Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast. This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world. New episodes release every Friday. My guest this week is Tilly Dillehay, a wife and mother and author of the excellent new book My Dear Hemlock, out now on Canon Press. The premise of the book is simple. What if the Screwtape letters were written about two demons tempting a woman?
How would their correspondence differ from Lewis classic? What uncomfortable truths would it reveal about women's hearts? And most importantly, how might it bless women to see themselves reflected in ways the culture will do anything to prevent them seeing? As you'll hear me say in the interview, I've read many books this year, but My Dear Hemlock might be my favorite of the year. But Will, you might ask, you're a man.
What could you possibly have to take away from a book written about the hearts of women? Let me explain. Those who have been listening to this podcast for a while will remember the author Alison Armstrong, who wrote the book the Queen's Code and its prequel the Keys to the Kingdom. Allison has been on my podcast twice for two of my most downloaded and watched episodes of all time, and she also appeared at the Renaissance of Women Proverbs 31 conference I hosted online in summer 2023.
Believe it or not, Allison's books were a huge part of my journey through the conversation about masculinity. The Queen's Code especially showed me that a there were women who cared about understanding men and b that women could have a unique appreciation of men as well. Because, having been raised in a hyper feminist culture, I'd exclusively met women who felt called to weaken men or castrate them.
In Alison's words, in the war between the sexes, it had always been weapons free for women, encouraged to use their verbal gifts to punish men for patriarchy, leaving men with little or no ways to retaliate. So to read the Queen's code in 2018 was a revelation to me as I was learning about masculinity because it showed that there were indeed women out there who wanted to learn to love and appreciate men. At least somewhere on Earth, the sexes didn't have to be at war.
And so once I started my podcast and began working on my documentary, I befriended Allison and spoke with her publicly three times and many other times in private. But as I continued on my Christian walk, I began to see that the modern and New Age influences of Allison's books were too much for me to ignore there's talk about yoga, pg.
13, references to sexuality, and two of the characters even sleep together as part of the story, which, to be fair, is framed as the way a virtuous man can help the woman he loves overcome a prior experience of sexual abuse. It's not casual sex per se, and yet from a Christian perspective, it is. Furthermore, the Queen's Code book may even be channeled material. I doubt Allison would use that language, but others have.
And last but not least, at the end of the Queen's Code story, Allison leaves unanswered the question of what the hardened career feminist will do when she grows in her femininity and falls in love with a successful man. Will that character leave her career to become a mom? Having known Allison, I doubt she'd land in that choice the way I'd want her to. And if the character stays in her career, that wouldn't exactly fit with the character's feminine trajectory.
So it's convenient that the stickiest question in all of femininity today was left unanswered. For all these reasons and more, even though I once found the book to be an invaluable tool to help women deprogram from multigenerational feminism, I can no longer recommend it for Christian audiences. So where would I find a book that could serve the same function? What tools could I recommend to Christian women who are wanting to learn how to relate to men?
And that would be as convicting as I've seen the Queen's Code be, holding a lens up to the dark heart of women's modern rebellion from their design. There aren't many books like that today, frankly, because that idea is not popular. Nothing is more forbidden in our culture than the idea that women do have a design. An entire documentary, what Is a Woman? Was produced about it specifically because no one wants to answer that simple question.
The answer that Matt Walsh gives isn't even all that great. Plus, the American Evangelical church is far more feminist than it wants to admit. Both men and women. Submission might be the dirtiest word in the English language, and any book that could replace the Queen's Code would also have to address the negative influences of not just culture, but women's friends, the media, and even the subtle ways the world expertly plays on women's vanity, especially young women.
This, as you might imagine, is a tall order for the modern Christian publishing industry. Except now enter Tilly's My Dear Hemlock on, you guessed it, Cannon Press, which does all of this and more from an explicitly Christian worldview. Even better, Tilly is a woman. This isn't a pastor or male faith leader lecturing down to women about what they are. Nor is it a fearful feminist male looking up to women in a form of culturally acceptable, slightly critical affirmation.
Instead, it's the wife of a pastor calmly looking women and herself in the eye and telling women what's there. In fact, men barely even play a role in the story. The demons Madame Hoeksrot and the junior Devil Hemlock make reference to men and to our foibles and temptations, but it isn't about men specifically. My Dear Hemlock keeps the focus squarely and uncomfortably locked on a woman throughout all the seasons of her life.
It's a bracing story that reflects back on men as well, because sin is sin, and though the sins unique to men are quite different than the sins unique to women, they do interlock. And so as a man, it also helped me see how I can be a better leader to prevent, as best I can, the sins that may beset my future wife, Lord willing. So perhaps now you can see why this book of all I've read this year struck me so sincerely.
While I'm far less bullish than I once was on the idea of the Great Reconciliation, because that will be a gift of God following our societal repentance and not a work of man, I'm still hopeful that enemy combatants of what I've called the sexual holy war will, one by one be convicted by the Holy Spirit to throw down their arms and walk off the battlefield. And my prayer continues to be that when they do, they will walk into God's design for men and for women.
However unpopular it may be, however much scorn it may draw, however many headwinds we may encounter. Because past all the marring of original sin, we're still made in God's image. Which means that there's a garden out there waiting for us as children of Adam and Eve. May Tillie Dillehay's book My Dear Hemlock help show the way for all of us? Friends, we're not just recording conversations on the Will Spencer podcast.
