Finally: Navigating Marriage + An Evolving Faith

Our Story & Our Practices

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can listen to me read this reflection for you as part of The Secret Field Notes Podcast, Episode 35. (This is a private podcast feed.)

Hi friends,

Well, never say never, eh?

If you’ve been around here for even a minute, you know that I have an allergy to being prescriptive. I am highly aware that what “works” for me won’t and indeed couldn’t work for everyone because of who I am, where I come from, my own social location, my very real privileges as a nice straight white lady, my context, my temperament, and so on. I’m especially wary of offering advice on the things that are deeply personal to us like our health¹ or even marriage and parenting - especially the longer I navigate them.² I mean, I have learned a few things over the years, but I’m not an expert in anything except my own health, my own marriage, and my own kids - and even that’s questionable.

However.

There is one question I am asked in AMAs on Instagram, podcast interviews, personal conversations, in quiet hallways after events, or through desperate emails more than ANY other. Ready?

How do you navigate marriage while deconstructing your faith?

More bluntly, how did my husband Brian and I in particular navigate faith deconstruction well? What did we learn about the best way to journey through deconstruction with a partner who is on a different pace or path? And what wisdom do we have to offer from that experience?

With my new book, Field Notes for the Wilderness coming your way just a few weeks and my deep desire to be helpful/not annoying during this weird season of book launch, I decided to stop chickening out and just take a run at this constant question.³

(I desperately want to write six more paragraphs here with a million caveats and disclaimers, re-contextualizing this for every possible scenario and marriage and relationship. I want you to start with deconstructing your notions of what a “good marriage” even is because we often have to start with throwing away our notions of marriage that were given to us by patriarchal religious traditions. I want to give you all the permission you may need to leave or separate or get divorced if that is what is best for you. An ending isn’t always a tragedy; sometimes it’s a victory, a relief, a necessity, a new beginning, and a release. I want you to seek help if you’re in an abusive scenario or if there is genuinely no hope for change. I want you to know your worth and value, your belovedness and your sacredness no matter what happens or doesn’t within your marriage. But instead of the six-paragraphs-of-caveats, I’m going to trust that you all are grown-ups who are pretty well aware of your own lives. If something I share here isn’t applicable or helpful, I’m choosing to trust that you can figure that out on your own in cooperation with the Spirit. Look at me growing!⁴ )

Marriage isn’t a road map. It isn’t a formula. Brian and I aren’t going to be your blue print. Contrary to 90% of premarital counselling in evangelical churches, marriage isn’t a code to crack or a script to follow to guarantee a particular outcome. What follows will literally be just the well-lived practices that served Brian and I in the more intense seasons of our respective evolving faith journeys. I’m sharing it in hopes that it’s helpful but if it isn’t: chuck it.

So today, let’s talk about navigating an evolving faith within a marriage.

To begin, I’ll share with you a bit of our story so you are aware of what informed our practices. And then I’ll share the high-level practices that have served us well in our marriage while in the midst of a faith shift.

For everyone who is afraid that the core goodness of your relationship can’t survive deconstruction, take heart. As you become fully yourself - and your partner does the same - this can bring you closer together and strengthen your bond. An evolving faith can bring goodness to you, your marriage, and hopefully your community.

Photo by Will O on Unsplash

I haven’t talked or written directly about marriage too much in general, mainly because what we have is so unique to us, deeply personal, beautiful, and even sacred to me. Finding words can feel a bit cheap. But Brian and I look back on those seasons with a lot of gratitude now. An evolving faith can be a refining fire in a marriage but what emerged for us was pure and tough, lasting and gorgeous.

The truth is that any good I’ve been able to be part of is directly related to how Brian enthusiastically supports and protects, embraces and loves me. We have a lot of laughter in our home but there is such safety, too. I never, ever take this for granted - I’ve lived long enough to know how rare this is. Our marriage is our shared sanctuary.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

Our Story

Brian and I have loved each other for more than 25 years now. I don’t even believe in soul mates but somehow, he’s mine. We met as teenagers at Oral Roberts University,⁵ fell head over heels in love at 19, became engaged a year later, and were married in Tulsa one week after my university graduation. This is a pretty typical story for those of us who logged our formative years within the evangelical machine. This May will be our 23rd wedding anniversary. An Omaha kid, Brian matched me in sincerity and earnestness to the power of ten.

