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Full text of "Counting The Cost Jill Duggar
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COUNTING
THE
COST
JILL DUGGAR
GALLERY BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi
To those who have been harmed in the name of “religion.” To those who have
suffered behind closed doors and have yet to find their voice.
To those who have begun to find their voice but may still be living in a season of
isolation.
To those who like Esther of the Old Testament Bible story have courageously
answered the call for “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14), and despite the backlash
have now found their voice.
From victims and survivors, to strangers, family, and friends, this book is
dedicated to you. May you all know that you are not alone. That your story, your
voice, and your mental health matter.
The Lord ts a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
—Psalm 9:9 ESV
FAMILY TREE
JIM BOB
DUGGAR
JOSH JOHN-DAVID JESSA JOSEPH JOY-ANNA
DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR
JANA JINGER JOSIAH JEDIDIAH
DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR
children:
Israel, Samuel, and Freddy
MICHELLE DUGGAR
(NEE RUARK)
JEREMIAH JAMES JACKSON JENNIFER JOSIE
DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR
JASON JUSTIN JOHANNAH JORDYN-GRACE
DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR DUGGAR
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost,
whether he have sufficient to finish it?
—LUKE 14:28-29
PROLOGUE
=
The Sled
February 2, 2014—the Big House, Tontitown, Arkansas
Technically, there was no problem with Derick and I being outside together that
way. We weren’t on a date or anything, so we didn’t need a formal chaperone.
Plus, there were easily a half dozen little Duggars running around out there with
us, playing in the snow. We were safe. We were following all the courtship rules
that my parents had encouraged us to write down—no holding hands, no in
person, one-on-one conversations without another adult or mature chaperone
present, no putting ourselves in a position where we could fall into temptation.
All the same, I knew that people would be watching us. It was to be expected.
In between rides on the sled down the hill that runs away from the house, we
were trading stories—Derick talking about the new job he was about to start, me
telling him about my week as a student midwife. At some point the conversation
was probably going to turn to the different wedding venues we'd been looking at.
We were doing nothing unusual, nothing that any other couple of
twentysomethings who are weeks away from getting engaged would hesitate to
do. I was happy, at peace, and in love.
So I was surprised when I heard Mom call out, “Hey kids!” The snow was
soaking up the sound, and it felt like the whole world was listening. When I
turned to see her standing on the front porch, my stomach dropped. She was
smiling that same smile the world has seen for years—a smile that’s pure
innocence but protects like a shield—and her voice was full of sweetness and joy.
But I knew that voice well. By that point in my life I'd been obeying it for twenty-
three years. I knew what was coming next.
“No boys and girls on the same sled!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, jumping off the sled immediately.
But Derick didn’t move. At least, he didn’t back away from the sled—the
scene of our crime. Instead, he was looking around. He was trying to figure out
who my mom could have been addressing like that. Some of those little Duggars,
maybe? A second passed. Then another. Finally, he stopped searching. His face
shifted from curiosity to something like bewilderment. He turned back to the Big
House, called out, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Duggar,” and got to his feet.
I was grateful that he had gotten off on the other side of the sled from me,
making sure it was between us—so that all the eyes that were currently upon us
could see that we were not being disobedient.
“I'm sorry,” I said quietly to him. “I should have known better.”
Derick smiled. “It’s no big deal, Jill. Really.” But the bewilderment was still
there. I could see it in his eyes.
One thing about growing up in the Duggar family, I saw a lot of
bewilderment in a lot of different people’s eyes. Cameramen, journalists, everyday
strangers in a store. There was always someone staring, always someone trying to
figure out if we were for real.
For years, I didn’t pay it much attention. I either brushed it off or told myself
that people’s confusion about Duggar family life was just another sign that we
had been blessed by God with a wonderful opportunity to show the world how
we live. On that day in the snowy front yard with the empty sled between us and
all those eyes on Derick and me, I was unable to see things clearly. It was the same
a month later, when Derick proposed to me and I made sure that when I said yes,
the film crew got the shot just how they wanted it. I couldn’t see my life from the
outside.
It didn’t stay that way.
Soon, the bewilderment would be mine.
CHAPTER ONE
ow
Sweet Jilly Muffin
Click.
My parents didn’t believe in magic. They didn’t believe in dancing, either.
But they understood the power of music. And like all magicians, they knew
exactly when to wield it.
Just the sound of Mom loading a cassette into the tape player was enough to
call us all to order. With one press of that button marked play, we would stop.
We would listen. We would zip up our mouths, lock our feet on the ground and
our eyes on Mom. We would be in her control completely, held by the three-
second silence before the music would start, ready for whatever came next.
Sometimes it was a violin and a piano. Other times a rousing chorus of voices.
On the rarest occasions we might hear drums, but only if they accompanied a
marching band. It would take years before I would have the words to accurately
describe and define the narrow genres of music we were allowed to listen to—a
cappella hymns, southern gospel, certain classical pieces like Handel’s Water
Music. I was an adult by the time I could understand the reasons why these, and
these alone, were the kinds of music that were allowed to fill the air of the
Duggar household. But back then, in that sweaty living room, I didn’t have any
need for words. The music alone was enough.
I liked it best when Mom played “Ever in Joyful Song!” Almost immediately
the violin was marching and spinning and twisting like a kite caught in a storm.
All of us Duggar kids would get caught up in it, from my oldest brother, Josh,
down to whichever baby would be old enough to rock on all fours, dribbling
with delight.
At times, music was a distraction. Mom used it as a tool to break us out of a
cranky mood or inject a little joy when it was needed. Other times she'd use it as
a motivator to keep us on task as we folded laundry or unloaded groceries.
Whatever the reason for pressing play, she used it wisely. Music had power, and
it could be turned off as easily as it was turned on. Especially if someone
mentioned the D word.
“Look,” one of my younger siblings would say quietly to another little
Duggar. “I’m dancing!”
Click.
Silence.
“Hey guys, listen,” Mom would say, her sweetest smile back once more. “We
don’t dance. Remember, we want to be careful how we move our bodies, so we
don’t draw attention to the wrong areas. It’s okay to jump for joy when we are
excited, but we don’t dance.”
Most times the music would go back on, and we'd be allowed to continue.
But if someone’s joy jumping got a little too physical, it was either Handel’s
Water Music or game over: silence. Most of us Duggar kids knew the rules, but
sometimes when friends were over, we had to stop because one of them was
sticking their butt out, or—even worse—shaking it.
“We need to be very, very careful about the way that we move our bodies,”
Mom would say. “If you’re shaking part of it, where do you think people will be
drawn to look?”
We'd all chorus the answer together: “The part you’re shaking.”
“That’s right. And you don’t want people looking at your bottom, do you?
You don’t want people thinking bad thoughts about you, right?”
“No, maam.”
“Remember what happened when King David was dancing in the street after
returning with the Ark of the Covenant?”
“His wife despised him.”
“That’s right. He was dancing and he was immodestly dressed, and his wife
despised him for it. Let’s all remember that. When we are having fun, let’s make
sure that we don’t move in a way that draws people’s attention to places it
shouldn’t.”
By the end of the talk, there was no more jumping.
Dancing was off-limits, so I learned from a young age how to be a hunter.
We lived in Springdale, Arkansas, a city of about 70,000 at the foothills of the
Ozark Mountains, in a little house set on three quarters of an acre next to a
church. There were cow pastures all around us, and being homeschooled like we
were, we spent a lot of our days outside, drinking in that wholesome,
northwestern Arkansas air. But I didn’t hunt with a gun and I didn’t lay traps.
Instead of rabbit or quail, it was approval that I was searching for. And by the
time I was old enough to balance a baby on my hip while I folded laundry—
which I’m guessing was sometime around seven or eight years old—I was hands
down the best approval hunter in the whole Duggar family.
OLAN MILLS
Jim Bob and Michelle, Josh, Jana, John-David, and fill
When it came to getting a nod of acknowledgment or appreciation from
Mom or Pops at the dinner table, or—best of all—being singled out for direct
praise for listening intently while sitting perfectly quiet and perfectly still on one
of the mauve-pink living room chairs during family Bible time at the end of the
day, I tried my hardest to stand out as the most mature child in the room.
Whenever the tape player was turned on and we were jumping for joy, I always
made sure that my movements were perfectly modest and that my jumping was
perfectly straight. There was no wiggle whatsoever in my butt, no risk at all that
the music would be turned off on my account.
“Stop, guys!” Pops might say when it was Bible time and Joy would be doing
somersaults on the floor, and the twins—either set—would be wrestling for the
best position on the couch. “You look like a can of worms! Look at Jill. She’s got
her notebook and Bible out and she’s ready to go.”
I wanted to be the good girl. I tried to be the perfect daughter. And my goal
to be good and perfect even earned me a special pet name that only my parents
used. I was Sweet Jilly Muffin, the fourth born, second daughter in the family.
“Oh yeah,” Pops would say whenever he was asked about his kids and he
thought none of us were listening, “Jill’s so sweet, so kind and caring. Out of all
my daughters, she’s the most like Michelle.”
For an approval hunter like me, being compared to my mom like that was the
greatest prize I could ever wish for. Mom was calm, self-sacrificing, and entirely
loving. She seemed nearly incapable of anger or bitterness, and the love she had
for her family only ever grew larger. With every new birth and additional sibling
welcomed into the Duggar family, my respect and admiration for my mom only
ever increased.
And Pops—my dad—Jim Bob Duggar? Well, that story’s not too different
either. From a young age I looked up to him. Just before our family reached
double digits, he started bringing a few of us older kids with him to work at his
car lot to give mom a break and have some quality time with us older ones. He
loved spending time with us and told us often that we were his number one
hobby. I never tired of being around him, and it was a treat whenever we got to
go with him to work. ?’d watch him interact with customers—treating them
well, being honest about the vehicles he was selling, and going the extra mile to
help make things right on the rare occasion he ended up selling a lomon—and I
knew that he was a good man. He was the same honest, upstanding, Christian
man at work as he was whenever he was talking to us kids at home. He was the
head of our household, and that was the way it was supposed to be.
Jill and Jinger, mid-1990s
So being Sweet Jilly Muffin was easy for me. The role of perfect daughter
didn’t feel like a role at all. It was who I was, who I wanted to be. In a family
with as many kids as we had—twelve by the time I was nine years old—chaos
was never too far away, and the opportunities to help out and be of service to the
family were ever present. There was always a younger sibling who needed
feeding, dressing or bathing, and when Id helped all I could, I would play by
filling an old medicine dropper bottle with watered-down Kool Aid, put it in my
kid-sized apron with a few other items from my nurse playset, and do my
rounds.
“Are you okay?” I'd ask each of my siblings in turn. “Do you feel sick at all?
Let me give you a little something to help.”
I was delighted when my parents introduced what became known as the
buddy system. Each of us older kids would be given a younger sibling to help
feed, dress and bathe, as well as to sit next to and buckle up when we went out
anywhere in our fifteen-passenger van. I was the first one to sign up and get my
own buddy, and I happily looked after my little sister Joy from when she was
around one year old, and then my brother James when he came along. I was a
ten-year-old girl whose parents trusted her with their precious babies. I felt like a
little mom. I couldn’t have been happier.
Mom was the most amazing teacher. Whether it was making flaky pie crusts
for Pops’ favorite pumpkin pies, or learning how to curl my hair just right, I
relished any opportunity to learn from her. Spending time with Mom made me
deeply happy, and an invitation to join her for a one-on-one outing to run
errands—which often meant staying out way past bedtime—would leave me
smiling inside for days.
Mom was a role model too. She always prioritized us kids and would wake up
around the clock to care for us if we were sick. Even when she was sick herself
she'd be awake all hours, dosing meds, handing out Popsicles, and bringing us
wet rags to cool our fevers. In the highs as well as the lows, she taught me what it
means to be a mother.
All I had to do to gain my parents’ approval was to behave in a way Mom and
Pops expected. And in the Duggar household, there were opportunities to
remind us kids of those expectations and rules from sunup to sundown. Mom
homeschooled us during the day, and Pops rounded off each evening by sitting
in the living room or in the hallway between the girls’ and boys’ bedrooms and
reading from the Bible as he talked to us about character and sin and everything
else that mattered in life.
As a young child, I never experienced my parents as overbearing or
domineering. Instead, in my young eyes, they were about as loving and fun and
wonderful as any girl could hope for. At the end of each day they’d write us
notes, affirming and encouraging us for whatever we'd done well that day—
being kind to a sibling, working hard at our schoolwork, making the extra effort
to help out. I never felt the need to push against their rules, and I never found
either of my parents restrictive or constraining. If anything, I was grateful for the
boundaries they laid down for our family. Even though I knew my parents were
powerful and able to protect us, I was aware that there was a world beyond the
land we lived on or the used car lot that Pops owned. And that world, as they
reminded us over and over, was full of dangers and temptations and traps. Out
there, my parents’ protection could only go so far.
“Careful, girls! Let’s be modest! Keep your dress down or tucked into your
pantaloons.”
Pops didn’t have to remind us often, but sometimes when we'd be heading
out on a bike ride, one of my younger sisters might need to be told. Whenever
that happened, I'd check myself as a matter of course. Most of us would. We
knew how important modesty was. None of us wanted to be accused of being
“revealing.”
As girls, Mom made almost all our clothes, and we only ever wore full-length
skirts or dresses. All that dress fabric made cycling difficult, so Mom made us all
full-length pantaloons to wear underneath. I appreciated my parents’ careful
eyes as they checked us for modesty. As I grew older, the fear that I might be
immodest and cause someone to think bad thoughts would only get stronger.
It was even more difficult to stay modest the first time we went to a beach. We
were visiting family in Savannah, Georgia, and took a trip to the beach one day.
It was hot, and even though I was eight or nine, it was my first time seeing the
ocean, my first time tasting salty air or feeling the sand between my toes. My first
steps were cautious, like an astronaut on a new planet, but I loved it instantly.
But I was also troubled.
That trip to the beach was my first time seeing so many people wearing
bathing suits in public. Even though my parents had been careful to take us to
the quietest corner of the quietest beach, I could still see people in the distance
wearing what looked to me like practically nothing—a few couples, lots of
families. I didn’t want to get any bad thoughts into my head, so I tried not to
stare. But it was hard not to, and I worried for Pops and my brothers. Us girls
had been told often how much harder it was for boys to keep their thoughts
pure. I couldn’t imagine the battles they were fighting out there on the sand.
Still, the beach was a new experience for all of us kids, and it brought out a
different side of my parents as well. Soon they were caught up in the fun of the
moment, cheering the little ones along as they ran and tumbled and played tag
with the waves. We were all having fun playing in the shallow water, and like my
parents, I got a little lost in the moment too.
The spell broke when I saw someone walking over toward us. It was a girl
about my age, and she was heading right for us, riding the small waves on her
boogie board.
“Why are you wearing those clothes to swim?” she said when she was close
enough to get a good look at us. “Why are you not wearing bathing suits?”
“Uh, well,” I said, caught between the fear of a lie and the awkwardness of
talking to someone who was wearing little more than underwear in public. “We
didn’t plan on coming here so we didn’t bring anything else with us.”
The girl stared at me for a while. She took in my long dress with its now
sandy hem and my blouse with its sleeves that reached almost to my elbows. I
tried not to look at her golden skin. I kept my eyes on the waves instead.
I was grateful when the questions stopped and she ran back to the waves.
That day on the beach wasn’t the first time I talked with someone who was so
different from me, but it’s one of the earlier memories that stands out the most.
It was one of the first moments that I remember feeling awkward about the
difference between the safety of my family and the strange lands beyond it. I
tried not to dwell on it too much. I told myself that whenever we were in
situations like that where we stood out, it was an opportunity to be a positive
example to others just by living life and showing others how true, conservative
Christians should live—set apart and unpolluted by the world.
2001
We had a decent amount of friends, but those that we spent the most time
with were all people my parents knew from our home church or were people
with similar beliefs. On the rare occasions that I was given permission to visit
one of their houses for a play date without my parents—though never on my
own, always in the company of one or two of my siblings—I started noticing
little things.
Some families listened to music that had drums in it.
Some allowed their girls to wear cycling shorts when it was hot and they were
having a water fight outside.
Some homes had a T'V.
And some kids even talked to me about having friends who went to public
schools.
Instead of needing to keep any of this secret, I was grateful that my parents
were happy for me to tell them whatever I had seen or heard when I was away
from home. It was clear that they had thought carefully about how they wanted
to raise us, and so they always had time for a discussion about the differences
between our family and others—even though they took different approaches.
My parents liked to use role-play to prepare us for life.
“Okay,” Mom would say at random, many times each week, usually during
family Bible time in the evening. “What if somebody comes up to you and says,
Hey Joseph, why don't you read this book right here? It’s got a witch in it. What do
you say?”
Joseph would deliver his line, right on cue: “Pm a Christian. Pm not able to
do that.”
“That’s good Joseph. And what about you, Jinger? What would you say if
someone asked you to watch a movie with them? The kind with people who are
immodestly dressed.”
“I would say. 1’m sorry. I’m a Christian. I'm not able to do that.”
Mom?’s smile would turn up extra bright and we’d all get a clap. “That’s right!
And remember what we say to ourselves about the choices in front of us?”
This time it would be on all of us to reply, our voices singsonging in unison.
“Others may, we may not.”
Mom’s way of instructing us was true to who she is—a homemaker and full-
time mama who knew how to nurture her babies with patience. Pops joined in
the role-play games as well, but his approach was slightly different. He operated
like a teacher or preacher, using illustrations to make his point, but mixed in a
little politician and salesman who knows how to work a room. When it was his
turn to mold us into the young men and women he envisioned, he was able to
capture our imaginations by breaking down the challenges ahead of us into
simple, binary choices.
“You've got the world over here,” he would say during Bible time, holding his
left arm far away from his body. “And then,” thrusting his right hand far out in
the other direction, “Christianity is over here. There’s a line between them. Do
you want to get as close to that line as you can? Do you want to walk so near to it
that you might possibly be pulled into the world? Or do you want to steer as far
away from it as you can get?”
“I want you to picture yourself on a table,” he would explain. “It’s much
easier for somebody to pull you off the table than for you to pull them up. Now
picture yourself with two or three people up there on the table with you. Maybe
then it’s a little harder for someone to pull you down, and a little easier for you
to pull that person up on the table with you. That’s how it is in life, and it’s why
you need to be careful who you spend your time with. Like my mom always told
me, show me your friends and I'll show you your future.”
His lessons made an impact on me. They worked on my siblings as well,
because whenever Pops was talking with us like this—his voice a blend of
warmth and warning—the whole room was silent. There were lots of mini
sermons and stories, but one always stood out more than most.
“I was about twelve or thirteen when I went to a seminar,” Pops told us.
“That was when I first heard about the power of music and the dangers of rock
and roll. It’s not just the lyrics but the music itself. When the drums get going,
that backbeat has so much power over us. It can control us. That night, when I
arrived home, I realized that the music I had been listening to was not Christ-
honoring, because it was basically rock music with Christian words added on. I
felt so convicted that I immediately got my eight tracks and took a hammer and
busted them up.”
I didn’t know what an eight track was at first until Pops explained it, and I'd
only ever heard rock music when we were out at a parade or a fair. Even my
exposure to contemporary Christian music was limited at that time in my life.
But I was captivated by the image of Pops being not much older than me,
destroying his entire music collection because he wanted to follow God’s lead in
his life and live like a Christian should—set apart, with convictions. He had said
that I was like my mom, but there were so many things about my dad that I
wanted to emulate too.
The story became a kind of legend in our house, and we heard Pops repeat it
often. We liked that it was both practical and inspirational and we could apply it
to our own lives. We liked the idea of Dad taking a hammer to the devil like that,
and we liked it because it marked the beginning of our family’s involvement with
a man named Bill Gothard, the man who had delivered the seminar that had
made such an impact on Pops. Gothard was the founder and leader of IBLP (the
Institute in Basic Life Principles), and eventually, when the film crews and
excited whispers and stares from fans became a staple of our lives, the
relationship between Pops and Gothard and his organization would become
increasingly significant. And increasingly complicated.
But back in the days before we were on TV, things were simpler for us
Duggars. We put into practice the lessons that Mom and Dad were teaching us,
and we found our own ways of emulating our parents. For a while, all of us older
kids and our friends formed different clubs, like the What Would Jesus Do Club,
where a bunch of my sisters and a few friends would gather to make WWJD
bracelets and talk about handing them out to people. There was another group
formed in which us girls all read and discussed a book called Beautiful Girlhood.
My sister Jana also formed a club that met in the shed and ate ice cream. I went
to all of them regularly, especially Jana’s.
These clubs were good, but the one I really wanted to join wouldn’t let me in.
And that bothered me.
One evening during Bible time, Pops told us that the local gas station had
started selling pornography. We were all shocked and upset, and my older
brothers Josh and John were determined to do something about it. They invited
Steffan and Jeremiah, two of their fellow homeschool friends, and formed the
Boys Christian Outreach Team—known as the Boycott Club for short. Their
mission was clear: they planned to buy a load of Christian tracts—small leaflets
explaining how to become a Christian—hand them out in town, and try to
persuade everyone they knew to boycott the gas station. And if that wasn’t
enough, there was even a rumor that every time they met, they were going to eat
pickles, and that Josh was going to cover them with his own homemade
seasoning salt—a legendary recipe that Josh made himself with Lawry’s seasoned
salt, onion powder, lemon pepper, salt, pepper, and a few other secret
ingredients.
The Boycott Club was where it was at, and I was desperate to join. But no
matter how much I begged or how politely I asked, my application was refused
on account of me being a girl. It was only when I offered two dollars to join that
the boys agreed that the rules could be bent a little for me.
I was a little nervous before I attended my first meeting in the boys’ bedroom.
I was careful to sit perfectly still and silent as the four members sat in a circle,
looking at the items Josh had placed on the floor in the middle: a locked money
box, a small pile of tracks, a jar of dill pickles, and a container with his pickle salt
inside.
“Okay,” Josh said, calling the meeting to order. “So, first order of business is
money. John, how much do we have?”
“Nineteen dollars and fifty-nine cents.”
A warm murmur of approval went around the room.
“And Steffan, can you update us on the tracts?”
Steffan bent over the pile of Christian literature in front of him and pulled
out a couple. “Some new ones came in the mail. I particularly like this one about
not being left behind on the day of judgment.”
Another warm murmur of approval.
“Good,” said Josh. “My dad says that the gas station is still selling
pornography, so we can keep encouraging people not to shop there.”
And with that, it was pickle time.
Duggar kids, 1995
I never had to look far to be reminded of the ways that our family was different
to others. It took an eleven-hour drive in our beat-up RV—that usually ended
up lasting two days with the added stops and breakdowns—for me to discover
how similar we were to others.
It was the mid-to-late 1990s. I was little at the time—too young even to have
been given Joy as my buddy—but my memories are clear. We set out early in the
morning and drove from our home in northwest Arkansas, taking Interstate 40
past Little Rock and all the way across Tennessee to Knoxville. It was a long
drive, but the moment we arrived at our destination, we all knew it was worth it.
We were attending a conference in a basketball arena at the University of
Tennessee, and the venue itself was enough to make my eyes pop. Bleachers rose
high and wide, there were bright lights shining onto the stage, and a men’s
quartet was practicing while people rushed around onstage putting the blue
curtains and green ferns in place. We found and occupied a row, way up high
toward the back. Mom had given each of us a bag with a coloring book, a new
box of crayons, and some snacks. Exciting as the bag was, I was too busy staring
all around me.
Wherever I looked, there were people who were just like us. Families with
identically dressed children—the girls in matching floral blouses and skirts that
reached down to the ground, the boys in navy or khaki pants and button-down
shirts. Parents marshalling their family units around the arena, some with four
or five kids, others with closer to twenty. Having spent the first years of my life
being taught how different we were from other people, it was almost shocking to
see so many people who dressed like Duggars.
The conference was called Advanced Training Institute (ATT) family
conference and had been organized by IBLP, the same group that was behind the
seminar that had made such an impact on Pops. He and Mom had started to
follow the teaching together soon after they'd gotten married, but this was our
first trip as a family to the annual conference designed to encourage and equip
homeschooling families like ours.
As the event got underway, I was spellbound by the music. The quartet sang
in perfect harmony, and the whole auditorium was then led in a series of upbeat
hymns—“We’re Marching to Zion,” “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” and
“Victory in Jesus”—all accompanied by a single, talented pianist.
The singing was powerful, but it was nothing compared to the moment
when IBLP’s founder and leader, Mr. Bill Gothard, took the stage. He was short
and soft-spoken, but there wasn’t a single person in the audience who wasn’t
listening to what he said.
Just like the clothes and the large families, what I heard was instantly familiar
to me.
“Children are a blessing from the Lord!”
“Music can be a tool of the devil! Dancing is immoral and leads to sinful
thoughts and behaviors!”
“If somebody was offering you a million dollars, would you refuse it? That’s
what you're doing if you’re standing in the way of God’s plan for you to have
more children. Reject children and you are rejecting the very blessing of God!”
“Modesty is vital. Do not let yourself or your children lead someone into
temptation.”
Even though he spoke passionately about the value of children and the
importance of large families, he was single. He had never married and had no
children, yet I never heard anyone at any of the conferences take issue with it.
Mr. Gothard wasn’t like the rest of us. The usual rules didn’t seem to apply to
him.
He loved to quote scripture. The King James Version was the only translation
used, so the language was old and dusty. But there was a power and authority in
it, and I listened carefully, grateful for the clear rules that the Bible provided.
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his
reward” (Psalms 127:3).
“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a
man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the
LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5).
“In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with
shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly
array” (1 Timothy 2:9).
I was young, so I guess I only understood a fraction of everything I heard—
and whenever Mr. Gothard started talking about “the seven basic principles of
design, authority, responsibility, suffering, ownership, freedom, and success,” I
zoned out—but many of the words that echoed around the arena had been said
many times by my parents at home. And looking around at the faces that were
locked on the stage, I guessed that whatever Mr. Gothard was saying had to have
been worth following.
Eventually Mr. Gothard stepped away from the lectern and invited other
people up to join him. I watched as a handful of parents with young babies
walked nervously onto the stage. “These are our reversal babies,” said Mr.
Gothard, at which point the whole arena exploded with applause. My siblings
and I were confused, and Mom tried her best to explain over the noise of the
clapping what a vasectomy was or how some women had their tubes tied, and
the surgical procedures required to reverse it. A lot of the details went over my
head, but the whole place was so full of joy that I didn’t doubt for one minute
that a reversal baby was a very good thing.
I didn’t need any explanation when the next group of people were invited up.
It was a family, a perfectly dressed dad leading a perfectly dressed mom, with
eight perfectly dressed children following on behind. They all smiled as they
moved with grace and elegance across the stage, arranging themselves in a perfect
semicircle in front of a microphone. Mr. Gothard interviewed the dad briefly
about how his business was prospering and how his family was such a blessing,
then stepped back as the family prepared to launch into song.
The arena was silent.
Every one of the eight kids was smiling serenely as they sang.
The harmonies were nothing less than perfect.
This, I would later discover, was an IBLP tradition, and they were a Model
Family.
Ahead of each conference, families could audition for the privilege of being
invited onstage and perform a musical number in front of everyone. Some sang a
cappella like this family, others brought their instruments and played along. The
music was always impressive, but it was only a part of what made a Model
Family special. They had to be modestly dressed, have a lot of kids, homeschool
all of them, and play the right kind of music to the right kind of standard. But
there was more to it than that. Model Families had to demonstrate the values
that Mr. Gothard was preaching. Over the years I would learn from watching
Model Families paraded onstage—as well as reading about them when they were
profiled in IBLP newsletters—what it looked like when a family had devoted
themselves to living a successful, God-blessed life.
Watching that family as they sang, and then listening to the applause once
they had finished, it was clear that we Duggars were in some ways short of the
perfection required to become a Model Family. When we played our instruments
at home, the sound was sometimes painful to hear. We didn’t keep a strict “early
to bed, early to rise” schedule that we were told was essential to success. We
could just about get everybody dressed the same, but it wouldn’t ever take long
before someone spilled, smudged, or dribbled mess on their clothes. We weren’t
Model Family material. Not yet, at least.
That IBLP conference in Knoxville marked the beginning of a new era in my life.
Before it, my world had been small. We were like settlers in a new, hostile land.
My life was almost entirely set at home—it was where we were schooled, where
we played, and where we were taught how to live. Home was small, but it was a
place of safety. It was our rock, and I knew every inch of it. The lands beyond it
were vast and unknowable, beset with hidden dangers that lurked like
quicksand.
But that trip east changed the way I saw things. We were not alone in the
world. There were others just like us out there, people who looked like us, sang
like us, and dressed like us. For the few days that we were there I had been able to
let my guard down a little, and I was grateful for that. Mr. Gothard and IBLP
had brought us together. He had brought us home.
I was delighted that our first trip to Knoxville was not our last. The annual
conference became a regular fixture in our family calendar, and we also started
attending other, smaller IBLP events throughout the year. Through these trips I
learned more about what it meant to live according to Mr. Gothard’s principles.
At first my parents didn’t send us out to any kids’ groups, mainly because the
groups cost money, but also because they preferred to keep us with them so we
could get the full benefit of the teaching. I would sit and take copious notes on
the importance of avoiding alcohol or submitting to the authority of my parents
at all ages, even after marriage. Each seminar would end with a call for people to
raise their hands as a sign that they were pledging to follow whatever IBLP
principle had just been explained. I felt the pressure to prove my dedication to
God, so it never took long before my hand was up in the air.
The more of the meetings I attended and the older I got, the more my
worldview was shaped. I studied the people around me, especially the young
women who were a few years older. Their dress was always modest, but some of
them dressed professionally and wore perfectly tailored suit jackets with dress
skirts, while others preferred more simple clothing—no patterns or bright
prints, just muted, plain colors, no makeup, and maybe even a head covering.
Most women I saw were smiling constantly, whether they were performing in
the choir or orchestra, or just walking around. To my eyes, they didn’t just look
happy, they looked nearly perfect. Theirs was a wholesome, complete life.
I wasn’t the only one paying attention or comparing myself to what I saw.
One evening, not long after my first homeschool conference experience, one of
the Model Families visited our area and a local church hosted a small event for
homeschool families to hear them speak. The family played music and sang, then
the parents spoke about their daily routine and gave tips on how they raised their
children. At one point the mother explained a new concept she had started
teaching her younger kids.
“We have always taught our children to address us with yes, maam or yes, sir,”
she said. “But we decided to take it a step further and teach them to say yes,
maam, Id be happy to! As Christian parents, it’s our goal to raise godly,
respectful, and obedient children. Our kids must learn to respect and obey their
parents first, then eventually they will learn to respect and obey God.”
I looked at my parents. They were both listening intently.
In the days that followed the event, my parents had us trying out the new
concept at Bible time, role-playing yes, maam/yes, sir, I'd be happy to! In a short
time, we had fully adopted the habit as our own.
IBLP wasn’t the only expansion in our world at that time. My dad started to get
involved in politics, successfully running for state legislature in 1998. Whenever
it was in session, our whole family would move for four months to a rented
house a little way outside Little Rock, Arkansas. Homeschooling would
continue just as it always did, though sometimes instead of crowding around the
kitchen table or learning outside in the far northwest of the state, some of us
older, more mature kids would be allowed to take all our study materials to the
capital building while Pops worked. We’d tag along to the small committee
meetings or occupy a corner of balcony area while Pops worked on the floor
below. We weren’t the only ones doing it, and there were even a couple of
homeschool families whose dads were down on the floor while the children
studied up on the balcony.
Duggar girls, June 1998
We picked up on some of the politics, but I mostly enjoyed chatting quietly
with my friends, eating candy and other special treats some of Pops’ co-workers
would give us. My brother Josh, however, was fascinated. He’d get dressed up in
a suit and tie and wander downstairs when the session was over. We’d watch him
swagger beside Pops, a twelve-year-old politician in the making, shaking hands
and talking about whatever bill had just been voted on. They called him the
“Little Governor.”
“Nike!”
That code word became just as powerful as the click of the tape player in a
house full of Duggar toddlers. But while the press of the play button would send
us into a blur of vertical motion, “Nike!” had the opposite effect. Whenever it
was called out, everybody immediately looked at their feet. Nobody hesitated.
Especially not the boys.
For as long as I can remember, my parents warned us regularly about the
dangers of sin. They told us that sin came in many forms, like lying, stealing,
disobeying our parents, or being a tattletale (which my parents called “stirring
up contention among the brethren”). But perhaps the most dangerous and
destructive sins of all were around sex and temptation.
At first, when we were much younger, the lessons were simple and clear-cut.
“Physical intimacy was created by God and reserved for marriage,” they said
frequently. “So the only person you should ever kiss is the one you marry, on
your wedding day.”
I liked this simple rule. It made sense to me.
But later, as we got older and the first of the Duggar kids approached
puberty, the lessons became more complex.
It started one summer when I was around nine, Josh was twelve and the
twins John-David and Jana were ten. It must have been around the time of either
the Spice Girls or Britney Spears—neither of whom we had ever heard of—and
whenever we went into town it seemed like every other girl we saw was wearing
the kind of clothes that showed all their curves and most of their bellies.
At first we tried to ignore it, but with so many people following the fashion,
it was almost impossible. Eventually, one day, when we were pulling out of a gas
station, one of my older siblings cracked.
“Don’t look!” they said as we passed by a particularly scantily dressed teenage
girl. “There’s a bad girl dressed immodestly over there!”
Mom turned around instantly and looked at us all in turn. She wasn’t
smiling.
“Children, be careful about how you speak of others and the words you use.
You know, I do want you guys to protect your eyes, but I also want you to be
careful not to think down about other people who dress a certain way. When
you see someone dressed immodestly, it’s okay to tell your siblings not to look,
but don’t put the other person down. That girl just doesn’t know any better. It’s
not our place to judge. We should be praying for her instead.”
She paused briefly. “When I was younger, before I was a Christian, I used to
mow my lawn in a bikini. I really didn’t know any better.”
The silence that settled on us all was as heavy as a deep winter snow. To think
that Mom was dressing so inappropriately at the same time Pops was destroying
his music collection in pursuit of righteousness was kind of hard to
comprehend. But Mom was the most godly woman I knew. Thinking about her
transformation only made me love and respect her more.
Later that evening, at home during Bible time, Mom carried on the
conversation. “You know what made me want to stop dressing like I used to? It
was when I learned from your dad that men aren’t like us girls. When women
wear tight or revealing clothes that show certain parts of their skin between their
collarbone and knees, it gets guys going and can stir up sensual desires. It can
make them think bad thoughts. When girls do that to men, they’re defrauding
them. That’s not good, and it can lead them to sin.”
I think that was the first time I'd ever heard the word defraud, and it hung in
my mind for a while. I didn’t want to cause young men to think impure
thoughts, and I purposed to never defraud, not by the way I dressed, not by the
way I acted. I would be pure and live Christlike, even if it was difficult at times.
Perhaps one day I would be worthy of a truly godly man.
Pops raised the issue with us as well, explaining that even though we all have
bad thoughts at times, what mattered was how we dealt with them. “You have a
choice about how you will deal with those thoughts. A thought becomes a sin
when you dwell on it.”
It was around that time that “Nike
|?
became part of the Duggar code. My
parents were looking for a way to keep the boys from having impure thoughts,
but wanted something more effective than simply telling them not to look
whenever temptation walked by. “Nike!” was their solution. Whenever we were
out and saw a female dressed badly—someone defrauding men by potentially
planting bad thoughts in their minds—someone would call “Nike!” and
everybody would immediately lock their eyes on their shoes until the all clear
was given.
But Nike wasn’t enough.
The dangers were not just out there on the street or in the mall, and they
weren’t just limited to the summer. They were closer to home, as I soon
discovered.
I didn’t know it at the time, but one problem was church. For as long as I
could remember, we had attended Temple Baptist Church. The teaching wasn’t
quite the same as Mr. Gothard’s, and I don’t think there were any other IBLP
families there, but it took a conservative line on most things, and people were
kind to us even though we didn’t share the same beliefs. My parents had always
seemed happy enough with us going there, even if some of the other non-IBLP
families had standards that were lower than ours—sending their kids to public
or Christian schools and allowing them to hang out with the youth group and
goof off when the service was over.
But it was at the end of the year when things went wrong. We attended a
Christmas program at a different church and sat in silent horror as female
members of the youth group—which no Duggar kid had ever been allowed to
attend—performed a dance.
Later that night, Pops was somber as we settled down in our beds for Bible
time.
“I am so sorry,” he began, addressing us all but looking particularly at the
boys. “You should not have had to have seen that. I was wrong to take us there
tonight. We won’t be going back to that church event again.”
For a while, Bible time revolved around the theme of how hard it can be to do
right even in Christian circles. Not every Christian held themselves to the same
standard. “Sometimes,” Pops said, “you have to be bold and learn to stand
alone.”
This must have gotten Mom and Pops thinking about Temple Baptist,
because a short while later they announced that we had left and were going to be
part of a new church that a pastor and homeschool father was starting. Pops let
the church meet in a trailer house that he owned, and right from the start it
reminded me of the ATI and IBLP conferences.
I don’t remember what I felt about us leaving Temple Baptist. Some of that
time in my life is blurred, the memories pulled out of focus. But I do remember
the afternoon when Pops and Mom called me into their bedroom and closed the
door. I was eleven at the time and they both looked pale and tired in ways I'd
never seen them look before. I wondered if Mom had been crying.
“Hey,” said Pops quietly. For once, the words weren’t coming fast and freely.
He had to search for them, to hunt them down. “Josh... has been talking to us.
He has confessed about some stuff that he’s done. Can we talk to you about it?”
I nodded. Sat quiet. And waited.
Waited for Pops to find the next words that he was going to say.
CHAPTER TWO
=
"A Window of Opportunity that God has
Given Us” (and other half-truths)
When Josh went away, we didn’t talk much. The subject of whatever had
happened with Josh wasn’t embargoed and it wasn’t off-limits, it’s just that it
wasn’t something that I wanted to talk about so there wasn’t much to say. Mom
and Pops gave us the bare details about Josh, and so all I really knew was that
he'd been sent away to stay with some of their friends, that he would be working
construction, and that hopefully it wouldn’t be long before he would return to
us. That was all. I was happy to move on and put it all behind me.
As well as “Nike!”, and all the other useful phrases that guided our steps, we
had grown up being constantly reminded not to “stir up contention among the
brethren.” It was a way for our parents to keep us siblings from talking badly
about each other, or putting anyone down, but over time it became something
else—something more sinister. By preventing us from discussing anything
controversial or sensitive with each other, the instruction not to “stir up
contention among the brethren” became a tool for silence, for control, for guilt.
