Joyce’s Story / PCA / FL

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It only takes a moment, but has a tremendous impact on our reach. Thank you for daring to listen today. We welcome Joyce to the podcast. She will be sharing her story about her time at A PCA church in Florida, as well as her personal journey through marriage and faith. We're so thankful for Joyce and her courage to speak out. Be sure to stay tuned until the end of the episode 'cause we will be sharing an update on Joyce's story. I am all about blessed subtraction there.

There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mar Hill bus and by God's grace it'll be a mountain. By the time we're done, you either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options, but the bus ain't gonna stop. You either get on the bus so you get run over by the bus. Those are the options. Put the bus. All right everybody. Welcome back to The Bodies Behind the Bus podcast.

We have another storyteller with us here today we have Joyce Today Joyce is going to be talking about her experiences involved with a PCA Church in Florida. Joyce, it is an honor to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. Well, let's jump right in.

There's a lot to talk about, and I wanna start, if we can specifically, you know, you did attend this church for a while, so how long were you there and how would you describe the church, the feel of it, the culture, how did you get involved, things like that. Yeah, yeah. I had been there at the time, around 10 years when all this happened. We started there, I think it was like.

20 11, 20 12, my son, who is severely autistic, we were looking to come to a new church and that's always like a complicated thing for us. And so I had emailed ahead to the church and said, you know, hey, we're coming on Sunday, but I have this child with autism. And I got a call back almost right away saying, you know, no matter what, if we have to pull a volunteer just for your child, you'll have coverage. And so that was kind of our first outreach to this church.

And it was so just beautiful and affirming after we had had such, you know, difficulties in the past with accommodating his special needs. And that was at first the, you know, the atmosphere of the church. They were extremely welcoming and extremely, you know, caring towards our needs. Within just a couple of weeks of being there, they were asking questions about our son. They ended up paying our deductible the following year.

I mean, it was really incredible things and I was just like, wow, this, this is the church the way it's supposed to be. And, and I loved them. I, I loved them in a way that I've never loved a church. How, how involved, like what, what else did you do there? Were you involved? Were you on staff? You aren't on staff. I know, but I know you volunteered. No. So walk us through your involvement with this church. 'cause you were there a long time.

Yeah, so when we first got there, one of the things that we found out was a need right away was they needed homes to hold their small groups in. 'cause they even had people who were willing to be leaders but they didn't feel like they had a place to meet. So, really quickly I volunteered our home as an option for them to have their small group meetings. And that was kind of our first, you know, volunteer role.

From there, it took about six months for us to go through membership and then at the end of that six months, I right away joined the worship team and I became very visible through the worship team. 'cause there was a long stretch of time, years that I was on the team almost every week. It felt natural. The church had given so much to us. That I was really anxious to give back to them.

They did a foster care outreach back in, I think it was like 20 14, 20 15, and we signed up to be foster parents to support that. And we, and our, our youngest son was adopted through foster care. And then in addition to that, I, you know, as Covid was approaching my son with autism was starting to age out of childcare in the church. And so I was in the process of starting to scope out locations to do a special needs ministry.

So I was a really involved member and then Covid happened and then everything else felt pieces real quick. First off, kudos to the church for doing a lot of good work right there and good things. I am.

I don't wanna like skip over that because it does sound like you had a really lovely experience in the beginning and I think when we tell these stories, something that we all have had to get good at and every storyteller has had to get good at is like holding multiple things at once where it's like I can look back and see the beauty of this and like have fond memories, but also realize that there's other stuff there now and that like, it's hard. You have to hold multiple things.

So I think it's helpful to kind of like point that out because I think so many of us like go through these situations and like I know even in like Jay and i's own story, like we look back at our church and we're like, there was so, like, there was this beautiful time that was like something we can't replicate and that we're still thankful for and this whole sucky thing happened. So yeah. And that's, that is my story because I, I think part of what hurt so much when things fell to pieces.

Was because there was this incredible feeling of family that existed mm-hmm. Before, and if that hadn't, if, if I hadn't been so attached to my church, the traumatic mm-hmm. The trauma of losing them wouldn't have been so great. Thank you for voicing that. I think that that is a very common experience for storytellers, but storyteller, like, we don't often highlight that in the beginning of stories. So I think that was really, really helpful for our listeners to hear.

Like, it isn't, our storytellers aren't just a bunch of people who are like anti, they're like the most bought in, most like. Loyal in it, we will serve, we will host. So thank you for sharing that. Thanks. I do wanna highlight PCA, like what is their theological stance on women and like when you say you're leading worship or on the worship team every week, are you leading? Like, what does that look like? Yeah, so within the PCA, women are not allowed to be elders or deacons.

So I could not be a pastor or I couldn't be a deacon, but I could not be the worship pastor or something like that. But we do have women lead worship from time to time. But our, our main worship pastor who's in charge of everybody else, is a male. Awesome. Thank you. That's super helpful. Just as we move through your story, I think now we kind of wanna shift into. What was going on in your home during this season?

And maybe walk us through a little bit of how that correlates with your church story. Sure. So I will say pretty early in my marriage, there were things that, that bothered me. But I think as a woman, I felt like these were normal marriage problems. You know? 'cause you know, who hasn't heard of a wife complaining that her husband doesn't take out the trash or, you know, things like that. But what ended up happening for me, it was if I were to ask my husband to do something.

There would probably be maybe 50% chance that it wouldn't get done. It was, it was very hit or miss. And so to the point that it would cause me a lot of anxiety to have to follow up with him all the time. Did you, did you know, oh, I asked you to do this. Did you do it? And then a lot of times the answer would be no. So then I had to deal with the fallout of him not having done it. And I, it sounds very simple.

It sounds like such a normal situation in a marriage, but that was, that was my reality. Like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so what started happening is I didn't like that. I was feeling resentful in my heart towards my husband because he was not following through. And so I thought, well, I can tamper my resentment. By just not asking him to begin with.

So rather than relying on him, I just more and more started taking onto myself so that I wouldn't cause myself to feel feelings of resentment if I would ask him and he wouldn't do it. And it was, it was just this. I think what I realize now is that the difference is degree. It's normal to have a little bit of that in a marriage, but this was ev the every day, every request you would not be able to count on it being followed through.

And, and so the way that affected me was I just lost all interest in, in intimacy. But I, I had been, you know, raised on, you know, all these Christian marriage books that say that you have to give your husband sex no matter what, that he, he needs it. In a way you can never understand. Even though I didn't desire him at all, I felt like I had to go along with it if he would initiate sex. So just with this lack of agency, that was what would happen. And at first it wasn't.

I would, I would say I didn't enjoy sex, but it wa it didn't feel traumatizing in the beginning. It felt like I was just, you know, doing him a favor, you know, love loving my husband, that kind of thing. But as this waned into years, it, it felt more and more violating and started to get to the point where I didn't even want my husband to touch me. 'cause, you know, just being touched, was it, it felt like a violation too.

And that's where, you know, and, and he knew this, I had told him once I said. You know that I, I, you know, I know I'm not allowed to deny you. I said something like that to him and he didn't disagree. You know, I always go back to that. Like, he didn't, he didn't say to me like, oh, I never want you to do that if you don't want to. You know, he, he just kind of, yeah. It is your responsibility. So what did that look like? First off, I'm so sorry. That's super heavy.

Heavy and unfortunately I think it's, I mean, we have Sheila Greg War on often. She's a name. Our listeners will know, like this is a common occurrence in these. Hyper conservative spaces. I think it's probably a common occurrence in a lot of spaces that aren't even conservative just with messaging in general culture, but then like 10 x that in these spaces where women are made to feel like our biggest contribution to the world is fulfilling the desires of men, the sexual desires of men.