Despite the inherent cultural differences between Canada and Nebraska, we actually had a lot of religious overlap in our faith origin stories. We were both part of the third-wave charismatic renewal movements of the 80s and 90s. My background was more heavily “Word of Faith” or prosperity gospel influenced; his was more charismatic, prophetic, and wild deliverance ministry stuff but we spoke each other’s religious language easily. We both had an evangelical hero complex. We were sincere, true believers who loved each other and loved God with clarifying intensity.

When it came to an evolving faith, I went first. And it was a mess. Like, a proper mess. Especially because Bri was on the pastoral staff of a Texas megachurch at the time, bless our hearts.

My deconstruction upended so much of our lives. We suffered a lot of loss because of it from friendships to income, let alone the certainty and security. And yet: we held steady. Whatever or whoever came and went, we loved each other deeply.

Today, I would humbly(!) characterize our marriage as healthy, flourishing, and steady. (Our four children would likely characterize it as ‘embarrassing’ because we are still so wild about each other but whatever, there are worse things to tell your therapist than “my parents really liked each other,” right?) When everything else was awful, we were always the harbour. When I had not one single answer, he was my answer. And I think he’d say the same for me. We held onto each other through every storm.

We emerged from our distinctive experiences with major deconstruction and the ongoing shifts that are inherent to an evolving faith - along with the highs and lows, missteps and complexities that accompany any long-term relationship - with a strong, healthy, and loving marriage that is a genuine sanctuary for us both.

I wrote a bit about our marriage in my first book, Jesus Feminist.⁶ It electrified a lot of people back then perhaps because an egalitarian model of mutuality within marriage wasn’t⁷ as common in Christian books. I still get letters or emails about this passage in the book:

Sometimes the questions people ask or judgments they imply make us chuckle.

Well, who is in charge here?
We are.
Yes, but if push comes to shove, who is the leader? 
We are. 
But then who is the spiritual head of your home? 
Only Jesus. Only ever our Jesus.  

Like many other Christians throughout the ages, we believe Scripture teaches mutual submission in marriage, and so we strive for our marriage to be a reflection of the original God-created order - we endeavour to make our marriage a restoration of oneness, of equality, of two lives in the concert of playing second fiddle to each other; we are allies and restored image bearers slow dancing here beside the rocks in the light of the moon, affirming the truth that every marriage is as unique as the image bearers within the covenant.

Looking back now, I know how fortunate we were that we entered into our marriage with a strong emphasis on mutuality and egalitarian practice. We never had the complementarian or patriarchal model that set up a husband as “head of the home” and me as the submissive helpmeet. We didn’t have to deconstruct how to be in our marriage. This doesn’t make us “better,” but it does mean we had a more advantageous starting position than most of our peers when it came to engaging as equals and partners in this journey. We were also fortunate that we had examples of healthy long-term evolving marriages around us including my own parents.

I do share a bit more about my own journey within an evolving faith - what triggered that experience and how it unfolded as well as how I navigated that - throughout the new book. But suffice to say, we were pretty far apart for a long while in our marriage.

“In the early 2000s, deconstruction was a distinctly lonely experience. I got online around that time but didn’t really find community until the mid-to-late aughts. Conversations about Biblical literalism, feminism, and atonement theory were happening in academic and seminary settings but not in our regular old churches, you know?