Despite being vague about Josh, my parents rarely missed an opportunity to
involve us in other areas of life. Whenever there was work to be done around the
house, from daily chores to maintenance and yard work, we would all be given a
task, some tools and a clear set of instructions. Josh and John had both learned
how to drive before they turned twelve, and by the time I was the same age I
could teach my little sister to read, change diapers, babysit for short periods of
time, and fix a meal for the entire family as well as any adult.
It was no different when it came to Pops’ political ambitions. When he ran
for state representative, we became his campaign staff. He mobilized the army of
Duggars and drove us around northwest Arkansas, setting out lawn signs and
handing out leaflets at events. We'd get Wendy’s on the way home, and even
when the days were long and the waiting was longer, it was good to be involved,
especially when he won an initial term and then re-election. As kids, we had
purpose. We weren’t stuck in a classroom, exposed to all the perils of public
school. We were out in the real world, helping Mom and Pops serve God within
it.
That sense of purpose grew even greater the moment Pops told us that he had
decided to run against the incumbent for the Republican nomination to the US
Senate.
“Election to the United States Senate has never been something I have ever
sought. It’s not me that wants to run,” he explained one day. “But I really feel
like God wants me to do this. P’'ve prayed about it and have done something that
I only do for the most important decisions ever.”
One of my siblings asked the question that we were all thinking.
“What, Pops?”
“T flipped a coin three times,” he said, his eyes growing wider, and a smile of
amazement forming on his mouth. “And all three times it landed on heads. So I
said, ‘Okay, God, you want me to run, so I will run.’”
I was nearly eleven years old at the time and knew little of politics or the
challenge of running against an incumbent, but I did know that senators and
their families lived in Washington, DC. I didn’t much like the idea of leaving
Arkansas and the friends we had around us, but I also knew that sacrifice was an
essential part of serving God.
“Ministry sometimes requires sacrifice,” Mom and Pops would say often,
before going on to quote Psalm 34:19: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous:
but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”
So, we traveled the whole state, setting out yard signs, handing out leaflets
and eating Wendy’s on the way home. The days and distances covered were way
longer than Pops’ previous state campaigns, and the sacrifice felt real. And when
primary polling day came around, and we all dressed in our matching outfits and
accompanied Pops to the polling place—where a handful of journalists had
gathered to tell the story—I was sure that a God-given victory was just around
the corner.
I was wrong.
Pops lost.
His response was calm and measured. He reminded us that God had never
told him he would win, just that he was supposed to run. He was satisfied that
he had obeyed God’s call, and I respected him for that. I also think us kids were a
little relieved not to have to move to DC for several years.
But the loss was not the end of the story. In fact, it was really just the
beginning of everything. One of those journalists who had interviewed Pops at
the polling place was from the New York Times. He'd written about this crazy
Christian guy with a bunch of kids, who had failed at the ballot box. The story
had made it into print, alongside a photo of my parents and all fifteen of us
Duggars lined up in a row, walking into the polling place, smiling cheerfully at
the camera in our homemade, matching outfits.
A week or two later, Pops got a call from a magazine that wanted to know
more about our family and run a feature about us. Pops wasn’t sure at first, and
he told them that our family was going through a difficult time, with their eldest
son being temporarily gone and all. But he and Mom prayed about it, then told
the rest of us that he wanted us all to pray and see if we felt that God was
opening up a new opportunity for our family. We did what we'd been asked to
do, and we all dutifully agreed that this was something God wanted us to do.
Not that we had much choice in the matter.
After the feature came out—complete with a photo shoot with all of us
(minus Josh) out in a field somewhere, surrounded by hay bales—Pops played a
message on our answering machine from a man who said he was from Discovery
Health and that he wanted to make a one-time documentary about our family.
Pops was skeptical.
“I don’t want you to make us out to be freaks,” he said when he called the
guy back.
I didn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but as I listened, and for a
long time after the conversation, Pops looked serious. He looked like he did
whenever he was listening hard to Mr. Gothard or one of the other lawmakers in
the state house of representatives.
>:
“You know,” said Pops to all of us later at Bible time, “when I ran for senate, I
didn’t see God’s ultimate purpose in it. But with the article and now this TV
documentary, Pm beginning to see that God had something bigger and better in
store for us. This is a window of opportunity that God has given us to show
people what a Christian family can look like. This is our chance to share with the
world that children really are a blessing from the Lord.”
I didn’t know it at the time, none of us did, but that phrase—“a window of
opportunity”—would become as familiar in the Duggar house as the cries of a
newborn baby, or the call of a director for there to be quiet on set. Mom and
Pops would repeat those five words often, and just like the call of “Nike!”, “a
window of opportunity” became part of our family shorthand. It was an instant
explanation of the reasons why certain choices were made, a reminder of the
blessings received and the sacrifices that all of us must make in return. But with
every passing season and every change that would follow, the meaning of those
five words would alter. In time, whenever I would hear anyone talk about how
that first decision to bring the TV cameras into our home was a window of
opportunity, all I would think about was secrets and lies.
I was grating cheese when the film crew showed up.
“Just act normal,” I was told by a man with an earring, as a camera loomed in
front of my face and a woman wearing pants started instructing everyone in my
family what to do. I was twelve now, a mess of self-conscious nerves and red-
faced awkwardness. Acting normal was not an option. I tried to relax, digging
out my best Sweet Jilly Muffin smile for the viewers.
“Look over there, sweetie. Don’t look at the camera!”
It wasn’t easy acting natural, especially when they had us all line up in our
pj’s outside the bathroom door. They wanted to show the viewers that we all
shared the two bathrooms in the house, but it left me feeling embarrassed,
uncomfortable, and a little unsafe. Not that I could express any of that to my
parents. This was a God-given window of opportunity, after all. The best thing I
could do was bury my feelings.
It wasn’t all bad. At one point the woman wearing pants announced that the
TV crew was going to follow us to the store for groceries. As we pushed our five
shopping carts around Aldi, I heard a whisper that the crew was going to be
paying for everything. So, for the first time ever, Mom wasn’t directing us to buy
our usual stocks of canned beans, ramen noodles, and forty-eight-cent frozen
beef and bean burritos. Instead, we were allowed to fill our carts with boxes of
Lucky Charms and Honeycomb cereals, ice cream sandwiches, frozen pizzas,
and all-beef chimichangas. Our carts were heavier than ever before, and all of us
Duggar kids had the same double-wide smile fixed on our faces. For once, the
week ahead wasn’t going to be filled with tater tot casserole or bean sandwiches.
The TV crew visited us for two or three days that first time, then returned for
another few days every two or three months. It was a long, slow process, and it
got so that we hardly noticed them when they were with us, and missed them
when they left and our weekly menu returned to its usual staples of beans, tuna,
and macaroni.
By the time 14 Children and Pregnant Again! was complete, Josh had
returned to live with us. His head had been shaved, I guess in an attempt to
punish him or instill some humility. I wasn’t worried about him, though. I was a
kid, and I trusted that things would get better now that Josh had been “fixed.”
Besides, it felt right to be complete as a family again, especially as Mom had given
birth to Jackson, the fifteenth Duggar child. Pregnancy wasn’t easy for Mom,
especially in the first trimester when the nausea was bad, but we loved the
excitement that surrounded a new baby. To have another sibling to love on and
care for made me deeply happy.
For a while, the baby eclipsed the filming. We had been sent a DVD to
approve the forty-five-minute documentary, but still didn’t have TV in the
house, so by the time the show aired, I'd started to forget about it a little.
That didn’t last long.
14 Children and Pregnant Again! went on to become the number one show
on Discovery Health at the time. Pops was ecstatic.
“We prayed about it as a family,” said Pops at Bible time one night, his eyes
dancing with excitement. “We felt like God was wanting us to share with the
world the message that children are a blessing from the Lord, and now it’s the
number one show on the channel! God is blessing this! God is using us to share
his message with the world!”
From that moment on, we didn’t just talk about a window of opportunity.
Now we had a new name for what we were doing: it was our “ministry.”
Duggar family at old Johnson Road house, 1993
The Duggar family kept on growing, and by the time Mom gave birth to
Johannah, her sixteenth, the TV crews were regular visitors to our little home
surrounded by the cow pastures. It was getting crowded in there, with only two
bathrooms and three bedrooms, so Pops bought some land over near Tontitown
and started the long process of building us a brand-new, seven-thousand-square-
foot steel-framed home. I was too young to even begin to wonder where the
money came from and was just happy at the prospect of a little more space at
home. We moved into a rental while the new house was being built, and in true
Duggar style, we did as much of the work as we could—laying the radiant heat
flooring, tiling the floors and a whole lot more besides. But even though we were
able to dedicate plenty of time to the project, and our workforce was big, the
house was bigger. A build which we hoped would be ready in a year was still in
progress when Mom announced that she was pregnant with her seventeenth
baby.
The arrival of another Duggar meant we had ourselves a deadline, but our
growing number wasn’t the only reason to hurry up our work. A second
documentary had shown us starting the work on the house, but the producers
wanted the third Duggar TV special to feature us actually completing the work
and finally moving in. Thanks to some good negotiating from Pops, the network
agreed to get out the checkbook.
Duggar family in front of the Big House while still under construction, 2004
If we'd been excited about filling our shopping carts with free Honeycomb
cereal, frozen pizzas and chimichangas, this was a whole other level. A crew of
workers turned up to the site, and the producers flew in an interior designer
from New York. She helped us pick out the kind of bedroom sets and other
furniture that we would never have been able to afford. There was still a ton of
work for us to do, but seeing the Big House (as we always called it) sprinting
toward the finish line like that made all the long hours worthwhile.
I don’t know when I first heard Pops describe us as “a filming family,” but it
made sense to me. We studied as a family, we worked as a family, we did
everything as a family. Neither Mom nor Pops had hobbies outside of us, and I
was thankful for that. They were devoted to each other and devoted to us. We
were an everything family, so why not let the cameras come in and show the
world?
There was a fourth documentary—which followed us on a road trip—and
then a fifth, which covered the birth of Jennifer, the seventeenth Duggar kid. As
a “filming family,” we were opening our home and letting the world come on in
and take a look. By this point I was sixteen and no longer blushing every time the
camera came near me. The crew was almost becoming part of the family, and I
was willing to take whatever direction I was given. This was our window of
opportunity. This was our ministry.
So when Mom and Pops told us that the network, TLC, wanted to move on
from one-off documentaries and start making an actual reality show about us, I
wasn’t blown away with surprise. It was just another confirmation of the fact
that this whole thing was a God-ordained opportunity. To my mind, at least, it
had nothing to do with us wanting to be famous or see ourselves on TV. After
all, we still didn’t even have a T'V in the house and we would only watch the
rough cuts of each documentary when they were sent over on DVD. I was
vaguely aware of when the shows were being broadcast, and strangers might say
something nice to us from time to time about what they'd seen of us on TV. But
when Pops asked us to pray about whether we should say yes to TLC’s offer, the
prospect of becoming famous was the last thing on my mind, especially when
Pops explained the condition that he’d made with the network.
“I told them that our faith is the core of our lives, so they cannot edit out our
faith. They said it’s our story, and that we can tell it however we want.”
In the world of IBLP, it was never okay to say you were proud of anything or
anyone, no matter how godly the person or righteous the decision. But even
though I knew Proverbs 11:2 and 16:18 by heart (“When pride cometh, then
cometh shame,” and “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before
a fall”), I was kind of proud of Pops for telling TLC that our faith was
nonnegotiable. I believed in what we were doing and prayed that God would
give my parents the guidance they needed as they negotiated.
“They’re calling it ‘17 Kids and Counting,” he announced one day, letting the
words hang in the air a little as we heard the title for the first time. “This is a
ministry opportunity that God has brought to us. If it were over tomorrow, we
would be happy.”
I looked around at my siblings. Nobody disagreed. It seemed to me as though
we were of one mind, united. We trusted Mom and Pops completely. Whatever
happened with the show, however long it lasted, I was convinced that it could
only ever be a good thing.
I was sixteen when the individual documentaries turned into a reality show
series, and I was old enough to notice the different demands that it placed on our
family. The first five documentaries had been filmed over a period of almost
three years, but we shot the whole of the first season of 17 Kids and Counting—
all ten episodes—in a few months. The crew would come three days each week,
filming three hours in the morning then another couple in the afternoon or
evening, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, depending on the week.
Once all the Duggar family content had been shot, we'd have a series of interview
days in a local studio where we’d narrate the show. It ran like this for weeks on
end, and homeschooling was often interrupted so that we could get out of the
house and film something fresh and new for the show—like taking a trip to New
York City for sightseeing or driving up to Ohio for a family reunion. These
experiences were exciting, opening the world to us. Nobody complained, and I
guess we just accepted it when Bible times didn’t only include praying and
reading the Bible together, but also became more extensive briefing times, with
Pops and Mom reminding us of upcoming filming commitments, as well as
cautioning us to not tell other people about what we were doing. We were a
filming family now, so we had to take it seriously.
Aside from the filming trips, the new show marked the return of the old
perks we'd enjoyed when 14 Children and Pregnant Again! was shot. If we went
to Aldi in the weeks we were filming, our carts would be filled without us
worrying about the price. On days that the crew was with us they would order in
food from wherever we wanted. Pops even gave us older kids a debit card, so that
if we were out running errands or hauling the younger ones to a music lesson or
dental appointment and it was getting late in the day, we could grab food out on
the way home and give him the receipts. It was a whole lot better than how it
used to be, with us driving around with a Crock-Pot of chili, feeding the little
ones on the run.
We were already deep into filming the second season when the first one aired.
Just like with the documentaries, we didn’t always watch them live but had
carefully checked over the various rough cuts that had been sent over to us. Just
like Pops had told them, they hadn’t edited out references to our faith, and when
the show aired, I was excited at the thought of all those people across America
watching and getting to see Christian values lived out on a secular television
channel and maybe inspiring them to live for Christ.
It wasn’t just random strangers who were watching us and taking note of
how we lived. One day we were told that we were soon going to host a special
visitor for lunch. A delegation of IBLP leaders from Romania was visiting the
US, traveling with several of the main leaders, including Mr. Gothard himself.
They were going to be in the neighborhood, and they were going to visit us for
lunch.
The excitement was instant. But then came the challenge. The Romanian
delegation totaled about fifty people, and there were almost as many US IBLP
leaders accompanying them. The Big House had two kitchens, one regular-sized
and the other a full commercial one with an industrial dishwasher and super-
wide ovens, so we had the capacity to cook for large numbers, but not the pans
required to prepare lunch for almost one hundred people. Mom put out a call to
her friends from church, and a small army of wives and some of their kids
descended to help clean, cook, and prepare for this epic event.
There was no filming that day, but even if the crew had been there, I doubt
we would have noticed them. When we heard the buses turn off the road and roll
down our gravel drive, we all took up our places out front. We'd rehearsed. our
family greeting a couple of times, and lined up in age order, ready to extend a
hand, as we put on our brightest IBLP smiles and introduced ourselves.
We'd sometimes practiced this at Bible time over the years, especially for the
newest younger kids to learn the drill, and it had always gone well. With the
Romanians, however, we hit a little turbulence. Both the men and women
among them didn’t just want to shake our hands, they greeted every single one
of us with a kiss on each side of our face. Aside from the occasional handshakes
and side hugs at church, or when being examined by the dentist or the
occasional visit to the doctor when we were sick, kids in the Duggar family
weren’t supposed to have much physical contact with the opposite gender. But
even though the greeting line lasted forever and was awkward—all of us older
kids were blushing—we accepted it as a cultural difference. Besides, the presence
of Mr. Gothard was enough to push any embarrassment to the background.
I wasn’t surprised by how short he was, as Pd seen him up close before, but
I'd never seen him outside of a conference, especially not in Arkansas in our
home. Having Mr. Gothard visit us at the Big House was a huge deal. In my
opinion, having such a man of God visit our home was more impressive than
being greeted by a fan in an airport, and even more impressive than a visit by the
president himself. Mr. Gothard was different from a boisterous politician, but
also very similar with his charm. At a little over seventy years old, with black
dyed hair, a round face and a wide smile, he had a twinkle in his eye as he looked
straight at each person he addressed. His voice was soft, with a strong northern
accent, and he gave each of us a firm handshake as he slowly moved down the
line. Watching him come closer, greeting my parents first, then my youngest
siblings, I could feel the nerves mounting within me.
When it was finally my turn, I thrust my hand out and blurted out the words
I had been rehearsing for days.
“If it weren’t for you, Mr. Gothard, I likely wouldn’t be here!”
He looked intrigued. His smile growing even wider. I stammered on.
“My parents have always told me that they would have stopped having
children after they had the twins, numbers two and three. I’m number four, so
thank you for teaching them that children really are a blessing from the Lord!”
I don’t remember what he said in reply, but I know what I felt, and it wasn’t
embarrassment or awkwardness. In my eyes and the eyes of everyone I knew, Mr.
Gothard was a legend, a man who we all looked up to. To have his attention on
me for just a few seconds was enough to leave me feeling on top of the world. As
Sweet Jilly Muffin, approval hunter, it was a moment that I would treasure for
the rest of my life.
The Duggar favorite lunch of tater tot casserole and sauteed green beans (from a
cookbook written by the Voellers, one of the best-known Model Families) must
have been a success, because from then on, we found ourselves invited to a whole
bunch of IBLP events. Sometimes my parents would be invited to speak, and
occasionally we got free lodging and entry into the kids’ activities that we
previously hadn’t been able to afford. We were starting to become a Model
Family. Along with some of my sisters, I was invited to attend one of their camps
called Journey to the Heart up in Michigan. We were invited to serve as leaders,
which was a great honor that I hadn’t expected at all. Even more surprising,
though, was the fact that after the camp, my elder sister Jana was personally
invited by Mr. Gothard to visit IBLP headquarters in Chicago and work there
for a while. We were new to the inner workings of IBLP, but we knew enough
already to understand why it was only Jana who was invited. She was the only
elder Duggar girl who was blond, and everybody knew that Mr. Gothard liked
blond girls. We'd joke about it, calling Jana one of “Gothard’s Girls.” It didn’t
occur to me at all how strange, unsafe, and unwise it was. And if I had, I doubt I
would have been able to speak out against it. Sweet Jilly Muffin had grown up,
but I was still terrified of conflict and would do anything I could to avoid it.
I was sixteen the day some of the families from church had come over to the
Big House. It was one of those hot summer afternoons when it was impossible
to stop sweating, especially when we were all wearing full-length skirts. I'd
outgrown wearing the pantaloons a few years earlier when I'd stopped climbing
trees and learned to keep my skirt down at all times, but I felt bad that some of
the little kids were getting kind of cranky in the heat. So I got permission from
my parents to set up a water balloon fight.
It was fun, and everyone was having a good time, shrieking and yelling out as
we chased each other across the grass. But then a voice I didn’t recognize yelled
out.
“Stop! What are you doing!?”
I froze, a large tub of water balloons heavy in my hands. I turned to see one of
the dads, red-faced with more than just the heat. He was enraged that his kids
would be playing like this without his permission, and the veins were popping
above the buttoned-up collar of his shirt. He was yelling at the top of his voice,
gesturing for his thirteen kids to immediately run toward him. They all obeyed
instantly.
“Who gave you permission to do this? Answer me! Who allowed this?”
Nobody answered, and he kept on yelling. In the chaos I slipped away, ran to
the end of the house that was farthest away, and locked myself in the bathroom.
It must have taken me ten or twenty minutes for my heart rate to get back to
normal, and another hour at least before I was brave enough to unlock the door.
I guess I inherited my avoidance of conflict from Mom. I doubt it was from
Pops. When the show was just beginning and we were acclimating ourselves to
our new life as a filming family, something wholly unexpected happened.
Something that made Pops upset in ways I'd never seen before.
It started with a letter.
Way back before Josh had been sent away, around the time we had left the
church that had allowed immodest dancing at its Christmas service, Josh had
been courting a girl. He must have confessed to her vaguely about the abuse that
he had committed, because I heard later that the girl had written a letter to him,
expressing her anger at what he’d done. But instead of sending it to him, she’d
tucked it away in a book.
Four years later, in 2006, the book was loaned to a friend at church and the
letter resurfaced. It was read by someone who knew us, someone who attended
the same church as us. Instead of talking with Mom or Pops, she got more
information from church leadership, phoned a hotline, and informed DHS
about what she thought was a potentially abusive situation.
Everything changed when we were in Chicago to record with Oprah and
then attend our first IBLP Headquarters Christmas party. Pops received a call
notifying him of the investigation, and as soon as the trip was over, myself, most
of my sisters, and my parents all had to be interviewed. We attended a closed-
court session. People—strangers—would come to our house at random times to
make sure there were locks on the doors and that everybody was sleeping where
they were supposed to be sleeping.
It was terrifying.
I was frightened that I was going to say the wrong thing and that someone
was going to take us away from Mom and Pops. One wrong word, one bad
answer, and Ill be the one who tears our family apart.
I tried not to let my fear show, I tried to bury it deep inside. But I was older
now and there was more at stake—it didn’t just affect me, it affected all of us. So
it was harder to bury the fear caused by the investigation than the fear caused by
the abuse that DHS was looking into.
Mom and Pops took time to sit with us all, to pray with us and explain as best
they could what was going on. I appreciated it, especially their advice.
“Just tell the truth,” they both said, many times. “It’s a safe place and they’re
just doing their job. Tell the truth and everything will work out fine.”
I was bound up tight in my own fear, but not so tight that I didn’t notice the
way that Pops was feeling too.
He was angry.
I had heard that the person who had found the letter and phoned the hotline
had also talked to a few other people in our church. While the details remained
private, the story of my brother having problems spread throughout our small
home church. Some families treated us kindly and with compassion, but I
believed others were jealous of our success with the television show and treated
us with suspicion. “They threw us to the wolves,” Pops said when the
investigation concluded. “They did not stick up for us at all. They’re the ones
who made this happen. They’re the ones who allowed DHS to investigate our
family, even though we had already taken care of it.”
The fallout was immense. We didn’t know who we could trust, who was for
us or who was against us. We pulled back from the church, no longer allowing
them to host services at the Big House. It created a deep divide within our
church, and in time, inevitably, I guess, the church split.
Like Pops, I was hurt and angry.
But when it was over, all I wanted to do was put it behind me. I had been
terrified of losing my family and traumatized by the questions I had been forced
to answer. I wanted to forget all about it. I wanted to move on from the whole
thing—as fast and as far away as possible.
CHAPTER THREE
=
Clipped Wings and Hills to Die On
I sat up straight, checked my skirt once more, and prepared my brightest smile.
A quick glance left and right told me that Jana, Jessa, and Jinger were all doing
likewise. It was one of our first public appearances since the release of our book
in March 2014 about our lives and our faith, called Growing Up Dugear. Td
been kind of unsure about it at first, but it had been way easier than I thought.
Pops had taken care of everything, from the writer who helped us with the
words to dealing with the publisher. He'd even told us that since there was an
advance, he had been able to buy us some new, gently used harps.
Writing was unfamiliar, but talking was easy. So at this impromptu Q&A ata
bookstore in North Carolina, we all knew what was expected of us. We knew the
unwritten script that we needed to follow.
“How do you kids feel about the show? Do you like it?”
“Oh, it’s a family ministry,” said Jana. “You know, sometimes it’s hard, but
the film crew is like family to us.”
“We love having them in our home,” I added, wanting to wipe away any hint
of a negative from my sister’s answer.
“And how long do you think it’s gonna go?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Jessa, “but I do know that we just feel
like it’s a window of opportunity that God has given our family.”
“And we'd be happy if it was over tomorrow,” said Jinger. “We're just leaving
it up to God.”
It was all true, but it was not the whole truth. Even in the early days, my
feelings were not quite as simple as the script we were following. Season one had
been a hit. So were seasons two and three, which followed soon after, airing a
total of forty-eight episodes throughout 2009. All that success meant that the
rhythm of our lives was increasingly set by the filming that was now taking place
for ten or eleven months of the year.
The crew filming in the girls’ room at the Big House
The perks were still good. We got to travel more—Mom and Pops went to
San Francisco for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and a bunch of us flew
down to El Salvador for a mission trip. but some of the best times were the
simplest ones, like a road trip to DC or to Branson, Missouri, and Silver Dollar
City. We'd crowd into our old RV with the back window open and make a game
of getting the semi drivers to honk at us. We'd park in a Walmart parking lot to
sleep at night, then stock up on Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, deli chicken
tenders, and potato wedge fries as soon as the store opened the next morning.
I loved these times when we were all together, especially when it was just us
Duggars. The presence of the film crew brought plenty of good things, but I
quickly grew to dislike the way they sometimes wanted to spring surprises on us.
I guess it made for good TV to see us react in real time to the news of whatever
challenge or adventure they'd set up for us, even if it was just an escape room or a
trip to a park, but it got to the point where I was feeling the stress nearly every
time they were filming. Either I was trying to bury my discomfort and anxiety
when they sprung a surprise on us, or fake my joy when we were filming
something we'd already rehearsed. I had to keep my reality far away from the TV.
With the increasing success of the show, we also started attracting some
negative attention. We had a family blog that people would use to contact us,
and at first Pops did all the sifting through emails, having warned us against
reading anything that came through it. He also warned us about any negativity
we might see online or hear about in other places, reminding us that “People are
going to say negative stuff. There will always be naysayers.”
There wasn’t much access to the internet for us in those days, and there was a
soft rule that we couldn’t do social media until we were married. But while Pops
could handle most of the emails, the amount of physical mail that people sent to
our home was starting to pile up. Some of us girls began to help sort through it
all and respond to people when possible. Most of the time the mail was
overwhelmingly positive and kind, but from time to time we'd receive something
negative. It might be a letter with packets of condoms inside, an all-caps message
telling us to STOP HAVING KIDS YOU'RE OVERPOPULATING THE
EARTH, or just plain old hate mail telling us we were horrible people. Our
parents would always respond with the same advice: “When you're doing what’s
right, you're always going to be persecuted. Don’t ever forget that Jesus was
persecuted, and he never sinned once in his whole life.”
I took comfort from their words. Despite the fact that I was hardwired to
search for approval like a sunflower that scans the sky, these negative reactions
didn’t bother me too much. Instead of feeling crushed by them, I actually felt
encouraged. All my life ?'d been taught that ministry comes with hardships, that
following God inevitably involves suffering. So in some ways, this negative
feedback was a kind of relief. Having been to El Salvador and seen the conditions
that the Indigenous Christians were experiencing down there—no electricity, no
running water, a constant humid heat and no AC—and frequently hearing from
missionaries in other places who lived in similar conditions and some even
worse, I was already starting to feel that the ministry that God had called us
Duggars to was way less challenging than others. Seeing the hate mail as a light
form of persecution for the sake of Christ somehow slightly eased my guilt. It
made me feel a little better about things.
I feel like the success of the show also changed the way that we were viewed by
the leaders of IBLP. We were still way less polished than the other Model
Families, but the fact that we were airing almost every week of the year made us
appealing in other ways. Instead of educating and resourcing the existing
followers of Mr. Gothard, we were introducing millions of new people to the
world of IBLP. It didn’t go unnoticed, and as well as us girls being invited to
help out at camps, or volunteer at the main offices, the leaders started asking
Pops for his input on decisions as well.
Pops was happy to oblige. He would tell us kids all about how he'd talked
with Mr. Gothard on this matter or that, how he’d recommended a certain
person speak at a conference. He seemed to enjoy this new position, but he
wasn’t only talking to Mr. Gothard or the other leaders. Pops often offered
encouragement to parents. Many times I'd heard him talking with couples about
their children, offering them advice like “You need to train them to understand
why they believe what they believe,” or “The Bible says to ‘train up a child in the
way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it.’ We as parents
are responsible to God for how we raise our kids.” Pops was never shy about
telling the truth, even when it hurt a little.
Pops was aligned with the way IBLP saw the world. Those “seven basic
principles” that were the core of everything made sense to him and had shaped
the way he and Mom brought us up. Mr. Gothard’s teaching determined what
little music we could listen to, the cut of our clothing, and the length of our hair.
We would be homeschooled and hardly ever allowed to spend time in the
company of anyone who wasn’t either our parent, an older sibling, or—on rare
occasions—a friend from church. There would never be any drinking, any
dancing, or even any contraception once we were married.
“Children are a blessing from God” was a fundamental statement that
underpinned so much of what IBLP taught, but so was the subject of authority,
especially the authority of parents over their children. A portion of scripture
that was frequently taught or referenced was “Honor thy father and mother;
(which is the first commandment with promise;) that it may be well with thee,
and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3). Honoring parents—
even into adulthood—was such a big deal that even if your parents weren’t
Christian, it would be a sin to disobey them. If you wanted to get married and
they refused to give their blessing, IBLP teaching was on the side of the parents.
There wasn’t a lot of talk about hell or damnation, but fear was a powerful
tool within IBLP. TV, public school, even contemporary Christian radio
stations with their rock music—these were all threats constantly trying to drag
us away from righteous Christian living. Children needed to be protected from
them all, and so there was a lot of talk about “umbrellas of protection”—one of
the most significant planks of IBLP teaching. If a child ever were to disobey their
parents’ instruction, or act in a way that dishonored them, they would be
placing themselves at risk. By disobeying their parents, they would be stepping
out from under the umbrella of protection, and terrible things could happen. By
turning themselves over to sin, God’s judgment would be on them.
In the world of IBLP, the parents’ authority didn’t end when their child
turned eighteen or even on the day they were married. They still talked about the
Bible’s teaching of “leave and cleave,” and how couples should make decisions
together, but it seemed like they didn’t really believe it when it conflicted with
the parental authority teaching. It might change or look different, but parental
authority never stopped, never weakened. Like all my siblings, I knew that I
would always strive to honor and obey my parents, even when I was married and
had kids of my own. Saying no, going against Mom’s or Pops’ wishes, it wasn’t
something I could ever imagine myself doing, especially since our beliefs aligned
in most areas. Many times my parents had told us that one day we'd get married
and do things a little differently than they had. “That’s okay,” they'd said, and so
I believed that when the time came, if my husband and I made some different
decisions about things from the way I was raised, those decisions would be
respected.
However, even though I couldn’t see it at the time, IBLP also encouraged
parents to clip their children’s wings. They taught that children should stay with
their parents until marriage, and that instead of going away to college, children
should stay home and pick up other safer trades for work. They encouraged
fathers to be self-employed, to build up family businesses and have their boys
work for them. It was a clear way of keeping full-grown, adult offspring locked
into the role of dependent children. Back then, seen through the eyes of my
younger self, it seemed like a great plan. I didn’t have any intention of leaving
home or trying to make a life for myself on my own. Why would I? The world
was dangerous and full of peril. At home, in the Big House where my parents
could protect me, things were safe.
But no matter how much Pops tried to keep our wings clipped or how badly
he tried to keep us huddled in close underneath his own personal umbrella of
protection, there was one child he couldn’t prevent from making mistakes. It
was Josh. A few years after he was first sent away, he was in trouble again. He’d
been caught looking at pornography on the phone of somebody he'd been
working with. Those seven basic principles didn’t have much to say about
secular therapy or rehab, so once more, Josh packed his bags, and Pops sent him
away from home for several months to do some demanding manual labor in the
company of good Christian folk and get himself back on track.
And just like before, we didn’t talk about it much.
Josh’s problems were only ever talked about vaguely, if at all, but Pops was
happy to answer most all questions we had about the show (unless those
questions were about money). He would explain the daily responsibilities, the
upcoming events, and often encourage us by sharing positive feedback he’d had
from people. It left me in no doubt that the show was being used by God to
minister to the nations. Pops would say yes to almost any positive filming
opportunity that came along, and we even ended up with crews from all over the
world coming to Tontitown to film with us for their own specials. I remember
one time when a crew from South Korea came. They were very kind but set a
much more punishing schedule than we were accustomed to, filming five days in
a row from seven in the morning until ten and sometimes even eleven at night. I
don’t remember so much about the Russians other than that they were more
laid-back and spent time explaining to us how their previous plan to fix their
declining birth rate was to give people refrigerators in return for having babies.
With every season of the show that went out on TLC, and every one-off
program that Pops signed us up for, I could see him grow. He had sold his old
used-car lot and vehicle towing service back when he’d entered politics but had
kept his car dealer’s license up-to-date and still loved going to car auctions. He
rented some land to Josh that he used as a car lot, and sometimes Pops would
put some of his own vehicles out on Josh’s lot to sell. As the show grew, Pops got
more into buying real estate and focusing on maintaining what he had, but
whenever he was talking about the show and the ministry impact he thought it
was having, he really came alive.
“T’ve always had this great desire to reach people for Christ,” he said one day
not long after he’d returned from a trip to New York City, where he and Mom,
Jessa, Jinger, and Jordyn—the newborn eighteenth Duggar—had appeared on
The View. “When we were flying in over the city, I was asking myself, how could
we reach this many people for the Lord? And then it occurred to me that there
are so many people watching the show. We’re reaching millions. I never would
have dreamed that God would allow our family to have this influence over all
these people.”
I shared his amazement that we had ended up in this position. It was wild and
crazy that a family like ours from northwest Arkansas should end up like this just
five years after the first documentary, and it was even more wild and crazy that
we'd done nothing at all to make it happen in the first place. The only possible
explanation was that God had opened the doors for us. He had made a way. This
show, being a filming family, this was his calling on our lives. For now, at least.
The NYC story became one of Pops’ favorites. I heard him tell it often,
especially when it seemed like he wanted to help someone understand that we
really weren’t in it for the perks or the fame or anything like, or he needed to
explain that the show came to us and that we didn’t go looking for it. Ever the
salesman, Pops always seemed to know how to pitch it right, and his story always
worked. At least, it appeared to work until the one time that it didn’t.
I heard about it weeks later. A young man who was a family friend had
apparently been talking with Pops one day at the Big House. Pops had been
trying to persuade the guy to agree to be in some filming, talking about the ways
he believed that God was using the show to impact so many people, inferring
that the numbers reached by our show on television had a greater impact than
lots of other ministries.
“Think about how many people we are able to reach through the show!”
Pops had continued. “Oftentimes we are reaching people who would often
never step foot into a church, yet they invite us into their living rooms each
week! It’s such a huge opportunity God put right in our laps, and we should be
good stewards of what he has given us!”
“That’s very interesting, Mr. Duggar,” the guy said, choosing his words
carefully. “But you know, Jesus, he talked to people one on one too. I think
that’s still vitally important today.”
Apparently, Pops was frustrated by the pushback, so he tried a different angle
and a new analogy.
“Just picture yourself in a stadium, and someone gives you a microphone.”
He let his words hang in the air for just a moment longer than necessary, as if the
idea was so big and so magnificent that it needed extra time to compute. “You
can speak to everyone in the stadium and tell them about the Lord. You'd take
that opportunity in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s a no-brainer, right?”
The guy shifted awkwardly, wondering whether speaking the truth to power
was worth it. He chose truth.
“I don’t know, Mr. Duggar, sir. Not if God had told me to go and talk to the
person under the bleachers. If I knew that the Lord wanted me to go talk to the
one instead of the thousands, then I'd have to obey.”
Pops froze. He looked like he’d just swallowed a fish bone. “Uh-uh,” he said
when he'd recovered himself, shaking his head. “No way. God would never tell
you to do that.”
When I heard the story, I was kind of stunned.
Was Pops really saying that he believed it was always God’s desire for people
to be involved in whichever ministry reached more people? And was he telling
our friend that he knew God’s will for this guy’s life, and that it included
filming? Was he really saying that to trust God’s timing, we have to be able to see
the results in our lifetime?
This was contrary to what Pops had always taught us kids. We’d grown up
with him reminding us that, “Little is much when God is in it,” and that “We
don’t always see how God is working.” Yet Pops’ words went directly against
times in the Bible where Jesus broke away from large crowds to address or
minister to one person. It left me feeling confused, and kind of sad.
Long before our family friend had questioned Pops like that, I had almost
concluded that life would be easier if I just avoided the whole relationship thing
for as long as I could. Like a lot of families within the IBLP world, there were
plenty of rules (though we didn’t like to call them that. My parents preferred
D.
“standards,” “convictions,” or “guidelines”) and growing expectations about
how us Duggar children would find a marriage partner. Instead of dating, we
talked about courtship, which was way more serious than simply playing around
and having fun with people. We were only going to court someone we saw as a
potential marriage partner, and we would always be chaperoned until the day we
were married. We wouldn’t kiss or even spend time alone in each other’s
company until we were married, and we wouldn’t say “I love you” until we were
officially courting and wouldn’t hold hands until we were engaged. Only a guy
could ask a girl to start courting, though if Pops (not Mom) felt like he wanted
to encourage what he thought of as a good possible match between a guy and
one of his daughters, it was okay for him to make hints and suggest we get to
know each other.
Teenage Jill, late 2000s
Josh had navigated it all and gotten married when he was twenty, and I'd
hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before my Prince Charming would come
along. But I knew I shouldn’t let marriage constantly consume my thoughts. I
also knew my parents loved me and wanted what was best for me, so it wasn’t
like Mom or Pops were ever going to actually arrange our marriages and force us
to marry someone. But without our parents’ blessing, there was simply no way
that any relationship would ever be able to begin. Years and years of IBLP
teaching had taught us that no good Christian child should consider going
against our parents’ wishes. Number one on the list of requirements in a future
spouse was that we had the approval of our parents. Without that, it was game
over before things had even begun.
We were encouraged not to just sit around waiting for our future mate to
show up, but instead to occupy our time in ways that distracted us from
constant thoughts of marriage. Mr. Gothard even taught that it was best to
make a vow of single service, committing a specific number of years to serving
God while single. His teaching was compelling, but I preferred to commit to
serve God, my family, and others just until God brought my future husband
along. I dressed conservatively, but inside I was a normal girl interested in
romance and love like anyone else. I had desires and emotions, but I tried to keep
them in check, and kept myself clear of the sin of talking about guys with my
sisters. When we were younger, we were all encouraged to talk to our parents if
we liked someone, asking them to help pray with us on it.
Joy, finger, Jessa, Jill, and Jana, 2014
I was okay with waiting. As the show kept on rolling from one season to the
next, my life was increasingly full. Not only did I have three young buddies to
look after—Joy, James, and Jenni—but I was also training to be a midwife.
Between filming, study, attending births, making sure that my three buddies
were dressed, washed, fed, doing their schoolwork and everything else, trying not
to think too much about finding Mr. Right wasn’t too hard. Besides, Pops was
already helping do some of the thinking for me.
By the time we'd wrapped up filming for season six, the show had gotten so
popular that my parents were continually receiving requests for speaking
engagements, meetings, and interviews. All of that attention led to Pops’
opinion and advice being valued and sought after by lots of people. He often
took calls with people seeking his counsel. Sometimes the calls were private, but
there were times when he might invite a few of us kids to join him as he put the
caller on speakerphone so we could listen in and hear them give an update of
their ministry.
