At the end of April, Mica Miller died in very suspicious circumstances. She had been married to pastor JP Miller, and there were what look to me like credible allegations of abuse. She had been asking people for help, and had recently filed for divorce and a...
You've likely heard of the "Bear or Man?" Test If you were alone in the woods, would you rather come across a bear, or a man? It's been taking social media by storm, and women overwhelmingly have answered "bear", which has made many men angry. The reasons women have...
Some awfully bizarre things happened at the recent Strong Men’s Conference–and Jezebel made an appearance. I don’t even know where to begin, and I don’t want to talk about the conference itself because so many have already done a good job. To sum up, there was one of...
One of the most damaging and unbiblical "Christian" books on marriage is Debi Pearl's Created to Be His Helpmeet. Debi Pearl's view of submission teaches women to allow themselves to be abused, rather than teaches women to seek God's will, God's plan, and God's glory....
The title of this post may sound corny, but do you remember that verse about awakening love in Song of Solomon? Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.Many of us have...
So during COVID, my husband and I, like many around North America, watched the complete and utter train wreck that is the Netflix series Tiger King. It depicts something so unbelievably awful that you almost can't turn away (although turn away I finally did. I only...
In church, we simply don't have a good working understanding of the importance of consent in sex. I think it's because we tend to operate with the idea that women aren't allowed to say no to sex, and that sex is an entitlement upon marriage. As we found in our survey,...
Unfortunately (in my mind), there has not been consensus in the Christian world on whether or not a person is biblically justified to divorce in cases of abuse. It's long been held that you can divorce for adultery, but not for abuse (I explained why I think divorce...
For almost two years, my mom and my husband had been planning a cruise for the three of us to take to South America and Antarctica. When we originally booked the cruise, we didn't know that Rebecca would be having a baby just a few short months before we were supposed...
Can you change an abusive marriage just by praying hard and having enough faith? A while ago a woman sent me in a letter criticizing me for saying that it's okay for women to divorce in cases of abuse, because I should be telling women to have faith for a miracle and...
Writing about a complex problem in a healthy way is very tricky. And I'm having that problem right now when it comes to trauma & sex. Today's Thanksgiving, so I'm quite aware that the majority of my American readers will be ignoring me today! That's okay. That's...
I'm afraid that most of us don't know the signs of grooming behavior when it comes to sexual abuse. I know I didn't! But sexual abuse, especially in churches, has been in the news a lot lately, and I thought it was worth doing a post on recognizing grooming behaviors,...
So Andy Savage, a former megachurch pastor from Memphis, is now starting a new church, despite being disqualified from ministry. I have had a tremendously busy week. Our grandson was born exactly a week ago, and we just got back from being with Rebecca and Connor (and...
If your husband wakes you up for sex, or starts sex with you when you're asleep, is that okay? A reader sent me a link to a post that The Transformed Wife did recently where she was telling a woman that being woken up for sex when she didn't want to be is a-okay, and...
When you're abused, a common defense mechanism is dissociation--when you mentally "flee" your body and try to be anywhere but here. That helps you live through trauma. But it also creates a whole heap of problems down the road when you're trying to get healthy again....