So there was a fair amount of pearl clutching and panic from folks around me as I questions and pushed back and flailed and raged. In my experience, this didn’t feel as methodical or thoughtful as the word “deconstruction” implies: it felt like kicking down every edifice I ever built for God and dancing on the ashes of old fires. It felt like flying and like falling, sometimes at the same moment.” (from chapter 1)

One of the turning points of our marriage happened around then. After four or five years in ministry, Brian had gone back to school for graduate studies in that field. Even though it took longer than we had hoped because of financial pressures and babies, Brian did finally finish with seminary. And his whole vocation was centred on Full Time Pastoral Ministry. We were always going to be in ministry together. That was the plan since always. But I was in a full-blown crisis of faith. Wobbly and furious and questioning, I kept trying to keep it together out of my love for him and out of my genuine belief that he would be an incredible pastor again. I showed up for all the joint interviews as the dutiful wife, giving answers I knew they wanted to hear, trying my very best to be an “asset for ministry.”

But he knew I was struggling. He also knew that if he stayed on that set vocational path that it may cost us each other. We could be another casualty in a long list of marriages and families sacrificed on the almighty “altar” of full time vocational ministry. He saw me struggling, saw me trying so hard, and decided to protect us.

And so he called it.

He stepped away from ministry on purpose for me. I remember him saying, “We didn’t marry ministry, we married each other. And I choose us.”⁸ He retrained in another industry, starting over at the very bottom at nearly thirty, extracting raw sewage out of people’s basements (worthy and dignified work, make no mistake, but not exactly his dream come true). He’s had his own share of success since then, in his post-ministry life the past fifteen years or so, working his way up the ladders, and we don’t have any regrets, but I will never forget that when push came to shove and when we didn’t know how it would end up and at great personal cost, we chose each other. When no one understood, when a lot of voices were calling me a liability and distraction or even accusing of sin, he didn’t waver. He picked us.

Afterwards, right around the time I felt like I had settled into a place of peace and goodness in my own “born-again-all-over-again” faith, Brian underwent his own evolving faith journey. It will surprise no one to know that his experience looked very different than mine. His was methodical, careful, prayerful, steady, private, and marked by a lot of humility. (Mine: chaotic, risky, loud, public and demonstrative, while occasionally veering into know-it-all territory.) As he wrote for a bio once, “My own evolving faith has been a thoughtful, slow, and generative experience. I’m still thinking through everything I’ve learned about vocation, work, ministry, justice, politics, church and all, but this has all led me to a more expansive, integrated faith that longs for justice, peace, and joy that matters in our ordinary lives.”

We don’t agree on everything today - who does? - but we have way more in common than not. We have deep respect for each other’s journey. Sure, we are more in line theologically and practically now but that isn't because he finally "saw the light" or I “got in line.” We both changed. We both mellowed and shifted, healed and transformed, learned and deepened. And that moved us closer together eventually. We share a lot of the same beliefs now and where we don’t, we have a lot of fun and grace. In some ways it felt like we grew apart in our faith but we eventually grew back together again even if we took a different route.⁹ We certainly aren’t perfect but what we have is good.

So that’s us. Let’s get into the practices that I think helped us along the way.

Our Practices

Keeping in mind all of the caveats and qualifications,¹⁰ here are the practices and postures we learned the hard way.

1. The dynamics that exist in your marriage will be intensified by deconstruction. So if you’re not great at communication or conflict resolution, brace yourself, this will be turn the heat up to high on those issues. Some of the most basic aspects of healthy, egalitarian marriage aren’t taught to us in evangelical spaces so you need to almost start there. If you came of age in the “premarital counselling” era of Christianity that relied heavily on patriarchal and imperfect texts or anecdotes and stereotypes, you may need to learn how to have a healthy, grown-up marriage together. We strongly encourage marriage counselling because therapy isn’t just for sheer emergency level crisis; it can provide good tools for conflict resolution, making decisions, exploring your questions together, and relearning intimacy.

2. You don’t have to be afraid for each other. Take “you’re going to go to hell!” right off the table. Centre your marriage on God’s love and kindness, consistency and faithfulness to both of you. This was a really big one for me because there was a lot of fear being shouted at us so when Brian made the conscious decision to reject fear as his motivator or currency in our relationship, it gave me the freedom to be more honest with him. I didn’t have to pretend with him the way that I sometimes did with others. He was safe.