Duggar sisters at filmed family photo shoot
One morning before the film crew arrived, I was in the girls’ bedroom getting
ready with a few of my sisters when Pops wandered in, midway through a call.
He muted it and quickly said, “There’s a young man I’ve been talking to. His
name is Derick and he’s serving as a missionary in Nepal. Why don’t yvall listen
in for a while?”
I listened for a bit with my sisters, but I didn’t want to seem too interested.
Plus, I had errands to run, so I didn’t pay too much attention.
The same thing happened about a month later, with Pops coming into the
room that I was in and announcing that he was on a call with the missionary guy
again, and again we listened to the conversation on speakerphone but didn’t
saying anything. This time after Pops got off the phone, he mentioned that
Derick had a blog that we should look at some time. Something about the way
Pops looked right at me as he spoke, told me that he had an agenda here.
Thinking maybe Pops was trying to set me up, I naturally avoided showing
any deep interest. On one hand, I was twenty-one years old and had no desire to
have my dad set me up with some random guy. In my opinion, that would be
embarrassing and weird. Then again, I respected Pops, and there was just a small
part of me that thought it was kind of sweet that he was looking out for me like
this. So I decided to play along, listening carefully to what this missionary in
Nepal guy had to say, but not give Pops any reason to suspect that I was
interested.
Derick’s life was different from mine. He was around my age, just a couple
years older than me, and he came from the same corner of Arkansas, but while
my days were filled with siblings and chores and TV crews, he had already
graduated college and was out in Nepal, serving on the mission field. As he
described some of the things he’d been doing since he and Pops last spoke—
visiting remote Himalayan villages, building relationships with people who had
probably never heard the gospel before—it sounded adventurous and exciting,
especially as Pd been dreaming of going overseas and working full-time in
mission work ever since my first out-of-country, short-term mission trip to
Central America.
I wasn’t about to get carried away though. When I next had some free time, I
did a little research of my own, finding Derick’s blog and Facebook page. There
were a lot of nice photos and updates about the work he was doing, and he
seemed like a decent guy. But I wasn’t interested. I was too busy and focused on
midwife schooling and clinicals, writing a book with my sisters, filming, and all
the usual chores at home. My schedule was full.
The more Pops got to know Derick though, the more he liked him and the
more eager he became, especially because we both had the calling to serve in full-
time international missions. Pops started talking to me specifically about Derick,
even suggesting that we might go visit him one day soon.
I didn’t give it much thought, but my immediate reaction wasn’t great. “It
just seems a little awkward,” I said. “I don’t even know the guy!”
“Come on Jill,” he said. “It'd be great. The network’s talking about filming us
on a vacation to Japan and China. When we’re done, we could easily go visit him
in Nepal before we fly home.”
The trip was big news, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for sure. Even
though we’d just been on a trip with the film crew two years before to Europe, I
still wasn’t used to this level of perks. I was still determined not to lose my head,
so I played it cool and told Pops I'd check to see if the travel plans would work
with my midwifery studies. It turned out they didn’t, so while plans for the
Japan and China trip went ahead, there was no chance of a Nepal swing.
Pops didn’t push too much, but he was patiently persistent, and it wasn’t
long before another opportunity presented itself.
In March of 2013, we were on a road trip and were staying with friends in
Illinois, when I stepped out from the house to grab something from our bus.
Pops was in there, alone, phone pressed to his ear, smiling and talking with
someone. As soon as he saw me, he motioned me over to sit down, flipping the
call to speakerphone. It was Derick again, so I figured I knew how this was
gonna go, with me listening quietly while Derick updated my dad on his work,
just like the three or four times before. This time, however, Pops didn’t keep my
presence a secret.
“Hey Derick,” he said when there was a pause. “I’ve got my daughter Jill here
with me. Why don’t you go ahead and tell her a little bit about yourself and your
testimony.”
Immediately my face was burning red. I mouthed, You didn’t tell me you were
gonna do THAT! THIS IS SO EMBARRASSINGI, but Pops just smiled and
waved me off. I dug him in the ribs with my elbow. Pops’ grin just got bigger.
“Hey Jill,” said Derick.
“Um, hey?” My voice was shaking like never before. “It’s nice to meet you.”
I was relieved when Derick took over the conversation. He told me a little
about his upbringing—how he had just one sibling, how when he was just a
freshman at Oklahoma State, his dad had died suddenly and how that had
inspired him to get out and do something significant with his life. He talked
about his time in Nepal, about how much he loved the mission field.
I didn’t say much at all. Even if I'd had more questions, I didn’t want to ask
them right at that moment and egg on Pops’ excitement. So I just listened, and
in a few short minutes the conversation was over. Derick seemed like a kind
person, but I wasn’t interested in getting to know him. Instead, I just pushed the
awkward telephone conversation out of my mind.
At first, way back in the early days when things were just getting going with
the show, I was curious about being on TV. I wanted to see what it would be
like, to observe what might come through the window of opportunity that God
had created for us. As the show gathered momentum, my thoughts became
clearer. People would often ask me how I felt about it all, typically assuming that
I loved it, and that being on TV was the coolest thing ever. I'd always answer
politely and try not to make anyone feel awkward, but their assumptions were
wrong.
While it was cool at times, and we had some great adventures while filming
the T'V show, being on TV also had its downsides. As each season was filmed
and aired, as more and more and more of Duggar family life was transmitted out
to homes across the country, my opinion started to change. The more I
experienced what it meant to allow your life to become the focus of a reality TV
show, the more I understood that while it was still a ministry for Pops and the
rest of us, it was something entirely different for the network that created us.
The show—and by extension the entire Duggar family—was a vehicle for profit.
No matter how much Pops talked about flying over NYC and the potential
impact of reaching millions with the message of Christ, for the company paying
the bills, we were there to entertain. We had to keep things fresh, and we knew
that if we didn’t provide the viewers with content they engaged with, there
would be no show. If things ever got stale, it would be game over.
Keeping things fresh required a lot of planning and sometimes a little
rehearsal. A guy asking Pops’ permission to marry a Duggar girl, or the proposal
itself, were some of the best TV moments, but there was practically no room for
spontaneity. Each step would be rehearsed in advance. And sometimes, keeping
things fresh meant bending the rules. So, even though physical contact between
courting couples was banned, we'd be allowed to put our arms around each
other if the show required it—which is exactly what happened in one episode
that featured a weird triple date that involved some extravagant archery contest.
What I found the hardest, though, were the ways the show intruded on my
most private moments. I was sixteen when I had surgery to remove my wisdom
teeth—my first ever surgery. I hate needles and was anxious about everything
that was involved in the procedure, and knowing that it was going to be the main
focus of an episode only made things worse. But saying no to the cameras was
not an option. The only comfort I could find was thinking about Mom. I knew
she didn’t like her birth being filmed, but she went along and did it anyway. If
she put up with it, so should I.
The longer the show ran, the deeper we had to dig to keep things fresh.
Sometimes it was a matter of taking a trip overseas, like the mission trip to El
Salvador in seasons two and five, or the epic journey to China and Japan after
season six, or other trips to Israel, Britain, and Ireland. But we didn’t have the
budget or the time to fill the show with travel alone, and we had to look closer to
home for new and exciting content. “There’s no such thing as bad TV” was
something the crew said so often that it became a family saying of our own,
repeated whenever we encountered a minor crisis like an unplanned trip to the
emergency room. Big life events were better, especially major milestones. Mom
giving birth would always give our ratings a spike, but it wasn’t the only life
event that made for great TV. Whenever our producer, Scott, heard that one of
us was going to start courting, his eyes would light up like a Christmas tree.
Derick and I had started talking regularly after the call on the bus, and the
more we talked the more I liked him. So, inevitably I found myself sitting on the
recliner chair in Mom and Pops’ bedroom, facing my dad while I made a phone
call to Scott and put him on speaker so we could both hear. I was feeling
nervous, even though I knew I had Mom and Pops’ full blessing. What I was
about to say could not be unsaid. What I was about to do could not be undone.
“Scott? I have some news to share.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I have a guy.”
“What? Nice! Who?” He sounded excited and genuinely pleased for me, and
for a moment I forgot that this was a business meeting.
“Yes, Scott. I have a guy. And he’s in Nepal.”
“Yes!” he said, sounding even more excited than before. Then he kinda
laughed as he continued, “I don’t know anything about this story or anything
about this guy. But yes. Nepal’s been on my bucket list since forever. When are
we going?”
We all laughed. “Yeah, I totally did this for you, Scott.”
I'd always liked Scott. He made filming fun, and I trusted him too. But I'd
been doing the show long enough to understand the implications of what we
were discussing.
“Scott, ve never met this guy before. We’ve only ever spoken on the phone
or on Skype.”
“Really? Oh. Well, that’s even better. This is a great story, Jill.”
“I know it is. But I have a question. If we go over there, and you film me
meeting the guy for the first time, but it doesn’t work out and we don’t start
courting, then do you have to air it? I just don’t know how Id feel putting that
out there, and I wouldn’t want to put this guy through it and all, either.”
Scott’s tone changed a bit. “I see what you’re saying, but unfortunately, if
we're going to make the investment of taking you, your dad and a crew over
there, and taking all that time out of the regular filming schedule, then we’d have
to air it regardless of how the relationship turns out. ’m sorry.”
It was exactly the answer I'd feared.
I didn’t wrestle with the decision for long—Scott needed an answer quickly
—but I did wrestle hard. I liked Derick and had tried to explain what it meant to
be in my reality TV family. I hated the thought of things not working out and
having it broadcast all over the world. I could hardly think of anything more
humiliating. Then again, this was my one shot at getting out to Nepal to see
him. If I didn’t take it, would that window of opportunity for me and Derick
ever open again? I talked with Derick about the proposal too, since it would
involve both of us.
In the end, the show won. I told Scott that I was willing to go. We found a
couple of weeks in late November and made plans. Everything was looking good,
for a while.
“Listen,” he said over the phone when we were a month out from flying to
Kathmandu. “We can’t do two weeks over Thanksgiving. It’s got to be five
days.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “You go for five days if you want, but if ’'m going to
decide whether this guy is someone I want to spend the rest of my life with, I
need two weeks. I'll do whatever you want. We can film a pretend goodbye scene
: Dg ID
and [ll turn on the tears for you, but I’m not doing this in five days. I just can’t.
Derick and Jill on a motorcycle in Nepal
That time, I won. The crew filmed Pops and I during our two days of travel
from northwest Arkansas to Nepal, as well as mine and Derick’s first meeting—a
moment that I wished could have been private. They then stayed another five
days filming various things around Kathmandu. Just before we faked our
goodbyes for the show, Derick asked me on-camera if I would be willing to start
an official courtship. My yes was 100 percent straight from the heart.
Derick asking fill to begin official courtship during departure scene in Nepal
Jill and Derick in Nepal after the film crew left
I was so thankful for that extra week we got to spend together without the
film crew. We were able to get to know each other better, and over the days there
were little snatched moments when Pops gave us space and our feelings grew.
Like the evening when Pops was chaperoning us in the room that he and I were
sharing, but he ended up falling asleep. Derick and I sat on the end of the bed
eating hot chicken fried rice out of makeshift tinfoil bowls that Derick had
grabbed from a street vendor. We talked about everything and nothing, and
when it was time to go, Derick looked at me.
“Goodnight,” he said. “I love you.”
“Goodnight,” I said. “I love you too.”
I fell deeply in love with Derick. He was polite and respectful, and I could see
that Pops was genuinely impressed with him. So when it was really time to go, I
was so sad to leave. I cried on his shoulder when I said goodbye in the car at the
airport, and then I cried a few more times on the long trip home.
The good news was that Derick’s two-year term on the mission field was
almost up, so a couple of months later he returned to Arkansas. (He was
gracious when his closest friends were forced to wait downstairs at the airport so
that the crew could film my family welcoming him by himself first!) I wasn’t
surprised that the rest of the Duggar family soon got to know and love him too.
He impressed my parents by quickly landing a full-time job doing tax
accounting at Walmart HQ, as well as enrolling in a seminary class, and
everybody who met him told me how kind and genuine he was. Every time I
heard those words, I could feel myself sighing with relief. ’'d found a guy who I
was in love with, who my parents approved of, and who wasn’t going to cause
tension within the family or have a problem with filming. Derick was unique,
and there was no way I was letting him go.
Derick came back to the US in January 2014, but by the end of February we
were already talking about getting married. At the end of March, Derick
proposed—successfully working with Scott and the crew to deliver all the
ingredients of a great episode—and we started planning our June wedding.
It was Easter Sunday when Derick called and told me that his mom had been
diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
A
Jill meeting Derick at the airport when he returned from Nepal, January 2014
“It’s stage four,” he said. “The first doctor she saw wasn’t even willing to treat
her and told her there was nothing they could do at this point. She found
another doctor who gave her a second opinion and he is going to start intense
chemo next week. But they haven’t given her much hope.”
I was in Hot Springs, Arkansas, four hours away, chaperoning Jessa as she
spent time with the guy she was courting. I felt the earth shattering all around
me. Derick’s mom and I had become very close friends over the last several
months, and she’d told me how excited she was to finally be getting a daughter. I
couldn’t imagine what Derick was going through, having already lost his dad,
and now being told that his mom was likely going to die too. He'd be left with
just one sibling, and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what that must have
felt like. Whenever I tried to put myself in that position, the feeling of loneliness
was so terrifying that it made it hard to breathe.
But Derick was not like me. As the days and weeks rolled by, I was witness to
the strength of his character, the depth of his faith, and the power of the bonds
of love that held his family together. He continued to work, to check in on his
mom and help her where needed, supporting his wonderful stepdad Ronnie
who was caring for her 24/7. Derick continued to attend seminary, plan the
wedding, and still make himself available for filming. His determination and
capacity for hard work was awe-inspiring, and the more I got to know his mom,
Cathy, the more it made sense. She received her cancer diagnosis with courage
and the kind of wholehearted trust in God that takes a lifetime to mature. She
refused to give in to fear and told everyone who asked how she was feeling that
she was convinced she was going to survive.
Cathy’s diagnosis meant that the wedding was even more significant on a
personal level. For a while at least, the fact that the day would be filmed and
broadcast took a back seat. That didn’t last long. I was the first Duggar daughter
to get married, and the network was determined to get as much great TV out of
it as possible. As the big day got closer, more and more of the decisions were
made with the show in mind.
Most of the time I was okay with it. I didn’t mind that the guest list had
grown to two thousand, or that some of them were complete strangers to me. I
didn’t care. I was focused on getting through the wedding planning details and
marrying my best friend. But when it came to the photos, we had a problem.
I wanted all the guests to be able to take photos and then share them on an
app with special tags so I could have copies of all their pictures. The network did
not agree.
“They want exclusive rights,” said Pops, “and they’re worried that if we let
people take photos, they'll leak. They’re offering to pay for photographers.”
I was tired and stressed and for a while I tried to dig in and hold my ground—
in the sweetest, most polite way possible. But my holding out didn’t last. The
pressure mounted.
“This is not a hill to die on,” said Derick after the subject had come up at a
wedding planning meeting we'd had with my dad and another representative
from the network. “We can let this one go.” Reluctantly, I agreed with him.
The whole month leading up to the wedding was a blur, but I was still aware
that some changes were happening. There was talk of a new season of the show
being agreed on. Also, Pops hired somebody to work with him for the first time
ever, which struck me as notably different, but good. The show had grown in
popularity, and my parents were both getting pretty overwhelmed by things.
Pops had always kept things to himself, but there had been times when I'd
wondered whether it was all starting to get a little too much for him. So it made
sense for them to get some help. Bringing in this new guy, Chad, to help with
public relations and any negotiations or business deals could only be a good
thing.
Then there was the plane. The higher our viewer numbers had climbed, the
more time Mom and Pops had been spending traveling to different speaking
engagements. It had started to get a little too much for them, so Pops bought a
four-seater, single-engine plane and arranged for a local pilot friend to fly them
when they needed to travel. Being Pops, and knowing my brother John’s
childhood dream to become a pilot, he also arranged for this friend to give John
flight lessons, so John often accompanied them on flights to gain training hours.
I was happy for my parents and John, and though I thought about it briefly, I
didn’t want to ask how much the plane had cost or where the money had come
from.
And then, eight days before the wedding, at our final planning meeting,
Derick received a call.
Jill and Derick doing interviews at the shop
We were all at a local restaurant—Derick and I, Mom, Pops, Jana, all three of
my wedding coordinator friends. Derick and I had just come from seeing his
mom at the hospital, but before we could even start the meeting, Derick’s phone
rang and he stepped away from the table.
He didn’t say much on the call, just a few basic questions. I watched the
blood drain from his face.
When it was finished, he pocketed his phone, walked back, and looked at
everyone. “I’m sorry. I think Pve got to go. My mom’s gotten worse. She’s being
Life Flighted by helicopter to a new hospital. She’s not doing well. It sounds
pretty serious.”
In that moment, everything changed. For weeks my phone had been
constantly announcing some new message to respond to, a missed call to return
or some vital decision that was long overdue. I no longer had the capacity to deal
with it. If it hadn’t been for my sister Jana offering to take my phone and handle
all the wedding stuff for me in the final days, ’d have spun out completely.
Derick’s brother, Dan, and Derick with Cathy in the hospital, June 2014
I spent those days leading up to the wedding visiting the hospital as much as
possible. Whenever we were not there, I fully expected Derick to receive another
call at any moment telling him to get back and be with his mom before she
passed. I was braced for impact, my insides clenched, my heart just moments
away from breaking.
But the call never came.
The day before our wedding, we'd started to hope that Derick’s mom might
actually make it. She was even talking about joining us at the church. “Mom says
she’s going to be there,” said Derick. “I don’t know how, but they’re saying they
will let her sign a release and let her out of the hospital on oxygen to be there.”
It was the best news ever, and I hoped and prayed she would be able to make
it. The day was a blur, with the Big House full of people, and the levels of noise
and chaos and laughter higher than ever. After I ran by the hospital to check on
Cathy, I rushed back home to move some of my things out, then got ready for
the filmed wedding rehearsal run-through at the church that afternoon, followed
by the rehearsal dinner that evening. My brothers were excited to be heading out
with Derick to his bachelor party after the dinner that evening, and my older
sisters and I were like a bunch of giggling preteens once again, as we were going
to stay at a hotel for some extra sister time away from the chaos. Overall it was a
good day, but one memory stands out more in hindsight than the others.
“Hey,” said Pops to some of the older siblings earlier in the day. “Chad and I
have been finalizing stuff on the new show, and I have some papers for yall to
sign here. Can you do it real quick before you leave?”
“Sure,” I said, not thinking much about it. Some of the big TLC and
production people who weren’t usually around were coming to town, so I
imagined Pops was feeling more pressure than normal to get everything they
needed together. “What’s this for?”
“Oh, it’s just about how you're gonna get paid.”
I looked at the papers sitting on the dining room table—single sheets with
signature lines with each of our names printed. A few had already been signed. I
didn’t see any extra papers to read, and I didn’t really know what it was about,
but I didn’t question my dad. After all, in all my life, ’'d never had reason not to
trust Pops. He knew best, and always had.
So I picked up the pen and signed.
CHAPTER FOUR
=
Costs
Two hours before the wedding ceremony was due to start—just after we’d done
an on-the-fly interview with People magazine— Derick and I were able to spend a
few precious moments together, alone. We fed each other Chick-fil-A nuggets
and tried to keep the grease off our clothes. It was a precious moment, made
even more special by a call Derick received about his mom. Cathy was coming to
the wedding. She’d be in a wheelchair, on oxygen, and would be accompanied by
a nurse who would help make sure that she kept her distance from people in
order to avoid catching germs, but she was coming. Waves of relief and gratitude
flooded over me.
The ceremony made my already full heart even more emotional. I wanted to
be present, to soak up every moment, every feeling. The beauty of the music we
had chosen, the smiles on the faces of so many people that I loved, the power of
the vows we took, the tenderness of my first-ever kiss. Sometimes I just had to
pause and remind myself to breathe.
ELIZABETH ZELLON PHOTOGRAPHY
Jill and Derick on their wedding day, June 21, 2014
The rest of the day had all the typical wedding day chaos, with the added
features of a camera crew, multiple official photographers and uninvited
paparazzi lurking outside, but I tried to block out the noise caused by the show.
When you're in the world of reality TV, everything has a cost. The shopping
carts full of great food, the trip to Nepal to meet Derick in person for the first
time, the wedding itself—they all came with a price tag, which we paid by letting
the cameras into our lives, giving them access to all the raw, unfiltered action to
be served up as entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, it was a privilege to be able
to benefit like that. Being a Duggar on TV meant that I had opportunities and
experiences that I would never have enjoyed otherwise. The show gave me so
much, and I am grateful for the places I have been, the moments I have enjoyed,
and the people I have met.
But...
... some things are not worth the cost. Some things are not for sale.
In among all the emotional turbulence that we were going through in the
run-up to the wedding, I was always clear our honeymoon would not be on the
show. It was private and it was precious, and it was absolutely not something
that I was willing to sell for an all-expenses-paid honeymoon vacation. I'd seen
what had happened when Josh and his bride, Anna, had let the network pay for
their honeymoon to South Carolina—how they'd edited it in a way that made
the two of them appear like inexperienced, naive kids who had grown up in a
sheltered environment and were about to head off to have sex for the first time.
The whole thing was embarrassing and designed to make them look bad. I didn’t
want that for Derick and me.
There was only a little pushback from the production team, but once we
made it clear we weren’t taking cameras along on our honeymoon, they made it
clear there wasn’t any money from them to help with the honeymoon either. We
took five days and disappeared off to the beach in North Carolina. It suited us to
keep it simple and short. Our bank balance was low, Derick only had a few days’
vacation available, and with Cathy back home, still on edge recuperating from
the wedding day, we were worried about even being away at all.
We returned to confusion and surprised looks on the faces of the friends of
Pops who were working on the house he was flipping—our first home as a
married couple.
“What are you guys doing back so soon?”
“Aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon?”
“We figured you’d be away the whole month.”
I thought about trying to explain the challenges of Derick’s work schedule
and the fact that we were living on a budget, but decided not to. Cathy was
getting better, Derick and I had just begun the application process to serve as
missionaries, and I was just a few months away from my final exams to become a
midwife. My life as a married woman of twenty-three was finally beginning. This
was a time for looking forward, not back.
A few days after we got back from our honeymoon it was like we’d never been
away. ILC wanted the episodes featuring the wedding to air as soon as possible,
so Scott and his guys were up against a crazy tight deadline to get all the
interviews shot. Pops had recently converted one of the shops at the front of the
Big House into a studio, so we only had to drive thirty minutes from where we
lived in Rogers, but even so, with Derick working forty-five hours a week as a
manager at the Walmart home office with a team that handled the company’s tax
audits, the only time we could film was in the evenings and on weekends. I felt
bad bringing him into all this, but he had a good attitude about it, and I hardly
heard him complain.
It was days after the wedding when he received a call from his mom Cathy,
who was due to have a scan that day, to see whether the first of six planned
rounds of chemo had made any impact. I'd been praying nonstop. But as the
phone rang and Derick set it on speaker, I couldn’t help feeling the fear start to
knot up my stomach.
“I’ve got news,” she said. “You know that chemo nearly killed me, don’t
you?”
Derick shot me a worried look. “Yes, Mom.”
“Well, it didn’t. But it looks like it killed the cancer. Doc says ’m cancer free.
Said he didn’t know how, but that it must have been some kind of miracle.” She
broke off, laughing. “I told him that prayer works.”
It was the best news ever.
Then, on a Sunday evening, when we'd been married just a month, I had
more news to get excited about. I found out I was pregnant.
I was tired and not doing so well with the morning sickness, and Derick was
trying to throw himself into work, but there was little time to relax. Most days
when Derick finished work, we'd have filming to do, and there was even more to
get through most weekends. Evenings were the worst, and the crew would often
wind up a little frustrated with us if we were running late or if Derick took more
than a few minutes to eat some food and get changed.
“Hey guys,” Scott would shout from downstairs whenever they were filming
at our house. “Come on now. Time’s running out. We don’t want to run late
again.”
I can understand why it was annoying for the crew to have to wait for us, and
they probably had no idea that we had never been paid for our filming and were
working as volunteers. ’'d never questioned it, because that’s the way it had
always been, right from the start. And I had always been warned not to talk
about the show’s inner workings or details with anyone for as long as I could
remember. Plus, I would not want to hint at or say anything that could
potentially be negative toward my parents either. We were just kids when the
show first started, and all we knew was that it was Pops’ show, and our job was to
do what was asked of us. To my way of thinking back then, asking to be paid for
appearing on the show would have been as crazy as asking to be paid for helping
build the Big House.
It was different now that Derick and I were married, and the twenty hours of
filming we had to fit in each week quickly became a burden for us. If we were
lucky, we'd have it wrapped up by nine p.m. Other times, we'd still be filming at
midnight. Ironically, this “family filming ministry,” which emphasized putting
your family first, was sucking the life out of ours.
Filming the guys’ pre-wedding getaway one month after the wedding, July 2014
We both treasured any moments that we had for ourselves, where no camera
crew could tell us to hurry up. I chose to drive Derick to and from work every
day that I could, and those conversations in the car became our safe space, a place
where we could talk honestly about the stresses of the day.
It didn’t take long for the subject of the show to come up.
“All this filming,” said Derick as we drove away from the house at six thirty
one morning. “It’s hard.”
We drove a little farther in silence. Between the pregnancy nausea and the
shivers of anxiety caused by my old need for approval, I kept quiet.
“And with you being pregnant and all, it’s even harder. Is it always like this?”
“I know. I’m finding it hard too. But just a little longer. Once Jessa gets
married and starts having kids, maybe it will lighten our load a little and be easier
for us then.”
Derick thought awhile.
“You know what I wish?”
“No.”
“That we could say ‘this doesn’t work for us,’ and they’d make a change.”
A fresh wave of nausea hit me. “Oh babe, we can’t rock the boat. Not like
that. Not this soon after we got married.”
For a moment I wondered whether Derick was going to say something else.
But he paused, looked at me and reached for my hand.
“T love you,” he said, squeezing it in time with each word.
“I love you too,” I said. Four squeezes.
Like all good IBLP parents, Mom and Pops believed their adult children—
even those of us who were married and starting to have families of their own—
were still under their parental authority. We were careful to avoid their
displeasure, and so pretty much did whatever was expected of us, from wearing
the right clothes to saying yes to whatever the show required. So while we'd been
able to hold our ground and keep our honeymoon private, when it came to
announcing that I was pregnant, there was no chance of us calling the shots.
Josh and his wife Anna had three kids by the time Derick and I married, and
Mom had given birth six times already since we started filming, so there was
already a clear path that we had to follow—not just involving some media outlet
being given exclusive rights to the official announcement, but also how we told
those closest to us. First, we were supposed to tell the producers, then—when
they were ready to capture it on film—we were allowed to tell our parents. I bent
the rules a little, telling a couple of my sisters and buddies first, but when it came
time to tell my parents and Derick’s mom and stepdad, I made sure I followed
the rules.
I had to promise the crew that we would all keep it a secret if I went ahead
and told them, since we couldn’t make a formal announcement for another
month—due to the show still rolling out our wedding story and teasing the
blossoming relationship and forthcoming wedding of my sister Jessa and Ben. So
a few days after we found out, with cameras rolling, we took a trip over to the
Big House and told my family. At first it was just the way I'd imagine it would be
for any other family. The room was full of excitement and laughter and a little
sibling teasing along the lines of “You’re gonna get so fat!” and “Derick’s gonna
love those diaper changes.” It was normal and fun, and I could feel myself
wanting to inhale every moment of it.
A day or so later, the spell broke.
I was inundated with emails, texts, and calls from the network and
production crew as they were trying to organize things and make sure “the
announcement”—carefully scheduled so as not to detract from Jessa’s wedding
—went off without a hitch. Everyone said they were excited for us. I was
tempted to remind people that this was my baby we were talking about, but I
didn’t want to play the role of Crabby First-Time Mom. Not yet at least.
TLC’s talent management informed us that People magazine would have the
rights to the story, and that they were going to schedule a photoshoot in the
coming days. We couldn’t tell anyone other than a small group of family and
friends until People broke the story, and even then, we'd have to coordinate
precisely with them for the birth announcement of our own child.
We were six years into the show and a little more than one month married,
and although I hadn’t been the one pregnant before, I was kind of used to the
timeline and rules, so not much of what they said surprised me. But as I relayed
the information to Derick that evening, I could see the confusion in his eyes.
“So we cannot tell a single other soul, and those we’ve told already we have to
get to swear to absolute secrecy,” he said, recapping what Id just told him.
“When it’s the day to announce, the magazine gets to post it on their site first.
And then, two hours later, we can repost on our social media, just sharing our
excitement and telling people to read the full story online or in print from People
magazine and remind them to tune in to TLC to see more. So basically, we get to
announce the announcement, right?”
“Right.”
“And this is normal?”
“Yeah.”
“But this isn’t normal. This is insane, Jill! I don’t like being a dancing
monkey who has to perform at these stupid photo shoots. And I don’t like
having to bend to the demands of when and how we’re going to post our own
family announcements!”
Derick’s demeanor was controlled, but I could tell he was very upset at the
restrictions. He started throwing out some ideas, like going rogue and posting
our own pregnancy announcement. But as a good IBLP girl who obeyed her
dad, I knew that was a big no-no. I tried to rein him back in again.
“Babe, we can’t just post our own family announcements. TLC and my dad
would be furious.”
“So we're basically slaves of TLC and your dad. Is that how it is?!” Then
Derick paused in his frustration. “If it’s this intense around the announcement,
what’s it going to be like with the birth?”
I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to tell him. Mom had learned how to
manage the expectations of the show when it came to giving birth—allowing
them access but being firm about what shots they were allowed to take. Josh’s
wife, Anna, had had problems with the crew using footage from one of her
births that she’d specifically told them she did not authorize. They cut it out for
reruns, but with later births, the footage was often added back in as part of
flashback sequences.
I felt terrible for Anna and my mom for being made to feel like they had to
give up control of their labors like that. It seemed like their only consolation was
the fact that this was part of a God-given ministry. It was a big cost to pay.
For me, in those early months of pregnancy, I tried not to think about birth
too much. I wanted to please everyone, but it didn’t seem possible. On one hand
I wanted to make Derick happy and totally agreed with him about not wanting
to hand over control of the pregnancy and birth to the network. However,
according to IBLP teaching, Derick was also under my parents’ authority and
was supposed to obey them too.
Even though I was now Mrs. Jill Dillard, I was still Sweet Jilly Muffin. I
wanted to please everyone, not just my husband, but my parents and the
network as well. I was a mess of conflict and didn’t know how to balance the
feelings. All I really knew for sure was that if I messed up and didn’t get my
parents’ blessing, I would be sinning by not following God’s will.
Just when life was threatening to get a little too intense, the clouds parted. Pops
announced that he was taking a bunch of Duggars on a week-long mission trip
back down to El Salvador in December 2014, and invited Derick and me to join
them. Neither of us had to think long before we said yes. Even though it would
be a pretty busy trip with less than desirable amenities, especially considering I
was going to be nearing my final trimester, it sounded like a nice break from
some of the chaos and long workdays back home. The irony of seeking comfort
and respite from the stresses of life in El Salvador, which of course had its own
very hard stresses and circumstances, wasn’t lost on either of us.
Derick had spent two years in Nepal, and he'd traveled widely throughout
Asia, but he’d never been to Latin America before. I was excited to show him the
project that my family had visited several times over the previous years, and I had
a hunch that he’d fall in love with the friends, the food, the scenery, and the
children there just as much as I had.
It was everything I'd hoped it would be.
Those five days were a pause on everything that was making life at home
stressful. My morning sickness had finally eased, and for once, there was no
conflict between our schedule and the rest of the Duggar family’s. It was a relief
to not feel like we were letting people down or making life difficult for them.
But better than all of that was the chance to see Derick in action. He didn’t
mind the heat, the lack of creature comforts, the chance to serve others, and the
opportunities to sit and talk with people about life, God, and everything else. P’d
only been able to see a little of this in Nepal, and it was a privilege to witness him
come alive like this in El Salvador.
The trip was full of great moments. Sleeping on an air mattress on the front
porch of the church, playing Mary and Joseph in the nativity story performed at
church, spending time together without the pressure of filming. But the best of
all was seeing Derick interact with the kids at the orphanage. His mom was
adopted, and it meant so much to see the kids’ faces light up when he and some
of the other team members played soccer with them and goofed around.
The day before we flew back home, we were riding in the truck with Mike,
the director of missions. He was telling us how they had started working with
ex-gang members, providing them with food, job training and pastoral support,
when he asked us a question that I didn’t see coming.
“We could use a young couple like you down here, helping support the
growing local church ministry and coming alongside Indigenous leaders to
provide jobs in gang communities, which would help people stay out of the
gangs. Would you pray about coming down and working with us? It would only
be for a year initially, maybe two.”
I was stunned. But I was also intrigued. Derick and I exchanged glances, and I
knew he felt the same too.
A month later, after we'd prayed and sought counsel from people we trusted—
including my parents and Derick’s mom—we called Mike up and told him that
we were in, pending some things. We explained that we wanted to wait a few
more months before we moved, which would allow me to give birth in April and
make sure everything went well with me and the baby. Mike was happy, and
Derick and I were pumped. Those morning and evening car conversations on
the way to and from his work were now focused less on the stress of filming, and
more on this new adventure that our little family was about to embark upon.
The closer we got to April and my due date, the more I thought about what
the show might want from the birth. Both Mom and Anna had let the cameras
in for all their births, but I wasn’t so sure myself. My midwifery training had
exposed me to what could go wrong, and I knew myself well enough to know
that in that most intimate, vulnerable place of childbirth, I'd value my privacy
more than ever. But keeping the cameras out just didn’t seem possible.
Jill with Derick as Pistol Pete at an OSU basketball game for the show, February 2015
When I first raised this with Derick, he didn’t see a problem. “We can just tell
them what we want to do,” he said.
“Babe, no. You don’t understand. That’s not how this is. We cannot just tell
them what we do and don’t want.”
Derick frowned. “But this isn’t like an engagement or a birth announcement.
This is bz7th...,” He left it hanging.
“Yeah,” I said. “But... they have certain expectations.”
We came back to the conversation a few times, but it always felt like we got
stuck in the same place. Derick couldn’t understand how the show could just
assume so much power over the birth, and—after more than a decade in front of
the cameras—I couldn’t imagine how we could ever hope to stand up for what
we wanted. We were stuck in a loop, and the birth was getting closer.
In the end, Scott brought it up one evening after we'd finished filming. It was
just him and us in the house—no Pops, no Chad—which felt like the best
possible way to start.
“So,” he began, like a chef describing a meal he was planning. “Here’s what
we're thinking about the birth. TLC really wants to do it well, so we’re talking
about a couple of one-hour specials. One will be a quick turnaround show that
will air within a week of the birth if all goes as planned. For that one we will have
all the lead-up already shot, with a place held at the end where we'll just drop in a
few minutes of the delivery before it airs. And then there will be the other
special, which will be a more extensive telling of the birth in the follow-up
episode that will likely air about three weeks after the birth. How does that
sound, guys?”
I breathed deep to calm myself, just like ’'d seen many mamas, doulas, and
midwives do. “I just don’t feel comfortable with filming the birth, Scott. As a
student midwife, I feel like I already have some anxiety about the birth itself
because I know too much, and I know I’m going to be up in my head. On top of
that, I don’t want to feel like a watched pot.”
Scott sat back. “Okay,” he said, as he wrestled with the puzzle. “How about
we do what we did for Anna’s last two? P’ll just be outside with a camera, and Pll
come in and get a shot here and there whenever you want me to.”
Another breath. Even deeper this time. “No. I really don’t even want that,
Scott. I don’t want it filmed.”
At that, Scott started tearing up. He’d been with the show almost since the
beginning, and we'd been through a lot together. He’d traveled everywhere we
had and had shared all our significant moments. He was Uncle Scott, and I felt
horrible talking to him like this. Somewhere, though, there was just a small part
of me that wondered if he was tearing up because of the pressure that TLC was
putting on him to get us to agree to him filming the birth.
“It’s not you, Scott. You’re great. It’s me. If ’m tense, I won’t be able to push
this baby out.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting up straight. The mood had shifted. I knew the dance.
Whatever came next would be his final offer. “What if we give you some
cameras? Your mom and Jana will be there, right?”
I nodded. This was his last offer—the compromise I had to make. If I said no
to my mom and sister shooting home video, I’d have an even bigger battle on my
hands. Pops and the whole network would probably get involved. I didn’t know
whether Derick and I could withstand a force like that.
All my plans for a natural birth went up in smoke when I was in my third day of
labor. Once my water broke, I tried to get the labor going at home with the
midwife. It would start for a while but kept stopping. After more than forty
hours of this, we decided to go to the hospital. Another twenty-four hours
followed, first with Pitocin, then an epidural, but still no baby. In fact, after the
epidural, the baby got himself into an undeliverable position known as breech
transverse—just him chilling in a hammock-type position. I was exhausted. So,
after laboring for sixty-eight hours straight, Israel David Dillard was finally
brought into this world by C-section on April 6, 2015. Between all the drugs I
was on, and the gowns and screens and bright lights required for the surgical
procedure, Scott ended up getting a whole lot more footage from my mom and
Jana’s cameras than he'd probably thought he would—a lot more than if the
labor had proceeded at home as planned, naturally and simply in a birth pool in
my bedroom. But he didn’t get everything. Derick had his own video camera
with him, and we'd agreed that whatever he captured would only ever be just for
us.
As I sat in my hospital bed, staring in awe at this beautiful baby boy as he
nursed, I was aware that my brain was pretty fogged up with all those post-labor
hormones. I was like an astronaut who’d landed back on earth, still unsure of
what I'd just been through. But I was able to think clearly enough to be worried
that Derick was going to fail to follow the plan that Chad and the network had
laid out to us for the birth—People magazine was going to announce first, and as
a family we would only use whatever photos they approved. If any pictures or
news leaked, we’d be in trouble.
Between the fear of not meeting all the network’s wishes, keeping the story
from getting out prematurely, and the guilt about our personal secret videoing
of the birth, I felt like I might have been rebelling against Pops, and I wasn’t sure
how that sat with me. Even though all the conversations about the show’s access
to my labor had been between me and Scott and Derick, I knew that nearly
everything we'd discussed would have been shared with Pops, especially when it
caused a problem. The show was still his show, and even though his kids were
growing up, getting married, and having babies of their own, we were still the
source of many of those great TV moments that kept the ratings high. More
than that, even though I was a married woman and now a mama of my own, I
was still my father’s daughter. When he said he was giving me to Derick at the
wedding altar, it was an empty gesture. IBLP teaching was clear that his
authority over me would never diminish. If I disobeyed him or didn’t honor his
wishes and stepped out from under the umbrella of protection, I would be
exposing myself to potential harm.