But I can't imagine like, does it come to a point where you can't anymore? Like what do you guys end up in counseling? Like how, where do you go with this? It got to the point where it was something like just it, it was. Ruining me, and I can't, I can't, I can't say any any other way. And I didn't even have a word for it. I just knew that I just, I just knew that it was the worst part of my week.

So I, I finally went to my husband, this was about maybe four to six years before I actually pursued divorce. And I asked him if he'd go to counseling, and, and he told me, you know, he didn't wanna do that because the counselors always favor the women and that they tell the women what they wanna hear, and they tell the men all the things they need to do differently. And so he said, since, you know, counselors are biased against men, that he didn't wanna go. And so I said, well, I wanna go.

And so I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go alone. And, and that was kind of what I did from that point on, was I was, I saw myself as the problem. I never once. To, you know, I never, once I knew that my husband was doing things that he shouldn't, but I never once saw that as being a reason for me to do something I shouldn't. So I felt like, you know, I can't control him. I can only control me.

So I'm gonna go to counseling and I'm going to, you know, do whatever is in my power to fix the situation. And, and I, that's what happened. I did it for, I went to three separate marriage counselors over that time. Each time I switched counselors, I asked him to go again. And he always refused. He never wanted to go. And that's over the four to six years, you went to three different mm-hmm. And were they, what type of counselors were they? The first two were Christian counselors.

One was a man, one was a woman, one was a man because when he said he, you know, was afraid they were biased against men, then I thought, well, maybe a male counselor. Then for a period of time he got. He got strange about biblical counselors. And so then I, the third one was a secular counselor. They were all licensed. And that one was interesting because I did, they asked me in the beginning if I was willing to consider divorce on every, you know, in the intake form.

And I wrote no. And the first two counselors never brought up divorce for that reason. I'm pretty sure, because I had said I wasn't willing to consider it. The third counselor said, you say here, you're not willing to consider divorce, but do you wanna consider divorce? Kinda like I, I think she started to see that I was like at a complete disadvantage in, in terms of like orchestrating change in my own life.

And so she was kind of, I think she knew that was the healthy thing to do at that point, but she wasn't allowed to recommend it unless I. I'm just curious, like what are you hearing in these counseling sessions? Like are they affirming you? Are you leaving them feeling like you're the problem? What is the messaging that you are getting? Like where are you going internally as you are sifting through this stuff? So the first and second counselors both recommended a sexual sabbatical.

They both said, you need to not have sex for a while while you work on this. And when I went, I with the first counselor, you gotta realize I'm going through my own journey here. So the way I'm responding to it kind of changes over time. So with the first counselor, I still felt like I could only have a sabbatical if my husband was also in agreement that we could do that. And so to his credit, he did agree. 'cause I had asked him, you know, can you give me a year?

That was what I said, can you gimme a year to work with this counselor? And, but what was happening? And he, he did give me, he said he would give me the year, but then there was not really any change in his behavior. Like the counselor would give me some homework and say, go home and do this activity with your husband or that and. So like one of them might be to write a list of boundaries or to, you know, to give him a list of ways he can support me.

And he would take it and he would, okay, thanks so much. You know, that kind of thing. And, but then it would just fall by the wayside and there'd be no action on whatever the counselor had, you know? So it was kind of like, if I couldn't just change it within me, I was completely ineffective at changing it within the relationship because I had no participation. So, I mean, it's such a, I mean, it's probably common to have that type of dynamic, but it had to be a very hopeless feeling.

'cause you're going and doing self work and these counseling sessions and then you're coming home and it's, there's no change at all. Yeah, I would generally, after a couple of months, I would start to fall off because it really just felt like I was going in there and being like, yeah. Me again, still the same. Nothing changed, you know? And that's, and that's kinda how it felt every week.

And then also I felt the need, like I, I felt like I was going to counseling twice because I had to have the counseling with the counselor and then go home to my husband and regurgitate the session to try to get his feedback. So it was emotionally draining to me doubly that he would not go. And, and in context, me, you're a foster parent, you have a, you know, special needs child. So you have a lot of stressors at the house, I'm assuming. And I, yes. So there's a lot going on in your life.

Mm-hmm. When they mentioned divorce or when the second counselor mentioned divorce, how did you receive that? Yeah, that was actually the third. It's funny, I, um, when she said, you know, you sure you don't wanna consider divorce? I, I have to admit, like my heart was there. My heart was like, yes, I want to. You know, to consider divorce, but I said no, because I, I felt like God was gonna be mad at me if I even allowed myself to go there.

I also felt like, you know, I was, if I pursued divorce, it wasn't, it wasn't like I could sin once and then it's done. It was gonna be this ongoing period of time where I was in a, you know, quote, state of sin. And that scared me because it felt like I knew the church would consider it a, a period of unrepentant sin. And in these, you know, the way I was raised, if you are in a state of unrepentant sin, then your very soul is in danger. Like I, I felt like.

If I died before this was resolved, you know, was in a car accident or whatever, I was gonna go to hell because I was in a state of unrepentant sin. And so I, I really, I was just emotionally hurting so bad from that. I really realized having lost hope in the marriage. I had no hope by the time I got to the third counselor, but I did not feel the freedom to say I could consider divorce.

So during the first two sessions, well, I guess all three, I know the church eventually, or you eventually reached out to the church. Mm-hmm. But was anyone aware at the church of what was going on in your home before you reached out to the two pastor's wives? Later on, I heard from some people that there were suspicions and I'm not really sure what.

They were basing that on what they, what dynamic they saw between my husband and I. But 'cause, 'cause my husband and I, neither one of us, like we, we weren't at each other's throats. We weren't aggressive people. We were actually, both of us tried to avoid conflict. Yeah. So I don't think there was a whole lot of knowledge, but the, I reached out to the pastor's wives right around the same time that I started seeing the third counselor. So this would've been in like early 2021 and.

The first pastor's wife I reached out to, she told me like, I, I really think, you know, I was, and I was crying in her office. I was, I was crying, so, you know, so much over what was going on. And, and she goes, you know, I really think you just need to have sex with your husband.

You know, like, kind of like, oh, well, you know, and, but thankfully by this point, by the third counselor, I was kind of like, I just couldn't, like, I, it, I, I wouldn't even say it was like some kind of conviction that I had the right to say no. It was just like, I physically could not find the strength in myself to go through with it. So, yeah. I mean, I get that.

And you at this point, so they, they're giving this advice to you, your, your emotional health starts to, physical health starts to deteriorate at this time as well. Right. Can you walk us through what's going on there? Yeah. I had been noticing, well, I got diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, which is like a autoimmune condition of the thyroid, where your body basically sees your thyroid as a foreign body. And it attacks it.

So I had, I have hypothyroidism from that and I just also started to, I started to develop an eye twitch. Lots of anxiety type things. I would not be able to maintain sleep at night, so I'd, I might fall asleep. Okay. But then I'd wake up two hours later, not be able to go back to sleep.

I was having multiple migraine days per week, and I think the big turning point for me was I had gone through the Chick-fil-A drive-through, and on my way out of the drive-through, I had a soda that fell into the backseat of the car. And I remember at that moment my, I just got tunnel vision and I thought I was gonna pass out and I had to pull over the car.

And that was kind of my aha moment, that physically that I needed to do something because a big part of the reason I had been staying all this time. Was because I was wanting my pa my kids to have two parents, and in this moment, sitting pulled over on the side of the road, almost passing out from a soda falling over in the car, I was like, they might end up with one parent after all if I don't do something about this. That's so heavy. I'm so sorry. There's just so much there.

