Announcement

Three Years of SFL

99 Comments

It was three years ago today that during a fit of post-holiday boredom I wrote the first post to appear on SFL. Almost nobody read it.

Today there are 1000 posts, 84,000 comments, and, over 3 million lifetime visits to this site. I’m am so honored to have been able to share the last three years with all of you. Thank you.

99 thoughts on “Three Years of SFL”

    3. I hope you’re only joking, it wouldn’t be right for the first post to be from a troll. 😡

      1. Poor Fundamentalist Forever. I don’t think I could do it. I mean, going to an “idiotic” site each morning to read what the people who have escaped from the prison he still resides in are saying about their freedom. There he sits in his chains while we are here frolicking and playing. It is sad, really. Are you SURE you won’t make him a butt cushion? It may be one of his only comforts in his sad pathetic existence. 🙁

        4. I think he/she needs one of those donut ones… but that’s enough about them. Happy Birthday SFL!!! Helped me escape and I for one am very happy I stumbled onto this site several months ago. Thanks, Darrell. 😎

        5. Headnotbowed — “Helped me escape…” That’s probably the best birthday tribute you could give. 😉

  4. Wow, I guess everyone is entitled to his own opinion regarding the nature of these posts. Darrell, your site is wonderful! I’m able to laugh at my former self, analyze my current beliefs, and thank God for a future lived in grace rather than law.

    You should find and repost the first post here. Then you wouldn’t have to say “almost nobody read it.” 😀

  5. I’m glad you have the writing chops to do it well. You’ve shined a discerning light on many fallacies and you’ve helped us laugh over the many absurdities that are found in Fundamentalism. Cheers!

  7. Darrell–Thanks for the SFL and the new friends it has brought.

    FF–what does it say about you if you have to get up and read what you perceive as idiocy, and brag about being first idiot?

  8. Happy 3rd Birthday SFL, here’s hoping for many more years of shared tears, memories, and laughter.
    Although it didn’t seem like it from inside the fundy bunker, fundyland is actually a teeny-tiny portion of the population and the ex-fundies are an even smaller group, without sites like this it would have taken me longer to leave and the healing process would have been much slower.

  9. Ahh..as a newcomer, I feel amazed that this has been around for 3 years and I just found it! 🙂

    1. Same here! Fun, isn’t it?

      (BTW, the Forum button is at the very top of the screen on the far right.)

      1. I found it! *phew* I’m not so good at finding my way around. But I got there and replied to your thread.

      1. Thought I’d read through most of them…but there’s 1,000?? I have a lot of catching up to do. But hey, I have a 4-day wknd.

  10. I’ve only been posting here since around July I guess. It was before we left the former church which we did on September 11. In looking back though, at the time it was painful but it was one of the best decisions we ever made. This site was so helpful to me during that time and since. I like to click on the random posts link at the top and read what’s been posted before I came and often wish for a redux of those topics since I wasn’t here at the time. This site is one of the first things I like to read when I get online in the morning and I look forward to the topic of the day. Thank you Darrell for this site, I hope it never disappears from the net. :mrgreen: Happy third birthday! 😀

  11. Happy birthday. Love having a place to go, laugh and be with people who really understand what the Body of Christ is all about.

  12. Without you, I would not have discovered Jack Schaap’s Q&A videos, or learned so much about how much logic is used in my Pastor’s sermons, or found so much amazing music.

    (P.S. Only one month until I’m married!)

    1. CMG, I’m shocked, just **shocked** that you would even consider getting married on Christ’s birthday. Such an act would take away from the glory that is due to Him. Please move it to either the 24th or the 26th… actually, Boxing Day (26th) would be very appropriate for a marriage to begin, perhaps!

      🙂

    2. Miss CMG,
      I know that you have saved yourself for Titus, but I think maybe you should reconsider. I have been saving myself for YOU! Well, ever since I got banned from KJV Singles…I guess the webmaster and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things. Nevertheless, I think you could be a wonderful wife to me and mother to my children. Think about it.

      P.S. – what do you wear when you are in the kitchen? Nothing, I hope.

  13. Happy Birthday SFL!

    Wow three years!? Where have I been? Thanks Darrell and all you folks who contribute to this site. What a blessing it has been to me and so many others.

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      1. That made me laugh hahaha. Still impressive–better than I could do for sure.

  15. Joyce MilburnDejon Kelly
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  16. So today is our Homecoming?

    And if so, Darrell, aren’t you missing something? As you well know, when celebrating a Homecoming, you must go on and on AND ON about what you’ve done and how great you are and then tag it with, “But I’m not bragging, I give all the glory to God”. 😉

    1. Oh and don’t forget that we have to drive Darrell around the football field in a convertable car, smiling and waving at the crowd, while everyone cheers…

      2. Ooh, ooh, and let’s take the money that people meant for ministry and sacrificially gave that they could barely afford and get Darrell a brand new Jaquar!!!