.
Baby Israel, April 2015
I was blind to it at the time, but eventually I would see just how dangerous
and toxic IBLP’s teachings about authority were in my life. The umbrella
principle had sounded harmless enough when I was a child, but it was a brutally
effective means of instilling fear and controlling behavior in the lives of others,
regardless of whether they were adults or children. The fear of what would
happen if I stepped out from under this umbrella had bled into every part of my
life, and it left me second-guessing so many decisions. Even hiding a camera from
Scott in the hope that I might be able to preserve my modesty and prevent the
whole world from seeing me give birth felt like a risk. My father wanted us to
cooperate with the show, therefore deceiving Scott could be seen as an act of
sinful rebellion against my father if he disagreed. I could be outside the umbrella,
and then something terrible might happen.
I was stressing about Derick, worrying that he might do or say something
that would upset Scott, but he followed the plan to the letter. For the sake of our
marriage, he stepped under the umbrella with me, even though he later told me
how weird, and somewhat angry, he felt when the first photo he ever saw of
Israel was when Pops stepped out of my hospital room and showed him the
picture that he was about to send to Chad for People magazine.
We settled into our new life, enjoying our new baby as much as possible
between filming as we prepared to depart for El Salvador. Summer was only
weeks away, our first anniversary was approaching fast, and we were learning to
let ourselves flow in time with the rhythms of a newborn baby. Even the guilt
around keeping things from Scott and Pops started to fade.
And then one evening in May 2015, Derick and I were around at the Big
House when Pops came into the room, looking drained and worried. He looked
like he’d forgotten how to hold the smile that he wore so often.
He gathered some of us older ones around and spoke softly, choosing his
words like he was picking a route through a minefield.
“I just got word that a tabloid has information about stuff that happened a
long time ago. Stuff that happened between Josh and the girls.”
I was in shock. Nobody spoke. We all just waited for Pops to continue.
“In Touch magazine has been able to get a copy of the police report from the
investigation. I don’t know how they got it, but ’m told that the information it
contains is graphic.”
Nobody breathed.
Silence.
“I’m doing all that I can to make them stop. I’m sure that what they’re doing
is illegal, and I want to get this nipped in the bud.”
The rest of the evening was a blur. My head was spinning. All I wanted was to
get back home and close the doors and windows and forget all about everything
that had happened. I wanted to dig a hole so big that none of these memories
could ever reach the surface again. And if that didn’t work, I hoped that
somehow, Pops would be able to shut this down.
I barely slept, but when I did my dreams were full of shadows and fear.
The only steady source of peace I could find was watching Israel as he fed or
slept. I didn’t think I could love him any more than I did the day he was born,
but as everything threatened to explode outside, watching my beautiful boy
steadied my heart.
When daylight came, there was no point hiding. Derick needed to get to
work, and I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled. Because I wasn’t yet fully
recovered from my C-section, I couldn’t lift Israel in his car seat, so Jessa came
over to take me to the appointment. I was glad for that. It felt like a day to have
your sister by your side.
On the way to the appointment, I tried to distract myself, to live in the
present and think about what else I needed to accomplish that day. I told myself
that everything was just fine, but there was a knot in my stomach, a cord tied
tight around my throat. At times I felt like the air was running out.
We had just parked and Jessa was about to get Israel out of the back of the car
when Pops called.
“They ’ve released it. ’m sorry.”
Immediately, Jessa and I burst into tears.
“They promised us secrecy,” I said when I could finally speak. “They said it
was private. That it was a safe place. How could this happen?”
I was in shock all afternoon. I couldn’t believe that what I had told people in
confidence at the Child Safety Center all those years ago had been released. I
could easily remember how much it had cost me to talk about what had
happened with Josh—how painful it had been to dredge up those memories,
and how frightened I was that we would be taken away from my parents as a
result. How could anyone involved in that process be willing to release it to the
media?
The state of shock didn’t last for long. Like a landslide thundering down a
valley after a night of storms, there was worse to come. For when I finally
summoned the courage to visit the Jn Touch website and read the story for
myself, I was instantly engulfed by a deep, all encompassing, overwhelming sense
of horror.
They had published everything. All the details from the investigation—
details that we had shared in hushed whispers with tear-filled eyes—were now
splashed across the screen. But it wasn’t only presented in the cold, forensic
language of the initial report. This was tabloid journalism at its worst. The most
graphic, the most scandalous, the most painful parts of the story had received the
greatest prominence. It was written with one aim and one aim only:
entertainment.
As soon as I heard Derick’s key in the lock that evening, I ran to him. He held
me tight and cried along with me. I'd told him about the abuse back when we
were nearly engaged, a little more than a year earlier. The release of the report
was salt on an already open wound for him, and he was angry. It took all his self-
control to stay calm for me.
“Hey. How’re you doin’?”
“Terrible,” I said. ’m an avoider by nature, but there was no hiding from
this. The weight was enough to crush me. “I wish I were dead.”
That was all there was to say. I couldn’t speak much more. I just cried.
The nightmares started that night. It had been over a decade since the initial
abuse, and until that point ’d never dreamed about what had happened. But as
soon as In Touch published the story, the trauma started to replay itself in my
dreams.
Daylight didn’t offer much relief.
The doorbell rang soon after Derick went to work, and I didn’t think twice at
first about who it might be or what they might want. I peeked out like I
normally would, saw an unexpected package on the ground and someone
leaving, walking right by the network’s security guard who had let him through.
I paused, watching the delivery guy return to his car, pull out a camera with a
long lens and train it on the front door. I looked closer. There were more of
them.
They stayed there all day. All I could do to defend myself from them was keep
the blinds down and try to stay out of the yard, which was easily visible from the
road. I was trapped. I wanted to go hide under a rock. I had spent my entire life
being taught that modesty was so important and that it was my responsibility as
a godly woman not to behave or dress in a way that would cause any man to have
impure thoughts. And now the whole world was able to read about—and
imagine—what happened to me. I felt naked, ashamed, humiliated. I was being
paraded through the streets, my sexual abuse being served up as nothing more
than entertainment.
I spent a lot of time on the phone that morning. I talked to my sisters, to my
parents, to Cathy and to Derick, too, when he was able to get a break. They were
all loving and supportive, and I was grateful for them all. We were all struggling
together.
Talking with people I trusted didn’t take away the feelings of humiliation and
shame that I was experiencing, but it did help to clarify who I held accountable
for all this: the chief of police at the time, Kathy O’Kelley; the city of Springdale
and its attorney, Ernest Cate; Washington County Sheriff's Office, and its major
sheriff, Rick Hoyt. The magazine itself, Jn Touch, and its parent company Bauer,
plus any other unnamed players.
In the months and years that followed, a lot of people have shared their
opinions on how I responded to the releasing of the report. Some offered their
support and their understanding, and I am grateful to them. But others have
accused me of blaming the wrong people. They said I was covering for my
parents, that it was Mom and Pops’ fault that all this happened in the first place.
It wasn’t and I’m not.
I hold Josh responsible for his actions.
And I hold In Touch, Bauer, Kathy O’Kelley, Ernest Cate, the city of
Springdale, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Rick Hoyt responsible
for illegally releasing and publishing the report—for inflicting on me and my
sisters the trauma of a second victimization, a trauma that was made so much
worse than the first by the fact that it was so public.
I am clear about the mistakes that my parents have made over the years with
our upbringing, especially Pops, but the way my parents handled or didn’t
handle things with Josh does not influence or justify the release of juvenile
records and further re-traumatization and exploitation of innocent victims.
The paparazzi were everywhere. Whenever we left the house they'd follow us
in their cars, lenses trained on us like snipers. They tried to get to Derick at work,
and there were a ton of them camped out at the Big House. A friend of Pops’
offered for everyone to go and stay at his ranch in Oklahoma, so my family
decamped there in the hope of peace.
Derick and I visited on the weekend. I could feel myself exhale as soon as we
turned off the road and onto the property. It was peaceful out there at the ranch,
surreal to be in a place of such tranquility when everything else in our world was
being dominated by trauma. But while the ranch was free from paparazzi, it
couldn’t banish the pressure from our family. As soon as we stepped into the
cabin that had become Duggar HQ, I could feel the tension.
The family was spread around the room. Some were playing board games,
others about to go out for a walk. Mom was with the littlest ones, and Pops was
in the corner with Chad, his right-hand man.
Josh and his family were also there. This might seem strange, but I suppose
events were somehow viewed as a “thing of the past” by that point. It had been
about three months since Id last seen Josh. He’d moved to Washington, DC, in
2013 to work for a conservative group lobbying against access to things like
stem-cell research, abortion, divorce, and pornography (ironically enough, given
later events). As soon as the story broke, he resigned and he, Anna, and the kids
all fled the paparazzi and came back to Arkansas.
I didn’t know how to be around Josh. Although what had happened had
been addressed back then, and he had apologized many times, we didn’t talk
about what had happened anymore. It felt like the distant past. But even so, I
didn’t expect him to be quite as relaxed as he was. And later in the days I didn’t
expect him to start laughing—even though it was clearly nervous laughter—
when he described being under siege by photographers.
It felt weird that he was acting like this, but it was Mom who dealt with it.
“Josh,” she barked. “It’s not your fault that this was released, but you need to
know that you were behind all this. Don’t be so arrogant.”
Josh’s smile vanished. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry to you, girls, that y’all
are having to go through all this.”
Pops was in game plan mode. He and Chad spent most of the day huddling
together, debating what the best next steps were and constantly taking calls.
They'd share snatches of news, but it wasn’t until the evening that we all finally
got to sit around and listen to Pops explain everything to us.
He started by saying that TLC had paused the show and were considering
canceling it altogether. It seemed painful for him to say it out loud, and he let
the words hang in the air for the longest time. It was hard to see Pops like this.
Hard to see him wounded. It was impossible for me to imagine what life would
be like for him, Mom, and my younger siblings without the show in their lives.
But the fight was not all gone from him.
“There are people out there who would like us to fade away. The world
would like to see us close our doors and disappear. But we’re not going to do
that. We’re not giving up on this ministry. The window of opportunity that
God has opened for this family to show the world what it means to follow him is
still there. They think we’re damaged goods, but I will work with TLC to see
what we can do to get this thing back up and going again.”
Another pause. And then there was resolve in his voice once more. Pops was
Pops again, rallying his troops.
“It was wrong what Josh did,” he said, looking at us all. “But we will get past
this. We will move on. We need to help TLC understand that this happened in
the past, that this was something we have already dealt with.”
In many ways he was right. This belonged in the past, and we had taken steps
to deal with it. I had seen a professional counselor, per the court’s
recommendation during the DHS investigation, and my parents were always
ready to listen if I wanted to talk. But by the time of the investigation, I didn’t
really want to talk about it, so it rarely came up. Maybe it would’ve been helpful
for me to have had some earlier counseling when it first happened, and for sure it
would have been helpful around the time all of this released in 2015, but
unfortunately, like many people, I didn’t know I needed it. So I buried it back in
the past.
The conversation shifted to specifics, as Chad and Pops discussed. the best
way possible to change the narrative. Chad had connections with Fox News, so
he talked about offering an exclusive interview to someone there.
“A world exclusive. The first interview. But who with?”
“No need for Josh to appear.”
“No way. Maybe Michelle takes the lead?”
“That could work.”
“Who does the interview? It’s gotta be a female.”
“Megyn Kelly?”
“Megyn would be great.”
The more they talked, the worse I felt. I felt bad for my parents. Bad that they
had to do all this. Bad that Pops’ show was on the line here. Bad that the world
wasn’t able to see that my parents were good people just trying to do good
things.
So even before they asked us girls how we felt about them doing an interview
on TV, I knew what I was going to say. I knew that they needed someone to
stand up for them, someone to vouch for them. They needed someone to do
what they could to save the show.
I was one of the older kids, so I naturally felt more weight and responsibility
to do something, to help somehow. And I wanted to help them, to show them
my love and loyalty in this hardest of times. But I had no boundaries, no sense of
what I needed to do to protect myself. I was terrified and didn’t want to do the
interview at all, but I felt like it was the only way to prove my love and
commitment to my parents. I could clear their name and tell everyone that my
brother’s problems were a thing of the past. How could I stay silent?
I thought I knew how much it would cost me.
All that trauma Id been feeling as I'd hidden behind the closed blinds at
home, it was all going to get worse. That shame, that humiliation, those feelings
of being victimized and violated all over again, they were all about to be
magnified. Everything was about to get worse, but it was the cost that I had to
pay.
“I would be willing,” I said. “Pll do the interview.”
A wave of nausea hit me, like nothing I'd ever experienced before. The room
was spinning, the sound of blood rushing in my ear. I knew why I'd done it, but
what had I done?
Then, without warning, a moment of hope.
“Me too,” said Jessa. “Pl do it with you.”
Pops looked at us both. “Are you sure?”
We nodded.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” said another voice. I looked up. It was Josh.
The days that followed were chaotic. Chad wanted to go over the talking points
with us, and Jessa and I talked a lot about how we could vouch for Mom and
Pops. In a strange way I was grateful that there was no time to pause, no
moment to think about what was coming or how Id feel going on primetime
TV to talk about the abuse. I was about to face the firing squad, and all I wanted
to do was get it over with.
After the Megyn Kelly interview at the Big House. Ben, Jessa, Jim Bob, Michelle, Megyn, fill, and Derick. June
2015.
CHAPTER FIVE
iy
Tearing Apart
“Do you still want to go?”
In the immediate aftermath of the release, Derick and I had not talked much
about going to El Salvador. But it was getting close now. Decisions had to be
made.
It had been less than two weeks since Jessa and I had sat down with Megyn
Kelly. On that day we had taken our seats beneath the bright lights at the Big
House and did what we could to stand up for our parents. Answering all
Megyn’s questions, with Josh watching from a couch just out of shot, was like
having a bandage ripped off a deep and open wound. It was agony, so painful that
I didn’t really pause to ask why Josh was allowed to be there in the first place.
What was worse was the fact that I'd hoped it would calm things down. It hadn’t.
The paparazzi were still chasing us, the internet still feasting on us, poring over
every statement from the network, every new photo, every new angle. My
nightmares were getting worse and there was nothing I could do to block any of
it out. All I was doing was surviving from one breath to the next.
So yeah, I wanted to go. I felt like it was something we were called to do. But I
knew there were risks. Being missionaries with this particular organization, we
would be responsible for raising our own financial support. The show had given
us a level of exposure that was way above anything we could have created for
ourselves, but it had brought with it some complexities. We weren’t naive to the
fact that we might be seen as some kind of target, so we chose not to reveal where
we were going, and only ever talked about working in Central America. The last
thing we wanted was for someone to be able to track us down.
The first thing that happened? Someone tracked us down. At least, that’s
what Derick and I were convinced had happened when we arrived in El Salvador
and were told by Mike that he had just received a call from a Salvadorian
journalist who wanted to come and write a piece about the mission.
Something about it didn’t add up. The mission was small, and apart from
Derick and I starting that month, there was nothing else new that had happened
—certainly nothing that would cause a journalist to suddenly take interest and
want to Visit.
Mike didn’t share our suspicions. He told us that he knew the journalist in
question and had been interviewed by him in the past. All the same, I was glad
when the baby and other demands kept me away from that area of the mission,
out of the camera’s eye on the day the journalist visited.
A few days later, when the Suz posted a grainy picture online of Derick at the
mission, alongside a story about how we'd fled Arkansas and how they had
tracked us down in El Salvador, Mike apologized. It was kind of him, but it was
too late by then. The piece hadn’t just named the country we were in, it even
named the mission itself. The target on our back had just gotten a whole lot
bigger and brighter.
To make matters worse, we soon discovered that there had been a recent
increase in gang violence in the area. There were rumors of killings and
kidnappings, and whispers that the wealthy were a particular target.
Despite the ever-present fear of what might happen if we got caught up in the
gang violence, life in El Salvador had its good parts. We stayed on the mission’s
property while a mission multipurpose house was being built overlooking a
valley that was densely packed with banana trees and a whole bunch of other
jungle plants I didn’t recognize. I divided my days between caring for Israel and
running groups with local women and girls. We had no AC, no Wi-Fi,
intermittent electricity, and an army of fire ants that were desperate to take over
the kitchen. It took some adjusting to, but growing up in a large family I had
learned to be patient and not always have everything I ever wanted. Thanks to the
show, we'd lived well for years, but I didn’t miss the luxuries. It felt good to figure
out how to do laundry without all the usual appliances, and how to clean food
while being careful about the contaminated water.
Arkansas and being part of a filming family felt just a little further away, and I
was grateful for a little more space. The show still had a hold on us, and a lot of
time was taken up with emails, conversations, and a lot of filming on our own.
But the location and the rhythm of life made it easier to cope with the filming
requirements that had remained with us, for which we had to make the
occasional trip back home. Whenever we could, we savored the moments of calm
that this simple life brought us.
ELIZABETH ZELLON PHOTOGRAPHY
Jill, Derick, and baby Israel, June 2015
I was grateful, too, for the opportunity to see Derick in mission mode once
again. He thrived on the work, and I was sure that I'd never seen him so peaceful
or so content as when he was sitting on the back balcony, looking out over the
valley with his Bible open on his lap and his notebook ready beside him.
Derick didn’t look so peaceful or content the day he connected to Wi-Fi and
logged into Twitter.
“Hey babe. I just read something about Josh,” he said. “People are saying that
he’s been caught logging in to some website called Ashley Madison, for people
who want to have extramarital affairs. I googled it, and there are a bunch of
tabloids running the story.”
I felt my heart plunge in my chest.
But I decided to play it differently this time, to be active instead of passively
waiting for the story to emerge. I wanted to know the truth, so instead of
ignoring it or waiting for my parents to tell me what was going on, or trying to
get information through the grapevine from my siblings, Derick and I decided
that it would be best if I texted Josh right away. I wanted to hear directly from
him, to know whether there was any truth in the rumors.
In El Salvador, 2015
I got no reply.
A day or two later, Mom called. “It’s been devastating for Anna and the kids,”
she said, and I could hear the same weary, frustrated tone that she had used in the
Oklahoma cabin just a couple of months earlier. She told me that the rumors
were true, that Josh had confessed that he’d been addicted to pornography for
years, and that he had paid to join a social networking site for people wanting to
cheat on their spouses.
By the time the call ended, I felt just as weary and just as mad at Josh and the
whole situation as Mom.
This time, it was up to me to share the news with Derick.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“He is being sent away,” I sighed. “Again.”
We had agreed to work with Mike’s mission in El Salvador for two years but had
some prior commitments—mainly involving my midwifery training—back in the
US that meant we had to return home briefly. So, not too long after Josh’s affair
news broke, we flew back to Arkansas and made our way back to Tontitown.
It was fall, a season filled with so many great memories of home—trips to
Silver Dollar City, our favorite theme park, and long games of Bible charades at
home, where one older sibling would lead three or more little ones in re-creating
anything from David and Goliath to the stoning of Stephen. We had so much
fun back then, but when we returned from EI Salvador, the Big House felt
different to me. There was no Scott, no TV cameras, no visitors sitting with Pops
in his office, the Big House had lost its usual buzz of excitement. It felt somber.
Mom looked tired. A lot of my siblings looked stressed. But that evening when
we joined the greater Duggar family for Bible time in the living room, Pops had
some news to share.
“Hey guys,” he said after we'd greeted each other, hugged, and everyone had
made a fuss over Israel. “I just talked to Josh and the guy who runs the place
where he is staying. He seems to be doing good. He’s been working in the
kitchen. And the guy who runs the program says he’s doing really well. He said
he’s been like a role model for some of the others and that he’s their best person
there.”
Mom had told me about the program—a Christian-run rehab center up in
Rockford, Illinois. I knew nothing about rehab, but it sounded better than
sending him away to work construction.
“We had some trouble getting him up there,” said Pops. “The paparazzi were
trying real hard to find out where he was going. They even tracked the tail
number of his flight. But at least we got him in there without him being seen.
The guy who runs the program said they had some photographers show up at the
open chapel looking for Josh. But the staff there have been very kind to us and
they were able to find a way to keep him out of sight. I just wanted to update
everyone, as we are happy to receive a good report and we pray that God
continues to work in his life while he is there.”
The conversation changed soon after that, but I was left with his words
ringing in my head like a bell. Though I love my parents and it made a lot of sense
that they would want to protect and care for their child, I couldn’t help but
think about the lengths that Pops had gone to in order to guard Josh’s privacy
and keep him from being publicly humiliated. I mentioned this to Derick, and he
said that he had noticed the same thing. The feelings grew stronger within me,
and by the time I went to bed I felt sick to my core.
When the Jn Touch story broke, all I had wanted was to be protected. All Pd
wanted. was to have privacy and space to grieve without feeling the weight upon
myself to fix the situation. I knew that in time we were all going to do what we
could to fight for justice in the legal system that had failed us, initiating a lawsuit
against the magazine and the people who were behind the illegal release of the
records. I also knew my dad would fight hard too, and I was so grateful for that
support. But back when we’d sat in that cabin discussing the show, what I'd really
wanted. was for Pops to say, “No, we’re not going to put you on Fox News. ’m
going to do everything I can to keep you girls out of this. We are not concerned
about the future of our show anymore.” I wanted my daddy to stand up for me
in that way. Had he known that? Would he have done something different if ’d
spoken up? I had no idea. I’'d spent much of my life listening to IBLP teaching on
the “umbrella of protection.” When I'd needed it most, it had failed me. It felt as
though I, as a woman, was expected do all I could to protect Pops and Josh.
Nobody appeared to see it differently.
We were back in the US for a few weeks, and during our stay there we spent
plenty of time over at the Big House. It was good to be with the family, especially
without the presence of T'V crews for just a few weeks before things picked back
up full force. Though our show and all the reruns had been pulled from their
regular airtime back when everything was released in May 2015, filming hadn’t
taken much of a break for long. My mom, Jessa, and I had already shot one scene
for the network in August in NYC, and there was talk of more show plans
picking back up soon. In between studying for my upcoming exam, we were very
busy catching up on doctor visits as well as continuing to raise support and meet
with people to update them on our ministry. For a while at least, it almost felt like
a normal family.
But... normal families don’t have family meetings where execs from a TV
network roll up and pitch the idea of starting a new show. That’s what happened
one day in mid-September when we were back home. Pops introduced the
network guys, and I recognized the girl who spoke first. Pd seen her at various
media appearances, and most recently the Megyn Kelly interview. She might even
have been at my wedding. I wasn’t sure. With a guest list of two thousand, it was
impossible to keep track of who had and hadn’t been there.
“We don’t want to punish the victims,” she said, looking around. “So we’ve
been trying to figure out how to get the show back up and running. At the
beginning, we’re going to focus only on the older kids who are adults, but
especially those who are married and have moved out of the house. Eventually we
might be able to come back around to showing the younger kids and your
parents, but Josh will not be on the show. We cannot have him part of it at all.”
I could feel the whole room shifting its focus onto Josh’s wife, Anna. She sat
silent and still, like a rabbit hoping a hunter would just move on.
“Before we continue,” said the network representative, “we want to make sure
that you guys are on board.”
Our producer, Scott, spoke up. “We'll have to rebrand the show, give it a new
name and a whole new filming style—no more cutting back to old footage like
before. It’s all fresh, all new.” He paused and looked at us older kids. “We can’t
bring the show back without you. What do you say?”
In spite of everything I'd just heard, it felt a little like a watered-down rerun of
the Oklahoma cabin conversation to me. I wanted to be helpful to Pops, I
wanted to show him that I was on his side, but what about the cost? I wasn’t sure
that either Derick or I saw there being a whole lot of room for the show in our
future. The mission field was where our hearts belonged.
My siblings were taking it in turns to voice their support and agree to the new
show. When it was time for Derick and me to speak, he said that life was
complicated for us now that we were in El Salvador. “It’s dangerous down there,”
he added. “If we draw too much attention to ourselves or the mission, it could
cause problems.” We wanted to help, but made it clear that our involvement
would likely look different now. We would be gone again soon, and this time
when we returned to Central America, per our commitment, we would not be
coming back to the States at all for several months. If they were going to have us
on the show, they'd have to be flexible and creative, especially as they were
thinking of calling it Jill and Jessa: Counting On. We wanted them to know for
sure that Derick and I were firmly committed to pursuing our calling as
missionaries. The rep listened, then talked about us having approval over all
content. Derick and I exchanged glances, and I knew that, like me, he thought it
could work.
When we had all agreed, the rep had one final point to raise.
“If we’re going to do the show again, we can’t just skip over what happened.
Anna’s going to have to sit down and talk about the affair, and the rest of you are
going to have to talk about what happened with the magazine. Are you going to
be okay with that?”
We all froze. I don’t think any of us were okay with it, but the play had already
been set with the Megyn Kelly interview. Going on TV, opening our most
painful wounds for the sake of the ratings, it was what it looked like when you
were a T'V family.
I felt for Anna. She'd been through so much already. And now it was going to
get worse.
Even though we'd agreed to the trip back to the US before we took up our post in
El Salvador, spending six weeks in the US so soon after we'd begun our work at
the mission wasn’t ideal. When we returned to El Salvador in December, Mike
asked that we commit to remaining there until the following July. No more trips
back to the US. We gladly agreed. We wanted to be all in, all the time.
Things felt different when we returned. It wasn’t just the twenty-two hundred
miles between us and Arkansas, or the fact that communication was so difficult.
The new show marked a new beginning, and we had made some fundamental
changes to the way we interacted with those running it. Earlier in the year,
around the time we were leaving for Central America, we had set up a 501c3 and
asked Chad to help us with our fundraising. In the fall, when we headed back
and filming had picked back up, we also decided to ask him to be our main point
of contact for the network. Suddenly it didn’t feel like Pops was the one asking us
about when we could film or what we could commit to, and we’d hoped it would
help the show become more balanced and feel like less of a burden. With Chad
on our side, we hoped that we might be able to avoid some of the emotion when
it came to negotiating our involvement with the show. For a while at least, I felt
optimistic. Maybe the commitment would be managable and the show would
give Derick and I just enough exposure to continue raising the funds we needed
to remain on the mission field.
There was one more reason things felt different. In the short time we had been
away, the gang situation in El Salvador had gotten even worse. There were a lot
more police on patrol in the capital, San Salvador, and in our little village some of
the shops and houses had started hiring armed guards. We'd had our own guard
ever since we'd arrived, but it didn’t feel like much protection anymore.
One evening, while Derick was off somewhere, I was with a few of the ladies
on the team inside our room in the church. It was quiet and remote where we
lived, so we all heard the single gunshot that echoed across the valley. We froze. It
was close. When the second shot rang out soon after, we panicked. Two of the
older moms hurried me into a closet, and as I squatted on the floor—with Israel
pressed close to me—I listened to the sounds of feet scurrying around as the
others found places to hide.
Minutes passed. It was hot in the closet. The air was stale and lifeless. I
listened hard, but there was no sound coming from the other side of the closet
doors. I had no idea whether that was a good sign or not.
My heart was screaming in my chest, the sound of blood in my ears almost
deafening. I wanted to call out and see what was going on, but if this was a
possible kidnapping, our survival depended on us going undetected.
Israel started to squirm to let me know that he was hot too. He took a breath
and made the noise that he always made before he started to cry. I fed him,
desperately hoping that it would work.
After about ten minutes, someone gave the all clear. One of the guards at the
other end of the property had been showing off and had let a friend fire his gun.
At first I was relieved. Then I was annoyed that the whole thing had been
caused by someone acting so foolishly. As the sky grew dark, I was worried. That
night, for once, my nightmares weren’t set in a dark Arkansas bedroom.
Most of the time gunfire was a rarity, and life started to find its rhythm. Each
week brought with it a rich array of opportunities to pray with people, for Derick
to preach, for us to visit a local orphanage, and to generally spend quality time
being a mom of a little one alongside other moms and their babies. My family
had been visiting the mission down there for years, and I was glad that many of
the people we were working among considered themselves our friends. In the
strangest of ways, I felt at home down there.
As Christmas approached, it was time for the annual mission trip to El
Salvador. As usual, a handful of Duggars were coming, including Pops and
several of my siblings—as well as a new friend of theirs, a great guy named Jeremy,
who my sister, Jinger, was getting to know.
Six months had passed since we had formed Dillard Family Ministries, our
501c3. We'd posted about it on our family blog, and so many people had been
generous in response. That initial burst of financial support was amazing, but
since moving, the fundraising had gotten a lot harder. Money was flowing out of
our ministry bank account a lot faster than it was coming in. Like any other
missionary family, we discovered quickly that fundraising when you’re on the
field is hard work. Things were a little more complicated for us because of being
on TV—and we'd had a few comments from people on Twitter, who assumed
that we were making a lot of money off the show and shouldn’t need to go asking
people for help. Derick wanted to set them straight, explaining that we didn’t
make a dime off the show, and that our involvement in it was purely voluntary,
but per my request, he stayed quiet. We figured that if we could do a good job of
presenting what we were doing, and Chad could help us with providing updates
and maybe putting on church events and meet and greets when we came back to
the US, then that fundraising might just get a little easier.
The mission house that Mike’s ministry had been building was completed just
in time for us to move in during the first week of December, just before the
Christmas mission team arrived. Mike was excited to show us the place, and a
couple days later when Pops and some of my siblings arrived with the rest of the
team, we showed them around too. The house was pretty empty, so Mike took
Pops and a few other people to the city one day to shop for some household
items. They came back with a washing machine, a rice cooker, and a few other
things. For a mama with a little one in reusable diapers, that was a good day.
A few nights into the trip, Pops, Derick, and I were sitting around our dimly lit
bedroom as I nursed Israel to sleep. It was a typical night on the edge of the
jungle, and all of us were feeling wiped out by the ninety-degree heat and 100
percent humidity. Our single fan was no match for the conditions.
I don’t remember who brought it up, but somehow we started talking about
the show, the filming schedule, and our availability. Suddenly, without warning,
the topic shifted onto a subject that I had always avoided discussing with my
parents. Money.
With his background in accounting, Derick always paid special attention to
our finances, and he was starting to get concerned when looking to the future
that the initial fundraising was not sustainable. As we continued to talk about
ministry fundraising efforts and keeping supporters in the loop via regular
ministry email and blog updates, we were also reminded, on a different note,
about our personal finances.
Even though our ministry finances were completely separate from our
personal finances, it spurred our thinking. Since the start of the new, rebranded
show—Jill and Jessa: Counting On—we couldn’t help but think again about
when we might see some income for all of our previous and current involvement.
After arriving back in El Salvador, Derick and I had talked a few times about
the fact that we had never seen any income for our work on the show, but I
would always feel bad about going there, so I'd circle back to remind him about
the show being a ministry, which is where the conversations always ended.
But tonight, with Pops in the room, Derick wanted to talk.
“I’m just wondering, Pops, do you think we could maybe see some kind of
income from the show at some point?”
Pops tensed. I cringed, bracing for impact. He looked genuinely shocked.
When he regained his composure, his words were carefully measured.
“Derick, from the very beginning, our family has viewed this as a ministry. An
opportunity to share with the world that children are a blessing. Back when we
started this show, we didn’t make anything off it. I was the one who was able to
negotiate a good deal for our family. I could retire right now. The only reason I’m
still doing this is for you kids.”
Pops sat back. Question dodged. Conversation over.
I looked at Derick. I could tell he was thinking. It was like he was checking a
column of calculations a second and third time before hitting return. Eventually,
he spoke again.
“Well, how about us receiving a certain percentage of what comes in? Could
that work?”
Pops paused, his jaw set tight. “We used to pay Josh, but decided not to do
that after a while because it wasn’t a very good idea.” Then he shifted, smiling at
us both and changing course, seemingly looking for another way to shut things
down. “Michelle is the one that has had all these kids. We wouldn’t even have this
show if it weren’t for her.”
It was obvious that Pops wanted us to pick up on his cues and bow out of this
dance, but Derick wasn’t giving in. He was respectful, but his voice was firm and
his demeanor unwavering. “Yes, that’s true, but we’ve also added a lot of value to
the show and done a lot to contribute. After all, the show is called Jill and Jessa:
Counting On.”
It was a game of chess. I knew there were other moves Derick could make, like
mentioning the fact that our wedding alone had drawn 4.4 million viewers for
hours of prime-time television, or that as a couple we'd taken part in multiple
People magazine cover shoots to promote both the wedding and Israel’s birth
episodes, which had been big successes themselves.
Pops was quick to respond. “I know y’all did some iPhone video or something
for the pregnancy and birth stuff, and we appreciate all of that, but it takes
teamwork. We all have to help out. Like some of the kids are filming a lot in other
areas of their lives. And at times some will be more involved than others, but it
averages out in the long run.”
For a moment I thought Pops was done with the conversation. But he
surprised me.
Turning to Derick he asked, “What are you worth? Ten dollars an hour?
Twelve? That’s what I pay some of the others who work for me.”
It was the first Pd ever heard of Pops paying anyone in the family, but I could
read the signs. It wasn’t an invitation to debate or discuss, and it certainly wasn’t
a joke. It was a dismissal. He wanted us to back off, to go into full retreat. But
Derick wasn’t having any of it.
“Well,” said Derick, remaining calm, “what’s the show worth?”
“Huh?”
“You can’t appraise the value of a worker to a business until you know what
the whole business is worth. So I guess before we can tell you what we’re worth,
we'd need to know what kind of deal you’ve got with TLC.”
Pops’ mood soured further. He was already upset, and the effort to stay calm
was starting to show. “Derick, when we got into this, all those years ago, we just
really wanted to reach people to show that children are a blessing. It’s not
something we went looking for. God brought this opportunity to us, and we
really feel like he has blessed it and helped us reach so many people, many who
would otherwise never step foot in a church. Nearly every day we are getting
emails from people who say they’ve been impacted. They’ve shared how they’ve
given their lives to Jesus, or started going to church again, or decided to have
more children, just by seeing Christian values portrayed through the show. Think
about how many people we’ve been able to reach on a secular television network.
I'm not saying your work here isn’t great, but we are reaching more people
through the show than you are here on the mission field.”
The sting was sharp.
All the while Pops and Derick had been talking, I'd been cringing, trying to
hide myself away right there on the bed, wishing that the conversation would
stop. All my internal alarms about pushing back on authority had been going off
full volume. But Pops’ comment had bite. It hurt. It felt like it was designed to
make us back off.
But Derick didn’t scare so easily.
“T understand, Pops. But we would be so grateful if you could pray about
maybe possibly paying us something. Jill has contributed a lot of hours to filming
over the past decade, and she has nothing to show for it financially. I know she’s
the first daughter to get married and that you are still figuring this out, so we get
that it’s awkward, but I’m sure as more of the other kids get older and marry too,
they'll be thinking of these things also.”
When Pops left our room, Derick and I talked a little longer, prayed, then
went to bed. Derick had no trouble sleeping, but I was wired too tight. I was
anxious and panicking, and my heart was threatening to burst its way out of my
chest. I wasn’t used to seeing someone talk back and press Pops like that. I was
worried that we would be seen as disrespectful, even though Derick had been
polite throughout. In the culture I had been raised in, questioning a parent’s
authority was a very negative thing, and I hated the thought of rocking the boat
like that. Nobody had ever done it before, but I was sure that if anyone did, the
punishment would be severe, most likely resulting in effective banishment from
the family. But I was also with Derick on wanting more information about the
finances of filming. So, long into the night, I stared into the darkness, hoping and
praying that we could work things out with Pops soon and get more information
without causing any problems.
Somewhere in the middle of those long, humid hours, with the cicadas
making their constant chorus outside, my thoughts turned to Derick. He wasn’t
plagued by guilt or bound by fear. It reminded me of what Jesus said in the Bible
about children not being afraid to ask their father for bread.
I felt something change inside me. I was still mortified by the thought of Pops
feeling angry with us. But I was proud of my husband too. He’d fought for his
family, just like he’d promised to do on the day we got married.
The rest of the mission trip passed without incident between Pops and us. We
spent good times with several of my siblings who were old enough to come on
the trip, and we hoped that Pops would do what we'd asked and pray about
starting to pay us and some of the other kids.
Almost as soon as they left, the security situation in the area got worse. We
heard rumors of increased gang activity, and we were warned that even walking
for a minute or two on our own in the wrong street would put us at risk for
kidnapping. We tried not to give too much oxygen to the fear, but we felt like we
had a target on our backs, and it felt like our worries were further affirmed with
the news that TLC had decided to take out ransom insurance on us, which only
made us feel even more vulnerable. No matter how much we wanted to blend in
and be part of the community, we knew we stood out. We were the only white
people in the area. When we’d visited when I was a kid, it had never bothered me
at all, but now, with the dangers increasing, and me as a wife and mama having so
much more to lose, it felt different. People encouraged us to keep an
unpredictable schedule as much as possible, but that was hard to do while trying
to be consistent in ministry.
In the end, it wasn’t us they came for.
Pretty much every male in the country was in a gang, even boys as young as
seven and eight. There were only two ways of getting out—you either died, or
you joined a church. For some reason, the gangs left Christians alone, but only if
the person was genuinely committed to their church. Even then, the gangs still
forced those non-members to pay taxes or “rent” for their freedom.
We had been attending and helping in various ministries at the local church
afhliated with the ministry we were working with ever since we arrived, and we
were starting to become good friends with the people there, especially with one
family who lived ten minutes from our house. One of their daughters, Fatima,
had a boyfriend who had gotten out of a gang. Raul was sixteen or seventeen, and
we'd see him at church from time to time.
One day while Raul was out in the street, a car pulled up and took him.
Nobody ever saw or heard from him again. Everybody assumed the same two
things—that someone, somewhere, had noticed that he hadn’t been a regular at
church, and that Raul was now dead. Not long after, Fatima and her mother,
Rosa, showed up at the church in tears. They told us that the gang had instructed
them not to ask any questions or look for Raul or his body, and that if they did,
they would be next.
As the violence continued, we decided to get a permanent guard of our own,
not just for when the mission’s teams were with us. It was yet another expense
that we couldn’t afford, but the risk of not having someone armed to protect us
was just too great.
We didn’t have a television in El Salvador, and even if we had, the shows usually
aired later internationally, so we weren’t keeping up with the show and for a
while felt like it was happening on a different planet. That didn’t last long. As
soon as season one of Jill and Jessa: Counting On aired just before Christmas,
there was an increase in emails and phone calls as TLC made plans for season
two. We were given instructions to shoot a lot of content ourselves—home video
of anything from us eating a meal, to Israel starting to walk—and since the
arrangement was more conducive to our schedule, it worked out okay.
