Despite the fact that it centered around a visit to Jill and Derick’s humble home in Central America, last night’s episode of Jill & Jessa: Counting On was basically the Jessa and Ben Seewald hour.
The Seewalds recounted the history of their short relationship (Couples move fast in Duggar Land.), including how they coped with the fallout from the Josh Duggar sex scandals.
Jessa and her sister Jill have spoken about their brother’s actions in the past, but though they were both victimized by him in their youth, they mostly defended Josh last summer after it was first revealed that he molested five young girls while he was in his teens.
However, after the world learned that Josh had cheated on his wife, Anna Duggar – possibly with prostitutes and women he met online – both Jill and Jessa became far less forgiving.
On last night’s Counting On, Jessa spoke again about Josh’s misdeeds, and though she claimed that the crisis brought her closer to her husband, her outrage was still palpable:
“I stood up for him, and then there was another whole wave of things [that] were exposed about his personal life, what he was involved in,” Jessa said when asked about Josh.
“During my pregnancy, my family walked through some very difficult times. A lot of things from my oldest brother’s past were brought up and it was just really difficult for us as a family to walk through that again. Relive that.
“It was really difficult for me to just be like, ‘I stood up here, I spoke out for him,’ and yet there were some things he was hiding and wasn’t being honest about. It was very emotional through those months after that, just working through all that.”
Despite all the grief and disillusionment that accompanied the second wave of allegations against Josh (and his eventual confession), Jessa says the whole ugly ordeal brought her closer to Ben who helped pull her through the darkest period of her life.
Though Ben has yet to display a single emotion on screen, and his mannequin-holding-a-baby routine has provided plenty of unintentional humor, Jessa says his sensitivity to her needs and ability to focus on the good in their lives (like the impending arrival of little Spurgeon) enabled her to carry on.
“It was very difficult and we cried a lot of tears. I felt like it was especially difficult for me because I had spoken out in defense of Josh and had stood up for him,” Jessa says, clearly still wounded by her brother’s infidelity.
But when the episode shifts focus to Ben and Jessa’s first kiss and the arrival of lil Spurge, it’s a reminder that the despite being forced to endure some major obstacles very early in their marriage, the Seewalds found a way to press on together.
Watch Jill & Jessa Counting On online to relive some of Ben and Jessa’s finest moments.