We're part of a restoration project for Christian civilization in the west, and I need you in this fight with me. When you visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to write how these conversations impacted you. Your words might be exactly what someone needs to hear to give this show their first listen. And those conversations that shifted your thinking? Share them.
We're in a war for the soul of our culture, and these conversations are ammunition for the right side for those ready to go deeper, please visit willspencerpod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber for ad free interviews and exclusive content. And remember, our sponsors aren't just businesses, they're allies, building Christian economic wealth for generations to come. Supporting them isn't just spending money, it's investing in an American reformation.
A quick note before we begin, I'd like to recommend that all my listeners go check out three new interviews that I've just done, which I think are some of my best to date. First, my interview with Stuart Amidon on his Tactics Con podcast. In that hour long interview, I discussed some of the challenges reformed men are facing today and the roots of the chaos we're seeing online. Second, my interview with Lennox Califungwa for the new St. Andrews podcast, Flames and Crowns.
This high production value podcast focuses on my testimony and story of global travel and has caused quite a bit of stir online when I explained how anger has been used both to motivate and manipulate young men. Finally, I strongly recommend my recent appearance on the Watch well podcast with Parker Brown and Nick Sloan. On that episode, I discussed why the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is one of the most profound meditations on fatherlessness in modern cinema.
Yes, really, once you see it, it'll blow your mind. Please enjoy and you can find links to all three interviews in the show notes. And please welcome this week's guest on the Will Spencer Podcast, the author of My Dear Hemlock, out now on Canon Press, Tillie Dillehay. Tilly Dillehay. Thanks so much for joining me on the Will Spencer Podcast. It's so good to be with you. So I have your new book here, My Dear Hemlock.
I've been reading this in preparation for the interview and I have to let you know I've read many books this year. This might be my favorite book that I've read this year. So thank you so much for writing this book. Wow, that's great to hear. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I think there were sections that I was reading where I was like, I couldn't believe that. First, that this book got written and second, that it got published, especially given the era that we're in.
Yeah, well, not everybody would have published it. I think that's, that's just the truth. So. Correct. It's an eccentric project for sure. What do you mean by an eccentric project? Well, it just, it was, I guess to imitate screw tape is a, is probably a thing that someone shouldn't do, honestly. But so just doing an Imitation form for a book, for it to be fiction, but not really fiction that's, you know, unusual. And then for it to be hitting a lot of things about.
About just women's lives that are often, I think, not talked about. They're just. There were a lot of things about the book that I knew it wouldn't be a fit for just any publishing house. So, yeah, I was really grateful that they agreed to kind of run with me on it because I see it as being an eccentric project, for sure. Yes. I heard your interview with Doug Wilson where you said that you kind of had a feeling that canon would be the right place to go with that versus some other. Yeah, yeah.
What was the inspiration behind the book? Like, walk me through the genesis of it. And you're like, I think I'll try Screwtape letters, but written from the perspective of a woman. Yeah. I was just remembering this for a friend in a conversation with a friend about the book this week, that it started as some blog posts that I did. And this was, I think, maybe 2019, maybe 2020. And I believe that it started with a couple of the early letters on one of the letters on marriage, maybe.
So it was like, I want to write about this thing. I'm hearing some things with some, you know, in conversations with friends or younger newly married women. I would like to write about this, but writing a straight piece about it just doesn't. It doesn't feel like something I can just sit down and write a, you know, three reasons why you shouldn't think that you're better than your husband or whatever. You know, it's just something. It was. I think it was.
It was the letter where she's talking about, you know, teaching the woman to believe that she's genuinely superior to her husband in some way because of just kind of incidentals in their life. And I was. I wanted to write about that, and I couldn't see a way to do a straight. A straight article. So I thought, what if we were to fictionalize this and do an imitation screwtape? How would that.
And then I got really excited about, you know, just the fun of the writing challenge of that device, which. And then I wrote probably three or four, maybe five or six more blog posts before I ran out of stuff to write about and set it aside for a while. So did you have to get yourself into a specific mindset to inhabit the character of Madame Hoaxrot? Am I pronouncing that correctly? I think you are. I just finished the audio book, so that's how I pronounced it the whole time.
Yeah, I think it was just, it was just a fun kind of experiment to try to come up with the voice and not to do. Because, you know, with screw tape, it's a pretty, it's like a, like an Oxford don voice that he holds the whole time, which is pretty easy for him to hold because that's, that was his actual role in life. And it was, for me it was like, okay, how can we make this kind of more a feminine. Like, what would it mean for it to be a feminine voice?
And then kind of, what are you shooting for? And I do think there were probably some old, old books that I had read kind of floating around in the background. I think in college I really enjoyed Dangerous Liaisons, which is also. Which is another letter form book and has a wicked female voice. And it's an 18th century French, you know, female villain, basically writing letters. So that is probably.
I haven't thought much about how much that probably influenced the voice of Madame Hoaxrat, that one book. And then at least in doing the, doing the audiobook was a challenge for sure because I was like, you know, how Disney villainous. Mwahaha. Do you get with this? You know, how. I didn't want it to be difficult to listen to or cartoonish, you know, so it was something to kind of try to strike a balance.