The request that Chad emailed to us after Christmas was a whole other
matter. TLC wanted to shoot some new promotional content for commercials,
and they wanted all of us adult Duggar children involved in the show to fly to
Houston for a few days in February.
Even though the show was technically about us adult children and had been
branded to look different from the old 19 Kids and Counting, everything behind
the scenes was the same. Scott was still the producer, Pops was still the only one
being paid and the one in control of the contract, and Chad was still the one
carrying out Pops’ and the network’s bidding, making sure everyone stayed in
line and behaved as they were supposed to in order to get this new series off the
ground.
Back in October, when we’d left Arkansas and returned to El Salvador, we’d
told Chad and everybody else about the commitment we'd made to Mike to stay
in the country until the end of July 2016. When Chad asked us about going to
Houston for filming, we figured that maybe Chad had forgotten this, so we
apologized that we couldn’t make it and reminded him that we had given our
word that we would remain in El Salvador.
He didn’t reply, but in January Chad did email us to say that since he was
about to book tickets to Houston, we needed to tell him which flight we wanted.
We wrote back, telling Chad that we were not going to be able to make it,
reminding him again of our deal with Mike.
Chad’s email back was polite but insistent. He explained that the shoot was
vital for the promotion that the network was planning for the show, and that our
presence was key. “It is a big deal for them,” he wrote. “They’ve offered if you
have a list of things you need from the States that you cannot get in CA, they will
do that shopping for you and pack those things up to go back with you.”
We got back to him quickly, repeating our commitment to Mike. But we did
say that we would pray about it more and let him know that we would be talking
with Pops and Mom later that evening.
The next day, after talking with my parents and praying, we slept on it. Our
parents had been supportive, though clear that they wanted us to figure
something out with Chad, and even more clear that they thought the shoot was
important. We went back to Chad the next day and told him that we felt that our
time in the field was important and that we needed to honor our commitment, so
traveling back wasn’t an option. We suggested that we could shoot some video
and send it on to them, or they could have the crew fly down and meet us at a San
Salvador airport hotel and do the shoot in front of a green screen in an afternoon.
We hoped that somehow we could figure out a compromise.
We couldn’t.
Eventually, after several emails, Derick picked up the phone and called Chad.
“We don’t have to come back,” he said. “Jill isn’t obligated to anything. Jill and I
have only ever been volunteers.”
Chad shot back, “Jill has a contractual obligation. She has to return.”
“Excuse me? Jill has never signed any contract.”
The call ended soon after and was followed by an email from Chad outlining
what he alleged I was obligated to—a pasted list of various obligations toward the
show, including that we would make ourselves available to all promotional
activities as requested by the network. Chad’s email referenced a contract that I
signed, and that the contract was fixed for five years.
I was confused.
Derick was suspicious. “Do you remember ever being part of any contract
deals with the network?”
“No,” I said. “Never. Pops always handled all communication with the
network.”
I was upset, confused, and immensely disturbed by the idea of there being
some kind of actual contract out there that might obligate me to things beyond
my control—a contract of which I had zero recollection of ever signing.
As the weeks passed, while I was stressing about this phantom contract, the
attempts to get us to agree to go to Houston increased. The phone calls and
pressure continued to build, but we heard less from Chad and more from my
parents. We asked Chad and Pops to send us a copy of whatever contract we were
obligated to, but still nobody would give us anything. They just kept pressuring
us about the shoot, repeating that I was obligated to attend.
The more they pressed, the more we pushed back. The only commitment I
felt obligated to was the one we had made to Mike to serve the mission fully.
Three days out from the shoot, the phone rang. It was early morning, and even
before I looked at the screen, I knew who would be calling. Pops had called twice
already that day.
Saying no to the Houston trip felt like torture, but Derick and I had been
doing it for weeks now, and we were committed to standing firm. After years and
years of compromise and giving in to whatever demands the network made,
finally we had found a hill to die on. This was our moment to take a stand. We
were not doing it to make things difficult for the network or for Pops. We wanted
to make everyone happy. We wanted to work things out and we were still trying
to be as accommodating as possible. However, we just felt like we had to make
the right choice. Instead of feeling happy or empowered, I felt angry that things
had come to this. Angry, and terrified too.
“Pops...,” I said, trying to get a word in as soon as he began. “That’s not...
that’s not what we’re saying...”
The tension made my voice sound different. Younger, like I was twelve instead
of twenty-five. Maybe that’s what he wanted, to put the right kind of pressure on
the right nerves. But I didn’t want to cave and just give in. I wanted Pops to
understand why we were taking a stand like this. I wanted him to know that we'd
made a commitment to our ministry. I wanted him to be proud of us for that,
but instead all I could hear in his voice was frustration.
“It’s so important that you're there for this. It’s Jill and Jessa: Counting On,
and they need you. Surely Mike can spare you for one day?”
Derick came and stood beside me, his arm around my shoulders. My heart was
racing. I felt sick.
I put Pops on speakerphone so we both could hear what he was saying, but his
request hadn’t changed in any of the calls he’d made over the previous days. He
wanted us on a plane that weekend, arriving in Houston in time for the shoot.
But while the request was the same, his tone was different. On all the other calls
he’d tried to persuade us. Now he was trying to guilt us.
“Ts this you or is this Derick who is being the problem here?”
I'd never heard Pops say something like that before, and it pierced like a dagger
to hear him try to pit us against each other like that. I was speechless.
“This isn’t like you, Sweet Jilly Muffin. Is Derick behind this? Are you having
problems financially? Are you depressed?”
I could feel Derick tensing beside me.
“Pops,” he said, his voice calm and controlled. “We really aren’t trying to ruin
anything. We wish we could help, but we’ve made a commitment here.”
There was pause before Pops spoke. When he did, his voice had a new, harsher
edge to it.
“If you don’t come back for this filming thing, everything’s going to get
messed up. We just got the show back up and going again, and we need to be real
careful not to rock the boat with the network. They can’t film the promotional
material for Jill and Jessa: Counting On without you, Jill. Just think about it, if
you don’t come to this shoot and TLC cancels the show again, everyone is going
to look at you and know that it’s your fault and that you could have stopped it.
Are you gonna be okay carrying that burden?”
“Hey...,” Derick said, stepping in to defend me.
“Let me talk to you for a minute, Derick, because you are causing your wife to
go against her word. Is that what you’re going to do? Make her break her word?
If so, let me tell you that you are failing your family and leading them down a
path of destruction. Are you prepared for that? Do you know what happens if
you break a legally binding contract?”
It was the first time he’d mentioned the contract other than in email, though
we still hadn’t seen it. I could feel the blood rush to my face. I was so angry.
There was a moment’s silence.
“You know,” said Pops, “maybe you should flip a coin.”
“Excuse me?” said Derick.
“A coin. I did it when I was trying to decide whether to run for US Senate. I
flipped it three times and it came up heads every time. That’s how I knew I
should run.”
Both of us sat in silence. That only seemed to make Pops more upset.
“Let me tell you something now! You’re gonna get sued! You’re gonna need
whatever money you have, because you're going to be sued!”
Pops called back later that same day. And for the first time, we didn’t answer. We
just let the phone ring.
We did the same thing with the next call too.
And the next.
I felt a glimmer of relief, but it was more than overshadowed by the strong
sense of guilt that we were disrespecting him this way.
My head was spinning, my stomach clamped painfully tight. Even on silent,
the sound of the phone buzzing into life felt like the gunshots that had sent us
into hiding months earlier. I felt tense and anxious. There was no closet deep or
dark enough for me to hide in this time.
Finally, we turned off our phones.
My anxiety only got worse.
All afternoon I was in agony, flipping between fear and guilt every few
seconds. I felt like I was in labor, but not like I'd been with Israel. This was no
new life that I was bringing into the world, and there was no sense that if we
could just get through this storm with Pops then everything would be okay. On
the contrary, I was terrified that things were about to get a whole lot worse.
Later, when it was dark and all we could hear from outside were the sounds of
the cicadas, I finally began to cry. Derick was holding me close, trying to make me
feel safe and protected. But all I could feel was fear and guilt. Guilt and fear. My
own father didn’t recognize me. Didn’t like me. Maybe he didn’t even love me
anymore.
What had I done?
What had I become?
“What if he’s right, Derick?” I sobbed in the darkness. “What if we show up
in America and we’re taken to jail?”
Derick held me tighter, telling me everything was going to be fine.
“They’re not going to sue the poor missionaries in Central America who have
no contractual obligation and who haven’t received so much as a cent in return
for their work.”
But the fear I felt was so real. I was convinced that by disrespecting Pops like
this, by stepping out from under the umbrella of his protection, I was placing
myself in great danger. If the courts didn’t punish me, maybe God would.
On the day of the shoot, when my adult siblings were in Houston, I woke up
feeling different. Not totally better, but not as bad as before. Some of the guilt
had eased, and the fear wasn’t quite so tight around my throat anymore. I felt like
I could breathe again. We'd made it all the way to Saturday, and we hadn’t given
in. For the first time in my life, it felt like I was standing up for myself.
Saturdays were always busy in El Salvador, and this one was no different. We
always worked in a local village that had a lot of gang activity, coordinating job
skills training and teaching a Bible study. Besides that, Derick had a Sunday
sermon to finish preparing for. It was good to feel like we were doing something,
good to be distracted.
I was just finishing feeding Israel when I heard a vehicle approach out front.
Then car doors slammed shut, and a voice I'd recognize anywhere called out.
“Hey! Derick? Jill? Are you there?”
I opened the door and saw them, Mom and Pops, coming down the stairs.
Her eyes were kind of teary. Pops was behind his phone, filming this family
reunion.
I didn’t know what to say. My Sweet Jilly Muffin mask wasn’t appearing on
command. Derick was stunned too.
“We wanted to come and see you,” said Pops after an awkward pause. “Didn’t
we, Michelle?”
She nodded and Pops put the phone away. He looked right at me. I could feel
the walls edge closer, and I braced for impact.
“T realize I was a little harsh,” he said. “I’m sorry for some of the things I said.”
I reached for Derick’s hand. If ever I needed to be reminded that my husband
and I were united, it was then.
CHAPTER SIX
=
No Agreement
The first week of August 2016, we boarded the plane for northwest Arkansas.
There was a lot to be thankful for, and a lot to think about. Derick and I were
both glad that we had been able to honor our promise to Mike, and we both
were feeling like we had left behind good friends and a thriving ministry. It had
been hard to say goodbye, even though we were only planning on being back in
the US for two to three months. We were due to attend two weddings—one for
Derick’s brother, the other for my sister Jinger—and do a ton of filming
required for the show. The weddings I was super excited about. The filming, not
so much. There were extensive plans for the crew to follow us as we all prepared
for the wedding, plus capture a ton of everyday activities, like going to the
grocery store, so that we could talk about all the things we’d missed while we'd
been away.
That final flight on the long journey home was anything but settled. Israel
was just a year old and didn’t want to sit still for more than a few minutes at a
time. Inside, I felt just as restless. Just as unsettled. The closer we got to home,
the worse I felt.
A few months earlier we'd finally received a partial copy of the infamous
contract that Chad had mentioned. Not the whole contract, but a few excerpts
—including a clause that stated I had to reveal to the network if I discovered I
was pregnant, as well as the final page that had mine and my siblings’ signatures
inked in.
That signature page was instantly familiar, especially when I read the date
that I'd signed it.
June 20, 2014.
The day before Derick and I were married. The day Pops had told me that he
had some simple papers for us all to sign in the dining room, saying that it only
had to do with how we were going to get paid—not that we'd ever received any
wages for any of our work.
I'd been furious when Id found out, but now that we were heading back to
see the family for the first time, I was calmer. But I was still nervous.
The whole family was waiting for us. So was a film crew, which left me
wondering just how honest the hugs and the “welcome backs” and the “we love
yous” really were.
It turned out they were genuine. Once the cameras left and we were back at
the Big House, it was like the whole Houston shoot conflict had never
happened. I even began to think—to hope—that Pops’ apology when he and
Mom had showed up that day was completely genuine. We hadn’t spoken much
since then. Maybe he’d come around to our way of thinking and would be
willing to talk about paying us fairly for our work. Maybe he saw the true value
of what we were doing in El Salvador and wouldn’t have to lessen its importance
in comparison to the show all the time.
And so, with every conversation, every shared meal, every moment that I
braced for impact and didn’t get chewed out by Pops, I could feel myself
relaxing. There were still a ton of questions floating around in my mind about
the contract and why Pops had tricked me into signing it, and I still felt uneasy
about the way he’d tried to drive a wedge between Derick and me on that phone
call. But I was okay with leaving those for another day. We were going to enjoy
the short time we had planned to spend at home, then return to the mission field
ready for another period of service.
It didn’t take long for that settled peace to change. But the disruption wasn’t
anything to do with Pops or the show. It wasn’t even a bad thing. What threw
our plans into the air was all down to me and Derick. I got pregnant again.
In any other year, nothing would have changed. Derick and I would have
happily moved back to El Salvador just a few weeks later, confident that the little
one would grow just as well in my womb down in Central America as it would
back in the States. But 2016 wasn’t any other year. The Zika virus was raging
across Latin America, and it posed an even higher risk to women in their early
stages of pregnancy.
Ultimately, due to filming demands, including a promotional shoot in
December we were required to attend, we had to wait until at least the end of the
year to return to El Salvador. Mike was gracious and said he understood, and we
agreed that we'd return soon after the shoot. Besides keeping Dillard baby
number two healthy, it allowed us to be fully available for whatever the show
required. Even though mine and Jessa’s names were in the title, the show actually
divided its focus among several of us older kids. Jana, John-David, Joseph,
Josiah, Joy, and Anna were all featured in addition to us, and with Jinger
engaged to Jeremy, and another wedding on the horizon, we weren’t as much of
a focus as we had been in the first few seasons of Counting On. After thirteen
years of filming—almost half my life—I was finally starting to imagine a future
without it.
Derick and I enjoyed having time and space to talk and dream and pray about
what our lives might look like once we’d completed the second year in El
Salvador. We'd loved being part of the mission project, but our time was coming
to an end. At the same time our baby was growing secretly inside me, we were
also starting to nurture plans for what we might do next in our lives.
Family meeting. 10 am tomorrow morning.
Pops’ text came through early one October morning, to a group made up of
the older kids. Pops was always sending messages to different ones of us—those
who lived at the Big House, those who were older, those who were younger (but
not the smallest kids), married kids, single kids—but there was something
triggering about being called to a family meeting. The wounds from the last few
that I’d attended were still raw.
When Pops started by talking about Josh, it all sounded so familiar.
“He’s had a few more struggles,” Pops said once everyone had sat down and
the door was closed. “Yall already know that Josh has recently got his own car
lot, and so we feel like it’s best for him to go out on his own now.”
Pops stopped. His words were typically vague, designed to shut debate down,
not invite it. So while there were a ton of questions that we could have asked,
nobody said anything. Our main job in these family meetings was usually just to
listen. Substantive issues were not up for discussion.
But it turned out that the meeting wasn’t about Josh after all.
“Anyway,” Pops said, smiling, “Mom and I have been talking, and some of the
boys are getting older and are to the point where they could use some money to
help move on in life. And we thought it might be a good idea for you guys to
have a little bit of money so that y’all can do what you need to do in life. We
want to give you each eighty thousand dollars, and ’m guessing some of you will
use it to start your businesses, buy houses, or whatever to get yourselves started.”
The room burst into a chorus of surprise and gratitude. In all my life, I'd
hardly ever been more surprised by something that Pops said.
“You know,” he continued once the room was quieter, “you guys can thank
Derick for this. He’s been talking to me about paying some of you guys.”
To everybody else, the comment was a throw away. But to Derick and me,
sitting side by side, it was a trigger. I was glad Pops had finally decided to pay
something outright to some of the kids, and glad too that he recognized Derick
for his involvement in the process, but my mind took me back to the humid
bedroom that we'd sat in with Pops before Christmas, Derick looking confused
and exasperated. Pops looking mad. Me feeling like I was in a whole world of
trouble. Bracing for impact as the plane hurtled toward earth.
I swallowed my feelings and reached for my husband’s hand. I gave him three
squeezes, received four in return, and waited to see if Pops was going to say
anything else about Derick and me.
He didn’t.
“All Pm going to need is for y’all to sign something. ?m having the paperwork
drawn up now. Once you’ve signed, Pll get you the money.”
As soon as we were alone, Derick said exactly what I was thinking.
“I don’t get it. It raises so many questions. Why eighty thousand? Why now?”
“And what’s it for? Is this us getting paid for the shows we’ve already done, or
is it a gift?”
We talked late into the night but got nowhere. We felt frustrated to be left
with so many questions and only Pops to answer them. And based on recent
history, we didn’t feel comfortable taking all our questions to him anyway. A
discussion might just leave us with no real information again, and more
heartache. Maybe Pops was just being generous, but both of us felt sure that
there was some angle he was playing. After all, thirteen years as a filming family
had taught that everything has a cost. Plus, Pops’ lifestyle alone told us that the
show had generated a lot more than the equivalent of eighty thousand dollars
each.
At first, the changes had been subtle. We’d enjoyed more extravagant presents
at Christmas, newer RVs to transport us together, and I'd noticed when Pops
had started making bigger and more generous gifts to people in need. But as the
show had grown, Pops had been able to buy more and more rental properties.
He continued to be generous, often allowing several of his houses to be used by
friends or family at discounted rates, or even completely rent free.
It took a few days for the mist to clear and for us to suspect that the money
wasn’t just a simple gift.
First, there was a comment from Pops about how none of us needed to
discuss the money with anyone else, either inside or outside the family: “If you
have any issues, don’t go stirring contention among the brethren,” he said. “You
come to me.”
A few weeks later the paperwork came through—a four-page agreement
emailed over by Chad. After having been tricked into signing the previous
contract, Derick and I were extra careful to study this one, showing it to a
lawyer, along with the portions of the previous agreement we'd been given. If we
were going to sign Pops’ new deal, we wanted to be clear about what we were
giving up.
The contract wasn’t with TLC or any other network. It was with Mad
Family Inc.—a company that Mom and Pops had previously set up. In return
for the eighty thousand dollars, for the next seven years—plus an unlimited
number of years beyond that if the company chose—we would have to commit
to making not just ourselves but our children, and any children yet to be born,
available to any show that Mad Family Inc. created or participated in. We would
be paid for that work as well, but at a rate that we would have to accept without
negotiation. We would also have to sign an NDA which would remain active for
the rest of our lives. Eighty thousand dollars was a lot of money, but these strings
were tight enough to choke.
Derick and I didn’t even need a discussion. There was no way either of us
were going to sign. Not that we told Chad or Pops that right away. We figured it
would be wise to hold off on saying no to Pops until we absolutely had to.
Pops had been clear that we were not to talk about the deal with anyone else,
either each other, our other siblings, or anyone outside the family. To me, at that
time, the level of secrecy and control that Pops exerted on us felt normal. We had
been conditioned to obey, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to see the
hypocrisy in the fact that he would warn us against stirring up contention
among the brethren while also using us against one another and duping us into
signing contracts.
Most were scared enough of Pops’ displeasure to obey, but not everyone did
what he said. A few siblings asked us whether we were going to sign. I told them
no, choosing my words carefully, fearful of stirring up family problems. I was
surprised that almost everyone I spoke to felt fine about signing. Some said they
had some edits they wanted to make to the agreement first, but I started to feel
like they were being swept away by a soon-to-become treacherous river. I wanted
to jump in and save them, but I wasn’t sure I had that kind of power.
Signing a deal with Mad Family Inc. felt like jumping onboard a paper aircraft.
Nothing about it felt safe. But that didn’t mean we were down on Pops. Things
weren’t great between us, but it was late fall 2016 now and almost a year had
passed since we had argued with him on the phone in EI Salvador. We hadn’t
fought since then, and inside me there was just a small flame of hope that
somehow, we might be able to build a stronger relationship in the future.
A few short weeks later, we were on a Duggar family trip in Branson,
Missouri, at Thanksgiving when things changed. A month had passed since we'd
been given the contract to sign, and Derick and I had been talking a lot and
praying about everything that had been happening recently, trying to figure out
how we could navigate things better with Pops. After getting some advice from
an attorney outside the family circle of influence, Derick and I agreed that the
next step would be to ask Pops to hand over a full copy of the contract that he’d
had me sign the day before our wedding. He’d already sent us part of it in June,
but seeing the whole thing felt like a good opportunity for him to be transparent
and open with us. He was resistant. At least, he was playing the same stalling
game on the 2014 contract that we were playing on Pops’ eighty-thousand-dollar
one. But on vacation, when we weren’t all crowded on top of each other like we
often were at home, there was an opportunity to talk with Pops face-to-face.
We were sitting a little removed from everyone else, at a table in an empty
corner at Fritz’s Adventure, a kids’ climbing place in Branson, Missouri, when
Pops walked over and sat down.
“T feel like there’s still something between us,” he said. There was a pause.
Derick and I looked at each other.
“Well, yes,” said Derick. “There’s been some trust broken recently that might
take a while to rebuild.”
“It goes both ways. You’ve broken my trust too.”
His stare was rock solid. I could taste the bile in my throat. I feared that
things were about to get ugly again.
Then Pops surprised me. “I’m sorry,” he said. I hadn’t heard him say that
many times before. The words sounded unfamiliar. But I liked them.
At least, I did until he finished his sentence.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t let you know what you were obligated to.”
“But Jill never read the contract she was signing, so she wasn’t obligated to
anything,” said Derick, trying hard to hold his frustration in check. “Will you
admit that?”
Pops shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry for making her agree to something she
wasn’t obligated to.”
“Thanks, Pops,” I said. “We forgive y’all and love yall too and really hope we
can move forward and have great family relationships.”
Later, when everyone was talking about what they were thankful for, I
wondered what to say. I was thankful for Mom and I was thankful for Pops, too.
I was thankful for my husband, my son, and the little life growing in my belly.
But most of all, what I really wanted to say was that I was thankful for my
husband and his bravery and courage despite the obstacles we had faced together
that year. In all the stress of things with family, he was my biggest champion, and
together we were learning to take back control of our lives, one small decision at
a time.
The closer we got to the end of the year, the more pressure we came under to
sign the agreement. We talked about it, prayed about it, and slept on it a whole
lot. But even though Chad and Pops were persistent and persuasive, we just
couldn’t get any peace about signing anything at all. Yes, we wanted the money
—even though it was nowhere near an accurate compensation for the hours and
days and years spent filming—but we did not want to be tied up in any legal
agreement with Pops to get it.
I guess Pops felt the same way, because in the last few days of December he
visited us at home. I wanted to hide. I wanted everything to go away. I didn’t
want to have to pour concrete around my heart in an attempt to shield me from
the blast.
But Pops wasn’t there to fight. He was there to hand over a check for the full
eighty thousand dollars. “What about the agreement?” Derick asked.
“I know yall have been thinking over the contract and talking with Chad
about revisions, and we had hoped to get all that wrapped up before the end of
the year, but we can continue those conversations. Mom and I talked about this
and we really want to go ahead and give yall your payment now. We really love
you guys.”
“Thank you, Pops,” I said. I meant it, but I wasn’t rejoicing. Somehow it
didn’t feel like the end of the story.
Our return to El Salvador got pushed from December to February, thanks to a
combination of filming commitments and safety concerns that Mike had. The
time went quickly, and before we knew it, we only had a couple of weeks left in
Arkansas. Aside from packing up and sourcing supplies that we wanted to take
with us, there was one other task that we simply had to complete before we
boarded the plane. We needed to find a lawyer.
Ever since In Touch magazine had published the story a year and a half earlier,
my sisters and I had wanted to do what we could to right the wrongs legally and
hopefully help protect other victims. We couldn’t undo the damage and the pain
that we had experienced, and the humiliation was unerasable. But hopefully we
could get justice. We could hold to account the people who were complicit in the
illegal release of documents relating to the investigation: Kathy O’Kelley; the
City of Springdale, Arkansas; Washington County, Arkansas; Ernest Cate; Rick
Hoyt; Jn Touch magazine and its parent company Bauer, and anyone else
involved behind the scenes.
Pops had tried another law firm previously, but they didn’t take the case.
Now, in February 2017, time was against us. The statute of limitations was
approaching, and we had to file by May. If we couldn’t find a law firm to take us
on, our window of opportunity would close forever. What made it even more of
a challenge was the fact that none of us could afford to pay for it, even with
Pops’ eighty-thousand-dollar “gift.” He offered to loan us the money, but I
didn’t feel at all good about being in debt to him. So we needed a firm that could
take on local government, elected officials, and a national media organization,
and do it contingency. It was a tall order, but thanks to a contact of my new
brother-in-law, Jeremy, we found a firm in LA that thought we had a strong
enough case and was willing to take a risk on us.
When Pops heard, he called me. The muscle memory was strong, and I
braced for impact, worrying that he might be upset we hadn’t included him or
Chad in the process. But his voice was calm, his words genuine. “I’m so proud of
you guys. Pm so glad you found somebody.”
I exhaled a little with relief.
“But,” he added, “I would be very careful about how you approach all of this.
You know, we just got the show back up.”
“Okay, Pops. Love you.”
I was concerned about the show. I was concerned about Pops too. I didn’t
want to wreck the peace that was starting to form between us, as fragile and weak
as it was. But I was relieved that my sisters and I had an attorney of our own to
help us with this. LA was a long, long way from Arkansas, and for once I felt
confident that Pops wouldn’t be able to exert his control over the situation.
Finally, we could fight for ourselves.
Soon after we arrived back in El Salvador we had a call with a large mission
organization, the International Mission Board, or IMB, who we'd had a job
interview with at a missionary expo—the same organization that Derick had
previously worked with, and the one we had made contact with soon after our
honeymoon. Their process was slow, requiring us to be a part of their church
denomination for three years. With that hurdle finally cleared, we were
beginning to have some more detailed conversations about us working with
them.
The fact that we were already known through the show probably would have
made a lot of organizations nervous about attracting too much attention to their
sensitive work and pass us up, but the IMB was willing to look at us. And
though being well known meant that some of our job options within this
organization would be limited, we were excited. It felt like we'd found gold. We
liked everything about them—their mission, their values, the way they operated
and supported their missionaries—and had been so happy when they'd made the
previous offer to join them. They sent missionaries all over the world, and they
suggested we might either want to go to Spain or Panama.
Starting work with Mike after our initial interview with him had been pretty
simple—all we’d needed to do was agree on the scope of the work, iron out a few
details about funding and accommodation, and book our flights—but with
IMB things were a bit different. It was a lot bigger, had been around over one
hundred fifty years, and the steps we had to take were way more complex. There
were training courses to attend, vetting procedures to pass, and interviews with
potential mission partners to have. On average it took between two and four
years to go from being accepted as a missionary to actually being sent out onto
the mission field. We’d been working through it for a while, and we were finally
deemed to be almost ready. Finally, we were able to let ourselves get excited
about this new chapter opening up.
The call was pretty routine, but there was one question that caught us off
guard.
“We just want to double check, is there anything that you guys can and can’t
do with the whole filming thing you do with your family, Jill?”
“You mean contractually?” I said.
“Yeah. Do you have any formal agreements that you’ve signed that would
restrict your ability to be completely committed to your work?”
Derick and I squeezed hands, out of sight of the camera.
“Well, yes,” he began. “There is an agreement Jill was tricked into signing the
day before our wedding, but we don’t feel obligated to it morally or legally
because of the way the signature was gained.”
There was a moment’s silence. The man we were talking to looked confused.
Derick glanced at me. “We’re happy to cut ties with anything filming related
though, aren’t we?”
I nodded. “We’re ready to do that.”
Then I reiterated, “We will quit the show right now to show you that we’re
serious about working with you.”
“Well, okay then.” The guy was smiling. “That’s great. If you can provide us
documentation that shows you’re free from any contract, that will be just
perfect.”
It was strange to have talked about leaving the show with someone other than
Derick. We had been speaking about it between ourselves for almost a whole
year, and the timing felt right. But knowing that our secret was now out in the
world, it felt strange. It felt dangerous. And it felt liberating, too.
All those whispered conversations between us about when we should leave
the show had taken forever. Now that we had decided to leave, we needed to
figure out how we were going to do it. And for that decision we didn’t have the
luxury of time. We needed to press on, to get things moving so that we could
secure our release from the show in time to start our new post on the mission
field within the next year.
We drafted two versions of the email. The first was a simple and clear
resignation letter that we addressed to everybody we could think of at TLC and
Discovery, the parent channel, and the production company. We gave them an
end date of May 31, 2017, and said that we'd be back in Arkansas mid May and
would make ourselves available to do any filming they wanted. We didn’t copy
Pops or Chad on it, because we wanted to convey that we were capable adults
who could make decisions and communicate with the network for ourselves,
plus go out as cleanly and with as little interference as possible.
The second email we drafted to Chad.
We just wanted to let you know, after much prayer and consideration, to step
back from the show. As of the end of May 2017, we feel like we're not supposed to be
a part of the show anymore in any capacity.
We read and reread them both until I could recite them in my sleep. We
talked long and hard about what might happen when we sent them. We talked
about staying in our box, sticking firm to what we knew was the right thing for
us to do. We talked and talked until there was nothing left to say.
I felt terrified. So terrified that I started having contractions. I had just
entered my third trimester stretch at twenty-nine-weeks pregnant.
All I could do was breathe and hope that everything would work out all right.
Last minute, we decided it would be better and more respectful to call my
parents first before the network, instead of emailing them. So, we prayed, picked
up the phone, and, holding back tears, my stomach in knots, called my parents.
They were both on the call. The tears started flowing and soaking the shirt that
covered my pregnant belly as we let them know of our decision to quit filming at
the end of May. I anticipated a difficult reaction or arguments, as we'd had in the
past, but that didn’t happen. We kept the call short. They were calm and didn’t
ask any questions. They didn’t say much, but thanked us for letting them know.
After we hung up, we pressed send on the emails and waited.
The fallout was instantaneous. Chad emailed back demanding to know who
else we had sent that email to. TLC emailed back too, wanting to talk. We told
them that we were happy to have a call and share our side of the story. We
wanted to explain how we'd been in the dark about things with the contract. At
first they agreed, but then Chad must’ve gotten wind of the call, because they
looped him in on the email thread—and all of a sudden the network wasn’t
allowed to talk with us unless Chad was on the call too.
From then on it was Groundhog Day: the same challenge over and over
again. Every time we tried to get TLC to give us something that showed we were
released from the contract, we hit a brick wall. We still only had a partial copy of
the June 2014 contract, and neither Chad nor Pops would give us the full thing.
Meanwhile, we were left trying to convince the IMB that the monthslong delay
was only temporary and that soon enough we'd hopefully have the legal release
they were requesting. About the only thing that appeared to be going well was
my pregnancy. Those anxiety-inducing contractions had only lasted a day or so
and not progressed into labor.
We tried to make the most of our last weeks in El Salvador. Despite all the
Duggar-family mess and all the show-related chaos that we had experienced
throughout our time there, we felt deeply connected to the people we had
worked with. I had grown especially close with the pastor’s wife, Maria. She was
the sweetest, and I knew that she would always be there whenever I needed help.
Leaving her and everyone else was going to be hard, especially as the security
situation had deteriorated even further in the previous months.
Our former guard, German, was another of the friends we would miss the
most. We had known him for a while, and he always helped to translate and
make people laugh. His wife made the best chocolate, which we would buy
whenever we needed a treat. He told us that his favorite meal was the
hamburgers we'd cook him. German had been a member of MS-13, one of the
brutal gangs responsible for so much of the killing in El Salvador. He had
become a Christian, and was a regular at church, but even that wasn’t enough to
keep his past from catching up with him. There were rumors that he was a
target, and that if he carried on working with us, we would become a target too.
It was hard, but we knew that we had to let German go. We stayed in touch
after he stopped working as our guard though, and he came to see us several
times with his family.
One month before we were supposed to go back to the States, we got the call
that German had been murdered.
Derick and I were stunned and devastated.
All the chaos and all the trauma that the show had thrown into our lives was
nothing compared to German’s murder. We had known the risks when we
started our work in El Salvador, but a part of me never thought the danger
would ever get so close to us.
The sorrow seemed to hang over the whole valley.
For weeks I felt empty inside.
Compared to the previous August, everything felt different when we flew back
to northwest Arkansas in mid-May 2017. All my dials were turned up to the max
—my anxiety about how people would respond to us, my fear that things with
Pops were going to explode, my sense that we were returning to somewhere that
felt less and less like home. The sadness I felt at leaving El Salvador weighed
heavier in my heart than I thought possible.
We were both stressed about the ministry fundraising as well. Ever since we'd
stood our ground about the promo shoot, it seemed to us that Chad’s
fundraising efforts had declined. We were still technically paying him 10 percent
of anything raised, but barely any money was coming in. We still had our
personal money, the eighty thousand dollars that Pops had paid us, but if we
were going to be serious about life on the mission field, and still have some
savings for our future, we needed a solid network of supporters. As we returned
to Arkansas, our Dillard Family Ministry bank balance had fifteen hundred
dollars in it.
There was frustration, too. We had been unable to secure any kind of
document confirming our release from the show, and eventually the IMB could
only wait so long. They reiterated to us that unless something changed with the
contract deal in the next few months, we were in danger of losing the job
opportunity we'd been wanting in Panama.
And yet, there was hope. Growing inside me, unaware of anything else in the
world that might be troubling me or Derick, our second baby was thriving. I was
very pregnant—over thirty-three weeks along now—and everything was looking
good for the final weeks. In spite of all the stress and uncertainty around our
future, there was one thing that we still agreed on with Mom and Pops: this new
life we were about to welcome into the world was nothing less than a blessing.
With no job lined up and no knowledge of whether we would ever be able to
get out of the contract, we battled hard to keep ourselves positive. Our little one
—a boy—was due six weeks after we landed, and we would spend much of our
time until then either getting ready for my sister Joy’s upcoming wedding, or
filming our final interviews for the show.
Of course, at some point someone from the show asked whether we would be
willing to have cameras in when I went into labor.
We didn’t need to think twice before answering them.
“Absolutely. No. Way,” we said, on multiple occasions.
But there was a real curveball waiting for us, and it came from Chad. He
informed us that he was no longer able to work with Dillard Family Ministries
and was resigning from our board. That didn’t surprise either of us at all, and it
was kind of a relief. What troubled us was when we happened to check the
balance on the ministry bank account. Chad had withdrawn almost all of it,
leaving us with only a few hundred dollars in the ministry account that we used
to pay ourselves a wage. We confronted him, and he gave us some story about a
CPA bill being due even though what he was paid was supposed to cover those
expenses.
The whole thing tasted bitter. Maybe another day we would have fought
harder. But right then, with so much on our plate and with the future so full of
unknowns, neither of us had the appetite for another battle. We just wanted to
get through the next transition in our lives. There was just one last loose end to
tie off before we were free. The show.
The producers asked if we could block out five hours so they could film some
final exit interviews with us that they could use to tell viewers of our decision to
leave the show. It seems strange to me now, but I don’t remember much at all
about the last interviews that we filmed for Jill & Jessa: Counting On. | know
what I was feeling—a mix of sorrow and gratitude, of relief and anxiety, of
feeling happy that this was all behind us now at the same time as wondering
what was coming next—but I don’t recall what we said. I remember them asking
us to give them a few different versions of our decision to leave the show. I don’t
think any of it ended up making it into the final cut of the show. Part of me still
wonders why they didn’t bother to explain to viewers why we left. Part of me
knows that it didn’t matter.
Other than that, as far as I recall, there was nothing to mark the end of our
involvement in the show. No speeches said and no final paperwork that we had
to complete. We just finished answering whatever question we'd been asked, and
the room fell into a brief silence.
“That’s it,” said the cameraman.
We stood up from the couch where we’d been interviewed hundreds of times
before, in the shop building turned studio that sat at the front of the Big House
property. Nobody from my family was there, so once we'd said our goodbyes to
the film crew, we just walked back to the car and drove home.
That was it.
For us, the show was over. We were out. Getting back onto the mission field
was harder than we'd hoped it would be, but at least we were now free to do
what we wanted. Free to relocate, to build our lives the way we wanted them to
be built, free to raise our boys without any of the complications that Pd
experienced. Part of me was excited. Part of me found it more terrifying than
anything I'd ever encountered. Like a lifer who’d just been unexpectedly released,
I felt dazed and unsure about this new world ahead of me. It was all too vast. All
too unknowable. I was just twenty-six years old.
Derick held me close those nights, him, me and the little one pushing the skin
so tight across my belly that you could see the outline of the little foot or elbow
was on the other side.
“You see,” said Derick whenever our baby in utero would kick and squirm.
“Everything’s going to be all right.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
y
Dying. Inside and Out
All my life Pd been taught that suffering was good. For anyone doing the Lord’s
work, pain was to be accepted, even embraced. “Many are the afflictions of the
righteous,” I was told often by my parents, quoting Psalms 34:19. “But the
LORD delivereth him out of them all.” And I believed them. When people
criticized us in the press, it was a sign the ministry was working. When filming
was hard and demanding, it was a privilege to serve the Lord. Even when it felt
like the whole world was peering at us through paparazzi lenses, there was a voice
inside me saying, Tough it out, Jill, this 1s what it means to serve God.
As my final weeks of pregnancy became a regular roll call of aches and pains
and reflux and insomnia and swollen ankles and everything else besides, I smiled.
Tough it out, Jill, this ts what it means to be a mama.
My water broke while Derick and I were out on a triple date, having ice cream
at Cold Stone Creamery with Mom, Pops, and some friends. We rushed back
home. I used my midwife doppler device to listen to the baby’s heartbeat: 154
bpm with good variability. His head was engaged, and his position was good.
Everything was looking great.
Thirty-six hours later, I was a long way from great. The contractions were
about two minutes apart and I was fully dilated. ?’d only been pushing for about
half an hour, when the baby stopped descending. The pain had been
excruciating until ’d been given an epidural, but I was losing all my energy to
push. I was feeling weak and tired. I tried to summon that voice that would tell
me to tough it out, but it was on mute.
“I can’t.” That was all I could say.
“C’mon, Jill,” came the doctor’s voice beside the bed. I kept my eyes closed,
not really wanting to see what kind of stern look I was getting. She’d been with
me for a while now, and the more tired I'd gotten the more assertive her voice
had become. “Let’s roll you over on the other side. You’ve got another
contraction coming, Jill. You have to push for me, okay?”
When it hit, I tried to push, but I had nothing to give. It was all I could do to
breathe. I drifted.
For a moment, I was left alone. I could hear voices talking, but they were a
soft blur. If I retreated far enough into myself, I could block everything out.