        3. You know, the final straw for my husband was just that. The last Christmas we spent in fundamentalism we couldn’t even afford to buy food for our kids and the m-o-g was generously gifted a new suit and a trip for his entire family to Hawaii. The staff and employees had been told that they were forfeiting their Christmas bonuses that year (only %50 but still…) and then they made a big production of how much they appreciated the m-o-g, etc etc and he (instead of offering it to his starving staff) took it. We were gone before New Years Eve.

        4. You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? I meant Jaguar not Jaquar and that TOTALLY went over my head. And you’re now laughing at me.

          Give me your butt cushion!!!

          😉

        8. Ok, it is really bothering me… up there in my post I typed a % instead of a $ but you guys were so fast after it that I couldn’t blame George anywhere near where I typed it. So WAY back up ^THERE^ that needs to be fixed. Lets blame George though, ok?

  18. I for one, truly appriciate all your hard work. This site has made me laugh and helped keep me sane. It’s a great comfort to know I’m not alone. Thanks and please keep it coming.

  19. It was Thanksgiving last year that I jumped on board. I remember I was so excited to find a site that thought like me and shared my sense of humor. I went through and read every post and laughed and laughed.

    I’ve been hooked since. And, now SFL is a bookmark on my phone and I’m usually checking in throughout the day. I just can’t leave you all at home. 😉

  21. I don’t know how long I have been here, but from the very first time I read it I knew it would be a favorite. I went back and read old random posts until I was all caught up and then started posting and eventually got to know some of the posters a little bit. I felt like I had made some very real friends. People who, even though I didn’t know them at the time, had been through exactly what I had been through, making them more able to understand me than the people who surround me as friends in my real life now. Making them more like FAMILY than friends. (But not the weird fundy-family who will never understand me) I love you guys! I really do. And I love Darrell for being smart and funny and a survivor and for doing this to bring us all together each day for a little free therapy. Oh and the Icing Flower on the cake was that I was re-connected with my BEST and possibly ONLY friend from college. It was difficult to make and keep friends in that environment. Not real ones anyway. That is what makes Seen Enough so special and that, after all these years, God saw fit to put her back in my life is such a GIFT! Thank you Darrell for that. I hope and pray that God richly blesses you for speaking the truth here. So many of us need it.

    1. Yes, Sims, I’d have to to say that you and Seen Enough are pretty special posters here. Having been at HAC, you know what it was like for me to be in a Hyles-worshipping church.

      I’m glad to have found this site.

      Pastor’s Wife has been especially kind to me as well, I should mention.

  22. “Thanks for the mem-or-ies”
    Thanks for the memories
    Of sentimental verse,
    showing fundies at their worst,
    And chuckles
    When the preacher said
    “Give until it hurts”
    How funny it’s been.

  23. Happy Birthday, SFL! I was just talking to my SIL this morning, and we talked about how refreshing it is to come here and know you weren’t the only one who experienced the crazy. :mrgreen:

  25. Happy happy birthday to my very favorite site of evil heathens and backsliders and, worst of all, people who don’t exclusively use the KJV! 😀 Love you guys.

  28. I may have not read the 1st post when it was posted, but when I discovered this site I spent several days reading back to the very beginning, so I did read it eventually!

    Happy anniversary, SFL! This site has been such a blessing, not to mention source of laughter, to me. =)

  29. Happy 3rd anniversary! This site has been very therapeutic for me to unload some of the years of guilt put upon me by others and by myself because I couldn’t bring myself to do the door-to-door salesmanship “soul-winning”. How many years I wasted in a system that wouldn’t let me serve because I didn’t meet that one criteria! (Unlike some of the others who were held up as pillars, I did not seduce a girl in the teen department, nor did I make others do my job and then take the sole credit for it… but they went “soul-winning” and were lifted up, and I was the one to avoid.)

    Happy 3rd anniversary!

    1. Ain’t that the truth. Attacking the wrong people a lot of the time.

  31. Sweet sweet, the memories you gave to me……….

    I have to thank Les DuLunch for introducing me to SFL. He would forward links that I would read and find amusing, until one day one really hit close to home. Then I started reading more regularly and looking at the Random Posts and found Cognitive Dissonance (http://www.stufffundieslike.com/2010/10/cognitive-dissonance/)
    I knew then that I was among friends who understood where I had been and what I was trying to say. Happy Birthday. To us!!