There's just so much. When, so when you, when you prompted to talk to these pastor's wives, did they, did they offer any other further assistance? Like were they gonna meet with you regularly or did they say, oh, well let's get the pastors involved? Like how did they, how did you, I guess, how did that relationship, what was the progression of that relationship if there is one?

That first pastor's wife I spoke with, I only talked to her once, but then there's another, she, she actually recommended me to another and I ended up following up with her over several months. I would say it went from about January to maybe like May or June of the year, and she actually started telling me that I shouldn't be withholding sex from my husband out of revenge. And I remember thinking like, how in the world do you think I'm withholding because of revenge?

Like I literally was, you know, allowing him to use my body for a decade. If I, if, you know, if it was about revenge, I would've stopped a long time ago. Was it was, I, I just, I never got any kind of sense that I. They were gonna actually take steps to help me get out of the situation. It was always just about how I could submit more, accommodate my husband, more so that we could stay married. It's just so much there.

There's so much there and there's so much to comment on, like that, sharing that type of advice with you. I mean, when they did, how did you, I mean, looking back in hindsight, you have wording right to name what was happening in your marriage. Yeah. But how did you receive that at the time when they're saying, you know, don't do this out of revenge. Like, what, what's going through your head then? I, I think I just felt trapped.

Trapped was a word I would've used pretty frequently throughout this process. Yeah. So in that feeling trapped, how do you break out of being trapped? Can you walk us through? I. You know, when things start to progress out of this situation and specifically what the church's role was in that.

Okay. Yeah, really the big turning point for me was finding Natalie Hoffman, a friend of mine who you know, is a Christian, but she's, she wasn't as heavily churched as I was, so she was a little more open-minded. And so, and since she was my friend, I listened to her because she was my friend. And so, so she said, you know, that I needed to listen to Natalie Hoffman's podcast.

And I remember I was with my kids sitting at this indoor playground, and it was so loud they were having a birthday party next to me, but I had Natalie Hoffman's podcast playing in my ear. She had Sheila Gregoire on. Her podcast and Sheila Gregor was going through what constituted sexual abuse and rape in marriage, and I found myself relating to the things they were saying. I, I found things resonating and ringing true.

I, you know, joined Natalie's Flying three free group and through that group got connected with a, a woman who was a life coach. And she started, I started meeting with her. So now I had a one-on-one person. It wasn't about saving the marriage anymore, it was just about what I needed for my situation and. I was only doing that for about a month when I decided I was gonna ask for divorce. It was super quick.

And you know, one of the things that people tell me is like, oh, you got strong, you got strong. And I'm like, no. I'm like, you don't get strong like that. And a month I was already strong. It takes a lot of strength to stay in that situation. And I said all that happened was I stopped putting that strength towards saving the marriage and I started putting that strength towards.

Getting healthy and, and being in a healthy situation was, was this the first time that you began to, like, name things that were happening in your marriage? Yeah, and I'll be honest, I, I was, I still to this day struggle with comfort over terms. So generally when I've told people my story in the past is, I, I don't use terms like rape or marital rape or even sexual abuse.

I just have told people this is what happened, and I let them take the facts and decide for themselves what they want to label it. But what I will say is it wasn't Jesus. It was not what Jesus, you know, the Bible says that we're supposed to love your neighbor. Your wife is still your neighbor. Your wife is perhaps the most profound neighbor that you would have, your spouse, you know, or your husband if you're, so you're starting to hear these terms. You're starting to.

Educate yourself honestly about the dynamics that you had been living. What do you do with your church? Like I'm, I'm guessing based on the advice you got, that they were not educating themselves on these topics or understanding these dynamics. Am I wrong or right? Yeah. How, like, how was that experience? And at any point, do the pastors actually get involved or is it always with pastors wives that you're speaking with, which wouldn't also not really be that uncommon in these spaces?

Yeah, no, the pastors do get involved. What basically ends up happening, I decide, I'm gonna tell my husband that I want a divorce. This is February of 2022. So I tell him I want the divorce and that conversation. Goes horribly wrong. He accuses me of having a midlife crisis. He says like, oh, I've been talking to all of these therapists, and I finally found one that was telling me what I wanted to hear. Basically, it, we, we talk into the night.

It ends with me kind of in this exasperated, exhausted stage, just saying, please just let me go. When I said that, he told me, he leveled his eyes at me and he said, hell no, and if you try to leave, I will go to the children and I will tell them that I love you and I love them, but you're breaking up our family and you're making me leave. So again, that was that I'm trapped. I don't have a choice because I, I didn't want my children to think ill of me.

So. The next day I went to the church and called the pastor, told him everything in gruesome detail of all that had transpired in the marriage, and then I followed up immediately that same day with an email, putting it all in writing.

He told me that what was gonna have to happen if I wanted to pursue a divorce was that he would form a commission and that women could be a part of the commission, but that I'd have to go to counseling and that, and I'm guessing Nick would have to go with me and that whatever that commission decided would be, what the church would abide.

But at this point, you know, I'm still living with him as husband and wife and I. He's very angry at me at this point because I've started to take steps to leave and it's just not a healthy environment. And I, I'm worried, what if I go along with the church and instead of telling me that they're gonna give me permission to divorce, they tell me, Nope, you guys need to keep working on it.

It, it wa I felt like I was in a situation where it was better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. So I called the pastor back after a couple weeks and I told him, you know, that I was not ne it wasn't necessary to form the commission that I was just gonna, you know, move ahead with trying to get divorced. And that at that point, that's when things started to go.

I know that in the church I grew up in, and I'm curious if this is the same for you, that it was very rare that divorce was allowed and it had to be extreme continued. Domestic violence that would allow for that. Really. Is that kind of what you felt like you were up against? Like you have to prove that there's like, continued abuse or were you like, I don't even feel like I need to prove this to you people? Like, what did you feel?

No, I, I actually felt like if I went through the church, I was gonna end up being excommunicated. I, I felt that from the beginning there were two grounds that the PCA allows for divorce. One is adultery and I believe by adultery they, I don't know if they. Articulate it this way, but they mean physical skin to skin, adultery. They don't, they would not count porn or anything like that. And the other option is what they call abandonment of the marriage covenant, which that can be different.

Churches interpret it differently. Some require it to be physical abandonment. Others will, I, I believe Rio would fall in the category of where it could also be emotional abandonment. And so if they had granted me a divorce, it would've been on that, on those grounds. Do you and your husband ever get pushed into a counseling session or counseling sessions together? Or does that just never happen? Like what does the church do with that?

Because normally a church would start there, like, meet with us as pastors as a couple or something. Yeah, that's, I'm pretty sure why I ended up. Being disciplined by the church because at the point that I had asked for the divorce, even though I had been in counseling for years, you know, at the point that I had asked for the divorce, at that point my husband started saying, oh, we, well, we need to go to counseling. At that point, I was over it with the counseling.

And so he did come to me at one point and tell me that one of the pastors had said that he would do our counseling, but that the way this pastor likes to do counseling is he likes to say, we're not gonna talk about the past. We're just gonna, you know, clean, slate it and start talking about how to build a healthy marriage in the future. And he goes, but if we're gonna do that, you have to forgive me. He kept saying, you have to forgive me.

And I said, you haven't even apologized for anything, you know? And he said, well, I. Don't want to apologize because that would be admitting I did something wrong. And so, so I, you know, I kind of left it at that. I was flabbergasted, but, so he's all of a sudden changing his tune is that, and he said, ah, now I wanna get to counseling. Is he communicating that to the church leaders?