“Jill,” said the doctor. Her voice was different now. Still assertive, but there
was another note in there now too. She was concerned. “Listen to me, Jill. Baby’s
heart rate isn’t recovering as quick as we'd like it to after the contractions. It’s
dipping to seventy and not coming up fast enough. We need to get this baby out
now. With this next contraction, you have to push. You know this stuff, Jill. You
know what this means.”
I knew what it meant. It meant the baby was potentially in distress. It meant
that something was wrong.
“Okay,” I said.
Then the doctor changed her mind. “Nope!”
I looked up and saw the doctor standing at the end of my bed. “We’re doing a
C-section, now! Prep for surgery!”
For a few seconds I was aware of the room exploding into action as the bed
was pulled out from the wall and broken down to become a gurney.
Then came the pain. And the screaming. I realized after a minute it was my
own.
I felt as if someone had just sliced me open on my side. I looked down, half
expecting to see blood. There was none. But the pain was like nothing I'd ever
known.
Then it hit me—Id had an epidural. If the pain was strong enough to break
through drugs that strong, something was seriously wrong.
My screams only got louder.
I felt sick, the kind of sick that seeped into every muscle and every organ. I
shut my eyes as I kept screaming. I could vaguely sense motion. Felt a breeze on
my face as the bed hurtled down the corridor. But it might as well have been
happening to someone else. Besides the sound of screaming, the only thing that
existed for me was the pain in my side, a ripping and a tearing unlike anything I
could ever imagine.
The lights were bright in the OR. The doctor was gowned, but I could see
the concern in her eyes as she leaned over.
“Jill, the anesthetist isn’t here yet, but we can’t wait. ’m going to have to start
without him.”
I could still hear my screams as the doctor started giving me shots of local
anesthetic and began slicing me open to get to the baby as soon as possible. I
heard someone else shouting about the amount of blood I was losing and
another person yelling as they counted every instrument and item the doctor put
inside me. But another thought within me was even louder. This ds it, Jill. This ts
where you and the baby die. This ts the end. There’s no more need to tough it out.
I opened my eyes to see Derick. He was wearing the same shirt that he’d been
wearing for the past two days, but he looked five years older. His eyes, though,
were relieved.
I wanted to ask what happened, but the pain silenced me. It wasn’t just on
my side now, but all down my lower torso.
“Four hours,” he said, holding my hand. His voice was shaky, as if he’d just
that minute stepped out from a car wreck. “You’ve been out for four hours, but
it’s okay. You’re okay. You had a uterine rupture. There was a hole in it. It was as
big as my first. You lost a lot of blood, too, about half your total blood volume.
But they gave you a transfusion and they were able to keep your uterus. You’re
going to be okay, Jill. They saved your life,” Derick said with tears in his eyes.
“The baby?”
“The baby’s okay, Jill. They had to take him to a different hospital. But he’s
in the NICU there.”
For all the pain, the ache of my baby not being at my side was the worst. I
trusted the decision the staff had taken to transfer him to a better NICU, but I
wanted to hold my baby. I needed to hold him, to feed him and care for him.
Being separated like that was like they’d taken away my heart and lungs. I
couldn’t last long with ¢hat kind of rupture within me.
It was four days before I was released from my hospital and finally met my baby
—whom we named Samuel—face-to-face for the first time. The days that
followed were all compressed into one big blur of nighttime pumpings and
getting up and down to the NICU to feed and hold Samuel. My mom was with
me all the time, and she made sure Derick and I were taken care of. Derick had
gotten some video of the birth, but I couldn’t watch it. Samuel had been
unresponsive at birth. He’d been oxygen-deprived for a little while during the
rupture and swallowed some meconium. When he came out, he had been limp
in the nurse’s hands. When I finally got to hold him in the NICU, I experienced
the slow, dawning realization of just how close Samuel and I had both come to
death.
Samuel made some improvement in the NICU, but there were still enough
concerns about what he’d been through for him to be sent for a scan. It revealed
signs of bleeding on the brain.
“There’s nothing we can do about it right now,” a doctor told us as we sat
beside the ultraviolet glow of Samuel’s incubator. “All we can do is follow up
with another scan in a few months to see how he’s healing. It’s only then that
we'll be able to begin to understand whether there’s any damage to the brain.”
It was a shock to hear this, but there was nothing we could do but accept it.
Our entire world had been shaken by the birth. Everything was in the air. There
were no guarantees for whatever was coming next.
Michelle with fill at the hospital following Samuel's birth, July 2017
After a total of nine days in the NICU we were released to go home, with
several follow-up appointments scheduled in the coming days and weeks. My
world was small in those days, with room for me to only focus on Samuel,
Derick, and Israel. Everything else—from what I was going to eat that day to
what our lives would look like now that we'd left the show—it all floated beyond
me like ocean mist. And that was okay. Thanks to my mom, Jessa, Jana, Anna,
Joy, my other little sisters, my grandma Mary, Aunt Deanna, lots of friends from
our church, Derick’s brother, Dan, and his wife, Deena, and Derick’s mom,
Cathy, I could forget about food and laundry and everything else entirely. I
appreciated their love and support more than I ever thought possible.
But even when life was as fragile as it was in those days, the show still had a
way of casting its cold, dark shadow over us. Derick stepped out from the NICU
one afternoon to see Pops there, talking with some of the staff. Derick was
confused, as with hospital protocol only allowing a limited number of slots on
our unsupervised visitor list, we'd not given Pops permission to visit. Thanks to
the show, however, everyone knew who Pops was. When he’d come for a visit,
he’d been invited inside without hesitation.
We were on better terms with Pops at the time, but still cautious around him.
Nevertheless, Derick didn’t make a big deal of Pops charming his way in as a
visitor, and chatted with him about Samuel’s progress.
>
“A lot of people are asking about him,” said Pops, holding his phone so
Derick could glance at it.
There was a text message that had just come in from Chad, who was still
working with Pops:
Get me a picture of that baby!
Derick was fuming. He took out his own phone and messaged Chad soon
after. Please do not ask other people for pictures of my children. It makes me
uncomfortable. Thank you.
Chad responded five minutes later.
I haven't asked anyone for pictures of your children. I have no idea what you're
talking about.
Samuel still needed oxygen when he was nine days old, but there was no need
for him to be in an incubator or even in the NICU, so they sent him home with
a little oxygen tank and nasal tube. It was a relief, and with the sun shining and
the four of us Dillards finally able to sleep under the same roof and eat around
the same table, it felt like life was starting over.
I knew the healing would take time, but people were kind and supportive and
made sure that I didn’t do anything that put too much strain on me. I was
especially grateful that Mom had taken me for the traditional pre-birth manicure
and pedicure that she tries to do for all us girls before we have a baby. I was in the
middle of my postpartum period, cocooned away at home and still on painkillers
as my C-section wound was knitting itself together, but looking at my nice nails
made me smile. It reminded me that I had good people out there who loved and
cared for me. I was so grateful to Mom and everyone who was helping, but I
noticed that Derick was feeling pretty drained. He’d just been through a long
period of shuttling between home and various hospitals, and then of looking
after Israel, worrying about me and Samuel, all the while still feeling stunned
and shocked by the birth itself. He needed a break.
My younger brother Joseph was getting married, and his bachelor party out
on Beaver Lake was just a few days after our return home from the hospital.
Derick had grown up on the same lake, and if ever there was a time for him to
take the day off and enjoy some male company, this was it. The only drawback
was that it was going to be filmed. We weren’t opposed to Derick being on-
camera, though we really didn’t know how it would feel to be there around
everyone in light of us leaving the show. We had no regrets at all about leaving
the show, but we were realistic about the place that filming had in Duggar family
life. If we were going to see my family, we knew most of the time we'd have to do
it with cameras present. We talked and prayed about it a lot and reached a place
where we felt good and peaceful about being at the bachelor party, but with
Samuel and I not being filmed. It felt like we would be gaining back control.
Derick’s mom took Israel, and we headed over to the lake. We intentionally
got there a little late, after they’d filmed a lot of what they needed. I sat on the
dock in the shade, far behind the film crew. It was good to see Derick having fun,
waterskiing and just hanging out like he had often done with his family growing
up, and the sound of his laughter was better than any painkiller. Marrying into
the Duggar family had cost him more than I think either of us could have
imagined, but it wasn’t as if the family was all bad. Far from it. Derick was loved
by so many of my brothers and sisters, and it was important to remember that.
That day on the lake was the first time that I'd seen the crew since leaving the
show, and it was good to know that there were no hard feelings. We talked a little
and joked about the guys on their water skis. I introduced them to Samuel but
saw the way some of them did a double take when they saw the little oxygen
tube running underneath his nose.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s doing great. Just needs a little oxygen right now, but he’s doing great.” I
knew that I was deliberately holding back the full story, not because I didn’t
trust the crew, but because that story was still so unformed. We didn’t know the
extent of any brain damage and had no idea what Samuel’s future would be like.
There was a chance that he’d have significant learning difficulties, but there was
no way of telling now. So, Derick and I decided that we would keep things to
ourselves for now. At least until we knew more and could make a better decision.
We were going to protect him. I was going to give Samuel what I didn’t have
myself when I was younger.
With Samuel, we prepared for the long haul. We'd been told that it would take a
year and a half at least for any developmental problems to start to emerge, maybe
longer. But the scan that was booked for when he reached three months still felt
significant, and we drove the three hours to Little Rock that fall, hoping that
nothing dramatic would show up.
That evening after Samuel’s MRI, just after we made it back home, my phone
rang. It was the neurologist.
We'd been told that it would likely take a few days before the report would be
sent over from the radiologist to the neurologist to read, and then they’d call us
with the results, so we weren’t expecting a call yet at all.
“Doctor?” I said, putting the neurologist on speaker.
“I wanted to call you myself as soon as I read the report,” she said. “I don’t
get to make these calls very often. What Ive seen on the scans is a miracle.
There’s no lasting damage at all.”
I let out a cry of amazement. Derick was quiet with shock.
“Usually, Pd expect to see some scarring after a bleed like that. But on
Samuel’s scans there’s nothing. Everything is healed. That doesn’t mean he
won't have any lasting issues. We’re still gonna want to evaluate him every three
months until he’s around two years old. But if he gets to that point and he’s
walking and talking and doing all the things we'd expect him to be doing by
then, we won’t need to see him anymore.”
It was like we’d been released from death row. The air tasted sweeter, and the
sky looked bigger. The future felt brighter and more hopeful than it had for
months.
Our application to go back out on the mission field was still on hold until we
could get the official release from the show, but our desire to serve overseas was
just as strong as ever. Derick had decided to enroll in a one-year ministry
residency program, partially funded and run by our church. We figured it would
give us something to do during the time that we were waiting and would add
more ministry skills, seminary hours, ministry licensure and experience that
would be valuable in the future. As a bonus, the school offered housing, which
meant we could finally have our own space and put a little more physical
distance between us and the family.
A month after Samuel had been born, we’d moved out into the church rental
duplex thirty minutes away from the Big House. Pd been unable to lift anything,
but thankfully, my family was still there to help. The army of Duggar siblings
and Derick packed us up and moved all our stuff.
Since our return from EI Salvador, we'd been living in a house that Grandma
Duggar owned—a 4,400-square-foot, two-story home set on one and a half acres
with farmland views. Our new place was a 1970s two-bed, two-bath duplex that
had a hornet nest by the back step, occasional visits from garter snakes, and mice
in the kitchen. But despite the infestations we were happy in the new house.
There were other ministry students nearby, and we were looking forward to
building new relationships with our new community. We were our own family,
finally free to be who we wanted. This—I told myself so many times during
those long August days when Derick was away working with the church and I
was with the two boys in the house—this was the point when, finally, our new
life would begin.
Trouble was, moving on and letting go of the past was an impossible task. It
didn’t matter how much Derick and I talked about building our lives together,
what future I dreamed of, or how badly I wanted to begin again, I felt stuck. I
felt like I was in chains, and I couldn’t break free from the past. My heart was
open to the possibility of a new life, but my head was full of reasons why I
couldn’t. For every whisper of hope, there was an avalanche of guilt. For every
moment of joy, there was a stab of fear.
I had IBLP to thank for that particular baggage. Ever since I was a kid, every
decision I'd made had been gripped with a level of guilt or fear that weighed
heavy in my decision-making. Over time I'd gotten so used to it that I hardly
noticed it was there. But now that I’d walked away from the family ministry and
we were beginning to change in other areas, I couldn’t just ignore it.
At first, the guilt manifested itself around children, specifically whether I
would be physically able to have any more. As my body started to heal, my mind
became troubled. Having just had my second C-section and experienced a
uterine rupture—not to mention Samuel’s stroke and brush with death—I was
just waking up to the possibility that I might not be able to have any more kids.
It was not an easy thing for me to accept, despite the fact that I had been doing a
lot of questioning about IBLPs teaching over the years. In 2014 Mr. Gothard
had stepped down after being accused of sexual harassment and molestation by
thirty-four women. It was the year Derick and I married, and Td started
questioning the IBLP view of scripture. The closer I'd looked at the Bible, the
more it seemed to contradict what I had been taught as a child, especially the
idea that adult children were still under their parent’s authority, and the way
they had placed Mr. Gothard on a pedestal. But one thing I hadn’t thrown out
was the belief that children are a blessing. Before I got married, I knew that I
wanted to have as many children as I possibly could. Becoming a mama had only
strengthened that belief within me. But after Samuel’s birth, there was a very real
chance that he would be my last child.
All of this was stirring within me when Derick and I made a trip back to the
hospital one day. For once it was nothing to do with Samuel or me—we were
visiting a family friend who'd just had a baby. I was surprised to see Mom and
Pops there, but it was good to catch up, especially on safe, neutral ground like
that.
We all had to step outside for a moment while the staff did something in the
room. Mom and Pops, Derick, me, and another friend of mine were all standing
in the corridor together when my friend leaned close and asked me about
Samuel.
“How’re you doing?” she whispered. “You healing up?”
I'd been guarded about Samuel, carefully keeping the story about his birth to
only the closest people around me. I didn’t want him to become a storyline in
anyone’s tabloid, but I trusted my friend.
“Kinda,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But it was rough. I don’t know
whether I’m going to be able to have any more kids.”
My friend reached out to put an arm around me, but before she could say
anything, Pops’ voice filled the corridor.
“We don’t know for sure now, do we?”
I turned. He was looking right at me, smiling. He meant well, I guess, but in
that moment I was mad. I wanted to ask him why he thought he had the right to
comment about my uterus, but I bit the words back.
The moment passed, and I doubt that either my friend or Pops would even
remember it. But I did. It was triggering. It hit a nerve in me, invalidated my
feelings and pressed on the bruise of my guilt—a bruise that had formed after
Israel’s birth. Even though contraceptives were generally not allowed in IBLP, I'd
used birth control after having the C-section with him, knowing that all medical
advice recommended not getting pregnant for about eighteen months after the
operation. Even though Derick and I had prayed about it. Even though we had
agreed as a couple that it wasn’t wrong for us to use non-abortive contraception
and we knew we were making healthy choices, that didn’t lessen the guilt I felt,
because it went against the way I was raised. Yet it was a decision that had caused
me no end of guilt, and I'd kept it secret from nearly everyone, apart from
Derick. Now, after Samuel, not getting pregnant wasn’t a matter of choice.
There was a chance that perhaps my body simply wouldn’t be able to sustain
another pregnancy, that I would never be able to give birth again. It was earth
shattering, and the prospect left me traumatized.
And so, the fearful thoughts began.
Ive always imagined myself having a ton of kids, but what would my life look
like if I could only have two children?
Do I really believe what I was taught, that even if the doctors told me not to, a
godly woman should question the doctor’s opinion and be willing to try for more
kids in most cases and trust that God would protect her?
I'd always been taught that most people who were saying they'd stopped
having children on the advice of their doctor were using it as a cop-out. IBLP’s
view was that a lot of people with small families were basically lazy. Feeling
overwhelmed, stressed out, or like you couldn’t cope with having more kids was
no excuse. In fact, the only acceptable approach to the matter was to leave the
decision up to God and trust that he would provide the grace required to cope.
Anyone who wasn’t coping just wasn’t relying on God fully enough.
What if old friends start to ask questions and notice the gap between our kids?
What tf they figure out we're using contraception, or guess that something might be
wrong?
It turns out that living with fearful thoughts is a lot like living with hornets
and garter snakes. Once they find a way in, you can block as many holes as you
like, but the struggle to keep them out will require constant vigilance. And when
they do get in—which they will—the memory of all those previous attacks will
make whatever you’re facing so much worse.
I used to think I might not be able to handle all the kids God gave me. Was this
his way of answering that? I felt conflicted. I was devastated at the thought of not
being able to have more kids, and I felt like my fertility had been robbed from
me. But also, dare I say it, I was somewhat relieved. The devastation far
outweighed the relief, but there was a small part of me that appreciated the
excuse not to have to go through a zillion pregnancies and deliveries. I always
liked getting to the stage where I could feel the baby move and listen to the
heartbeat, but with both the boys my first trimesters had been rough, leaving me
bedridden with nausea.
My inward critic told me not to feel sorry for myself. I knew that others
outside the insular world I grew up in wouldn’t understand this conflict. They
might even tell me to just be happy with the two kids I had.
But in my world, big families were everywhere. If you didn’t have one, then
there was probably something wrong with your body. I hated that I could still
feel the involuntary recoil at the stigma.
I had always been told that we should “trust God with the size of our
families,” and “have as many kids as God would give us.” Even when I heard this,
way before Derick and I were married, it seemed hard to swallow at the time. I
dared not speak it, but the thought was always there in the back of my head that
I didn’t know if I could physically and emotionally handle that many
pregnancies and deliveries. But I figured if that was God’s plan for my life, then I
shouldn’t question it. Sweet Jilly Muffin should just accept it and trust that God
would somehow provide the grace to get through it.
When it came to trusting God with the size of your family, there was one
phrase that I heard often—that “God opens and closes the womb.” Growing up,
I guess I’d always focused on the idea of God opening the womb and pouring
out his blessings on us. I'd liked that idea a lot. But now it felt like God was
closing me up. I wasn’t so sure I was okay with that.
What if trusting God doesnt only mean trusting him with more kids than I
feel I'm able to handle? What tf it means being content with only two kids?
That was never part of my plan.
At some point, I started to try and tune out the anxiety. My feelings on the
matter were so complicated, and I knew I had a whole lot of sorting out to do. I
didn’t know what the future held, but I was relieved that we didn’t have to make
any decisions right now. And I was even more thankful that God had led us to
step away from the show when he did. I was so glad we were able to protect
Samuel while we waited to learn more, but I also was thankful that I had time to
process everything without having to rehash it all in an interview chair for the
show multiple times, stumbling over my words and still in the midst of working
through it—only for strangers to critique while I processed everything, further
adding to my trauma.
Fertility wasn’t the only complicated area in my life at the time. Friendship
and community brought its own challenges. Derick was out most days working
in international college ministry on the University of Arkansas campus, or at the
church, taking classes as part of the ministry program, keeping the car with him.
The other young families from the church lived nearby, but I still felt lonely and
isolated. We were just thirty minutes away from the Big House, but my siblings
didn’t come by a whole lot. I still wanted to hang out, and I'd see them from
time to time if I made my way over there and hung out awhile, but it was just to
be around them and pretend like everything was all good. I didn’t feel like we
were on the same playing field anymore. They were living the life I used to live,
and I had chosen to move on. Sometimes it was a hard reality to be faced with.
I wanted to reach out to people beyond my family, to sit and talk just like I'd
been able to do with the moms down in El Salvador, but it was different. Down
in El Salvador, there was no risk in me talking with other moms about the
dangers I was facing—we were all at risk in some way from the gangs. I could be
real with them and they could be real with me. I missed that freedom and
comfort, and I missed the way my faith felt strengthened just by being in their
company. Down there, the women in the church—like the pastor’s wife Maria—
were like giants, trusting God in the face of so much adversity. They were like big
sisters to me, and I missed them so much.
Back in Arkansas, there was no way I could talk about my fear, and my faith
was feeling shaken. All the times I'd been warned not to “stir up contention
among the brethren” had left their mark on me. I was hardwired not to be
critical of my parents to anybody—not my siblings, not my pastor, and certainly
not to my friends. The thought of doing it nauseated me.
From the guilt, the fear grew.
The spotlight that the show had placed on our family meant that people were
always assuming things about us or itching to be the first to report anything
negative. I could see it in people’s eyes, hear it in their questions.
“Do you miss the show?”
“I guess you’ve got a ton of babysitters on hand with your family living round
here!”
“Are there any new courtships happening in the new season?”
Even something as simple as, “How are your parents? Tell them we say hey!”
felt dangerous. Every interaction with someone outside the family had me on
alert, just like it had since the early days of the show, when we'd have to remind
people not to post anything on social media if they'd been around us while we
were filming. A few times stories had leaked out about upcoming weddings or
relationships, and we'd spend time trying to figure out who had leaked the info.
It was hard to shake off that kind of suspicious mindset, and as I tried to make a
new life for myself and build new friendships with people, I'd often wonder
what their agenda was, or how likely they would be to sell anything I told them
to the tabloids. Growing up Duggar had left me paranoid about people.
“Remember,” Pops would say again and again whenever we were talking
about the show, “other people don’t really understand, and they might be
jealous. Let’s not talk about this with anybody else.”
I had been trained to keep all interactions with people outside the show as
light and superficial as possible. Even when there were no cameras, if we were
among people who were not immediate family, I was playing my role. I'd smile,
keep everything positive, just like I did when we were filming. Only when the
doors at the Big House were closed could I relax and be myself, whoever she was.
At home with Samuel and Israel, while Derick was out at work, Pd try to talk
with some of the other mamas from church. I'd do okay if the conversation was
light and easy, but the minute anyone asked me how I was doing, Id feel the
emotion start to whirl within me. I knew that if I even came close to trying to
answer them, [’d wind up sobbing, and that was terrifying. My emotional
muscle memory took over, and I filtered my words like I was making baby
formula. I kept everything spotless. There was a block against any hint of grit or
dirt about Duggar family life passing my lips.
I hated it.
At the time when I needed friendships the most, I realized that I didn’t know
how to talk to people. Sweet Jilly Muffin had been a gold star kid in the Big
House, but out in the world without any Duggars around, she was just a hollow,
lonely, scared girl.
I was caught in no-man’s-land, that strange space between the foreign enemy
on one side and the safety of home on the other. Only, for me, the roles were
reversed. Home (the Big House) was where the risk was, while the strangers were
my hope for safety. I guess I wanted the freedom to follow where we were feeling
called, to a world beyond my family and the way Id been raised. I just didn’t
have either the tools or the guide to help me do it and survive.
The one place I felt like I could relax was church. I cherished Sundays, and not
just because Derick would be with me much of the day. He’d drive us to the
campus, and we'd join the flow of people making their way through the doors
and into the auditorium. With a couple thousand other people in attendance, I
could feel myself relax as I blurred into the crowd.
Church was nothing like IBLP. There was no Mr. Gothard figure at the
center, drawing attention to himself. There were no Model Families brought up
onstage to give us a model of perfection to emulate. They didn’t even use the
King James version of the Bible. They didn’t talk about authority in the same
way Id heard it taught, they didn’t say how important it was that children
obeyed their parents far into adulthood, and they didn’t preach that women
should wear dresses at all times. Instead, they talked about Jesus, love and grace.
They still talked about God’s holiness, justice, and our need for sanctification,
but it was different than many of the rules I'd been taught in IBLP. They were
genuine about wanting to build community with young couples and families,
and the result was captivating. To people in IBLP, it might have been “a worldly
church,” or as my dad once said, “a two-kid church.” To me, it looked like a
healthy church with a more balanced view of freedom in Christ.
I know that no church is perfect, but I wasn’t looking for perfection. I spent
a lot of time studying people there, not so that I could start following them. I
was just aware of the contrast. IBLP families tended to dress, speak and smile the
same, but in our new church there was a big range of people and behaviors to
observe. A few of the older men might wear ties, but most people dressed like
they were just heading out to the mall. A bunch of men and women had tattoos,
and women of all ages—including the pastor’s wife—wore pants. One of the
women on the worship team even had a nose ring. But nobody looked like they
were doing any of this out of rebellion or to particularly draw attention to
themselves. In fact, me sitting there in my ankle-length skirts and covered
shoulders made me stand out way more than anyone else.
“Derick,” I said one Sunday afternoon when we’d gotten back from church
and the boys were both taking a nap. “What do you think about pants?”
He was watching a replay of an OSU game, so all I got was a “Huh?”
“Do you think that it makes guys think bad thoughts?”
“What?”
“Women wearing pants. I was always taught it was a sin.”
He pressed pause. “Well, no. I don’t think it is.”
“But Deuteronomy 22:5.”
He looked blank.
““The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall
a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the
LORD thy God.’ Growing up I was always told this verse meant that women
shouldn’t wear pants because they were originally designed for men, and men
shouldn’t wear skirts because they were women’s clothing.”
Someone scored and he zoned out for a moment. “Well, maybe these days
skirts are women’s clothing, but back in that culture, men wore robes which
were basically skirts. Seeing a woman wearing pants doesn’t make me have bad
thoughts.”
“That’s just because you're used to it.”
“But what about James 4:17, “To him who knows what to and does it not, to
him it is sin.” My parents would say that because I have been taught the dangers
of dressing immodestly and wearing pants, that it would be especially sinful for
me, because I “know better.” They'd say I would be lowering my standards.
“Are we talking about personal convictions or hard-line sin issues? Because
there is a difference. If it’s a hard-line sin issue, then it would be a sin for
everyone.”
The discussion was over and Derick went back to his highlights. I kind of
agreed with him about the rule belonging to another culture, but I was kind of
annoyed with him as well. It wasn’t fair, but somewhere deep inside of me there
was a part that wanted Derick to tell me that pants were wrong, just like Pops
always had. Growing up, having the world divided into thou shalls and thou shalt
nots by Pops or IBLP ideology made life appear easier. I had grown up believing
that if I just followed the rules, I would be okay. I guess that belief started to
crumble when I learned that Pops had manipulated me into signing the
contract. Maybe authority wasn’t always totally trustworthy.
Instead of just getting Derick to decide for me, I thought over our
conversation and decided to pray and study the issue more myself. I looked at
the Bible to see what else it said about women in pants (turns out not so much)
and looked past the style choices of the pastor’s wife and the worship leader and
decided that I liked, admired, and respected them. The more I talked with them,
the more I could see that they were both godly women who just happened to
wear pants and a nose ring. It didn’t define them.
One thing about pants kept on troubling me though. Even if I didn’t think
they were sinful, there was the bigger issue of my parents’ wishes to consider. If I
started wearing pants, it would likely be seen as an act of rebellion against them,
and I really didn’t want to be viewed that way by either my parents or the press.
The way I saw it, I was already in enough spiritual peril without adding another
potential judgment onto my back.
Then, just as I was feeling like there was no way to untie this knot, something
happened that was shocking to the Duggar fan base and made tabloid headlines.
My sister Jinger decided to start wearing pants. Not on the show, and not at the
Big House, but whenever she was back home in Texas with her husband, Jeremy.
I waited for the fallout. I watched the family text message groups—at least the
ones that I had not been removed from—wondering how long it would take
Pops to call her out or cut and paste that verse from Deuteronomy. But nothing
happened that I was aware of. There was no public condemnation, no
backhanded shaming.
One day I called Jinger. She told me that she'd faced some backlash behind
closed doors, but encouraged me to make good decisions, not based out of fear
of what others would think.
Jinger’s decision to think for herself while staying true to the Bible was
inspiring. Derick and me trying to figure out what we believed together in other
areas too was difficult but comforting. All my life P’'d followed the IBLP teaching
that drinking alcohol was a sin. I knew there was truth to the real dangers with
getting drunk and had always been warned about the slippery slope. But after
studying what the Bible says about it I resolved that it wasn’t a sin for me to
drink, though for a long time I was still afraid to try it. Eventually, the thought
of an occasional relaxing date while sipping a glass of wine with my hubby
sounded lovely. After long conversations with Derick and setting some clear,
healthy boundaries ahead of time for ourselves, I was nervously excited when
Derick brought back a bottle of wine to accompany our in-home date night one
evening.
But I didn’t like it. It made my mouth feel like it had just been disinfected. I
was kind of disappointed.
When Samuel’s oxygen tank was no longer needed, and I was finally feeling like I
was fully healed, we decided to celebrate with our first big family day out. It was
just Derick, the boys and me, plus Cathy and her husband, Ronnie, and Derick’s
brother and his wife. There was only one place I wanted to go—a theme park in
Branson, Missouri, called Silver Dollar City.
Growing up, I always got excited when I heard that we were going to Silver
Dollar City. From the moment we woke up and all throughout the two-hour
drive there, my siblings and I would talk about which rides we were going to
tackle first and how wet we'd get on American Plunge. We'd drive back happy,
exhausted, and grateful for the small fortune it had cost our parents to take us
there.
On the fall morning that we were due to go, I felt different. The excitement
was there, but so were the nerves. I’d decided that since it was going to be cold
and I'd be on the rides, it wasn’t the day for dresses. Pd picked out a pair of
leggings that I sometimes wore under a skirt, found a long T-shirt that covered
my butt, and a coat that covered the T-shirt. ?’d decided that this was the day that
I would first wear pants, but now that I had them on, I just felt wrong. Even
without the guilt and the fear, I felt like nothing was going to look good on my
post pregnancy, breastfeeding body.
“What do you think?” I asked Derick just before his mom arrived.
“It’s fine,” he said, checking his watch.
“No, I’m wearing pants, Derick.”
He paused and looked at me. “You look great. And it’s practical too. You'll be
fine.”
We arrived at the park and I tried to breathe deep and not think about
anything but the rides. Israel was just big enough to go on the smaller ones, and
it was fun watching him get all excited and wide-eyed as we walked around—
him skipping on ahead, me with my coat belted tight. I was just starting to relax
a little, when someone came up and asked me for a picture. This happened a lot,
and I'd always said yes in the past. But now? For a moment I wondered what it
would be like to say no, but I didn’t want to be that person. So I smiled, tried to
pull my coat down as far as possible, and kind of hoped that it wouldn’t end up
getting tagged on Facebook.
We must have been there an hour or two when I saw something in the
distance that made me reach for Derick’s hand.
“My family,” I said, my voice shaky and my heart racing. “Look!”
The Duggar clan had just arrived. Mom and Pops, Jana and nearly every
other sibling that was still living at home, ready for the thrills of a day at Silver
Dollar City.
There was no TV crew with them, and I knew I couldn’t hide from them for
the whole day, that sooner or later we'd run into one another. But I decided to
try all the same and steered us Dillards quickly off in the opposite direction.
The rest of the day was a series of near misses. I was feeding Samuel when a
couple of my siblings saw me and came over to say hi. Luckily, I was sitting down
and had a nursing cover draped around me so my bottom half was kind of
invisible. I came within twenty yards of Mom and Pops while we were both in
line for different rides. We said hi, and I was grateful for the low hedge that
separated us and covered my legs. By the time we got in the car to drive home, I
was way more exhausted than Id ever been as a kid. Of all the days I could have
decided to wear pants for the first time, I happened to have picked that one. I
was so frustrated, and wished the whole thing hadn’t been such a big deal for
me.
I guess it was inevitable that the person who took the photo would post it on
Facebook, that they would tag me, and that various sites would pick it up and
that it would trigger one of the Google alerts that Pops had set up to monitor
anything and everything posted about the family. From that point on, it was
inevitable that he would say something to me.
“Jill? Can I talk to you upstairs?”
It was a few days after that Silver Dollar City trip, and I was over at the Big
House. Mom wasn’t there, neither was Derick. I followed Pops up to his and
Mom’s bedroom, the scene where all the most serious conversations always took
place.
He looked calm, but there was an edge to his voice that made me nervous.
“Were you wearing pants the other day?”
“Well, not exactly.” My stomach felt like it was about to explode. “They were
leggings. So, um, yeah? Kind of.” I was twenty-six, but Pops was looking at me
like I was twelve again.
Pops stood up started pacing. Never a good sign.
“You know, Jinger called and talked with us about her decision before she
started wearing pants.” The words stung. Even though she'd told me that they’d
given her a hard time too, I felt like he was finding me guilty of a double sin—
not just wearing pants, but failing to meet the standards Jinger had set when she
told them.
“Jinger took the time to go through the Bible and explain to us how she was
feeling about it all. You know, Mom’s got this book somewhere that talks a lot
about clothing and modesty and what it does to men when they see women
wearing pants and stuff. So maybe you should give that a read.”
“Great,” I said, wanting to get out of the room as soon as possible. “Thank
you, Pops.”
I took the book, knowing that if I decided to read it, it likely wouldn’t change
anything.
I cried when I got home. I felt embarrassed, humiliated, even though nobody
else had been in the room with us. Pops had told us ever since we were little that
we needed to be able to stand up for our convictions, even if others disagreed.
Why couldn’t he see that by deciding to wear pants, I was doing exactly what
he'd taught us? All my life P’'d been trying to show respect to Pops, but when was
he going to show the same to me?
Some people thought that I was just trying to prove something to my parents.
Some people thought I was deliberately rebelling. The truth is that I thought
pants looked good and were comfortable to wear. I felt the same way about nose
piercings too, which in many ways were even considered worse than pants as
they were an “ungodly distraction.” But I thought they were cute. There was a
worship leader at church who had hers done, and I thought it looked good on
her. That’s why, a short time after escaping from Pops’ room, I woke up one
morning and just knew that was going to be the day I would make my first-ever
visit to a tattoo parlor and get my nose ring.
Taking a lesson from Jinger, I called Pops and Mom first. Pops’ phone went
to voice mail, which was a relief, and I kept my message as brief and courteous as
possible. Mom picked up, but aside from thanking me for letting her know, she
didn’t have much to say.
The piercing itself was uneventful.
The voice mail that was waiting for me from Pops when I got out... that was
another thing altogether. He pleaded with me not to do it. He told me I was
making a huge mistake. He begged me to think about how it was going to affect
my little sisters. He said I was ruining my life.
The words hurt, but the pain was eased a little when I spoke to Mom later.
“I’m so glad you did not answer his call,” she said, her voice as loving and
kind as ever. “He wasn’t in a good state of mind.”
From that point on, my relationship with Pops was nearly all hornets and
garter snakes. It seemed to me that he was realizing that he was losing control of
me. He’d text verses reminding me to “honor thy father and mother,” and every
conversation we had just heaped more guilt on me, leaving fear gripping my
throat even tighter. Often he would text me and apologize, but the messages
were often followed up by more words condemning our actions or calling us
out. His apologies felt insincere and invalid. Hardly a day would go by without
some barbed message from him—either directly or from one of my siblings—
and it got so that I didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
Days after ’'d had my nose pierced, he asked me to have a call with him and
Mom. I told him no and put my feelings down in a text.
Honestly, I dont really feel like talking when I feel like there might be a chance
I'm just going to be verbally abused, manipulated, and emotionally hurt. It makes
me want to shy away from any type of conversation... I don't want our relationship
to be this way, Daddy. And I know we arent always going to agree on everything.
But we wont want to ask for counsel if we feel like we aren't going to be heard. And
you are only going to attack us and insist that your view 1s the way we should see
things too. We wouldn't ask you to agree, but only to listen... I love you, Daddy,
and believe me, it hurts my heart to know that there would be any kind of
disagreement, but life isnt a cookie cutter, there will be differences. I just want to
have good relationships with you and Mama and our stblings, even if we arent on
the same page with things. We know you still have littles in the house and that
creates a different dynamic that you have to look out for them. But we don't want
to feel like you have to turn against us, turn us against each other either... I know
you will have to talk with them about differences and convictions like the nose ring
thing. But I do feel you have a lot of control over how they view us... We love yall
and all of our siblings and family and families and seek to honor the Lord and live
in right relationship with him and fellow believers. We also recognize that
differences can be hard for you too, Daddy. We want to be considerate of that, too.
And show that despite our differences, we still love and respect you... Love you,
Daddy.
I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess Pd hoped that Pops
would give a genuine apology, not one that he followed up with attacks or
justifications. Maybe he’d let me explain to him about the pants and the nose
ring and actually try to see things from our perspective. Maybe, from this low
point, we might even be able to finally form a relationship where he saw me as an
adult, a mama of my own, not a kid to be disciplined and controlled.
But none of that happened.
Pops dug in.
He hated the hunk of metal in my nose. He despised how I was dressing in
ways that put sexual thoughts in guys’ minds. Instead of his Sweet Jilly Muffin, I
was now a threat to the rest of his children, and a threat to his authority.
For me, the hornets buzzed louder. The snakes came closer.
Fear and guilt. Guilt and fear. At times it was almost hard to breathe.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ow
Pushed Aside
2017 ended badly.
2018 started worse.
We received news from the missionary organization that we'd been hoping to
serve with. They'd been waiting almost a year for us to provide some kind of
legal confirmation that we were no longer bound by the contract that I'd signed
the day before my wedding day. Despite us asking Pops, Chad, and the network
repeatedly—either for a release or at least a full copy of the contract itself—we
still had nothing to show them other than the typed-up bullet points which
Chad had shared telling us the contract ran “for five years” until June 2019, and
the partial contract pages from Pops that didn’t give us all the information we
needed. We'd lost the Panama job, and they'd kept us on their reserve list for as
long as they could, but time had run out. If we ever did get free and wanted to
serve with them, we'd have to reapply and go through the process again, which
would take years.
We were devastated. The mission field had been the one place where I felt
free, and I had been so sure that we were called to serve there. We'd already
waited a year, and with Pops refusing to cooperate, we would have to wait
another year and a half before we could even think about getting out of the
contract and serving with the mission organization, if they'd have us again.
Neither Derick nor I felt able to put our lives on hold for that long.
I was upset. A while later I finally told my mom about losing the job, and
eventually Pops found out. We were together one evening when he brought it
up.
“You should have told me,” he said. “Pm sure we could have worked
something out.”
I bit my lip so hard I thought I might draw blood.
“No, Pops,” said Derick. “That’s not the point. You aren’t entitled to know
what’s going on in our lives. What would have been most helpful would have
been to stick up for us to TLC, explain everything to them and get us released
from the contract.”
Around the same time, he texted us, finally giving us just a small but crucial
piece of the puzzle—the date when the contract expired.
It wasn’t 2019 after all. It was June 2018.
We were both so shocked and upset. Our future had been affected yet again
by a lack of transparency, by Pops operating on a need-to-know basis. If we'd
known about the expiration date for the contract, then maybe the missions
organization would have held on just a little longer. If Pops had been transparent
with us earlier, then maybe we might have been able to get back on the mission
field without delay. And maybe if we'd told Pops about everything that had been
going on with the IMB earlier, then he would have helped sooner, but neither of
us had wanted to give him that level of control over our lives, or open the
possibility of him making contact with the IMB directly and trying to use his
influence to persuade them to bend the rules for us. We wanted to stand on our
own two feet.
