When you've been raised to submit, will you even recognize abuse? With thanks to the NIV Kingdom Girls Bible for sponsoring this podcast! Today on the Bare Marriage podcast, we've got such a compelling interview with Lauren Rose from Called to Peace Ministries. She's...
with thanks to Brazos Press and the book Forgiveness After Trauma for sponsoring this post. Divorce is one of the most painful things a person can go through. But often, right when people need help the most, the church abandons them. A few weeks ago on the Bare...
Accountability is a necessary part of forgiveness and reconciliation. And yet often it’s downplayed, where even asking for accountability is somehow proof that you haven’t forgiven. Over the last few weeks we’ve been walking through some amazing truths from Susannah...
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....
As parents we want to do everything we can to protect our kids from sexual abuse. And even though we can never completely eliminate the risk, we can make it more likely that they will tell us if something is up. We can make it more likely that we will notice. And we...
Tragically, too often in "Christian" teaching women's views are ignored, or "gaslighted". It's time for a new Bare Marriage podcast, and this one's a doozy, and a bit of a departure from my normal podcasts. Recently, readers sent to me an email and a blog post that...
So I binge watched Unbelievable (with some exceptions that I'll tell you) on Saturday, and I was very impressed. I had another post all scheduled to go for today, but I wanted to tell you about this show because it's a new one and everyone's talking about it, and I...