street (9 kids).  Other than that, in my parents' generation and also mine, the families weren't that big.  Most had two or three.  I wanted six kids.  My ex husband didn't. 

[LurkerOverThePond]

Do we know the name of Jesse and Anna's daughter?

[treemom]

Anna looks so happy!  And good!