For a while we considered making contact with the organization again to see
if this new information changed anything, but we decided against it. We still
didn’t have factual proof or all the information—no contract in hand, just a text
message. Derick had taken the LSAT and applied to law school, and he’d just
heard that he’d been accepted. The way we saw it, a little legal training might be
beneficial for us both in the future. The lawsuit that my sisters and I initiated
against the people who had released the investigation was still in the early stages.
In Touch had filed a successful motion to be dismissed from the lawsuit, and we
were discovering that as “public figures” we weren’t allowed as much protection
as “private figures,” though we still hoped to maybe prove later the intentional
mishandling of juvenile records which could bring them back into the suit down
the road. The city and county and their defendants were filing appeals on parts
of their suits, but things were still rolling there, slowly but surely.
We tried to put the ending of our IMB plans behind us, but after Easter
things flared up again. Derick had been making comments on Twitter, speaking
his mind about various topics and making a few enemies. It earned him a quiet
conversation with Pops and a warning. “Be careful,” he said. “If you’ve got
problems, come to me.”
Neither of us felt much like taking him up on his offer at first. We had tried
that before and it didn’t go over well. So instead, we did what we could to
swallow our frustration and tried to avoid doing anything else that would
inflame Pops. But when the problems continued, we thought it best to not just
sweep them under the rug and continue pretending. We decided to take Pop’s
advice about coming to him with our problems, but not in person this time.
Based on our recent history, and wanting a little buffer, we decided to put our
thoughts down in a letter.
We took days working on it. We tried hard to make sure that it was clear and
free from too much emotion. We just wanted to list everything that had
troubled us, to make sure that Mom and Pops had the best chance possible of
understanding where we were at and what we were feeling.
What started out as a page or two quickly expanded. We added paragraph
after paragraph of things we really wanted to get resolved. It was a long, long
letter—twenty-seven pages in total—and by the time we'd finished it we were
worn out. Instead of sleeping on it or checking it over, we decided to send it just
as it was. Besides, we were away on a trip to Texas as a family with Derick’s
ministry program, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a little extra
physical distance between us too.
We were relieved and somewhat confused when Pops emailed back a short
reply, not answering the questions we’d asked, but apologizing for “all of the
ways that my actions & controlling spirit & lack of sensitivity & lack of
communication have hurt you and Jill.” He thanked us for bringing it to his
attention, asked for prayer and begged our forgiveness, adding that he loved us
very much.
Then, just as summer began, we came home one day to a letter. And that’s
when everything finally fell apart.
It was from the IRS, so to me, it was just another letter from the government
that was hard to understand and easy to ignore. Ever since I could remember,
Pops’ CPA had filed my taxes for me, and for both Derick and I together the first
couple years of marriage until we got someone else to do our taxes, and so my
initial instincts were to send it on to him. Derick thought otherwise. His degree
from OSU was in accounting, and he’d spent a year and a half working in the tax
department at Walmart HQ, so he studied the letter carefully.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet. But I don’t like it.”
In the days that followed, Derick tackled the letter like he was a forensic
accountant. We emailed Pops’ CPA, nonchalantly asking for copies of all my tax
records since I’d become an adult. Once we had those, Derick created
spreadsheets, looked back over old tax returns, and did what he could to decode
the mystery.
Finally, he figured it out and sat me down to explain it all.
“Remember the eighty thousand dollars that Pops paid you?”
“Yeah.”
“I think your dad’s accountant has been telling the IRS that you’ve been
receiving income from the show that you haven’t actually been paid.”
“What about the eighty thousand dollars? Doesn’t that cover it?”
“Nope. As far as I can tell, over the last ten years, income from Mad Family
Inc. that you’ve declared to the IRS is way higher than that.”
“How much?”
Derick checked his spreadsheet again. “About a hundred and thirty thousand
dollars more.”
We followed up with Pops’ CPA via email, asking him to help explain two
things—how Pops had reached the eighty-thousand-dollar figure in the first
place, and why there was such a vast difference between that and what had been
declared on our returns. The fact that we had waited years to see a copy of the
contract, and were still waiting, meant that neither of us held out much hope for
a quick or detailed reply.
His response did come soon, though I really think the CPA was in the dark
on a lot of it, because his answers seemed to show that he thought we’d been
aware of more than we actually were.
Pops wasn’t offering too much help, either. Though he did dodge the
question and gave us some unsolicited advice:
“It’s important not to live off your life savings but to reinvest it,” he said.
“Jason bought a house and fixed it up, and now is reselling it. You guys could do
the same. Instead of paying rent, buy a house and fix it up, that would save you
rent and multiply your savings.”
He also said that he noticed within us a “spirit of ungratefulness.” It seemed
clear to me that he didn’t like us questioning his financial decisions. Typically,
he’d have been a little smoother, trying to win us over. But now he sounded like
he'd had enough, like we’d exhausted his patience and he couldn’t wait for the
emails to end and for us to stop asking questions so he could move on. Derick
tactfully tried to explain that if we in fact had income, we would like to tithe on
it. He said he had already paid the taxes and tithed our portion. Pops explained
that if we wanted to tithe on our income, then he would have to kick some
families to whom he was giving free rent out of their homes. What we wanted
most was transparency and to figure out why I hadn’t been paid what had been
reported to the government.
Pops’ reply contained a question of his own.
“Derick. What amount do you feel like you and Jill are owed?”
It wasn’t meant to be a question that invited an answer. It seemed like it was a
challenge. As the emails between us and Pops continued, it felt like he was daring
us to say a number, daring us to show him disrespect. It wasn’t like him to be so
harsh, and I wasn’t used to feeling such coldness coming off him. I loved Pops
and hated the conflict, so part of me just wanted to give up. I wondered if this
was all even worth the fight. I just wished we could handle this civilly and
without things getting so heated.
The Fourth of July was just around the corner, and for the first time ever Derick
and I agreed not to join in the annual celebrations at a friend’s house where I
knew my parents would be in attendance. It felt like a big decision, and we
needed to put a little space between us. I'd hoped that if we could just give some
space and let things cool down a little, things might improve.
A period of space wasn’t my only idea. First, I asked Mom and Pops whether
they'd be willing to meet with a mediator to help us talk through some of our
issues in a constructive way. They agreed, and even said they’d be happy for us to
pick the mediator and set the time. I appreciated that and hoped that after a
couple of weeks we'd be able to all sit together and work things out.
My plan hit a hurdle early on. I had asked my church to recommend some
people to facilitate the meeting, and they’d given me three names of people who
could sit with all of us and mediate. Finding a time that they could all make
work was difficult, so it got narrowed to just two of the three. Then Derick
started law school in August, which added more pressure to our lives and
schedule. Finally, we settled on a date in the first week of October, but at the last
minute the other mediator had to drop out, leaving just one.
I had gone three months without seeing Pops or going over to the Big House
at all. It was strange, and I felt estranged from the family, but it was easier to stay
away rather than spend time with everyone and try to pretend like everything
was just fine.
I was nervous when we arrived at the church for our meeting. We were early,
and talked briefly with a friend of Derick’s from the school of ministry who was
waiting outside. She had tattoos and a nose piercing, but I also knew she was a
big fan of the show. When the mediator arrived, we went inside and waited for
Mom and Pops.
Pops had a wide smile when he walked through the door. As we exchanged
awkward greetings and hugs, Pops held out his phone.
“Look at this,” he said.
Derick, the mediator, and I moved in to look as Pops pressed play on a video
he’d just recorded. It was the girl from outside, and her smile was even bigger
than Pops’. She was saying how her life before had been so full of sin, but
watching the show had helped her change. She’d started wearing skirts and
signed up for the school of ministry so that she could be near the Duggars. And
now, to actually be meeting Pops and Mom in person, it was such a great day for
her.
“Isn’t that great?” Pops said, eyes wide and sparkling as he looked at each of
us. “She’s so sweet.”
It was nothing new. Ever since he got a smartphone Pops had been taking
videos of anyone he’d met who complimented him on the show and how it had
made a positive impact on their lives, then he’d share it with the rest of the family
on the group text. To him, it was a way of encouraging people, a reminder of
what the ministry was all about. In the past I would probably have agreed. But
this time it just stung, watching him pour out praise on the girl with the tattoos
and the nose ring. How could he have such a problem with me wearing pants
and having my nose pierced, yet appear to overlook whatever this girl had done
to her body?
I shook it off and tried to focus.
Derick and I had come prepared, and I checked the note on my phone for the
things we wanted to discuss.
That it’s not sinful for a woman who fears the Lord to wear pants, have a nose
ring, or cut her batr.
That Pops wasn’t just disorganized or forgetful when he had me sign the
contract without seeing it. It was a deliberate deception.
We want Pops to be fully transparent by finally sharing the 2014 contract with
us and telling us about any other agreements that affect us.
Pops can make things right by paying us the full amount that his accountant
has reported on my tax returns. Total $130,249.98.
When Derick and I had been talking in the days and weeks leading up to this
meeting, those four points had seemed like the most basic things we wanted to
agree on. They'd seemed reasonable and possible at the time, and I’d let myself
imagine how good it would feel to have reached a resolution on them all. But
sitting in the room, with the mediator introducing himself and thanking us all
for being there and Pops looking confident and strong and like nothing in the
world could ever touch him, I felt different.
So when the mediator invited me to go first, I put the four points out of my
mind and just tried to say what I thought would help.
“I’m sorry it took so long for this meeting to happen,” I said. My voice was
shaking a little, and I could feel the breath stutter in my lungs. “There have been
some very hurtful things that have happened, and so we wanted to sort it all out.
To have a good discussion together. We love y’all and I know we all hope to be
able to restore family relationships very soon.”
In the time I'd spoken, Pops’ body language had shifted. He wasn’t smiling
from the video and the girl outside anymore. Instead, he was sitting very still, lips
tight, eyes locked in a scowl that had been sculpted out of rock.
“That letter you guys sent us.” He stopped, like he was lost and didn’t know
where to go. He looked at Mom. She looked at me.
There was no scowl on her face, no folded arms. Just a look of pain. The pain
of a mama torn by her baby.
“It was the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever read.”
Her voice was soft, but her words hit me harder than anything she’d ever said
to me.
I knew she was right, that she was speaking the truth. I didn’t know exactly
how Vd messed up, but I knew that I had. I'd hurt her and Pops, and that was
never my intention.
I heard Derick try to explain that we never meant for the letter to be taken
that way. I looked at Pops. He was still scowling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We love y’all and could’ve used more care. We wrote the
letter together and had hoped it would help explain our feelings, but I know we
kept adding to it and then we were tired and just figured we had better go ahead
send it along...”
My voice trailed off as I tried to find the right words. But Pops wasn’t
listening to me. He had his own list of things he wanted to talk about.
“You sent me a text message, Jill. You said I was verbally abusing you. I was so
offended by that, too. You know in your heart that’s not right. Are you going to
apologize for that?”
I was nervous now. I remembered the message, remembered sending it in the
hope that it might wake Pops up to how bad I felt things had gotten, to maybe
make him give us a little space and let things calm down. Pd written about not
wanting to be verbally abused, which was exactly how Id felt at the time. I’d felt
it in El Salvador as well. I wasn’t sure that I could apologize for that. I glanced at
Derick as I remained speechless.
Pops must have sensed what I was thinking, because he suddenly stood up.
“Youre not going to apologize? Really?”
His voice was loud, and there was an edge to it that I'd rarely heard. The
moderator looked pale and was stuck on mute. Derick tensed, and I could feel
him getting ready to step in. I squeezed his hand, hoping he’d get the message.
Hold back.
Please be qutet.
Do not let this get any worse than it already 1s.
We were sitting in a horseshoe formation, the moderator in the middle, with
the Dillards and Duggars facing each other from opposite couches, open space
between us. Pops took a step toward me, closing the gap.
It wasn’t a gesture of reconciliation.
It was an act of aggression.
He towered over me, his whole body fueled with anger. My face flushed red.
My eyes filled with tears.
Then there was a long, awful silence that I wanted to fill but just couldn’t yet.
Derick’s hand was shaking in mine, and I squeezed as hard as I ever had,
desperate for him to hold his tongue.
“You know why you're crying, don’t you? Your conscience is talking to you.
That’s why.”
Pops’ voice was so loud in my ears. His words were like blows. I instinctively
tried to protect myself and block him out. I curled up on my seat, trying to find
safety in some kind of fetal position.
“Youre guilty!” Pops was yelling, stabbing a finger at me, standing right over
me.
Mom started crying.
Derick tried to speak, but I pulled him back.
“You want to know why I’m crying?” My voice was cracked, my eyes burning.
“It’s that you think ?m some kind of horrible person just because I wear pants
and have a nose ring, and yet you see that girl outside and praise her. That’s why
I'm crying, Daddy. I’m evolving and changing, just like that girl out there, but
you can’t see it. You treat me like ’m a prodigal who’s turned her back on you.
You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother.”
Pops looked stunned. “Well...,” he stammered. I wondered whether he was
about to agree with me, to confirm that in his mind my sins of disobedience
really were as bad as what Josh had been doing.
But finally, the moderator spoke up. “I think we should take a break.”
The mediation meeting lasted three hours. Three hours of raised voices, flowing
tears from my mother and me, and not much in the way of resolution. We didn’t
even get to ask about the money situation or some of the other things we'd
hoped to discuss. By the time it was over, my head was pounding, my heart felt
like it had been beaten raw. It was almost impossible to concentrate, but I heard
clearly what the mediator said to Derick and me once Mom and Pops left.
“You need professional help.”
We agreed and began searching for a therapist right away. We found someone
quickly—we’ll call him Mr. Ray McIntosh—a silver-haired licensed Christian
therapist who had a space for us in his calendar. Derick was all in from the
moment we made our initial appointment, but I had some baggage to work
through.
“A therapist is just someone you're paying to be your friend.” I'd heard it said
often when I was growing up, and it was on repeat in my head. So too was Pops
warning us repeatedly about talking to people outside the family about anything
to do with either the show or the family. “They might not understand. And they
might not be in line with IBLP teachings.” It was the old umbrella of protection
again, making me terrified of thinking for myself.
Like the fallout of a nuclear blast, I was beginning to hate the way the IBLP
umbrella principle continued to affect me. I hated how much of a hold it still
had on my life, even though I'd tried to tackle it so many times before. I hated
the fact that I was still having to deal with it. I wished I could sort things out and
I was tired of the toll it was taking on me emotionally. I wanted help, but I was
scared to be one of those people, the kind who looked to the world to solve their
problems instead of to God.
It wasn’t all bad. Just when things were at their bleakest, Samuel was due for
his eighteen-month checkup—the one that would determine whether he had
sustained any long-term brain damage at birth. The results, according to the
neurologist, were conclusive: there was no lasting sign at all of any brain damage
from the birth. It was a rare piece of good news, and it left me ecstatic for days.
By the time we walked into our first therapy session, I was ready to talk. The
words tumbling out of us both, while our therapist sat and listened, occasionally
steering us back on course.
At the end of the session, Ray delivered his verdict. “I’ve tried to do those
group mediation sessions before and they’re very hard to do. It’s not easy to keep
a handle on the room, and it can easily turn into a shouting match.”
“Yeah,” I said, my mind flashing back to me curled up on the chair while Pops
jabbed a finger in time with his shouting and our first mediator just sat silent and
stunned.
“I would recommend that you guys see a therapist, whether it’s me or
somebody else, for a few sessions. Your parents can see someone else as well, and
when you're ready you could sign something to allow the two therapists to talk
and help be the go-between for a while. Then maybe you can eventually meet
together with your parents... but I don’t know if ’'d recommend that.”
It sounded good and we shared the plan with Mom and Pops. To their credit,
they contacted the other therapist that Mr. McIntosh had recommended and
had a session together. But the more time we spent in therapy ourselves, the
more it became clear to us that we were a long, long way from being able to put
in place the solutions that would fix our relationship with my parents. First, we
had to understand how deep our wounds went and how much healing was
needed.
People were starting to notice that something was up. Bloggers and tabloids and
people on social media had spotted that Derick and I hadn’t appeared in any
photos posted by the family for months. The longer we stayed hidden, the more
the rumors spread. It didn’t help that TLC never aired our exit interviews and
there was no announcement of us leaving. We had just disappeared from the
show without any of the exit interview footage being used, so people speculated.
Some people said we'd been fired from the show. Others said it was all because of
Derick’s Twitter comments. One thread I saw was all about how Derick had
obviously ordered me to start wearing pants because Jinger had gotten so much
attention for it and Derick was just desperate to be noticed.
It was all ridiculous, and for Derick and me it was easy enough to ignore. For
Pops, it was another matter. Anything that damaged the show damaged him, so
he seemed anxious to get back to the mediation, to make things right between us
all and have us back over to the Big House again, just like old times.
“You can’t put a timeline on healing,” said our therapist when we asked him
how long it was going to take before we were ready to meet with Mom and Pops
again. “You're just going to have to tell them that at this point we don’t know
when you'll be ready. I think we need to focus your energies on your own
healing right now.”
It was good advice, the kind that makes you exhale with relief. Finally, we had
someone on our side. And after all those years of having to fit in with whatever
schedule worked for the show, I could say no. I could follow my own timetable.
Even in just a few sessions, Ray had helped us see how to communicate more
effectively with Pops. We realized that the long letter we'd written in the summer
had been all kinds of wrong. We'd put way too many accusations in it and we
hadn’t owned how we felt about it. There was no way for Pops to read it and not
feel offended.
So, when I sent a message to Pops and Mom about when we'd be ready to
meet again, I took our therapist’s advice. I explained that we felt like we needed
some time to work on ourselves, apologized for the fact that everything was
taking longer than we’d hoped again, and thanked them for being willing to
work on this with us.
It was good to feel empowered like this, and I was fine with waiting as long as
it took for Derick and me to heal. But there was one issue that we couldn’t put
on hold indefinitely—money.
Back when Derick had enrolled at Oklahoma State University as a teenager,
his mom and dad had given him some great advice: apply for every grant, every
scholarship possible. He did exactly what they said and sent out almost a
hundred letters, applications and essays to various boards and nonprofits and
foundations that he had a chance of receiving financial aid from. Then they
started rolling in, including $20,000 from OSU, nearly $10,000 from the Buck
Foundation, and $1,000 from the local Walmart Neighborhood Market. He
ended up getting almost half his costs covered, saving himself tens of thousands
of dollars over the course of his degree.
Naturally, when he enrolled in law school over a decade later, Derick took the
same approach. With two kids under four at home, and a wife who wasn’t
working, money was even tighter than it had been before. He needed all the
grants he could get, so he began applying.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that all the money that Pops’ accountant
had declared on my tax returns made it look like we had way more cash than we
actually did. It didn’t matter that we'd never actually been paid the $132,249.98
which had been declared. As far as these trusts and foundations were concerned,
our tax returns told the story that we didn’t need much financial help. While
that was frustrating, that wasn’t even our biggest worry. We worried more about
what we still didn’t know about our finances, the contract, and previous taxes
with Pops.
We had been pushing Pops to pay us the bare minimum ever since the
summer, and we had hoped to reach an agreement in the mediation session, but
we hadn’t even discussed it. There had been more follow-up emails and texts.
We'd got an email from him a couple weeks later, and as I read the opening lines,
I felt genuinely surprised:
Jill &§ Derick,
We love you both and want to see our differences resolved.
I have been praying and fasting about all of this.
I need to share my heart with you...
I have made some bad dectstons along life’s way, and have hurt you all. I
am sorry about that.
I was wrong for things I have said and done, and I pray you will please
forgive me.
It was a good start. Maybe he'd had a change of heart and was actually going
to reconcile with us after all.
But the further I read, the worse I felt.
Yes, we allotted, at different times, amounts to our children, for tax
purposes, because each one of our children were benefiting from having all of
their needs met (food, clothing, shelter, utilities, mustc lessons, education,
travel, instruments, vehicles, phones, medical insurance, medical bills, etc.).
Here are some low numbers of what was approximately spent on Jill in
the last few years:
Apartment rate rent $750 x 24 months=$18,000
Utilities discounted $600 x 36=821,600
Midwife education $5,000
Honda Pilot $9,000
Harp $15,000
Furniture $5,000
(If you dont want the furniture, we will buy it back after 4 years of use
for $3,000.)
Cell phone @ $50 x 120 months=$6,000
Car insurance $50 per month x 8 years=$4, 500
Vehicle fuel (8 years) x $50/month= $4,800
Eating out $100/month with family debit card for 8 years=$9,600
Clothes &F Goodwill on family debit cards $1,000 per year x 8
years=$8,000
Eating at home $3 per day x 12 years=$13, 140
Gift to Dillard Family Ministries $10,000
(You paid yourself a salary from this, stated there was only $1,200 left
when you closed it out, so you must have eventually received tt. You can
refund this ministry gift, and we will give tt to you directly if you want us
to.)
$129,940 is just the beginning of Jill’s expenses paid by Duggar family
over the last several years. Most of this was made and spent on Jill before you
two were married.
Also, taking into account many other ways that we have spent money to
help you all, for example, installing the AC in your home to El Salvador, the
stove, the washing machine, ete.
The total on fill’s tax returns was $130,250.
We would be willing to write a check for $20,000 to settle this once and
for all.
Jill, when Mom and I pass on, you are set to receive 1/1 9th of everything
we own that 1s set up in a trust for you kids.
If you attack us, probably your inheritance will be lowered significantly.
I love you, but I am grieved by the disrespect and the accusations that
continue.
I have asked for forgiveness, and I hope that you will also, you have
deeply offended your mother and I.
We love you and forgive you for the things you have said &F done.
$20,000 1s a one-time offer, take it or leave it, please let me know by
Monday night, or the amount will be zero.
Love, Daddy Duggar
For all the progress we were making in therapy, for all the desire we had to be
on good terms with family and work things out, that email set us back a long
way. It felt cold. It felt brutal. It hurt. It seemed Pops wasn’t being generous
when we thought he was being generous in the past. He was showing us
Proverbs 23:1-8 in action.
It was clear that Pops was not only counting the cost of bringing me into the
world, he was set on denying our requests. We couldn’t just continue the cat-
and-mouse game. We were already spent emotionally, and we knew if we didn’t
move to protect ourselves and remedy the situation, it would only get worse. We
couldn’t live like that forever, so we decided to act.
In late October, we hired an attorney who sent a formal demand letter to
Pops, asking for the 2014 contract as well as copies of the Mad Family Inc.
bylaws, minutes, and other details that I, as a shareholder, should have seen
already.
Pops went ballistic.
First, he hit the phone. There were texts and voicemails and calls every day,
but in none of them did he give the answers we requested. Instead he was calling
for us to get things resolved, to move on and work things out. We told him that
we wanted to do that too, and that all he had to do was communicate through
our attorney, with the information requested.
He didn’t.
Then came the next wave, a consolidated effort from several of my siblings.
They hit the phones, sending voicemails and texts all day long, each one pleading
with us to get this resolved. When that didn’t work, some of my siblings started
visiting. They'd want to spend hours talking it through, trying to figure out
what our problem was and why we weren’t doing what Pops wanted. I felt
obligated to at least hear them out and show them we cared by listening. I could
just about cope with the daytime visits, but when they wanted to stay up until
midnight talking with Derick and me, when Derick had law school exams the
next day, we finally told them no.
“What? How come you won’t talk?” they'd say. “This is way more important
than law school.”
We could see what was going on. Early in 2017, Pops had started paying
small, non-negotiable amounts per episode to those who were filming, both to
spouses and siblings. It seemed to me as if they had been brainwashed into
thinking that they weren’t owed anything, and that the $80,000 payment had
been super generous. That they should be nothing but grateful for all the gifts
and good favors he was giving them. There were strings attached though—like
having to pile on Derick and me when we caused trouble—but it seemed like
nearly none of them were willing to question what Pops was doing. They were
still so terrified of stirring up dissention among the brethren that they went
along with most everything.
Not every visit was designed to apply pressure though. One of my siblings
came alone and told us what was really going on.
“Pops is telling everyone that if we don’t stand against you both on this, then
we're standing against him. He said none of us can be neutral here, and that this
affects all of us. He says we might all be sued as a result of what you’re doing.”
When my sibling left, I cried. It was one thing for Pops to be angry at Derick
and me, but how could he justify bringing his other children into it like this?
How could he mislead them into thinking they might be sued, when he knew
full well it was the Mad Family Inc. corporation we were dealing with, not our
siblings? It made me sad for him. It made me scared for them.
Our attorney told us to stay calm and ride it out, calmly repeating our
demands when Pops refused to cooperate. For him it was standard lawyer stuff,
but for me, it was a nightmare.
I wasn’t coping so well. I'd feel a fear-spiked adrenaline rush kick in every
time my phone screen lit up with a Duggar family name. Each knock on the
door felt like we were back in El Salvador with armed gangs prowling around.
One day, around the end of November, another one of my siblings paid us a
visit. For once there was no conversation to be had.
“Here,” they said, holding out a piece of paper. “Pops says you’ve got twenty-
four hours.”
Derick and I studied the page after my sibling left. Pops was still trying to
make a deal with us outside of our formal request for just the Mad Family
documents and contract. It was the same deal we’d seen before. He wanted to
pay us $20,000 that day and have us sign an NDA that would keep us from
talking about any of it. We had no intention of signing it.
Our attorney maintained our requests as he continued the discussions with
Pops and his CPA over email. As the deadline for handing over the documents
grew closer, we started talking about the next step—possibly obtaining a court
order to gain the release of the documents we were requesting.
“Will it work?” I asked Derick. “Do you think he will give us what we are
asking for?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he will let it get to that point.”
It was late and the boys were asleep and I was feeling cold. But my shivering
was nothing to do with the temperature. It was raw fear.
“How do you know?”
“Because what we’re asking for is perfectly reasonable. Because we have a
right to them and it makes sense to anyone who looks at it objectively, including
a judge or jury.” Derick exhaled. “Because Pops values the show and wouldn’t
want all of this to be public and jeopardize the show.”
For months Id been trying to hold in all the fear and sorrow. There was
nobody I could talk to about it, apart from our therapist, and at times those
therapy sessions were like jumping into a frozen lake. We'd be discussing some of
the recent difficulties with Pops and exploring how it related to parts of my
upbringing, and all the blood would be rushing in my ears. My thoughts would
spiral so much that I'd mainly remember those sessions with Ray like a dream.
I could feel myself unraveling. All my edges were frayed. Throughout my
whole life ?'d had my family around me. And IBLP had preached the importance
of the immediate core family relationships always being prioritized above
relationships with others, causing some to still define them as immediate and
prioritize them above all relationships well into marriage. Now most of them
were against me. I wasn’t built for this. ’'d experienced stress and trauma before
—some of it caused by individuals in my family—but Id always been able to
count on the rest for support. They had been my gravity, the force that I never
had to question and could always rely upon. But now it felt like they were gone.
Some were still there, but it was different and more distant than before. They
didn’t know how to handle it either. Despite having my own wonderful family
of four, there was a part of me that felt alone. I had no frame of reference for
dealing with that.
I woke up one night to the sound of our storm door opening. Someone started
hammering on the door. It was 12:15 a.m.
My heart was instantly hammering in my chest. I was freaking out, reaching
for Derick. He was groggy at first, but when the doorbell rang, he shot up out of
bed.
“Wait!” I hissed as he headed out of the room.
“Who is it? Are they seriously breaking in?”
I was at the window. I couldn’t see who was out there, but there was a car out
on the street. A car that I recognized.
“It’s Mom’s car,” I said. “And...”
Whoever had been hammering and knocking on the door gave up, turned
around and walked back to the car. It was Mom. She’d never done anything like
that before—nobody in my family had—and I stared out the window at her,
frozen.
I watched her go.
The adrenaline took hours to leak from my body.
Neither of us could figure out why she’d come, but a long fifteen minutes
later, after she'd been gone awhile and we were climbing back into bed, unable to
sleep, we got a text:
Jill &§ Derick,
We love you all.
I took the discovery contract in tts entirety to your house late last night.
I apologize for going by so late.
I left it in between your screen door and front door.
—Mom
Sure enough, when we opened the door in the morning, there was an
envelope wedged at the base of the storm door. Inside was a copy of the contract
from 2014. All thirty pages of it. They hadn’t worked it out through our
attorney like we’d requested, but we were glad to have it in hand now. And a part
of me felt like them bringing it over may have been a last-minute emotional
decision which may not have happened if they’d waited.
We spent most of the morning studying the contract. Derick had to translate
some of the legal language for me, but there was plenty in it that I didn’t need
any help with.
Like part three, titled “Compensation.”
It stated that for each half hour episode, Mad Family Inc. would be paid
$50,000, and for each one-hour episode $65,000, with the numbers rising to
$58,000 and $73,000 if the show hit a fourth season.
Pops later determined somehow that each child would receive 3 percent on
their tax return each year. However, even this was a phantom payment,
seemingly just reported on paper for tax purposes with no apparent intention to
actually pay out this amount. We would later be told that this previously
reported income was an investment or inheritance that we could only have access
to upon my parents’ death.
We did the numbers. Over the years there had been well over three hundred
shows, for which we estimated that TLC had paid Mad Family Inc. over
$8,000,000 total. Our wedding alone had netted well over $100,000 for Pops,
and Israel’s birth had been the focus of two special episodes, earning Pops
another six-figure sum. Yet when we'd asked him to cover our $10,000
deductible and out-of-pocket expenses from the hospital stay, he’d pushed back.
Over the years Pops had bought more and more properties, and his fleet of
private aircraft now contained multiple airplanes, including one with ten seats.
There was no denying that he was a generous man who had helped a lot of
people, but it was also true that he’d grown rich off the show and had fought
hard to keep that under wraps.
It was hard to face the reality that my own father had seemingly tricked me
on the day of my wedding rehearsal into signing such a document.
While we were emailing our attorney about the contract, one of my siblings
called me. They sounded excited and wanted me to know that they had talked
with Pops and that he was suddenly ready to pay the $130,000. They explained
that he had some conditions—like wanting to handle it in house, without our
attorney, and have us sign an NDA. I thanked my sibling for their
thoughtfulness but reminded them that we had already tried working things out
multiple times with Pops without an attorney, and that our only current request
via our attorney was still not fully met as we were still lacking the other Mad
Family documents. I told them that at this point we would just prefer that Pops
communicate with our attorney to get those to us.
It wasn’t until January that things were finally resolved. We got some, but not
all, of the Mad family documents since they were missing some, and our
attorney had spent weeks going back and forth negotiating the final settlement.
We didn’t sign an NDA or anything of that nature. And though we hadn’t asked
for what we felt was the true value of what I had provided to the show, at least it
would help me recover what was owed to me that had previously been reported
on my taxes, plus cover attorney fees, as well as buy me out of my shares and
future profits of Mad Family Inc.
Once I signed, I drove to our attorney’s office to collect a check—the first of
five monthly installments.
I sat in the car, check in my bag, and exhaled.
$175,000 was a lot of money, but I wondered if it would even make a dent in
the Mad Family Inc. bank balance. We could have asked for more, I suppose, but
we hadn’t wanted to be greedy. We just wanted to recover some of what I was
owed for the work we had done and maybe also send a message that our
contribution to the show, along with my other siblings, should be valued.
So we'd won. We'd got what we wanted. But I wasn’t in the mood for
celebrating.
I felt like maybe my parents and most of my siblings thought I was greedy,
and that Derick and I were horrible people for what we'd done to the family.
Maybe they were right.
I never knew that victory could feel so hollow or so overwhelmingly sad.
CHAPTER NINE
ow
Real. Not Fake
I knew nothing about cocktails, but even from the first sweet sip I could tell that
the pifia colada was a good one. It was September 2020, a late summer date night
for Derick and me, and everything always tasted better when it was just the two
of us, sitting side by side in a booth, sharing stories about the boys, sketching
future plans like we had on the back porch of our house in El Salvador. But this
night, just like this pifia colada, was special. It felt like a night to celebrate.
Israel had just started school. Sending your firstborn off on day one is a big
enough milestone for every parent, but for me, it felt even more significant.
Homeschooling was at the very heart of what IBLP stood for, and they loved
quoting Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he
is old, he will not depart from it”). It was a nonnegotiable for any true IBLP
member, and it was one of the things that first attracted my parents to Mr.
Gothard’s teaching. And their homeschooling conferences, resources, and
training continued to be a big part of the IBLP business model. As a result, not
one of my siblings or any of their children had been sent to a public school. I'd
been brought up to view the public school system as dangerous and ungodly,
and to view anyone who didn’t choose to homeschool their kids as an
uninformed or risky parent.
Date night, September 2020
Our decision to enroll Israel in public school represented a significant step on
my own journey out from IBLP—an organization that I was finally able to see
clearly. It was a cult, thriving on a culture of fear and manipulation. Derick—
who was a perfect example of how a godly man can thrive in public school—
helped challenge my thinking. The more we had talked and prayed about
sending Israel to public school, the clearer the issue became for me: IBLP had
put a lot more energy into teaching me to fear the world beyond its doors than it
had put into teaching me to trust God and discern for myself how to reach a
good and wise decision on any given issue.
I guess that was why I didn’t move the pifia colada out of the shot when
Derick took a photo of us at the end of the meal. I was going to. When he
reached for his phone, I reached out a hand to move the half-empty glass, but
then I stopped. Derick had drunk a beer and I'd had my cocktail. It was a special
kid-free date time, just the two of us. So, I left it where it was on the table. In the
shot. There for everyone to see when I posted the photo later on. I didn’t want
to be fake. I wanted to be real.
The whole pifia colada picture got some people upset. The story—such as it
was—got picked up by People magazine and others, but it wasn’t anything like
the nose ring or the time I started wearing pants. It must have triggered one of
Pops’ Google alerts, but there was no communication from him. I guess he had
gotten the hint a few months earlier when he read online that Derick had been
seen drinking a beer. Pops had made contact soon after and offered to send
Derick to the same rehab facility Josh had been to, in the hope of curing Derick’s
clearly raging alcoholism. Since he’d never been drunk or ever had more than
two beers in any one sitting, Derick declined.
My desire to be genuine had been growing steadily within me for a long time.
Two months had passed since I'd walked out of the attorney’s office with the first
check for the money declared to the IRS. Pops had left me in no doubt that by
pushing him to pay the money we believed we were owed, I wouldn’t just be
stepping away from Mad Family Inc. I would be placing a large barrier between
me and the rest of the Duggar family, and giving Pops control of the narrative
my siblings would likely hear. It was daunting, but I knew that Derick and I had
made the right decision. And in the year and a half that followed, my journey
toward acknowledging and embracing my real self had gathered pace.
At first, things were tough. But for every moment where I felt a sense of relief
at getting out from Pops’ control, there were a dozen more times when the fear
and the guilt felt just as dangerous and painful as they had ever been. We’d left
the show, we'd cut the rope that bound us tight to the family, so by rights we
should have felt at liberty to make new, deep friendships with people. But all I
felt was worried. There were days when I felt more alone than ever. I'd recently
read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend and
found it very helpful, validating, and encouraging.
Things had gotten worse in April 2019 when Pops sent me a text that
included the words “please don’t come over when I am not at home.” We had
already started to feel uncomfortable hanging out at the Big House—sometimes
it felt like we'd have to get the courage up before hanging out with some of my
family members in any setting. Even Derick was starting to feel the pressure,
which manifested itself in the form of an all-out panic attack around Easter time.
Being effectively banned from the Big House felt like a reactionary and cruel
blow.
Yet in the middle of those dark times, one thing we never failed to be grateful
for was the chance to continue seeing Ray for counseling every week. He was a
voice of calm in the storm, a steady, unchanging presence when everything else
was in a state of decay. Thanks to him I learned a lot about myself, especially
when it came to the issue of trusting people. Pops had always warned us about
talking to people outside the family—and even advising us against speaking to
those inside the family at times—so Id always found it difficult to be honest
with people about things I was struggling with. I was hardwired to be wary, and
after everything that happened with Jn Touch magazine and the story of Josh’s
abuse, I found it almost impossible to open up to people.
“Have you heard of the word ‘attunement’?” Ray asked us one session.
Derick and I both looked blank, so he went on to explain about the importance
of couples learning to communicate with each other on a deep, emotional level
—becoming attuned. Instinctively I liked it, and Derick and I added the word to
our vocabulary. We needed it. Somehow, throughout all the chaos around the
show and with my family, we’d stayed strong together. We'd been united through
all the turmoil, but we still needed help. By introducing this idea of us being
attuned to each other, Ray helped us to communicate on a deeper level than
wed been on before.
He knew how to challenge us, encouraging us to talk with others. He advised
us to pick a small circle of close friends who we trusted and start talking with
them. He also gave us better tools to help us open the lines of communication
with my family.
For our homework one week he said we should draw a target. “Write the
names of friends and family inside different rings of the target with the middle
being your closest, most trusted relationships, to the widest being the more
distant ones. This exercise will help you visualize your relationships, and it’s okay
if it takes a while to figure out. Those relationships will change at different
points in your life, and that’s okay too.”
It was harder than I thought, and I almost felt guilty not putting all of my
family in the inner circle. But it brought clarity and was a helpful, practical step
for us as a couple to verbalize and decide which relationships we felt safest in and
in which ones we needed healthier boundaries.
“Take a risk,” Ray told us when we discussed next week’s exercise. He advised
us to cultivate close friendships and talk with some of my siblings about
problems we'd faced. “If you can share a little bit more about the things you’re
struggling with, it gives them permission to do likewise.”
It wasn’t easy. After so many years of being warned not to “stir up contention
among the brethren,” I was preprogrammed to keep my thoughts to myself. But
as soon as I opened up for the first time—saying yes to one of my brothers when
he told me he liked a girl and asked if he could come over and get my advice on
how he should navigate the relationship without Pops taking control—I realized
two amazing things. First, that maybe the act of talking about the tough journey
that we'd been on could actually be of help to some of the people I loved most
and help them avoid some of the same problems we'd faced. Second, when I did
talk about it, the sky didn’t fall in. And just like drinking a pifia colada on a date
with my husband, God wasn’t angry with me. Muscle memory told me I was
sinning, but common sense, long and deep conversations with Derick, as well as
my own Bible study, prayer life, and conversations with other Christians told me
that I was actually okay. It felt strange, but at twenty-seven years old, I was finally
learning to build healthy relationships and have a healthier, less fear driven view
of God. And I was realizing it was a whole lot harder to “walk the straight and
narrow” Christian road and live with balance than to fall to extremes.
So much of my faith has been shaken over the years, but never more so than
when things were so painful with Mom and Pops. It was hard to process
everything, hard to pick through everything that I had been taught—both at
home and in church—and filter truth from lies. At times it was tempting to
throw it all out and run away, but even that terrified me. Growing up I'd heard
so many horror stories of people who had become “backsliders” or had “lowered
their standards” that just the thought of looking critically at my faith felt
dangerous and foreign to me.
Deep down I knew that I didn’t want to bail on my faith. I was aware that
people had used the Bible to manipulate me and press on the nerve of my guilt in
order to make me conform to what they felt was acceptable, but I didn’t hold
that against God.
God was always there for me. So was Derick. He was strong for me when I
needed him, and I couldn’t imagine working through something like this
without a loving partner by my side.
These Bible verses from Micah 6:6-8 were a comforting reminder of what
God expected of me.
“With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of otl?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what ts good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Talking deeply and honestly felt like a challenge, but it was nothing compared
with what had happened that summer. Six months had passed since Pops had
given in and paid out that first payment, and Pd not seen him since then. But in
June, Grandma Duggar died. She had been a force of nature, and her passing was
going to leave a mighty hole in everyone’s life, especially Pops. My heart went out
to him. For all the disagreement and pain that passed between us—for all the
lack of attunement—I felt for him.
When we got the date for Grandma Duggar’s funeral, I talked about what I
should do with Ray. I had no idea how to navigate it, though I knew for sure
that I wanted to go.
“Your dad’s going to be hurting,” he said. “Seek him out. Go up to him as
soon as you can. Don’t wait around anxiously for him to come to you. Go
straight up and show him that you care.”
My throat was dry and my insides were empty as I headed for Tontitown a
few days before the funeral. It was only a couple of months after Pops had told
me not to go to the Big House when he wasn’t there, and it was strange to be
feeling so nervous as I pulled down the long gravel drive to the house I had called
home for nearly eight years—a house I had helped build. I felt like a visitor, an
imposter, and a prodigal all rolled into one. I saw Pops coming out of the house
shortly after I parked, and I did what our therapist had suggested and went
straight to him.
“I’m so sorry about grandma. I’m sure you must be heartbroken,” I said,
repeating the words Id rehearsed in my mind over and over. Then I gave him a
hug. I hadn’t rehearsed that, but it wasn’t anything I could stop. It just felt right.
“Thank you,” he said.
For the first time in years, I felt connected to Pops.
Days later, after the funeral, Derick and I were invited back to the Big House.
It was nice to be asked, and Pm sure that Sweet Jilly Muffin would have said yes,
but her voice wasn’t as loud within me anymore. So I said no. I needed to go
home and grieve alone.
For Grandma Duggar.
For everything.
I didn’t think that hug with Pops would change anything overnight, but I
appreciated it all the same. And as summer rolled on, things did begin to shift.
Pops still didn’t want me going over to the Big House unless he was there, but he
did start inviting Derick, the boys, and I along to more family events from time
to time, sometimes even pressuring us to show up. Most of the events that we
were invited to attend didn’t include any cameras, which was fine, though I was
tempted to wonder if Pops was partly doing it so that he could post pictures of
us and squash the rumors that were circulating online about us splitting from
the family. I didn’t dwell on it. I liked spending time with my family, even if it
was hard at times. It felt right. I guess it felt right to Pops too, because just before
Thanksgiving, the Big House ban was lifted—partially. Mom told us that we
were welcome around the Big House anytime, though Pops added a condition,
“as long as you are not only coming over when I am not there.” It was a subtle
change, and I guess he wanted to make sure that we weren’t trying to avoid him
too much.
Derick and I were still seeing Ray, so there were plenty more opportunities to
reflect and try to make sense of the legacy of growing up like I did. With Derick
in law school, and our schedule busy, we tried to be intentional about where we
got involved in our church and how we continued building new relationships
with people. We started volunteering in the kids’ ministry on Sunday mornings
to be part of the classes our kids were in and make friends with other parents. It
was all hands on deck in the chaos of the kids’ church, and there really wasn’t
much opportunity for anyone to ask about my family.
We were in a kids’ church meeting one day in November when my phone
started blowing up. I could feel it announcing a new text message every minute
or so, and when I snuck a look, I saw that they were all around the same theme—
something had happened with my family and people were reaching out to tell
me they were praying for us.
As soon as our meeting was over, I checked Google and saw that Homeland
Security had raided Josh’s car lot. Details were scarce and vague, but it was
something to do with an investigation. Later that evening, I saw a statement
from Pops too, telling the world that nothing was going on and nobody in the
family was being investigated. I hated to think it, but the conflicting details led
me to believe that he wasn’t telling the whole story. I prayed I was wrong.
Once we made it home and got the kids in bed, I talked to one of my siblings
who had just been in on things at the Big House.
“That’s not all,” they said when I asked them about Pops’ statement. “He just
called a family meeting. Told us Josh was being investigated. He said they took a
bunch of hard drives but that it might all be a setup. So he’s telling us to pray
that this all comes to an end real quick, and reminded us not to make any
statements to anyone.”
I could imagine the scene. The heavy silence, everyone wondering what was
really going on, but nobody asking their questions out loud. All eyes on Pops,
standing in the middle, rallying the troops. Mom sitting quiet to the side,
looking weary. Like she’d been here too many times already.
For weeks, online rumors danced like a campfire. I stayed away from the
gossip, but I was aware that some people were saying that since it was Homeland
Security investigating, it must have been an immigration issue. Maybe, I
thought. But unlikely.
Mostly I tried to ignore it all. I was grateful for distance between me and the
show, grateful that I wouldn’t be called upon to do my bit to defend Pops’ other
baby. But I felt for my siblings. I worried about them feeling the pressure to help
Pops out.
Whatever the investigation into Josh was really about, it had kind of died
down by the time 2020 began, and especially by the time Covid hit. As the world
shut down and governments told people to retreat to their homes, I knew that—
figuratively at least—I was done with hiding. I wanted to connect with people,
to take a risk and begin to open up.
By late summer of 2020, Covid was still a risk, but I was grateful for the
protocols our local public school district had in place to create a healthy
environment for the kids to still be able to attend school safely.
So those first few days, as I prayed over Israel and kissed him goodbye and
watched him run into kindergarten, I was thankful. Thankful for God’s
direction and my husband’s wisdom and support as we prayerfully made
decisions together as a couple that were best for our family. And though I wasn’t
terrified of sending Israel into public school, I'd be lying if I said I wasn’t at least
a little nervous.
Maybe that’s why the date night pifia colada tasted so good. It wasn’t just
Israel starting a whole new chapter in his life.
I was too.
Being involved in reality TV does strange things to your relationships. It almost
denies you the right to choose who is close to you and who isn’t—in the way
that our therapist challenged us to do with his exercise. There are times when it
seems that everyone feels entitled to be in your inner circle, with full access to
your life. It also leaves you in a catch-22. After years of having to share almost
every aspect of your life with a show, you crave privacy. If you keep quiet and try
to hide away, people just spread more lies and rumors about you. If you defend
yourself and try to set the record straight, criticized and deemed to be unworthy
of privacy.
It’s an impossible choice, and there isn’t a pain-free option.
For Derick and me, the truth mattered. We’ve always known that some
people will dislike what we say, do or believe, regardless of the truth. We can’t
change them, and we have to accept that. But everyone deserves to hear—and to
be able to share—the truth.
We both knew that there was more to being real than posting photos on
Instagram, and we wanted to go further than laying a few breadcrumbs and
hoping that people would figure things out for themselves. We wanted to find a
way to put our therapist’s advice into practice, so, having thought about it for a
while, in October 2020 we decided to shoot a video of the two of us talking
about where we were at on a few issues. It was lo-fi, low-key, just Derick and I
sitting on the couch, my phone balanced on a stack of books on the coffee table.
We set it up like a Q&A and worked through a range of questions. Why did we
leave the show? Has there been some distancing with the family and why? Do
you see a change in yourselves since therapy? It was a bit hard and a little painful,
but it just felt good to be honest with people.
We uploaded it and waited for the reaction.
Viewers left kind, encouraging comments. People magazine picked up the
story, and we sat down for an interview with them. But the response I was most
curious about was Mom and Pops’.
They didn’t comment at all.
We were relieved.
On Friday, March 5, 2021, Derick was at home doing some remote learning.
Israel was at school and I had been reading to Samuel and working on some
other projects when there was a knock on the door. Two men were standing
there. One in his late thirties, the other in his mid-forties. Both were wearing
dark, collared shirts. Both looked serious.
“Jill Dillard?”
“Yes.”
“We're from Homeland Security. Can we ask you some questions about your
brother, Josh Duggar?”
I told them Pd want my husband to be able to talk to them as well, but that
he was busy right now. So I took their card and promised to call them back to
arrange a time.
Three days later they came back as agreed. At first the questions were all
about Josh’s business, his car lot, who worked for him, and more. I tried my best,
but I knew next to nothing about his car lot. I'd driven past it a bunch of times,
but I don’t think I’d ever visited him there.
“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” I said.
There was a pause. Then, “What about the abuse incident?”
“T don’t want to talk about that,” I said.
“Why?”
It was my turn to leave a pause. Time to be real. Not fake.
“I guess two reasons. One, because we have pending litigation with all of that.
And two, I just don’t want to go there. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”
When the Jn Touch story had been published in 2015, my experience with the
paparazzi left me feeling traumatized and panicked. It took years for the wounds
to begin to heal. I still wasn’t able to relax at home without compulsively
checking every car parked on the street outside. They kept coming. And they
would always try and tie in the earlier abuse to their stories, renewing my
trauma. Every year or so, just when I thought Id gotten used to life without
them, they’d be there, waiting outside the house as I came home, following me
when I went into town. One time they snapped Derick when he came back from
a run, which ended up accompanying the story “Disgraced Derick seems to have
a lot of time on his hands after being fired from Counting On...”
I guess I should have seen it coming. With Josh’s investigation not going
away, the paparazzi were bound to come back.
It happened a month after Derick and I spoke with the men from Homeland
Security. Derick was out at the time and I was at home with the boys. Someone
rang the doorbell, and I just assumed it was a delivery.
As soon as I saw him standing on the doorstep, I could tell. The travel-creased
clothes, the fake smile that didn’t reach his ratty eyes. But no camera that I could
see.
“FIlo Jill,” he announced, his voice a thick London accent. “I’m from the
Sun. D’you know you bruvver’s about to be arrested? Any comment?”
I was polite but said, “Sorry, no comment,” and shut the door. Then I tried
to remember how to breathe.
Josh was arrested three days later. From that point on I felt like Pd been
hurled straight into a hurricane.
Within hours, one of the Homeland Security guys called to tell me that they
were releasing my entire interview to the defense. They were obligated to do it,
but I hated it all the same. I was being dragged back into the drama, and I felt
powerless to stop it.
A week after the arrest, Derick and I watched Josh’s detention hearing online.
Derick told me to expect it to last an hour. Instead, it took six. We learned a lot
that day about what Josh was being accused of—charges related to him
downloading child sexual abuse material. These charges were way more serious
than I'd expected, and I was in shock to hear how terrible the crimes he was
accused of were. And when the agent from Homeland Security testified about
the day they raided Josh’s car lot, I was shocked by Josh’s initial reactions to the
raid. He seemed nervous, even asking, “What is this about? Has someone been
downloading child pornography?”
Unsurprisingly TLC canceled the show again, and this time there was no
high-profile exclusive interview that could get it back on track. The time of the
Duggars being a filming family was officially over.
I tried to keep myself focused on the boys, to not let whatever was happening
with Josh trigger me into feeling anxious or panicky again. It wasn’t easy, but all
those hours Derick and I had spent in therapy helped. I reminded myself often
that this wasn’t a repeat of the original investigation or the Jn Touch story. It
wasn’t easy, since there was a media frenzy surrounding every step of Josh’s legal
process, and the earlier In Touch article was brought up in nearly every story. But
I could make my own choices. I did not have to get caught up in the family
drama anymore.
In August, I found out that wasn’t strictly true. Over five years had passed
since my sisters and I had started our lawsuit against the City of Springdale,
Arkansas; Washington County, Arkansas; Kathy O’Kelley; Ernest Cate; Rick
Hoyt; In Touch magazine and its parent company Bauer. The defendants had
done their best to slow things down over the years. But things were coming to a
close. We were told that a court date had been set for December, and as a result,
my sisters and I, along with some of our husbands, had to give our depositions.
I was terrified. Knowing that I was going to be questioned by lawyers for
hours and give my account of what had happened, sent me back to some of my
most anxious moments—to El Salvador, to Megyn Kelly, to the original
investigation where I thought that one wrong word from me and we'd all be
taken away from Mom and Pops.
In the days leading up to my deposition I couldn’t focus, couldn’t eat
without feeling nauseous, or sleep without falling into a nightmare. Getting out
of bed was too much. My stomach felt like it had been wrapped up tight with
razor wire. For years I'd tried to bury so much of the pain. I thought Pd dealt
with it. But now it was back, and it was more terrifying than ever.
My deposition lasted seven hours. Every second felt like torture.
When it got to be so much I thought I might scream, I'd excused myself and
gone to the bathroom. Id tried to get rid of the fear and the pain, but all I could
do was dry heave over the toilet and try to muffle my screams with a pillow.
When it was over, I hugged the boys and cried in Derick’s arms until the
room was thick with darkness.
Then, in September, we found out that we were expecting. After everything
that had happened with Samuel’s birth, I had no idea whether I would even be
able to get pregnant again, but there it was, the clear pink line on the test. I was
so happy, I was even able to bury the feelings that the deposition had stirred up.
Yet the next month I miscarried. It hit me hard. As I grieved the loss of little
River Bliss Dillard, I was asking big questions about whether Id ever have
another baby. Part of me understood that if my body wouldn’t carry another
baby to term, then so be it. I already had two beautiful, healthy boys, and it was
easy to be grateful. But I knew I wanted more babies. I had seen health specialists
who had given me a protocol for managing any possible pregnancy, so I wasn’t
done yet. The desire hung over me like a shadow. I didn’t know what to do with
It.
Ahead of Josh’s trial, Pops had to appear in court. I wasn’t there, but Derick
heard about it from a family friend and told me it had not gone well. Pops
seemed scared and belligerent, indignantly telling the judge, “Are you going to
let this happen?” after he’d been asked a question that he didn’t want to answer
about past abuse and the release of information. It hadn’t gone down well, and
Pops had earned himself a warning from the judge—who happened to be the
same guy who was scheduled to hear the case that my sisters and I were bringing.
It was not a good start.
Then, in November, just as I was preparing myself for the fact that Josh’s jury
trial was about to begin, the unexpected happened. We got pregnant again.
I was on the prosecution’s witness list, which meant that I was supposed to
avoid reading about the trial. It wasn’t easy. Josh’s long fall from grace was
national news, and at times it seemed like nothing else was going on in the
world. I heard from Derick that there were paparazzi outside the courtroom and
outside the Big House. The days were long, but I was glad to be spending them
quietly at home, with my blinds shut just in case cameras showed up, just
hanging with my boys and praying for the health of the new life growing inside
me.
At other times, I thought about Josh. I'd been told that I could receive a call
at any point and be required to testify against him in court the next day. That
was a sobering thought—a little terrifying at times—but I was willing to do it. I
had thought about what Josh had done and reached a clear conclusion. After
years and years of following the family line and trusting Pops when he said that
things were better dealt with within the family, I wanted something different to
happen. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted the evidence to come out. And I
wanted Josh to be put away for a very long time.
I felt anger at what he’d done—so much anger it burned. He had hurt
innocent children by his actions, and then continued to avoid responsibility.
I felt sad, too. Sad that Josh had become such a monster, sad that even with
all the chances Josh had been given to change, he had thrown them away as he
continued down a dark, terrible road. Like the rest of the world, I was finally able
to see my eldest brother for what he was—a man unable to control himself,
totally detached from the reality of how deeply he was hurting others.
The more I thought, the more I realized how much I missed my innocent
childhood. The days when we used to just run around and play, picking fruit
from the trees that filled our yard. Back when there were just eight of us kids,
and to me our little garden felt like Eden. But like that first paradise, sin got in.
Evil had spread. The innocence was broken.
The trial brought up everything from the past, as news stories resurfaced the
abuse. I felt plagued by this, humiliated just like before. But it was different this
time. I had a stronger support system of friends. I was learning how to be
vulnerable with them about family, and I knew for my own mental health that I
couldn’t live in isolation this time around. And in return, for the first time ever, I
felt overwhelmingly supported.
Friends checked in on me and let me know they were praying. They sent
coffee or ordered dinner for my family when I was feeling drained by my
pregnancy and didn’t have the energy to do anything. It didn’t make the
problems go away, but it did give me the strength to press on.
And it wasn’t just my friends. Some of my siblings started to reach out. For
the first time it was clear that some of them were beginning to be skeptical of the
narrative they'd been hearing at home. As they looked for themselves at the
Duggar family spectacle, they started to ask their own questions.
I hated to be walking through such a painful experience again, and I hated
that it had dragged my entire extended family in too, but I was thankful that I
could look back and notice the growth, the positive changes in some areas of my
relationships and in myself. And that gave me more hope for the future.
Toward the end of the trial, I was told that I was no longer going to be needed to
testify. The prosecution had presented all that they needed to present, and my
testimony was no longer necessary. I exhaled with relief. Probably cried a little
too, especially when Derick got home from the trial that night.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. Being off the witness list meant I was
free to visit the court. “Are you going to come?”
I wrestled with it a bit before making a decision.
It was almost impossible to separate the pregnancy nausea from anxiety
nausea, and as I walked into the courtroom and sat quietly on the bench beside
Derick, I had to take a moment to catch my breath and keep my head from
spinning.
When I was able to look up, it hit me how strange it all was.
Josh was sitting with his legal team, looking like he was facing nothing more
serious than a parking violation.
There were the family members—Pops; Jessa; Joy and her husband, Austin;
Jason; Justin and his wife, Claire; as well as Josh’s wife, Anna. They all looked
like they were attending a funeral. They were pale. Exhausted. Beaten.
Then there were the journalists, outnumbering everyone else. They were
watching all of us, studying and analyzing our every move. I'd never been in a
room where I'd felt so claustrophobic. Never felt the urge to run quite so strong
within me.
But I didn’t run. I stayed and listened to the summing up from both sides.
More than once I squeezed Derick’s hand. Three from me. Four from him.
Before this latest scandal, there was a part of me that hoped Josh would
change, or that at least he might actually want to change.
But as the truth about his actions had emerged, I had become concerned for
who else might become a casualty if he was allowed to continue on as he was in
the world. It was becoming increasingly clear that the safest place for Josh, and
those around him, was prison.
In the past, he had apologized for looking at adult porn. Now that he had
walked into deeper and darker sins, he seemed to grow /ess remorseful. He never
admitted the crimes he most recently committed, never expressed any guilt or
remorse. Maybe he was actually worried this time about the very real potential
consequences that faced him. I don’t know.
But the whole thing made me feel sick to my core.
I decided against going back to court the next—and final—day. I'd seen
enough on that one day, heard enough of the evidence, talked with enough
people to not feel the need to return. Besides, I was exhausted, and didn’t want
to do anything to jeopardize the baby.
But Derick was there for the verdict. And soon after the verdict was handed
down, he called me.
“They found him guilty,” he said, but Pd been keeping up with the news
from my phone, and I already knew.
For a moment I didn’t know what to say. After so many words, so many
secrets and so many lies, it was hard to put what I felt into syllables. In the end,
all I could manage was, “I think they got it right.”
Later, Derick and I sat at a laptop and started to type. We wanted to put a
statement out on our family blog, and we wanted to do it quickly.
I knew exactly how I wanted it to start, and Derick watched as I typed.
Today was difficult for our family.
Our hearts go out to the victims of child abuse or any kind of explottation.
After that, I hit a block. I tried a few different lines, but they just looked all
wrong on the screen.
“What do you want people to know?” Derick asked.
I closed my eyes.
“That we have been lied to so much. But that finally, today, we got the truth.”
EPILOGUE
=
A Photo
“Just be careful, Jill.”
I sat, exhaled slowly, and let my mind drift to the baby that was bursting to get
out of my belly, and the birth that my calendar told me was likely still a month
away. Instinct told me to block out the voice of the person talking to me, to
ignore it and discount their warnings. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to hear what
they had to say.
It wasn’t a midwife I was talking with, or an OB-GYN, and we weren’t in a
hospital room or medical office. We were in a coffee shop. The person sitting
opposite, offering me advice, was an old friend from back in the days when Sweet
Jilly Muffin thought that Mr. Gothard could do no wrong.
“All Pm saying...” My friend paused, searching for the words. Maybe she
thought I was a minefield. One wrong word and [Id take us both out. But I
wasn’t on edge, and I wasn’t feeling too triggered by this long discussion about
my family. It was okay, and I tried to communicate that with my smile.
“All I’m saying, Jill, is don’t go throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I
owe a lot to your parents. They’re good people.”
“T know.”
Ever since we'd started talking publicly about our decision to put a little
distance between us and the family, this kind of conversation was a regular feature
in my life. I must have had it twenty other times with twenty different people.
But I appreciated it. Or, at least, 'd learned to appreciate it. Pd learned to really
listen to what they were saying and the heart behind it. To do that, I had learned
to tune out the old echoes of fear and the guilt that had shouted at me for so long.
I'd had other conversations too. Some people—like the father whose child was
engaged to be married to one of my siblings—had told me they’d wanted to hear
my side of the story. He’d told me that he didn’t believe some of the things he’d
heard about Derick and me, and he wanted to listen. We’d talked for three hours,
and he said it helped him feel more confident about how he could support his
child when they finally married into the Duggar family.
Every time I find myself talking with someone who is curious about my family,
especially when it’s someone who shares an IBLP background, I ask myself some
questions. How much truth can they handle? How much truth do they need?
Do they actually seem genuinely interested in knowing more or do they seem
combative? Will my conversation be beneficial for them in trying to help them
figure things out?
Growing up Duggar, there are so many things that ’m grateful for. We had
space and freedom and parents who were patient and kind. I read a comment
once that criticized Mom and Pops for using their kids as child labor to build
their house. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I loved being taught how to
use a drill or how to lay tile and then being given the trust to go ahead and get on
with the job. Mom and Pops didn’t treat us as slaves when we were building the
Big House, they treated us as co-workers, worthy of respect and praise. And when
the job was finished and we got to move in, all of us who were old enough to
walk, talk, and at the very least hold a paintbrush, could point to parts of our
home and say, “I did that.” It gave us a sense of purpose and created within us an
even deeper bond that held us together.
Jilly Muffin, December 1995
I am grateful for the way Mom and Pops taught us how to treat each other.
When you have that many kids living and learning together under one roof, you
can’t be a micromanager, refereeing all their arguments and disagreements. You
have to teach them how to get along, and Mom in particular was so good at that.
She was always encouraging us to think about what the other person was feeling,
to empathize and see things from their perspective. And one of the greatest
compliments you could ever give Pops was to tell him that you were impressed by
how well we all got along.
“They’re best friends,” he’d say, his eyes dancing with delight. And he was
right. We didn’t see the little ones as annoying and we weren’t fighting for our
parents’ attention. We loved each other, and we knew that we were loved in
return.
Mom and Pops made time for us individually as well. Whenever either of
them was running an errand, they’d take one or two of us along for the ride. We'd
often get a dollar to spend in whatever store we were visiting, and they both
would make us feel special. We were never in any doubt about the fact that their
marriage was their priority, but it was just as clear that they both loved every one
of us. For all the times growing up that I heard the phrase “children are a
blessing,” I never once doubted it. Mom and Pops lived it out loud. They loved
us, and they never ceased to take an opportunity to show us that love in action.
I guess things changed with the show. But it’s not difficult for me to look back
on those days with gratitude. Thanks to the show, we ate well, lived in a
beautifully furnished house, traveled the world, and got to feel like we had a sense
of purpose and calling as we dedicated ourselves to the ministry. It’s one thing to
give a kid a drill and show them how to put rivets in a partition wall, it’s a whole
other level for a kid to have those parents invite them in to share the God-given
task of telling the world about how great it is to grow up in a Christian home.
Jill, Jana, and John, early 1990s
So, yes, Iam grateful.
But I am also realistic. There is much that I can look back on and smile, but I
picked up some wounds along the way. It’s like roses and thorns, justice and
grace. You can recognize the beauty and happy parts of your story while also
recognizing the more difficult parts. The two can coexist. The highs aren’t
automatically erased or invalidated by the lows.
Ray must have been able to see it the moment we sat down to talk with him.
We'd originally gone to him with a plan to restart the mediation process with
Mom and Pops, but Ray gently helped us to see that the last thing we needed was
a quick fix.
“I'm Muscogee Creek,” he said, midway through our first session, “so ?m
going to talk about arrows.”
“Um, okay,” we said, not really knowing what else to say.
“You've been in a battle for a long time. You’ve taken a lot of arrows, and there
are more coming. Occasionally, back in the day, when someone would get shot
with an arrow, the arrowhead might get lost inside them, and anytime that area
got bumped it would be extremely painful. You’ve got a lot of different wounds
on you. Some are old, some are new. And I don’t think many of those wounds
have healed right.”
The room stopped. My breath grew shallow. Cry or run, I didn’t know what I
wanted to do. So I just sat and listened.
“That’s why it hurts so bad so much of the time, Jill. Even when people do the
slightest thing—maybe Derick says or does something dumb—but it bumps one
of those arrowheads and triggers all that old pain. So, no, you don’t need a
mediation meeting with your parents right now. You don’t need to go back into
battle. You need to heal. Really heal.”
It took years for us to put the puzzle pieces together, years for us to start to
identify the reasons why things felt like they did. It took a lot of talking with Mr.
McIntosh, a lot of talking with each other, and a lot of getting things wrong more
often than we got things right. We had to learn how to talk to each other—
becoming attuned—and I in particular had to learn how to trust people. Decades
of fear and paranoia didn’t unravel overnight.
Things like Josh’s trial and my deposition were tough, sending me spiraling
back into the panic and the fear. At times, even today, there are periods where it
feels like the old pressures come at me in waves and I have to work hard to keep
the weight off my shoulders. But slowly, gradually, we have started to find a route
away from the pain. The wounds are still there, but the scar tissue is growing
thicker.
In the same way that we'd thought that mediation was going to be our way to
the finish line with Mom and Pops, Pd hoped that the lawsuit against the City of
Springdale, Arkansas; Washington County, Arkansas; Kathy O’Kelley; Ernest
Cate; Rick Hoyt; Jn Touch magazine and its parent company Bauer; and anyone
else involved behind the scenes would bring closure and healing to that most
painful part of my life.
It didn’t. At least, not in the way that I'd hoped.
Right from the beginning we knew the law was on our side. But what started
out as a winnable case—so winnable that the law firm took it on contingency,
putting millions of dollars into litigation that spanned five years—suddenly
became weak once my brother appeared in court.
Our case was derailed by everything that happened with Josh. The fact that we
were due to appear in the same court, before the same judge, likely with jurors
drawn from the same jury pool, meant that we were tied to him. It was another
painful twist of the knife to be linked to our abuser like this, but there was
nothing we could do. After Josh’s trial revealed the continued secrecy in our
family and the lack of acknowledgment of wrongdoing, the judge and everyone
around grew skeptical of anything to do with the Duggars. They lumped us all
together, and despite the fact that our case was strong, we could feel the tide
turning against us. Even though we were suing those who the judge agreed had
illegally released the reports of our abuse and then exploited us as victims of child
sexual abuse, in many people’s eyes the court had already declared who the real
culprit was—Josh.
In February 2022, my phone pinged a local news alert as I simultaneously
received media requests for comment.
The judge had dismissed our case. When the judge released his opinion, he
made it crystal clear that the graphic reports of child sexual abuse victims were
illegally released. He wrote that what the defendants did was “profoundly wrong”
and that “[i]f the question is whether Defendants were ignorant of the law or
grossly negligent in its application, the answer is: Absolutely.” He went on to say
that “Arkansas FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] is not all-inclusive,” and that
in our case “all individual Defendants were seemingly ignorant of the privacy
rights Arkansas affords to sexual assault victims and to the families that are
999
identified as ‘in need of services.’” He further stated that “neither report should
have been released” due to the “clear and unambiguous” laws the officials broke:
“AR Code § 16-90-1104(b)” and the Child Maltreatment Act “Ark. Code Ann. §
12-18-104(a).” But even though I felt somewhat vindicated since the judge
recognized that the reports had been illegally released and that none of this
should have ever happened, it still wasn’t much consolation. The officials were
granted “immunity” because of their status. The lasting, personal damage had
been done. I had been identified and re-traumatized, had sought legal recourse,
but was now collateral damage in a seemingly unchecked system. And the
thought of making more appeals wasn’t much good either, because we'd only get
tied up with the ongoing circus and court proceedings surrounding Josh. We had
lost. It was all over.
Some people were supportive. Others said we were blaming the wrong people,
that it was all Mom and Pops’ fault. I could feel another wave of anxiety and fear
about to wash over me, but I held tight to some of the most powerful advice that
Mr. McIntosh had given Derick and me:
“Sometimes you have to be okay with other people not being okay with you.
And you have to be okay with you not being okay too.”
I had always struggled in that area. I grew up believing subconsciously that
whenever there was any bad feeling, it was up to me to do what I could to fix it. It
worked when my world began and ended with the Big House, but not anymore.
There was just no way of changing the way that millions of people saw me. If
they disapproved and didn’t like what I'd done, I had to be okay with that.
With time, I was able to see that even though our lawsuit was thrown out, our
fight for justice had left a positive legacy for us both. It was what drove Derick to
enroll in law school, and what inspired him to take on his first job after
graduation as an assistant district attorney in Oklahoma. Today, he is able to fight
for victims’ rights in ways that neither of us were able to do before. Every week he
strives to protect victims from being blamed, shamed, and bullied into silence.
Only now can I look back and see things clearly, like the way IBLP fostered a
culture of manipulation and abuse, the fact that Pops eventually put the show
above his children, or the toll it took on my own mental health.
I also see Mom more clearly today. I see the myriad ways she cared for us when
we were growing up, the sacrifices she made, and the depth of her love for people.
I love her, respect her, and look up to her. She is the first person I call whenever I
have a question about our baby’s health, and I love that we can still connect that
way no matter what family drama is occurring.
But I miss her too. I miss the ease of communication we used to have. I miss it
so much that there are times I almost wonder if it would be better to go back to
the way things were, when Derick and I were happy to fall into line and silence
our questions. Wouldn’t it be good to be free from all this struggle and
heartache? Is ignorance really bliss? I know the answer is no, just like I know that
I must at times sacrifice a degree of closeness in my relationship with Mom. And I
also know that any time I want to get together there’s a chance emotions will get
stirred up again. It’s all part of the cost that we count these days, and I pray this
troubled season won’t last. I believe there are better days ahead.
I remember Pops clearly too. My dad always had a great capacity for love and
for fun, and though he wasn’t quite as emotionally in tune as Mom, he was still
very caring, and I could still have deep conversations way into my teens. I never
doubted that he loved us kids, and never doubted that he loved Mom either. He
would often tell my mom not to worry about keeping everything looking just
perfect at home. To him, what mattered most was that us children got what we
needed and Mom was able to take good care of us.
Pops made life fun. He could transform a family bike ride or a night spent
camping out in the front yard into a real adventure. He was there for us, and even
when he was picking up a zillion Popsicle wrappers that we'd left in the yard on a
summer’s day and threatening to ban us from having Popsicles for a while, we
knew he wouldn’t be too hard on us. He struck a good balance. He wanted us to
have fun, and he made sure that we did. I loved him, and still do. It’s just that the
show and time seemed to have changed things.
Getting out cost us, but it was worth it. It was worth it to find freedom from
the guilt and the fear. It was worth it to learn how to think for myself about what
I really believed about everything from God and the Bible to how many kids we
should have and how they should be educated. It was worth it to discover that
standing up for myself or others isn’t a sin or an act of disobedience. It’s a mark of
freedom, of self-respect, of dignity. In learning to treat myself more kindly, I am
discovering that it’s possible to do the same for others as well.
In May 2022, not long after Josh had been sentenced to serve twelve and a half
years in prison, I let myself start to think about the upcoming birth. The little one
that had been growing inside me since November wasn’t so little anymore, and at
first my mind returned to my previous labors and deliveries with Israel and
Samuel. I knew it would be different, and hopefully less stressful this time with a
slightly early, planned C-section, but there were still so many unknowns.
Memories of the pain, the fear, the risk were still fresh, but I did not want to let
them take hold of me. I wanted to spend my final weeks of pregnancy looking
forward, not back.
We were at home when I asked Derick the question that had been brewing
within me for days. “How do you feel about my mom being at the birth? Maybe
she could help out here when I get home, as well.”
Derick smiled. “That would be good. She’s been at the others.”
My next question came out before I could help it. “What about Pops?”
“I don’t know. Do we want him to meet the baby here? Would a neutral
location be better?”
We left the discussion about Pops for another day, but never really got around
to it.
When I started dilating and had to have the baby before my scheduled C-
section date, Mom came straight over. She was great, as any woman would be
who has given birth more than nineteen times (including losses) and been present
at the birth of most of her thirty-plus grandchildren. Cathy and my friend Sierra
came to wait with the boys, and in spite of the regular but slightly earlier than
planned C-section, and the background fear that my uterus might rupture again,
I was able to exhale just a little knowing that my family was there with me. There
were no cameras, but I was still a Duggar.
Frederick “Freddy” Dillard came into this world with a shout, and my uterus
held up just fine. He had to spend a few days in the NICU since he was a bit early,
but there was nothing that anybody was worried about. When he was finally
ready to come home, Mom rode in the car with me and Freddy. She’d been
amazing all through the delivery, as well as after it, helping me with the baby,
night feedings, and tending to my every need as I recovered from the C-section.
We were able to connect in ways we'd not connected for years, and I was grateful
for this unexpected gift.
When we got back to our house, Mom checked her phone.
“It’s Pops,” she said. “He’s going to come get me.”
Her voice trailed off. She looked concerned. I glanced at Derick. He looked at
me. We both knew the answer to the question that Mom hadn’t asked.
“Okay,” I said.
“You should tell Pops to come inside so he can meet Freddy,” said Derick
warmly.
When Pops arrived a half hour later, he looked around slowly, like he was
taking it all in. We'd moved houses a month earlier, and this was his first time
over. He’d never been to our previous place either, and we'd lived there for three
years, so this was all new to him. He looked content, but like he was quickly
having to redraw a map of how Derick and I lived.
I needed to redraw my map too. In previous years, 'd seen him a few times at
family events—weddings, funerals, court cases—but never somewhere this quiet,
this private. He looked different. A little older, perhaps. The way he carried
himself, there wasn’t the same sense of authority and power than he’d once had.
As soon as Pops saw baby Freddy, his expression changed. His eyes found their
old sparkle, his smile fired up again. Of all the many different parts to him—Head
of the Duggar Household, CEO of Mad Family Inc, politician, public figure—it
was plain old Grandpa Duggar who I found the easiest to love. There was
nothing complex there, nothing to worry about. Just a man taking delight in the
precious baby that his daughter had just brought into the world.
For a long time we all just stood and smiled, Pops looking at Freddy, us
looking at Pops.
“Jill, Derick,” Mom said eventually. “Would y’all mind if Pops held Freddy?”
“Sure,” I said. “We should get a photo, too.”
Jim Bob and Michelle with baby Freddy, July 2022
AUTHOR’S NOTE
=
What thts book ts not...
This book is not a letter to my family as part of the reconciliation process. I
also didn’t write this book to shame my family or just to try and get their
attention. We will continue to work through matters with family independent
of this book with the desired ultimate goal of healthy relationships, Lord willing.
We understand that no family is perfect and that you can recognize the beauty in
your story while still acknowledging the difficult parts and even setting
boundaries. It shouldn’t make you unloving. It’s like roses and thorns, the two
can coexist, and I do love my family. The highs aren’t invalidated by the lows and
vice versa. Everyone’s story will look different. Just because some problems
weren’t intentional, or one story isn’t as bad as the next person’s, shouldn’t
invalidate the real problems or minimize the story.
And the degree to which we felt this book needed to be written, was the
degree to which we felt like voices were still being silenced and real harm was
continuing to be done by not telling it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Speak truth even tf your voice shakes.”
—Source Unknown
Like the Old Testament story of the support provided to Moses by Aaron and
Hur when they helped hold his arms up to ensure a successful battle for Israel, I
have felt so supported in many ways on this book writing journey.
I want to thank our pastor, friends, and family who have supported us either
quietly or openly as we have lived our story and then started the process to tell it
in book form.
I'm grateful to our agent, Anthony Mattero, and his team at Creative Artists
Agency who believed in us and have been super helpful in walking us through
the whole book process.
Thanks also to the amazing team at Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster:
Natasha Simons, Mia Robertson, Lauren Carr, and Anabel Jimenez.
Photographer Christopher Patey and his assistant, Jack, were so gracious to
come to our home and shoot around our toy-scattered living room, allowing for
frequent breaks to care for our baby.
Thanks to my sweet friend and owner of BLONDE salon, Michelle Gamboa,
who came to do my hair and makeup on cover shoot day but was also totally
there to support me and jumped in to help with the baby, too.
A huge thanks to our writer, Craig Borlase. From the time we received his bio
to when he crossed the pond from Britain to help us start this process, our trust
and confidence in him only grew. He embodies what it means to walk a mile in
someone’s shoes as he used his therapist-like gift of listening (for hours and
days!) and then compiled and helped us put our often-complicated story into
words. His own life experiences and previous work only added to the care and
attention he showed us in the more sensitive parts of our story. We couldn’t be
more grateful for Craig. The Yorkshire tea, Curly Wurlys, and help with getting
the London accent right were added bonuses.
We are so thankful for our therapist, Mr. Raymond McIntosh, who for
countless hours has helped us process the highs and lows of our story. Like a
guide, Mr. McIntosh gave us so many tools we didn’t know we needed when we
needed them most. He pointed us back to Jesus and helped us find our voice. We
are forever grateful for his help and support! He was an answer to our prayers.
Everyone needs a therapist like Mr. McIntosh!
Our sons, Israel, Samuel and Frederick, who gave us some of the greatest
motivation to keep going.
My husband, Derick Dillard, who has walked through the fire and every
therapy session with me and been my greatest support, advocate, and coffee and
sushi supplier. Babe, without you I wouldn’t have found the strength to face my
giants, count the cost, or find my voice. It’s been a journey, but there’s nobody
Vd rather live it with than you! ILYSM!
My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who I owe my life to, who has sustained us
through it all, and who promises to never leave us or forsake us through the rest
of our journey!
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