Right. So I had been pursuing, finding a mediator for us so that we could get the process moving along with the divorce. And I found one and we had a meeting set to sit down and meet with the mediator. But what, during this time that we're waiting for our meeting, my husband called the lead pastor and told him that he wanted the session to weigh in on our divorce.

And from what I understand, the only thing the in the session would've been required to do at this point, I didn't know this at the time, would be to investigate. So they weren't actually required by their bylaws or they, they call it the book of Short, short or the BCO. They weren't actually required by the BCO to punish me. They could have chosen to just take a stance of counseling me, but they didn't.

So what ended up happening was they held a meeting of their session, and during that meeting it was decided that I would be barred from the Lord's Supper for a period of six months, and I'd have to step down from the worship team. But there. There was no like process to it. It was just, this is what we decided and that was that. What is your response to that? And like, do you have any input in it? Do you just randomly get a letter? Are there conversations with you? What does that look like?

Well, that's, that's part of the problem because in, in doing this, my church actually broke a whole lot of their own rules. They are supposed to be required to submit a statement to me in writing, saying what my sin is, and then specifically also in writing what my discipline is. I was never told what exactly I was charged with, and in the beginning I thought they were disciplining me because I was pursuing the divorce.

Years later, I still haven't had this confirmed to me, but I. It sounds like they were actually disciplining me for not submitting to their authority in going to the counselor and in allowing them to make the commission and all that like that. That seems like what I was actually disciplined for, but they bypassed all process in doing that.

And looking back now, I'm like, it's such hypocrisy that they disciplined me for not following procedure when they followed none of their own procedures in doing it. Well, and the same time, based on those letters, I mean, you had poured out intimate details of your marriage to the lead pastor, so you would also think that there would be a response to your, to your husband at the time, to either a bar him from.

The table or at least address some of the things that you brought up in the letter, but that didn't happen. Right? He was, how did they treat him in this process? Was that Well, yeah, I know for a fact he didn't receive any discipline that I know because he started telling people, like the church ruled in my favor and even telling my extended family that like that, you know, well the church ruled in my favor.

Even, even recently, one of my kids came up to me and said like, are you and dad still married? And I'm like, no. And, and he goes, oh, 'cause dad said you're still married in the eyes of God. Oh wow. That's the kind of thing I'm dealing with because of what the church did. How does, how does this friend of yours get involved? So you hire a mediator, what, are you still proceeding with divorce even though you're in church discipline?

Like what's, what's that process and then when does this friend get involved to try to Yeah. Work through this? So we had our first meeting with the mediator, and during that meeting we reached a full agreement. All we had to do was sign it. And then when it came time to sign the agreement, my husband refused to sign it. And he sent me a text that said, I won't be going to the mediator anymore. I won't be signing anything and, and I won't be moving out.

And again, this is that moment where I feel trapped, you know? It's like, okay, so he's not going to allow me to divorce him. So I go to the lead pastor and. I show him these texts of him saying he's not gonna go to the mediator, he is not gonna, and I said, can you talk to him? All I wanted him to do was give him a call and be like, Hey man, you know, you really should go to the mediator. You don't wanna, you know, force somebody to be married to you. But the pastor told me I can't do that.

We've already ruled against you. And basically articulated that it was gonna be like a conflict of interest for him to get involved at that point. So at this point I'm feeling, like I said, trapped, trying to figure out how I can move this divorce forward when I'm not getting any support from the church and I'm not getting any support, you know, like, or cooperation from my ex.

And at this point also, I don't, you know, I just wanna state, 'cause I feel like it makes it make more sense is like my, my own family had already passed away. My parents were gone. I had two brothers, but they were also already gone. So. Because of this, I don't, it's not like I have another house I can go to. You know, I'm, I'm stuck in this living in this state for as long as this takes. So I start thinking like, how do I get things to move forward?

So I got the idea to contact the wife and tell her my situation and ask her if her husband might be willing to talk to my husband. So I contacted her. I sent her all of the letters and things that I sent to the pastors. So she had the full story. She called me back a little bit later and she said, yeah, my husband will help. You know, so that's how he came into helping us negotiate our divorce agreement. Was he, uh, was he a mediator or was he just a dude? No, he's a businessman.

Okay. He's a very successful businessman, and so I thought, you know, he, he would be able to, but more, more than just his negotiation skill. I knew my husband and I knew if he had a strong male figure telling him that he should do something, he would be more, you know, accommodating to it than if it was just me. So, yeah. W when the pastor said he had a conflict of interest, it's an interesting statement for someone, a shepherd to make, was he saying that? Because, why was he saying that?

Did he give a reason on what the conflict of interest was? He said, you know, because the, the session had already ruled against me, kind of like it wouldn't look good for him to then help me. I had already been ruled against. Yeah. And I find that interesting 'cause you wrote him a letter, you also talked to him in detail about what's happening in your marriage. And based on that, he should step in as a shepherd and shepherd the situation.

'cause you're asking for his help and yet his response sounds like he's dealing with a corporation and in Yeah, it's very, I I, it's a very interesting response. I remember after, after I had told him, you know, that I was being told that he's not gonna sign anything. He's not gonna move out, you know, and, and he told me, you know, he wouldn't contact him.

I just, I had this image of me sitting in the pew next to my husband on Sunday morning and him up there on the stage and him knowing that I was sitting there against my will and being okay with that, like. That, that was something that just struck across, struck into my brain when he said that was like, so it's okay with you if you know my husband is holding me to this marriage against my will. That's all right. You know, you're not gonna step in and do something.

So you felt, did you feel comfortable, would you say comfortable with him ta stepping into that role? Or what was kind of your initial thoughts? I was very comfortable at the time. 'cause at, at that, you gotta realize that every stage as you're going through this, you're, you're dealing with the cards you're dealt at the moment. And at that moment, my situation was that I was still living with my husband. He was refusing to move forward and I didn't.

Have the financial resources to be able to hire an attorney. So I felt very trapped in this moment and I was kind of racking my brain for what I could do to move things forward. And so reaching out to this friend, was it when he, when he agreed to get involved? It was a lifeline to me because I, I didn't see another way, way out at that point. And I mean, it seemed, I was like, wow, who, who wants to get involved in someone else's divorce? You know?

So the fact that he was willing to try to, you know, move things along and patch things over, make the mediation happen, I was just very grateful. And how did that mediation process end up ending? Did it end, did your husband comply? How did that go? Yeah, he, it, it did come to a close and. There, there were things about it that were positive and there were things about it that were negative.

I didn't really feel and, and I didn't really feel the freedom to push back on what was being mediated because anytime I kind of gave any pushback, the reaction was from my husband, well, I'm not gonna sign anything then. And so because he kept doing that, I felt like I just kind of had to agree and just be mis agreeable and not, you know, just to keep things going. I could not ever be the stopping point.

So I feel like on under some level of duress, I agreed to a settlement that wasn't really great for me. And one of the aspects of that settlement that like. Becomes important is that we agreed to that I would have custody for five days and then he would have custody for two days. But with, with this was with an eye towards the future because at that time he wanted to have his visitation at the, the marital home. So, so his two days were spent at my house and that started to create issues.

So. Like, for example, one thing that happened was he was, he was spending a great deal of time sleeping during his days at the house, and I was really still just doing everything I would normally do, taking care of the children, preparing meals, that kind of thing. I started to complain about that. I went back to our friend and I said, you know, can you talk to him? He's coming over, but he's just sleeping the whole day.