  33. Happy 3rd Birthday SFL!!!!

    To three years of posts and more recently, a forum that has helped me keep my sanity and laugh at the past, may you have many more years being the most therapeutic (and humorous) site ever!

  34. I’ve been a regular reader for about one year, and I’ve tried to go back and catch up through the random posts. It’s been great. Here’s to many more years of endless SFL material. Cheers.

  37. Three years ago I was happily convinced that I was attending the best church in Australia, with the best pastor. One year ago, my life – and my illusions – were shattered. I’m so glad God had this site going strong by then so I could find it easily 🙂

  38. Happy Birthday! This is a great party here, with y’all. Thank you for making me laugh, helping me feel not alone, and putting words to the things that bothered me but I couldn’t define.

  41. Thanks for maintaining an environment where we can be helped and feel like part of the group even without commenting. Every single post has contained some little nugget that hit home for me. Happy Blogday, SFL!

  42. Aw, jeez. Every time i start to write a comment i want to spill my guts. Must refrain.
    Anyway, thanks for putting this out, Darrel (Darryl? Derul?).

    I started reading daily last winter, and since then, i think i’ve been drinking the kool-aid a little more. Your site seems to help me, though, not to reassimilate fully.
    Kudos,
    Greg

  44. 2 1/2 years ago, just months into a new marriage and only weeks in a new country, I stumbled across SFL. I was researching the KJV Only idiocy. We had just met a missionary couple here in England and felt at home because they were Americans. Both hubby and I have Baptist backgrounds. But I was getting a whiff of KJVO from them, and that scared the liver out of me! I escaped the nut house 40 years ago, but my hubby never had the experiences in IFB that I’d had, so he didn’t understand my anxiety even though he tried to be considerate of it. SFL was a gift of God! I discovered that what happened to my family when I was in my teens was not an isolated incident. I was hooked by the humor, stirred by the stories, blessed by the balance provided by posters like Pastor’s Wife and Don as well as our fearless leader, Darryl. I now find myself in a position of leadership, one I did not pursue, with the Protestant Women of the Chapel, a group that includes all Protestant denominations. Couldn’t do it without SFL! God truly did use this site to prepare me to serve these women and to serve Him better because I have the insight provided by such a wide spectrum of folks. It is an education. Thanks, Professor Dow!

    1. Hello Kate! Thanks for the update! It’s good to hear about the Protestant Women of the Chapel, it does my heart good to hear how God uses his children who have come out of the Land of Fundie. Glad things worked out the way they did with the American Fundy Missionaries as well. Good to hear from you, I think about you and yours often.

      1. Thanks, Don. Would I sound too fundy if I said that blesses my heart? BTW, I have copied a number of your posts into a Word file so I can whip ’em out if I need a good comment on grace or on fundy-ism. Hope that’s okay. Yup, just got back on Monday from a Worship & Study Conference for PWOC at a military resort in Garmisch, Germany (I know, it’s tough) with 400 women from the European region. Not a fundy in the bunch. If there were, could you imagine the weeping and wailing at a couple of my gals who stayed up late in the hotel bar 😯 to encourage a young soldier on a 2-week R&R with his wife and two little kids before getting shipped back to Iraq? The fellow was depressed. His family was tucked up in their hotel room, and he was ready to go out to the strip club just outside the front gate. That young man was surrounded by God’s love from several of our PWOC ladies, military wives all, and encouraged to go up to his family and put his trust in God. Imagine if that had been a fundy conference. Ahhh! It’s good out here in the light!

  47. Happy Birthday! and thank you for the laughs, humor and helping me realize I’m not alone in leaving fundamentalism

  48. I’m more of a lurker here but I wanted to tell you how beneficial this site has been for me and how it is still currently helping me. Thank You Darrel for a job well done! I’m free in my mind and one day my body will catch up!

  49. Umm Darrell, the lady holding the cake is not wearing a God-honoring sweater. It is much to tight.

    1. You’re a Fundy or an ex-Fundy if a phrase like “God-honoring sweater” makes sense to you.

  50. I can’t say “Thank you” enough for all the help you’ve been in gathering material, getting information to the press, etc. You truly were (and have been) that “behind the scenes” person, when it comes to this national media exposure.

    I even remember one day we needed to draw a connection between one ministry and another to get a certain portion of the 20/20 documentary through the legal team, and that VERY DAY you posted something on the net that brought it together! I will never forget that. It was one of those incredible “God moments” in the process. You are inspired. 😀

    AND — You deserve your own show on Comedy Central!! I say we start a petition for that!! Lol!

    You have simply amazed me with your humor and insight. “Thank you” is just not enough!

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