It might be too cartoony for some people still, but I think listening to a lot of, A lot of Lewis audio of like lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, actresses doing the white witch probably snuck in there some. But. Yeah. Well, it's clear that you had some fun with the character. In fact, I think in one of, one of the later chapters you actually reference, you actually do reference the French Revolution where the demon got its name from. So maybe there was. I haven't read Dangerous Liaisons.
I remember when I was a child, the movie came out, it was very popular. Yeah. Is that, is the French Revolution when that's set? I don't remember exactly when that's set, honestly. I have a, I have an image of the movie maybe being kind of that era. I just. And I don't remember exactly when it was written either. So that it's not about the revolution at all. It's just about these wicked people at court kind of messing with, with other people's lives just for wickedness sake.
Yes. So you've got another meeting in the background. Yeah, yeah. Do you hear the baby? Yes, it's completely fine. Yeah. Okay. Well no, that, I think that also lends, you know, it lends authenticity to the voice to know that the book is about a demon, a manager demon, essentially writing to a lesser demon about tempting a woman as she moves through her sanctification journey and the challenges she faces as a new believer going all the way up to quite late in her life.
And so that you've lived these things definitely helps lend it a realm of authenticity, perhaps. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot. A lot of. A lot of the letters are about marriage, about young motherhood, about being a newer believer. So she does get up into her middle age by the end of the book. But that's. That's probably less. That's probably just a few letters, maybe five or six of the letters later on in life. So, yeah, it's definitely.
I mean, it's about things I've dealt with. A lot of it is very thinly veiled nonfiction. Me or friends or friends of mine. So it's not. It's really not. It's not fiction.
Well, that's the thing that I felt was so striking about the book, was that it was very revealing, in a way, of the inner lives of women in a way that I think a lot of modern writing culture and Christianity doesn't really go to, because we exist in this realm of women don't sin, and of course, we know that isn't true, but because women are so different from men, who is going to talk about that in an authentic way? Yeah, that's right. I mean, you have to.
I guess it has to be a woman who's willing to just dive right in there and do it. And I did want, you know, I think that's what, again, that's what drew me to this kind of device, was being able to fictionalize some of those temptations that were either directly, firsthand, or at the very most, secondhand experiences of me or people that I know very well. And fictionalizing them allowed me to, I think, to do maybe a deeper dive on them than I would have been able to do in a straight prose book.
So did you have to go within and explore some of these things within yourself? Like, what was I really thinking? What was I really going through in that moment? Or was it like. No, I remember that pretty clearly. Clearly that wasn't fun. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I guess it depends on the letter. Yes. And how it was structured or whatever. But, yeah, I think a lot of the letters really did start with, here's something I really want to write about. And here's a way to do that.
Yeah, I thought it was very brave. That was really the thing that struck me, particularly the section about marrying down about women believing that they could. Maybe I'll let you unpack that idea. Because I started encountering that chapter, and I got into that. And I said, I got into the chapter, and I was like, you know what? Like, that makes so much sense. I've seen that so many times. I've seen it. Well, exactly. Yeah. So take. Take that apart for people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's.
It's almost like. It's almost like a trope, you know, in some ways, the kind of slumpy husband with the. The awesome wife and like, you know, 90s sitcoms. But I was really thinking more true. You know, real experience with young wives that are coming to me. And, you know, we're having tea or whatever, and I'm. I'm just picking up this vibe, and then I'm noticing it in my own heart, you know, early on in marriage. And I'm seeing it, and I just see. Yeah, I've seen it a lot.
And I do think there's just. There's this weird kind of trick that Satan. That Satan gets a handle on women where they really believe being married to an average, hardworking guy in the church, you know, like, these are Christian men who go to work and bring home a paycheck and support your entire life. Like, this is. Our entire lives are made possible by these men.
And we somehow get this message that we either invent for ourselves or we pick up somewhere that there is something about us that is so special that we deserve better than this. Like, we deserve better than an average, normal life with an average, normal guy. And I don't know. I don't know if there are some women just more foolish that are kind of more prone to it or if there are certain factors.
I talk about fame in that chapter because at least at the time I was writing the chapter, I was connecting those things, that there are some women who, for whatever reason, just. They have this idea that they could have been famous. It's sort of that I could have been a contender thing in another life. You know, I could have been a model or an actress. I could have been a whatever, and somehow that gets planted. And there's a book that I read in high school, I think.
I mean, of Mice and Men has this exact character. There is a wife in that book who comes sidling around among these farmhands, and all she talks about is how there was this one movie producer guy who told her one time. I could have been in the pictures. So this is like 1930 something, you know, I guess it was a common daydream even then. I could have been in the pictures. I could have been. I could have been famous. Basically. I was. Some one person told her this and now she can never un.
She can never stop thinking about it. Basically, she's just. She's living her whole life in this sort of fantasy of what she could have been. So I don't know if I've ever seen someone's life just totally get wrecked, but I've seen women leave men before that were perfectly good men. And I have to wonder how much of that is this sort of fantasy idea that there is a. There's some better life out there and how much of that is even connected to the sort of the fame dream.
But the funny thing about living in an era of social media is that that illusion of potential fame is closer. It's more sustainable than it's ever been. I think. Madame Hoekstraut says it's sustainable energy for the demons that like the illusion that you could go and make yourself famous.