And I was even taking photographs, sending them photographs of him sleeping. And they said, well, the, and this was the, the pastor kind of echoed our friends. That's when I, why I say they like, you don't get to choose how he parents. If that's how he wants to spend his time with the children, then you don't, you know, then you should leave. Even though it's at my house, I shouldn't even be there. I should leave.

And I was even accused of like staying for the sole purpose of like having these gotcha moments so I could be, oh, you, you know. Then another thing that emerged during that time was, you know, I had only, the child support had only been calculated based on me having the kids five days. So these two days I had the kids, but I wasn't there. There was no support for those two days.

And so I had spoken to my ex at that time and I had said, you know, you need to provide, I. Food and you know, some kind of support for the children if, if they're your custody days. And he was like absolutely refusing. And so he went back to our friend who had negotiated the agreement and 'cause I said, whatever he says, I'll abide by, you know, I was trying to be agreeable. And our friend said, well those you're, if you're both there, it's shared days. So, which legally doesn't exist.

There's no such thing as shared days. But le he was saying legally it's shared days. So if she wants you to provide food, she has to leave. And so finally I just, in order to, you know, move again, in order to move things along, I'm always making these concessions in order to move things along. I went for like about six weeks, where as soon as my ex would show up to do his visitation, I'd leave and then I'd arrive back home that evening and I, and fi the kids started getting upset about it.

The kids were like, why is mom gone all time? And so finally my ex tells me, what do I have to do to get you to stay? And I said, you need to provide some kind of food, some kind of support. And so then he was like, fine, I'll do it. And so, but it was like, I was always in this position of having to jump through these crazy hoops to get really what should be basic support. And then when I would turn back to. The pastors or turned back to our friend to try to negotiate that.

I was kind of shut down and kind of, and ultimately I was told by him like, look, sooner or later you and your husband need to figure out how, or you and your ex need to figure out how to negotiate these things on your own. And he told me he didn't want me to turn to him anymore for that purpose. So at that point I just was like, okay, I guess I'm on my own. And during all of this, are you under church discipline? The church discipline ended.

During, actually it ended the same month that I actually filed for divorce. So I, my church discipline happened before I had even filed for divorce. And that, that is one of the things that's odd. It was like, I used to joke that it was like my minority report that we're gonna punish you before you do the crime, but Right. But, so you're allowed to take communion again? Yes. So I, I started taking communion again before I even filed the papers. And I didn't stay very long after that though.

Didn't you end up meeting with the pastor at, like, during this whole process to discuss the suspension? I did, yeah. When, when he reached out to me, which he had told me he, that my suspension was six months. I don't think he really, I. Wanted to punish me. I so that, that's a whole nother story. I, I think, I don't know who it was, but I actually think there was another elder involved that was really kind of demanding their, you know, their blood. And I don't know who that would've been.

I have guesses, but I don't know, because when he called me, he called me and he said, you know, that by his calculation as of September, my punishment is up and did I wanna meet to kind of, I guess it's like have a postmortem, like you can ask me questions, that kind of thing. And so I went out to lunch with he and his wife and I said, you know. That one of the things I didn't understand was why it was such a foregone conclusion that I had to be disciplined.

And he kind of said like, well, once your ex said that, that he wanted the session to get involved, that the session had to rule. And later years later, when I read the BCO, I would learn that is the BCO is the book of church order. That that's not true, that all the BCO says is that they have to investigate. It doesn't say they have to rule, but at that time, I hadn't read the BCO, so I just took his word for it. I'm like, okay. His, he had no choice.

I had tied his hands, you know, all the things that they had told me coming along. And I pretty much, the, the only thing I did push is I, I did ask him. Why my ex didn't also receive discipline, and I don't really, he, I ki I kind of just remember him kind of shrugging his shoulders at that one. I, I don't really feel like I got a, i a clear answer on that. And I had said, well, why didn't you just choose to abstain?

Like, it seems like you could just choose and say, you know, no, we, we choose not to rule on this issue. And he kind of indicated that wasn't a possibility, which I remember at the time, like feeling like, you know, the session, the session must be appeased, you know, like we need to have some kind of blood sacrifice for the session. You know? And, and that was me. But yeah, after, after that meeting, I walked away feeling like our senior pastor had just done. What he had to do.

His, I, he didn't have a choice. But then as the days went on and as I started to read the BCO, I started to realize he had, that there was a lot more he could have done. Yeah, that's very confusing. Especially because they came, I mean, they came so hard at you to like, put you on church discipline or to, to, to suspend you. And they, yet they wanna seem so involved, but then they also don't wanna get involved. Like you're getting a lot of mixed messages from them. Mm-hmm.

And, but it's empowering your husband to continue this behavior. Right? Like he's, there's no accountability for him. Right, and I actually used that very word with the pastor when I met with him for lunch. As I said, you know, do you realize that when the church ruled against me, you empowered him because he went, he, he was telling people that the church was on his side. He was, he was even telling my extended family that, you know, well, the church was on my side.

He, at one point, one of my kids came home from a visit and asked me if we were still married, because since the church had ruled with him, he was saying like that, we're still married in the eyes of God, because this was an unbiblical divorce, but my son was only like eight at the time. So it was just so confusing for him to have these two mixed messages like, mommy and daddy are divorced, but daddy's saying they're still married. So how, how soon, once the mediation started.

How, walk us through when was the timeline that the divorce was actually finalized, and did they, did this friend put up any roadblocks for you to get to where you could finalize the divorce roadblocks? I would say no. So the, our first mediation appointment with the mediator was in, at the beginning of April of 2022, and then I filed for divorce on September 29th, 2022.

That was when I, when all the paperwork was finalized, and I just pretty much was just sending it to the judge for, for review. And then the divorce itself was fully final on February 8th, 2023. So once that divorce is finalized, well, your ex-husband then leaves, you know? Mm-hmm. You're in the house. How do you engage the church? Do you engage the church then, or, you know, what's your, are you still involved? Like, walk us through that?

Yeah. It was about a year and a half before, a little more than a year and a half before. Finally, he was no longer in the home. And so, but once that happened, it, it did help me a lot with finding my voice and being able to speak up for myself because u up until then, I think a lot of people, one of the things they don't realize about the. Abuse dynamic is that at some point, you know, I was married for 17 years.

At some point you, your body is trained to submit to that person and it's very, very difficult to stand up to them, especially when they're in your orbit on a regular basis and in your home. So even though we weren't married anymore, when he would kind of stand his ground at me, I would become very intimidated. And that was to a large degree, keeping me in my place. So once he. Once the visits were no longer there, that's when I really went into high gear kind of healing and, you know, reading.

And one of the things I decided to read was the book of church order, or at least the pos, the parts that seemed pertinent. It's, it's quite a, just some light, you know? Yeah. At least the parts that seem pertinent. Some fun reading. And what I started to realize really quickly was that there, there, there were so many restrictions on church leaders that were not followed in my discipline.

Like they were required to, I think I mentioned this already, that suspending from, from for six months was not even something that was allowed it, it actually specifically says you cannot suspend for a specific amount of time. And I saw. So many different incidences. And then I started also talking to advocates within the, within the PCA church, the Presbyterian church. And they were also like, oh, well this was wrong and this was wrong.

And so as that started to come to light, I decided, you know what? I'm gonna reach out to the church. And kind of just why, why was this the way it was? I'm, you know, I'm not happy with how things went down. And so I sent a letter to the woman at the church who is the, the pa. Like they don't say pastor, the director of Women's Soul Care. And, and I told her my story.

First of all, she had not heard it, which I thought was very interesting, that despite being the director of Women's Soul Care, that. She had never been privy to what was going on with me at the time. 'cause she was at the church before I was, so she knew, she had known me for over 10 years at this point.

And she did tell me that at one point she had asked the senior pastor if she should try to reach out to me and he told her no. So yeah, but I, I basically threw out all of these things I was considering, why wasn't my ex ever disciplined? What, what about all of these rules in the BCO that it appears we're just ignored? And she says, let me talk to the pastor and I'll get back to you.

And she spoke with two of the pastors and the next day she called me back and she was telling me like, I have great news at least. And she's like, at least I hope it's great news for you. And then she says, you were never ruled against. And I was like. Whatcha talking about? Like, I, I mean, it was instant confusion.

And she starts saying, well, it was just, you know how before we give the Lord Supper, we get up there and we say, you know, if your brother has something against you, go and be reconciled to your brother. So the only reason they asked you not to partake was because you weren't reconciled with your brother. And I was like, well, he wasn't reconciled with me either, so why was he allowed to take? And she's like, well, I didn't ask them that.

And then I said, well, and I'm like, well, wait a second. And I'm, and you know, as I'm, as I'm talking to her, I'm having more and more of these little bells go off. And so then I was like, well. How come they, if it was just about the Lord's Supper, then how come I was also kicked off the worship team and how come my ex thought that I was disciplined if I wasn't ever ruled against? And I definitely thought I was disciplined and you know, so I was just going through this all in my mind.

We ended the conversation and I just remember thinking that I had never felt so gaslit in my life. Like it was like that I had spent the last two years living as I had been ruled against. Being deprived of the Lord's supper being off the worship team, my ex telling people that the church had ruled against me and now I go to the church to ask questions and I'm told that I was never ruled against.

I, I remember thinking, okay, the only way I'm gonna get a real straight answer as to what exactly happened and why it happened, the way it happened is if I add more voices to the mix. Because at up till this point, I'm feeling like the lead pastor is just te telling me just enough to make it diplomatic. You know, try trying to, trying to massage it a little bit, make it a little more palatable.

But if he has to tell me what happened in front of other people who were actually there when it happened, he can't do that. So I decided I was going to write. A letter to the pastor asking all my questions and I was gonna copy in all the elders. And so I copied in all the people who were current elders. But the problem is that it changes quite frequently, which I think it changes about once a year.

So I also copied in a p bunch of people that I knew had been elders because I was like, if, if you were on the session at the time this happened, I wanted them to be able to weigh in. And I also wanted to include women's voices. So I included the pastor's wives and I included the staff members of the church that were women. And I also like copied in some advocates and people I had been speaking to on my own, but that already knew the story.

So it was, that was basically who was included on the email and I just asked all my questions and the very next day I got an email back. And it took, it took me the whole day just to read the email. 'cause I was so intimidated without even knowing what the email said, I was afraid of what it was going to say. When I finally read it, it, it did not disappoint. It was, uh, what, what stood out to me when I just reread it was that it said that our church does not have a culture problem.

And that if they had a to do all over again that the senior pastor couldn't see doing anything differently. Towards the end of the letter, he even started to get a little personal. He started to say like, you know, you didn't follow Matthew 18. You haven't. Represented your ex-husband's point of view here. And he said it could be considered libelous what I was doing by sending them the letter. And he was like, and you're just, I remember he used the word spraying.

You're just spraying it out there. Like, I don't know. It felt very, it felt angry. Like he, it seemed like he was mad that I had Was this sent to, like, was it sent to everybody that you messaged? Yes. He, well, he, he wasn't able to copy the advocates 'cause those people had been blind, copied into the email. But, but yeah, every, all the elders and himself and the, you know, the women of the church could see it. So he sent this to everybody. He responded publicly.

He did, he responded pub as, as publicly as I had. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So did he answer any of your questions outside of just making excuses? Um, he put, he put a lot of effort into listing the timeline of events and he kept saying, like, you were saying that, you know, your husband was a good man, things like that. And so we, you know, of course. How would we know that, you know, this was not a good situation for you? 'cause you were saying he was a good man.

Well, the whole gist of my letter to them, the public letter had been that I think they need to get some training and, I mean, I wasn't even really asking them for an apology. I just wanted them to get training. I said so that, so that this didn't happen again and. I didn't get the impression they were planning to get training based on that email. And I, I, so I just, when I wrote back to him again, I just took all the, you know, quotes from his letter and just started responding to them.

And I said, you know, it's really common thing for women who are in DV situations to praise their spouse because we, you know, I, I'm like, there's, there's still the father, he's still the father of my kids. I'm still gonna present him in the best light that I can. So, but like, when I'm saying, saying things like, you know, he's a good man. It's like things like he goes to work, he doesn't hit the kids, you know, he does. And it's, it's very ta taking the, the.

Really bottom of the barrel, bare minimum type stuff, and using that to say, well, he's a good man. How much did you tell them when you went to them for help about the dynamics of your marriage? Oh, I, I was graphically, like I described sexual encounters in detail. As a matter of fact, I took flack for doing that because the pastor told me that my letter made him very uncomfortable. And I was like, yeah, my sex life made me very uncomfortable too, you know?

And, but part of the reason that I was that graphic was that whenever I wasn't, people just seemed to chalk it up like it was normal marriage, libido differences, like, and so I felt like I needed to be that graphic in order for them to understand what was happening. When I sent that letter, I also told the senior pastor that he could share it with as many people as he felt was necessary in order.

'cause I knew that it might be necessary for them to hear those details in order for them to realize that this is not a normal situation. But I came to find out later that he didn't share those details with them because he said that it made him uncomfortable to, to share the letter. So I was like, well, in, in my brain, I'm thinking, well then they don't even know what they're supposedly ruling on if you didn't share it with them.

And I, I do find it really interesting that none of the, like the, all these elders that were copied in this letter, none of them aside from the senior pastor wrote back to me. Which to me, that speaks a lot to me. It either says either you're a group of yes men, where everyone just agrees. Or you don't feel the freedom and the space to have a dissenting opinion. And did they ever offer like any explanation for the fact that one, like. Them stepping out of the bounds of the book of church order.

Am I saying that right? I always You are feel like when we get in these like high church episodes, I'm like, we're talking about Harry Potter. I always feel that way. I'm like, what? What is happening right now? Well, but like, did they address that? That they went. Stepped out of bounds with that. Yeah, it was always presented as, it was done as like a favor to me, like on my behalf.

You know, they handled it in executive session, which is this little private meeting, which keeps, it, keeps several things. I don't know who was included in executive session or who was asked to leave, so I don't really know who my accusers are. There's no record of if anybody spoke on my behalf, if anybody, you know, anyone was particularly against me. I, I don't have any kind of record of any of that.

I don't have a record of who voted which way, or if the vote was unanimous and, and that's all because they kept it on the down low. I think on some level, if I, if I had to put myself in their shoes, I think on some level they thought they were being kind. By going around the BCO, because if they would have actually followed the BCO, I would've ended up being excommunicated.

Because if you find someone in sin and they don't repent, which if you're getting divorced, that means you stop the divorce. So if they don't repent, then you need to excommunicate them. And so I think their thought is, well, we don't really wanna excommunicate her, so let's do it this way.

Just give her the six months No Lord's Supper, which is, I mean, some people might think that's not a big deal to be barred from the Lord's Supper, but it is the step right before excommunication, it's like everything. But so I think they thought we're gonna give her this, for lack of a better term, slap on the wrist and then let her go back, you know, so that.

Whoever was so upset that I had to be punished, that that person could be appeased, but at the same time, we don't have to excommunicate her. I, I think, and I can't prove it 'cause I don't know motivations and I was not in the meeting, but that's my vibe. I also when you were like talking about how it was explained to the Soul Care director for women, does it like just skive you out a little bit? That like the charge was that you weren't reconciled to your brother husband?

Like that language is so weird. You're like, brother, husband, what's going, like, what is happening? It's just so ridiculous that they couldn't even be consistent between the two of you both experiencing the same. Level of air quotes, accountability for this situation. And I just went back as you were talking and res skimmed through your initial emails and you were more than forthright about the dynamics at play. I wouldn't say it was extra gratuitous, but it got the point across.

So it's just, so I di I wanna say that for you just to bear witness to the emails publicly so that people understand, thank you. That this isn't just like, I think you come across so kind and charitable that people might, that there was room for you to have not been direct about what you were experiencing. So that could lead to some confusion. But you have in writing what you said and their responses and it. Was direct.

They were aware of what was going on in the dynamics at play and chose to still bar you from the communion table and then apparently fake put you under church discipline, which I also wanna address. This is all during the time leading up to you going into mediation, settlement, or like filing, right. So you're in mediation while you're under church discipline, correct? Yes. Yeah. And going into the filing.

Yep. So now looking back, do you feel that being placed into a position of shame negatively affected your ability to advocate for yourself during the mediation process? Like what would that have looked like? I know you can't know for sure, but had the church come alongside you and supported you and helped to make you not feel.

You were going to hell if you died the next day, which is what you referenced feeling in the first part of your story, do you think that could have potentially changed the outcome of this settlement? A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

It would've made such a difference to me to feel like I had some support, because like I said, my I di I didn't have my immediate family, so it really was, was just me and the only people I ha I had, I think like one friend and then I had my online community that was speaking positively to me and everybody else was telling me that, you know, I needed to just move on. I, you know, like as far as from the church, that I needed to just move on and get over it, that I needed to forgive them and.

It's just, it was, it's not that I don't forgive them, I actually don't feel like I'm someone that's full of all this rage and anger at them. I just don't want anybody else to get hurt by the, the same system that chewed me up. And when I see that there is kind of a lack of acknowledgement that they would do anything differently, which, you know, I can, I can't think of many difficult things I've gone through in my life that I can't look back and find something I would do differently.

So the fact that there's that kind of lack of self-awareness and recognition makes me really fear for what. Other women in a similar situation to myself would be faced with if they were to go through the same situation. I think about you saying you were afraid to push back because you were worried that that would end in you not being able to get out of this situation. 'cause he would not sign if you gave any pushback.

And I think about the power that that gave him, whether he utilized that or not. Like I don't, I wasn't sitting there, but like he was empowered by the church to make it hard and to not do anything himself, to try to fight to be better. And that put you in a really precarious situation going into mediation and. It grosses me out that the church is not able to be reflective on that. Before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about how there's a space and empathy for this.

Like for them to not know what to do. As leaders and to have never done this before, or never like had a woman tell them something like this before and to be kind of scrambling, what do we do? We've been told this about divorce, we've been told this about abuse. There's room for them to mess up even though there's consequences for those mess up. That's not an excuse, but the fact that they aren't even owning that they messed up is just devastating.

It's devastating for them too, like, 'cause being honest with ourselves matters and it matters for our own souls. So it's really sad that they aren't able to grapple with that. For the, for ev, for themselves, for you, for your kids, for your ex, and for any other people in their church that are going through something similar to you, which it's not uncommon. For people to be going through what you went through.

Yeah. Yeah. There was this one instance early on when I was first disclosing my situation to my pastors, that I was speaking to the pastor, that I was actually not the lead pastor. I was actually closest to him. I worked most directly with him and I told him my story and he said, wow. He says, well, that's, that's really difficult, but I don't think it rises to the level of abuse because he didn't hold you down. I was still kind of grappling on my own with what I had been through.

I was still developing language, and so having him discount that was just absolutely devastating to me. Putting me in a position where I felt like I had to. Even defend that I had the right to want to be out of the marriage. And I feel like, you know what I think a lot of the church leaders fail to see there is that at its core what a lot of women are experiencing, and I say women, it can be men, but usually women is a loss of agency.

And my ex-husband didn't need to hold me down because all my life I had been told that as a woman I was required to submit to my husband. I was told that I wasn't allowed to deprive him, and I believed that I was disobeying God and falling into sin if I did. So I didn't feel like I had any kind of right to say no. When you take away someone's right to say no, you don't have to be held down. They've, they've lost all of their agency.

And that was where I was, I I was just gonna say like, that's, it's so heartbreaking, but it's profound what you're saying and you know. What's interesting is that when I think about, when we look at like faith and we look at how Christ modeled interactions with people, you know, what your pastor did was nothing close to how Christ interacted with individuals and how he interacted with people.

And it's, especially when it comes to women in marriage and sex, how jaded we are to our misogyny and how it influences how we talk and look at other people. And you know, I would just say that I'm saying that me to the pastors out there, check your blind spots because they're profound and you don't have authority in these spaces because you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

And it's okay to shut up and say, I need to help this person by bringing in an expert instead of babbling on with something that you have zero and I mean zero knowledge to speak to. So I. I even in that statement that you just made, you model like so much grace about how you've handled this situation. And that's profound to me that in the midst of all, of all the stuff that you went through, you're still seeking for their not only approval, but their ability to see you.

Like you're just still saying, Hey, but can you please see me? And you're saying it in such kind ways, it, and they still don't see you. And, and that to me is, is probably, I mean it's heartbreaking for me to, to even think that. So I also just can't get over the fact that you have years of you one thinking you are the problem, but asking for him to help with the marriage in general. Asking to go to counseling. You go to counseling on your own for years, he shows no effort.

Trying to show up for this marriage and yet you were the one disciplined, like make it make sense where like what could he have said that made it look like he was not wrong? It's at the end of the day, I mean, and I don't wanna speak in generalities, but at the end of the day, it feels like the evangelical church only cares about who wants to stay in the marriage. And that's the only thing that really matters with whose side they are on.

When you come to the church, it doesn't matter how long you've already been in counseling up till that point, as far as the church is concerned, you're on day one and, and that's what happened. I may have been in counseling myself for many years, but. When I show up and bring it to the pastor for the first time, he's like, well, all right, we're gonna get a counselor. We're gonna do, you know, and it's, we're gonna form a commission.

And he, and I'm expected to have the same kind of endurance to bring to the table on year six that I did on day one, because to them it's day one. This is, this is them just coming to the table. And it would be really nice if pastors recognized that if someone comes to you who's already been seeing a professional counselor, and if they have a professional counselor saying, this is a destructive marriage and this marriage needs to end, that they take the counselor's word for it.

That they just say like, okay, she's been to counseling. The counselor is saying this is an unhealthy marriage. We need to help her. And, and just leave it at that because. Then putting me or whoever in the position of having to prove to them that this is really serious. It's, it's like it's another obstacle, another hoop to jump through in what has already felt like an endless line of hoops, and it's an added trauma to have to try to convince someone that.

You have a right to be free from that kind of situation. So, well said again, to pastors in general, it's seeing the person, right? You need to see the person and all, all people, you can't just look through the lens of your, your, uh, you know, your seminary degree that you won't admit may come from a background of either misogyny or racism or things like that. You have to look through the lens of how Jesus looked through the world and saw people like that has to be your, your worldview.

And if that is not your worldview, that is not our problem. You need to do your own work first before you act like you're a subject matter expert on everything. 'cause you're not. And if an expert is coming to you with, with, with advice, with knowledge based on years of working with individuals and they're saying X God, believe them, like see them. Like accept it. You don't have to be right all the time.

So I would say more to that, but I think what you said is just beautiful about like, just see, see people, like, see the situations that people are in and, and don't try to just be the king over it. But the, the point you mentioned about. They're more interested in saving people that want to stay in marriages. You know, people that will stay in marriages is concerning as well. It's very concerning, you know? Right. 'cause what is that?

What is that trauma in itself when we're, we're counseling people to stay in marriages of marriages that they should not stay in. Mm-hmm. So, and what does it mean to be the person that wants to stay in the marriage the most? The hell does that that mean it? It quite honestly, it means the marriage is working for them the best. Right. But honestly, like you put in the effort to try for your marriage. Like people don't do that 'cause they don't want to.

I mean, at the same time you were again in a situation that you were not. Emotionally safe or sexually safe, but like you wanted help, you wanted things to not be how they were your partner did not who wanted the marriage more like, yeah, it's definitely something that I, is an issue that I think the church needs to reckon with.

One of the things that was said to me in his letter, the lead pastor said, you know, that part of the reason I was disciplined was because he had a responsibility to uphold the sanctity of marriage. And I think that there's a huge misunderstanding of what that means because upholding the sanctity of marriage has to be just as much about allowing. Destructive marriages to die as they, as they are.

Because to say that you're upholding the sanctity of marriage by keeping a couple, like my ex and I together is saying that there is something sanctified about that marriage. There was nothing sanctified about our marriage as the time ca, you know, to the end came, I don't believe there was anything about our marriage that, that pleased Jesus or made Jesus happy with us.

And so in that case, the thing that you can do that depends the sanctity of marriage is to, to help that marriage come to an end in such a way that it is most peaceful and gentle on the children. Okay. And we're out of, we gotta move on. I have something on that too. I may save it for later though, but that was very well said, very gracious. Okay, so I, before we get to the final questions, you know, how, how are you, is there anything you'd like to share about your story?

Anything else you wanna share? And how are you doing today? Currently? I'm doing good today. I'm still working through trying to correct certain things that came out of the divorce settlement that were not fair, which I, I don't wanna go into details on that, but emotionally, I am in a much healthier place for a period of time, I tried to attend other churches, but at this point I have decided that for now I'm gonna do home church.

So I just watch TV on Sunday, whoever happens to tickle my fancy that week. And yeah, but the, the, the good news is that Jesus has been faithful and regardless of the ways that I, I found the church wanting or disappointing, Jesus has shown up in ways that were very unexpected. And I feel like I love him more now than I ever have. Beautiful. What would you, is there anything you'd like to say? Anything else you'd like to say to church leaders?

Well believe people believe they're therapists, believe they're coaches, and I would say recognize that when it comes to marriage, the only people who really know what's happening in that marriage are the two people who are in it. It's really easy to sit on the sidelines and say, you have to stay married or you can get divorced, or that kind of thing when you're not the one that has to go home and sleep in that bed that night.

I love the people at my church still, and it is hard for me to come on and talk about this. I believe they are better than what they have been to me, and I hope that at some point, if not now, that at some point they will become aware of their blind spot and that they will get the training and learn how to do better. Because they have a lot of good things about them, but the way they handle when a marriage goes south is so unhealthy and so traumatizing.

And, and I, I'm very discouraged by what I feel to be a lack of humility and self-reflection. So, well said. John, is there anything you would want to say to people that find themselves in situations that are similar to what you experienced? Especially some of you might be listening to this, and for the first time, hearing parts of your own lived experience said out loud. What would you wanna say to those people? I would like to say that number one, Jesus is more loving than.

You could ever imagine, and maybe you're in a place where I was, where you thought that if you got shunned by your church or if you left your marriage, that you were leaving your faith. And I just wanna tell you that that's not true. Jesus has shown up for me in such profound ways, and as I said, I have a greater love for him now than I ever have.

I also would wanna say, if you're staying for your children, one of the shifts I had to make in my perspective was instead of I'm staying for my children, I had to say, I'm leaving for my children. So that. They can have a healthy mom so that they can see a happy mom. We didn't get a chance to go into this in detail, but I grew up in an emotionally abusive household.

And so I think because of that, having a, a detached husband, someone who wasn't terribly involved and someone who made demands upon their wife's body felt normal because that was what I saw. And I love my mom and I, I I love my dad, but they had severe problems when in their marriage. And I think that it would've been beneficial to me to see my mother stand up for herself. Um, I think that would've been positive and would've made me feel more freedom to stand up for myself and my marriage.

So if you're there and you're staying for your kids, you can leave for your kids. And finally, I would just say. There's, there's happiness on the other side. There's brightness on the other side. It gets better. I love that. Thank you for that.

And for pastors or church leaders listening, I think so often the church is conditioned to respond to hearing things like what Jay said or what Joyce said as criticism, like unhealthy criticism or you're, you don't have the freedom to not have all the answers, but it's actually good and freeing for you to admit you don't have all the answers and to bring in experts when needed.

And I hope that through hearing Joyce's story, that some of you will start to really consider the ways that we talk about marriage and that we talk about sex and that we talk about. Manhood and womanhood because how you preach about these topics is directly affecting marriages, either positively or negatively. And some of the messages that kept Joyce in a marriage that was extremely unhealthy for her were baked into her through the preaching and discussions surrounding women sex and marriage.

So I exhort to you, encourage you to listen to this story and to allow it to broaden your perspective and broaden the ways that you can shepherd and care for the people that have been entrusted to you. Since the recording of Joyce's story, she attended a presbytery meeting in which she hoped to address the private nature of the apology she received. She was not allowed to speak but she had prepared a statement, so we are gonna read that statement to wrap up this episode. Good afternoon brothers.

For many looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. What does our Lord see when he looks at this apology? If Rio writes me a better letter, if they do a better job at pretending to be sorrowful, will Christ be more pleased? You see, this case was never about rules or procedures or policies or apologies. I was emotionally abandoned and sexually assaulted in my marriage for over a decade.

And when I came to my pastors, my shepherds seeking relief, they punished me and they empowered the one who was hurting me. That is not the heart of Jesus. As I have gone through the church court process, two things have grieved me more than any others. First, that there is far more emphasis on procedure than on mirroring the heart of Christ. And second, that the laypeople in the congregation have no idea what their leaders are doing or knowledge of their own rights.

Rio wants to say that my censure was private, but that is not truthful. I can't tell you how many members of the congregation, over the course of my censure asked why I was no longer on the worship team. What was I supposed to say to that? That I was assaulted by my husband and when I sought a divorce, they disciplined me. That is not what I said. I carried that shame within myself.

I protected the shepherds who were supposed to protect me when I did not rise to receive communion, and my own children questioned why I did not partake. I carried the shame that did not belong to me. Another private apology does not change the hearts that saw fit to shame me. A public apology is not about the apology. The heart of man cannot be legislated. A public apology is about the care of the sheep. The recommendation of training and advocacy is about the care of the sheep.

It is so the congregation will know that if they find themselves in a similar situation to my own, they deserve to be cared for, and if they are not, it is wrong.

Therefore, I ask the presbytery to be the shepherds that my own elders were not admonish the church to make a public apology and restore my good name within the congregation, and recommend that they seek training in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the DASA report presented at the 2022 PCA general assembly so that future congregants will receive the care that I did not.

Thank you. For Jake Coyle, I'm Jonna Harris, and this has been The Body Behind the Bus Podcast, the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed. Here are the speaker zone and not those of this podcast. This content is presented for informational and educational purposes that constitute fair use, commentary or criticism. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comment, suggestion, or correction of errors.