3. Practice relinquishment of your partner to God. Release, release, release. Avoid trying to control outcomes. Let this experience unfold without a death grip, you’ll only choke the life out of each other if you don’t learn how to release and relinquish. You don’t know how this is going to end and that is scary, I know, but if you are going to even have a shot at this, you have to release each other to explore and learn and heal and you want to navigate this season from your hopes, not your fears.

4. Look for ways to connect and stay connected beyond theology/church/religion. And keep a high priority on romance, fun, connection, and intimacy. This was a big one for us. Whatever brings you together outside of religion is a gift. Look for ways to affirm each other. Speak well of each other. Be affectionate and loving and gentle. You can disagree about a lot of things but those seem to fade when you’re connected in a million other ways, too. We didn’t want to settle for a marriage without magic.

5. We gave each other permission to change. I didn’t need Brian to be the earnest 22-year-old that I married anymore than he needed 22-year-old Sarah. Give each other permission to change. Learn to love the new version of each other. Brian and I often joke that we have both been married to a dozen different people in our marriage. Change is entirely normal and healthy. Making peace with this and seeing it as a normal experience gives each other the permission to transform and change.

6. Be gracious towards one another's needs. Even though I didn't want to, I went to the conservative church sometimes and took our kids to Sunday School. Even though he wanted to go all in with a particular denomination, he didn't. We compromised and tried to find ways to bless where each of us was at until we were closer together eventually. (However, remember to be super honest about what you can both handle and what you can’t. Don’t ask for more than they can give but don’t downplay your own needs either. It’s a delicate balance and you’ll make mistakes but you’ll get the hang of it. It turns out compromise isn’t terrible.)

7. Accept the truth that you don’t have to be in 100% agreement on EVERYTHING to have a good marriage. I know that evangelical marriage teaching tells you the opposite, but in fact disagreement and difference can strengthen your relationship. You can have an identity that is different than each other. It might be helpful to name that your marriage is an interfaith one right now: one of you might be agnostic, another deeply religious. That’s okay. You can believe very different things and still have a great marriage. Surrender the need to be the same; embrace each other’s differences. You can even delight in this, promise.

8. Place a high value on empathy. Try to understand each other’s perspective. Widen your gaze to include each other’s experiences and histories, questions and needs. It can be hard for us when we’re first deconstructing because we are often a new kind of fundamentalist before we learn that changing our theological opinions isn’t actually the point, but it’s worth striving to remember to empathize and bless. This is really tied to one of my life principles which is always assign positive intent until proven otherwise.

9. Find what’s beautiful in what your partner currently is learning or experiencing. Some of the best advice I received for parenting teenagers was to “Love what they love” and I think this is also helpful when you’re deconstructing differently. If your partner is learning something new, be interested in it. Read the book they can’t stop raving about and ask lots of questions. Listen to the podcast, go to the conference with a good attitude, and tag along on their journey. Showing interest, curiosity, and care about what they’re learning is great but when you find something beautiful or redemptive in it, say that. Look for ways to agree more than you disagree.

10. Prioritize listening to understand, not to win an argument. It’s easy to be looking for ways to “win” but the win you’re looking for isn’t proving your partner wrong, arguing until they acquiesce or abandon the conversation. That’s the “win” that turns to ashes in your mouth in the end. The win you actually want is to understand each other and love each other well in the liminal space. Choose communication, listening, and understanding over your “right” opinions.

11. Acknowledge that you have very different experiences and are coming at this from different locations. For instance, a lot of my initial deconstruction was born out of my experiences of being a woman in the church. Brian couldn’t share that experience anymore than I could fully share or understand his experiences in purity culture in American youth group life of the mid-90s. This is especially true if one of you has a social location or marginalized identity that informed your experiences with religion. It matters that you name that lived reality together and acknowledge that you’re coming at this from different places.

12. Focus on the values that still unite you. Maybe your labels have changed but what do you value together? Focus on the shared values, the shared experiences, the shared story, the shared hopes. You can live a long time there. Brian and I still knew what kind of parents we wanted to be, what kind of marriage we wanted to build, what kind of home we wanted to create, what kind of people we wanted to be in the world, and so we focused there.