Like, I mean, potentially you could, I guess, if you knew how to work, you know, with these apps or whatever, and you really wanted to pursue that, a lot of people probably could make a career or whatever out of that. I just think what it means is that the average woman who doesn't, who isn't pursuing that, still has her fingers just so close to this sort of illusion that she could be famous. I just think it's more sustainable. So I don't know. Just what I've.
What I've seen, at least among women, is that there is a weird idea that you're. You're too special for normal life. So I appreciate. And you called it right away, like, I have seen this and I think part of the reason why I enjoy this book so much is of course I know many single men who are courting, dating and they're trying to figure out, well, what's going on with women today and they observe these behaviors, really, they. Oh, oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That's.
That's why I've recommended to men to read it because when they try to like, what is going on. And social media, of course, is a big. Is a big part of that, like get women getting a lot of attention through social media, whether they actively court or not. Pretty illusion. Yeah, pretty illusionary. Is that a word? The attention you receive online, I think, messes with your perception of whether people are actually looking at you and caring about you.
So it sets you up to not be able to live in reality very well. Yep. I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday who had been having a long conversation with a man and it didn't work out. It's like, well, social media, online attention is a simulacra for an actual emotionally validating relationship with a real world in person. Person. But it can be very easy for both men and women.
But I think in particular the temptations of attention, women are more susceptible to them and so with social media profiles. But I never would have connected that to a life vision. Like, oh, maybe I can be famous. Like, certainly there are female content creators who do leverage their image into a certain sort of fame or success, but I never would have connected that to the everyday, average woman that she would also struggle with that temptation.
I mean, like, if it's in Steinbeck, it's not a new phenomenon, right? Yeah, that was what. Yeah, that was. What was kind of surprising to me is like, how many women were going to be in the film industry in the 1930s. That wasn't. It wasn't that realistic of a thing to pursue. I don't know. But maybe. Yeah, but it's not realistic now either, right? Correct.
But it may appear to be more so realistic because so many people seem to be at least their Instagram polished life makes them appear as if that they're perhaps famous when behind the scenes it's probably a little less polished. Right? Yeah. And the demon actually says this in the letter. She says, if your patient is pretty, then that is one factor at least that's going to prepare her for this, this particular temptation. Like, you'll have a better end for this.
If she has been told at some point in her life, you know, that she's attractive, like, it's just going to set her up for this illusion. So, yeah, I don't know. No, I appreciate you writing these things because it's important for women to know themselves in this way because I don't know that there are a lot of pastors or fathers or mothers that are going to tell women this. But if it's a common thing. And plus, I mean, we're just talking about one letter out of the entire book.
If these are common temptations that women are susceptible to, they need to know this. Particularly I like what you said about they will pursue fame because an average life isn't good enough. And I've met so many men with good, stable jobs and careers are like, I can't find anyone because Maybe I'm not six feet tall or. Please tell me where they are because I've got all the single women are in my church waiting for those guys. Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
That's why I was actually surprised when you were saying this is a, you know, I'm seeing an inside of marriages. I don't know if I'm seeing it so much in the single, you know, in the single world because my, you know, my particular, whatever church context, I see all these ready to go women and we just don't have a lot of single men out here. But. But yeah, I know so many ready to go men that can't find. I don't know. I'm telling you, it's time to start.
It's time to start a website or something for these people. It is. I'm ready for matchmaking to come back. I'm serious. I actually do believe that's the future because I don't think churches know how to handle it. I don't think apps are going to handle it. I think some brave people will step forward and try to begin doing something like that, to begin putting these pieces together. But again, it's going to require men and women both who are willing to just marry.
Whoever you get matched with, just go for it, just line up and get married. Just. Just dive right in. Well, there is something to that. Like, I've joked often that, you know, during our grandparents era, like, they would be walking down the street one day and like, they'd sneeze and they'd see each other like, oh, that's the person I'm going to marry. And they'd be married two weeks later. Right. And now it's, it's, it's far more complicated.
But I think that, I don't know, is it that there are more temptations, do you think? Or is it just we're less aware of the existing temptations or maybe fewer societal controls? Perhaps? The temptations are you talking about within which temptations are you talking about the temptations to. Well, in the case of your book, the temptations to women specifically, men will always have their own set of temptations. But we'll keep it with women specifically. Yeah, yeah.
I think the options, it's just there's. This is across the board, men and women with, with getting married. It's just you think that you have options out coming out of your ears and you don't. Like, you just don't. Or if you do, maybe you do, but eventually you're gonna have to pick somebody and just move forward, you know, and I think it is just, you know, it's a. It's a demonstrable societal problem that we have with options. So I think that's what we're experiencing.
So in other sections of the book, you also deal with the woman's relationship to her husband. So she has decided that she's not marrying down or she remains married to him. But then there are the temptations that exist through marriage itself. Maybe we can talk about some of those. Yeah, so there's. There is a chapter. There's an early chapter about them right after they get married. And just some of the basics of like, marriage just being. Being kind to each other, being courteous.
So the idea that so much of your joy and your enjoyment of a marriage comes down to just common courtesy, like speaking kindly to each other, listening to each other, greeting each other when you enter a room, you know, and the. The idea that when people. Or confessing sin to each other, there's. There's several chapters about confession of sin and how that works inside of a marriage and outside. But some of the. Just the basics.
I think we tend to think that our problems are more complicated than they really are. And I think there's a. There's a. Some kind of a part in there where she says the human beings are all Naamans. They. They think that once their marriage is in a bad place or it's not a, you know, a delightful place to be in, they search around for more clinical answers than just the basics of confess sin and speak kindly to each other because they think, you know, a simple wash in the Jordan is.
Is not enough for my problem. My problem is too big for that and too complicated for that. And often they're not. It's not, you know, sometimes it's just go back to the basics of attentiveness and keeping the. As Doug Wilson has said about keeping the floor picked up. That's an illustration that we have returned to many times in our marriage.
Just making sure that the things you drop on the floor when you sin against each other in your marriage, that you continue to pick those things up and you're never gonna have to. You're never going to stop doing that. You know, I don't care how many years you've been married, the basics are still going to serve you. So. Yeah, and then there's later in the. Later in the book, there's a whole chapter where she's being tempted.
The patient's being tempted to have an emotional affair or she's kind of Tiptoeing in to, you know, being involved in an emotional affair with a guy that she works with, I think. And the. Just some of the differences between the way a male brain works and the way a female brain works. Obviously I don't have a male brain. I've been told, you know, how things work over there. But I know that with us, it's not. Lust is not going to look the same way.
So we're going to be more interested in a man being totally enamored of us, being totally in love all the way down, whatever that means, you know, and that those are the things she is basically preoccupying herself with in her sort of fantasy time is thinking about this man and what does he think of me and is he really that attracted to me? So I just. I think that just started with me being me. Seeing marriages actually in. Fall apart over these kind of little.
A workplace thing or a friendship that kind of just went bad, basically went too far and just wondering, like, how does that happen? Like, how do you trick yourself into thinking that you're on safe ground until you're not anymore? And how does that work on the ground in real life? So kind of a thought experiment about that. And then, yeah, more marriage chapters.
I think eventually in the book, she gets to this point where gratitude takes over and she realizes her just how absolutely blessed she is in her marriage and in her life and recognizes that applying gratitude to all of life is the path to happiness. Basically, it's the way to be happy. So, yeah, I agree. So I have a ton of questions for you.
So the first one that I have is for married couples, maybe newly married couples, or maybe they've been married for a long time that haven't picked up the floor, so to speak. But they understand that there's a need to. They've suddenly become aware that, okay, this might be a good way to start to fix things. What advice would you give to couples in that position?
How do you start that process of picking up the floor when maybe you've left the floor unpicked up for longer than you should have, let's say. Right. Yeah, I think. And this. I know that. I know that men are prone to this too, but I know that women tend to think if he's not doing this, if he's not going to take over and fix this situation, there's nothing I can do about it. And obviously it would be great if the man always understood what to do and did it in a marriage situation.
But sometimes the clarity comes to you first of, like, here's what we need to do. And it really does only take one person to start picking up the floor because something on the floor was something you dropped, even if most of it is something he dropped. You know, there's something on the floor that was you. And you can begin this minute, you can begin today, tonight to repent and then to start just practicing the process of repentance.
In that chapter about confessing sin, the demon talks about different categories of sin. Like the big bad life altering sins like drunkenness or something big. And then that being kind of different from the everyday, the kind of constant day in and day out sins against the other person and how we kid ourselves. I think that some sins we avoid confessing because they seem too great and some we avoid confessing because they seem too small.
And so those, because they seem too small sins are the day in and day out. You know, you're probably going to need to confess something or other multiple times a day for a while, especially if you're new to it. Just recognize like this is routine. It's like getting your teeth cleaned. You know, it's like getting, it's like unloading the dishwasher. Like this is part of everyday life, living in a home with another person.
But also like, don't underestimate the power of these things because when you, when you don't do them, this is where hatred begins. Like these, those old couples that we all know who hate like can't stand the side of each other, who just a steady stream of nitpicking and, and obnoxious, you know, just rudeness to each other. They started by not picking up the floor. Like that is how those things start.
And it is like it's true hatred that can grow out of those little stupid things that got dropped on the floor. So yeah, you have to nip that in the bud. So another, another question I had for you is, oh, by the way, I did want to say I appreciate you saying that the woman can actually lead in that because there's a debate that happens amongst men that has, well, the man should lead in that.
And I usually say, well and I agree with you that if you as a woman listening, feel called to repent for something, you don't actually have to wait for your husband to lead in that. If you have that moment of clarity, you can actually lead in that. It is okay, yeah, that is something to, that is something to be clear on for a woman.
Like she needs to know where she stands in that because you know, I think It's a very important conversation for men to be having about leadership in the home and, you know, all of those things, obviously. But a woman is a Christian, you know, a woman is a Christian person who stands before God and it answers alone. On the final day of judgment, she will stand there before the Lord and answer for her sin, and he's not going to be able to do that for her.
So there are some women out there who don't need to be told that. I think a lot of women do need to be told that. Like, you're grown up, you're a grown girl. You know, you can. You can. You can. You can make some amazing things happen in your home by doing. By doing what's right, by being obedient and just behaving Christianly towards your husband. There's also a debate that happens online that some men seem to believe the idea that if men were better leaders, women wouldn't sin.
And that idea seems to be. And I think there's nothing that could be more sexist than that idea. But I fight with men over this. That's why I like this book so much, because there's nothing in this book. This book is written by a woman. There's nothing in this book, or almost nothing really, about the way the husband is going wrong. There's nothing that he's doing this wrong.
There's maybe a little bit of suggestion here and there, but in general, it's all her own inner and outer life with her relationships, the temptations and the sins that a woman is prone to as a woman that have nothing to do with her husband. And I found that to be such a beautiful, I guess, teaching tool. Completely independent of what her husband is doing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't have to go far out of my own door to know that a man can be doing everything right.
And a woman can still sin, you know, can still even choose to be unhappy, because I'm married to actually a very godly man. And that does not guarantee, you know, my deciding, I'm going to have a great day today. You know, it just doesn't. So it's still. It's still my responsibility. Yes, definitely. Women should know that. But also, I think it's very.
And this is a weird word to use in our circles, but I think it's very empowering to women in the right way to recognize that your husband's sin does not tie your hands behind your back in life. I mean, it can definitely affect your life so much. And I understand that. You know, I'VE known women who were married to very difficult men, but that does not. That does not have to stop you in your tracks, and it does not have to take away your witness, and it does not have to take away your joy.
Some of the women who have been the most encouraging to me in the Lord were some of these women who were. And this is actually mentioned in the book, like, make sure the patient doesn't spend any time with that Mary, who's over on the. Sits on the left side of the church and her husband's kind of obnoxious and she lives in an apartment, and yet she's just glad to be alive and she's faithful where she is.
And she is saying so much about the gospel because you can't look at her life and say, well, of course she's. There's no incidental things about her life that make you look at her and say, oh, well, obviously she's happy. Look how rich her husband is, you know, or look how. Look how great her life is. Obviously she's got joy. So there is something. There is something huge in that woman who's faithful and who's still taking responsibility for her spiritual.
Her spiritual life, even in a difficult situation. So. And that's one of the things I remember you got into in the middle of the book about faithfulness isn't dependent on circumstance. Like, oh, of course they have good family worship. They have this lovely living room. Or of course they host. They have a giant. Giant house. Right. Stuff like that. And to not tie. To not tie your faithfulness to your set of circumstances.
Yeah, I think that chapter opens with just the idea of, like, women are such that we're very physical creatures. I guess we're all about the spaces that we're in. Obviously our bodies are these sort of environments of growth and stewardship. And then our homes are the same way where we. We grow and birth and produce in these spaces. And so we react to, like, Instagram photos of a beautiful home almost with like, a kind of lust, you know, like just the.
Or at least just our brains are wired to really just respond to images of, like, perfectly appointed spaces or bodies. Fashion, you know, so we care about the environment. And so. And that's good. There are many good things about that because it's. It's, in many ways that's, you know, our calling has to do with these spaces and these, these things, these dishes, these, you know, the food that we're making, all these physical things.
But I think that means that we can be especially prone to Confusing obedience and productivity with the beauty of the space or the stuff that you could own or have to say that, like, I can't really be faithful if I'm not in a space that's like that, you know, so just that these. These things can kind of trip us up. We can confuse the two things. As you were sitting down with friends, perhaps to. To talk about some of the issues in the book or talk about some of the ideas, what was that like?
I imagine that it could be very challenging, perhaps very rewarding, perhaps very sanctifying, because these sounds like topics that women would need to talk about amongst themselves, but might be kind of difficult to bring up. Yeah, I don't remember any really difficult. I think a lot of it was kind of osmosis. Some of the things, like, I don't remember sitting down talking with anyone specifically about any of the chapters, except for the sex chapter.
That was actually the one chapter that I was like, let me interview somebody about this. But I think other than that, it was just kind of the organic conversations that you have over years and hearing how people process things. Yeah, I can hear all of my listeners right now wondering, what did you talk about with that person in the sex chapter? In the sex chapter, I just wanted. Yeah, I wanted to. I wanted to know, like, does this. Is this encouraging or is this discouraging to you?
Like this the whole point of writing, because I think I had mentioned. Or in an early chapter, I had mentioned when they were newlyweds, like the demon. I wanted to. I wanted to establish early in the book that the demons hate physicality of all kinds. So that she hates. She hates that the patient is gardening. She hates that the pregnant. When the patient gets pregnant.
She hates the fact that the patient is pregnant, making more of these vermin, you know, and she hates the sexual act between the husband and the wife. It was obviously very important to me to make it clear, like, the demons don't like this. This is not. This is not a point on their team, you know, for a husband and wife to be sexually active together. So I do think that's a message I wanted to get across to women. But I. I didn't have a whole chapter about it until later on.
I think the editors pointed out that I had sort of planted a little teaser for a chapter and then never wrote that chapter. So it was. The last chapter that I wrote was. That was adding in the. That chapter. But the whole point of it, I think, is just. I guess just to let. To let women know, like, this is a Big deal. And this is something that you. You can be faithful in, and it's something that you can be.
That you can kind of underemphasize as a duty and a joy and one of the ways that you bless your husband. So that's something I think women should be encouraging each other in person about. Like, this is something we. This is part of. This is a big part of life. So that was a. That theme running through the book is one that. I thought you understood men pretty well, actually. In the.
In the chapter about the affair, you said any man who would say something like, oh, we shouldn't, you know, that is. That is the. That's the. Yeah, right. That's right. That's right. That's not. That's not the right kind of guy. But then you talked. You talked about how men need physical touch. And you can't just look at men as some sort of sex fiend. That in some. There. There is in a way that every man has that need. And that is. That is very true.
And then the communication of giving, like the mutual exchange between. Between the couple, like all of these things I felt were very accurate portrayals of the. Of the male side without him, without the name of the husband even being a presence so much in the narrative. Like, he very much was there, and it was very authentic. Like, I could read it and say, yes, I can see myself reflected in that. Great. That's great. Great to hear. So as you were.
As you were writing the book, as you were getting further. So obviously there are sections of it that represent parts of life that you've lived. So as you get further into the book, you're sort of maybe looking a little bit down the road. How did you explore some of those topics? I don't want to spoil the book. I know I've already been really bad to do that. I have. But I did.
I just remember that is another interview that I did was actually about those final two chapters to do with a dear family friend. And they're just family scenes toward the end of her life. So I was. I was interviewed to get some of that. Just the detail, I guess. Yeah, I did have to kind of guess about some things, but towards the end, I think it's like talking about aging. One of those chapters, I didn't have to guess about that because I'm.
I'm feeling that I'm in my mid-30s or whatever, but I'm just. I'm starting to feel the. The march of time and realizing what it's. I'm Getting the first feelings of like, okay, this is what it feels like when you. You realize your role in life is going to change. Like, you, you've identified yourself as maybe this young mom or this young professional before you were a young mom. And then it's going to change again.
But also as you age and you start to realize people see you now as just a mom or they see you as just a grandmother. And that's something that kind of happens to women. And what are you going to do with that? Like, are you going to fight that tooth and nail and say, no, I'm not a grandmother? What do you mean? You know, I'm not a grandmother. I'm a young, beautiful woman still, you know, and just how hard are you going to clamp down on what you used to be or who you used to be?
What are you willing to do, the things that some women are willing to do, to try to turn back the clock and then just how lovely and how victorious it can be to instead embrace the aging that is reminding you that you're dying. The thing that it's doing is letting you know that your time is short and that death is real and that what you're living in is an adventure that is going to end. And so what are you going to do with that time?
So just to me, like, aging is a way of making it super real to you that your body's dying and that you need the new heavens and the new earth to be real because it's the only hope that you have. And so, you know, that's what we're doing. I guess, as women, if we're going to age gracefully, what we're doing is our fingers are being kind of loosened off of life itself. I know that the second there's a sequel to the Pilgrim's Progress that's about Christian's wife.
And I haven't read it, but from having read My Dear Hemlock, it felt very much like, sort of like that. That in its own way, like, here's a woman walking the road of life, and here are all these detours that she can end up taking into things that are unrighteous or unwise. And here's what the path of faithfulness looks like that continues to ask of her.
Expansion is like sacrificing herself, expanding her self concept to include things that she never would have otherwise considered right up and right up until the later chapters. And I just thought that was such a beautiful, a beautiful way of portraying the faithful life of a woman that I can't think of a similar book that communicates a message like that.
Yeah, I mean, I do think it's part of writing something like this is just hanging onto the hope that eventually you're going to grow into those seasons yourself. That you may have started as a very. In this character. This character begins as a. A pretty immature, petty, shallow person. And you just. You get to see the fact that the Lord really does change those things about a person when they. When they enter into his flock.
Like, they're actually going to be a different person by the time they die. And I, you know, I cling to that hope because there, you know, there are a lot of things that. About this character that are me as a young person. So the idea that you might eventually reach mature middle age and old age and, you know, be wise is something to really. It's very encouraging to me. And hope, you know, fills me with hope. So. So it had a transform writing, you writing.
It had a transformative impact on you a little bit as well. I think it did. Yeah. I think it did. Because it does. It. It sets. You set your sights for, like, what is my goal here? What's best case scenario in my life? You know, have you heard the same from other women who have read it or maybe during the editing process or maybe now that it's been released? Yeah, I guess I've heard.
Just. I've had a lot of friends who read it really, really quickly, for one thing, which was surprising to me, and just. Who just talk about the conviction. I think mostly just being convicted and then being emotional at the end. So that's sweet, too. I imagine everyone gets convicted about a different. I was convicted of many things. Even though it's, you know, it's. I think it's a. It's a mutually convicting experience because there are men's versions of these same. Of these same temptations.
Right? Yeah, yeah. Some people have said. I've definitely heard some people online saying, like, why. What do you mean? Why do we need a woman's. We don't need a woman screw tape. And obviously we don't need a woman's screw tape. Yeah, I know, but it's just the idea of like, I'm a woman. I'm a woman, and I love the screw tape letters. I don't need a she. A she screw tape, you know, which I totally get.
But obviously I wouldn't have written this book if I didn't love the screw tape letters and gleaned and gleaned so much from the screw tape letters for so Many years. And I think it was just. This was a great device that I was happy to. To borrow from Lewis for a little while to write about things that I really thought were relevant to us today. Have you gotten any negative pushback on the book? Has anyone been outraged by it, perhaps? Not yet. Yeah, not yet. Not yet.
It hasn't been out for very long. Yeah, right. So another book of yours that I wanted to ask you about. I wanted to ask you about Breaking Bread, because I discovered that book after, and it seems to be with. Especially with RFK Jr being nominated to head up the FDA, that there's going to be a really big conversation coming about food in America in general. So I wonder. I haven't had a chance to read the book, so I don't know a whole ton about it, but it's such a touchy topic, 360 degrees.
So I wonder if we can get into that book just a little bit. Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's been a little while. But that book came out in 2020, so it was an awkward time to have a book come out because no one was thinking about food really at that time. No one was thinking about dying of COVID But the book was. I think it was a response to something I was just seeing in the church and just a preoccupation with food and diet culture. And I was seeing a lot of people who were suddenly allergic to.
There was a lot of gluten allergy that would kind of come and someone would be allergic to gluten, and then they would be not allergic to gluten after a while. And I just. I felt like everybody was kind of just looking for. Looking for something. And it felt like. It felt like we were just. The church was kind of acting like the world but on a short delay, which is what we do a lot of the time. But I was just thinking, I feel like this has too much power in the church.
It's strange to me that there would be a lot of Christians who are not eating whole food groups for long periods of time to the degree that you have someone over and they can't eat what you're serving them. It felt like it was weighing too much, I guess, in the church. So I think that's why I started thinking about the topic and writing about the topic. But basically the structure of the book is like four food polls or like four extremes. So asceticism, like fear of.
Fear of pleasure in food, the idea that, like, the Seventh Day Adventist maybe position of, like, there are so many things that are bad for you, really. If it tastes good, it's probably dangerous for you to be eating. And then the, so just kind of a love of rules as a way of kind of controlling your life, I guess.
And, and then on the other side from that, just gluttony like which almost like law gospel kind of swinging from you go on a diet when, which I dieted when I was like 13 or 14 years old for the first time. So I was a real young dieter. Led, which led later on into a major just binging food problem and a, and an eating disorder.
So yeah, so I, I, I know very well that sort of dance back and forth between try to, try to come up with more rules that are going to get my flesh under control and then the swing out of that into just total, you know, debauchery basically that often happens when you try to use the law to get your flesh under control. So, and then the other two polls were snobbery and apathy. So these are more like cult like using food as culture markers.
Like I found this ingredient that no one else knows about and I'm going to make you feel foolish that you haven't heard about this yet or I only eat expensive food or whatever. And then on the other, the pendulum swing away from that. Like, okay, I'm not going to be snobby about food, so I'm going to pretend that all food is basically created equal. Like eating at McDonald's every day of the week is no better than making delicious food at home.
So yeah, so those were sort of the four poles that I was dealing with early on in the book. And I do think that I probably, it's, it's possible I would write that book a little differently now than I did in 2019.
I do think that part of what I was kind of assuming in writing the book was that if someone is thinking about their health all the time, it's because they're, they just love thinking about their health and they have a, they have like an imbalance and a problem thinking about it and talking about it all the time.
And I think having some personal health issues since then has, has helped me at least understand that sometimes people talk about it because there's a problem that they're trying to solve and it's a burden to them because there's an actual issue that they're trying to deal with, you know, and they can still, I think it can still become an idol, it can still become an obsession to talk about these things, but I think I just have a Bigger probably space in my mind now for why you might want to
talk about these things. So it was sort of at the time you wrote the book, it was responding to what you saw as some unhealthy trends in the Christian community and all these four different ways, which I absolutely agree with. I did look at the table of contents on Amazon and that was when I oh, this is for real. This is not a, you know, this is not trying to dive into one book. No. And nor was it, but. Well, even in the secular world. The secular world deals with these issues as well.
Like you can go to any major city and you sit down with, you know, make a liberal friend and sit down to dinner with them and say, oh, I need that to be gluten free, free range, bespoke, you know, sustainable. Right. Where you deal with that, but then you also deal with people who don't care at all. I looked at the table of contents again. It's not usual for me to have not read a book. I'm someone, I'm asking someone about.
But it seemed to me to be a very balanced perspective to give tools to think about it, rather than just advocating for a hard position like there are ditches on all four sides of the road. I suppose that's right. Yeah. And then I think a lot of the rest of the book was just developing sort of what had been so helpful to me because obviously I've been in every one of the ditches. You know, I've spent time in all. In all four of those stitches.
And in the end, I mean, after having this eating disorder that just chewed me up and spit me out metaphorically, I. The thing that was helpful to me was the thing that was, was actually healing, was cooking, was learning to cook for my family. So learning to cook first for my husband and then. And then for kids and just learning kind of the delights, the delight that food can be and that it can be a tool to serve. And it's a tool to unite people in the church.
And the only time, the only thing I feel really strongly about is people using it to divide in the church instead of using it as a tool for free unity, which is exactly what the epistles. That seems to be Paul's burden too, is just, I don't really care whether you eat the food that came from the marketplace or I don't really care about, I care how are you treating your brothers and sisters.
And the same thing with like, I think there's a chapter about alcohol in there, you know, is this going to Be a thing that you use to love your brothers and sisters or is it going to be something you use to be obnoxious? You know, so I think that was, that was the main thrust of that book. And I remember you also plugged those themes into My Dear Hemlock where you had, you talked about, was it abstention?
And you talked about, maybe we can, we can go back to My Dear Hemlock and talk about those unique challenges I think the woman faces. