With thanks to Brazos Press for sponsoring this post. Forgiveness is possible only after we’ve had the opportunity to name our losses. That’s how Susannah Griffith opens the chapter on lamentations in her book Forgiveness After Trauma. We talked about the book on the...
Why does our doctrine of forgiveness and healing often cause so much pain? We’re told the problem is our hearts, that we’re just bitter. But what if it’s not that? What if our teaching on forgiveness has gotten things all wrong? This week, on the podcast, I introduced...
What if...the people we listen to for advice are more likely to be being abused? And what if the couples held up as ones to emulate by organizations like Focus on the Family are actually in really destructive relationships? This was a sad one for me to record, because...
Last Thursday night, at 3 a.m., my husband and I were awakened by a terrible siren coming from our cell phones. An Amber alert had been sent out across Ontario, because a 2-year-old girl had been kidnapped after her abusive father had broken down the door to their...
All marriage speakers and bloggers get push back for what they say. But I'm not sure everyone realizes what women go through. Today I'd like to share some of the comments and words that are hurled at me, female bloggers like me, and my daughters when we speak up for...
Today I want to tackle a difficult subject: how can you enjoy sex after sexual abuse in your past? Your whole outlook on sex has often been poisoned, so that it's something icky, destructive, manipulative, and even evil. And now you're married to a man you love, and...
Is a biblical counsellor a good option when you need help with your marriage? Rebecca and I were talking on our podcast a few weeks ago about why biblical counsellors might be more likely to be dangerous when you need help. I'm not saying Christian counsellors are...
On Friday I was talking about how churches should handle sexual abuse allegations. But what if you have to report sexual abuse yourself? A number of issues came out in the comments on that post that I thought really should be highlighted. So instead of answering a...
Churches and sexual abuse are in the news all too frequently today. First it was the Catholic Church. Then other denominations started to be looked at--most recently in a huge expose of the Southern Baptist Convention (700 victims in 200 churches; read the Houston...
What do you do if you have a friend who is just plain mean to her husband? On Mondays I like to take a reader question and take a stab at answering it--sometimes in a blog post and sometimes in a video. This was a great question that fits perfectly in our month on...
Birth control should be a shared responsibility. I'm worried that too often women feel pressured to do something that hurts their health in order to preserve their husband's comfort. And that's not right. I'm down in New Brunswick (right on the Quebec border, on the...
I don't believe that survivors of sexual abuse need to be scarred forever sexually. I do believe that you can still have a great sex life. At least, I truly want to believe that. And this week I've cried a lot of tears over it. Like many of you, I started watching...
How do you know if you're being abused? One of the hardest parts of blogging is reading so many heartbreaking emails and comments that come in from people in truly destructive marriages. I find myself wondering, why do people treat each other this way? And even more...
Are you married to a controlling husband? I wrote a big post recently about how too often our Christian culture promotes a version of church and marriage that makes women powerless--and that this inevitably leads to abuse. Not that EVERY woman will be abused, but when...
On Friday my daughter wrote a blog post about the Duggar sexual abuse scandal. I posted it on Facebook. And both of us had a whole pile of criticism thrown at us. So today I'd like to explain, in my own words, why I think the Duggar abuse scandal matters and what we...