13. Slow down. Seriously. Stop rushing to new certainties. Some of the worst marriage advice I ever got in my life was to “Never let the sun go down on your wrath.” Nonsense. Go to bed. Get your rest. Get up and keep going. Urgency never serves us well. Take your time. You don’t need to resolve everything in the exact moment. Some experiences need to be lived into for a while. It can be a years long process. Give each other room and space to explore for as long as you need. Slow down. Get comfortable with discomfort and tension and waiting for each other.

14. Get very comfortable with the words, “I might be wrong” and “I don’t know.” Being humble with each other instead of certain and proud and unmovable. Even if you are certain that you’re right, you don’t get a hall pass from loving each other. If you are convinced your partner is wrong, let them be wrong for a bit. They are likely doing the same thing and letting you be wrong now and then. No one has perished from being wrong yet. You can handle it.

15. As I said above, choose each other. When it costs, pick each other over jobs, over churches, over systems, over friendships, over labels, over opinions, over theology, over it all. Choose each other first.

16. In our house, we often say, “Small things, small reactions. Big things, big reactions.”¹¹ Same thing goes with deconstruction. Small things, small reactions. Save your big feelings and language for the big happenings. Not every single discussion or issue or change has to be a Full Strength Summit. Basically, sometimes you can just chill.

17. Find a space to process your own deconstruction so the whole bulk of it doesn’t fall on your partner. (This is super helpful if/when they are freaking out a bit.) But the truth is that both of you need this support. Whether it’s a therapist or spiritual director or a friend, a book club at church or an online community like Evolving Faith, having another space where you can ask questions, flail a bit, rage as needed, freak out, and share honestly is very important. Your partner doesn’t have to fulfill every role to you in this season (or ever, but that’s another post). Let them simply be your partner while someone else fills the role of spiritual guide or therapist or community. Finding a good therapist, a few friends, and a spiritual community to sustain you, no matter which role you have in this experience will take the pressure off.

Okay that was a lot! I’m sure I could keep going but then what will be left when Brian and I write The ULTIMATE Marriage Manifesto?!? (I kid, I kid, because hi, that will never ever happen.)

YOUR TURN: If you have navigated this experience within your marriage - whatever the outcome - share your thoughts. What is the wisdom you have to share? What practices served you all well? Anything I missed on my list that you would add? Please do chime in!

25 years in and hopefully just getting started,

S.

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1. Hence, the caveat-heavy essay called “The Questions I Haven’t Been Answering” from last year and my ongoing high boundaries there.

2. That reticence probably has roots in the religious tradition I grew up within, which framed Christian life as a one-size-fits-all even for those for whom it decidedly did not fit or as an Answer Book to memorize and enact or elevated the leader as Expert Man of God. That is just one reason why it took me ten years to write Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith for you all - and even then, any wisdom I offer in that upcoming book is entirely framed as “practices” rather than “answers” or “solutions.”

3. Perhaps someone who believes in literal hell could check on it? Because it may be frozen over at this moment.

4. Old dogs, new tricks etc.

5. This little detail tells you A LOT about us and our place in the world, I know, but it doesn’t tell anyone everything either. Like most schools, there is more nuance and difference and complexity than is available on the low-hanging-fruit stereotypical level but I’ll trust that those folks with degrees/time logged at Wheaton, Calvin, Liberty, and others to know what I mean by that.

6. It’s in chapter 5, Dancing Warriors. This section is on page 74 in my edition.

7. It’s cute how I used past-tense here.

8. I wrote a bit about this in an essay about A. W. Tozer of all things if you’re interested in that.

9. This is part of what I meant earlier with all my disclaimers: our story here won’t be everyone’s story. Just because this is what happened for us doesn’t meant that it’s guaranteed or even good for anyone else.

10. Before you begin reading, just remember that you need to be committed together to the process. If you have a partner who is filled with fear or is generally being extra hard on you during this, you might not have a good partner for this and will need extra support.

11. The sheer number of mantras and affirmations in our house is probably cause for therapy. And you can probably tell from this one that we have some neurodivergent regulation needs in our home, too.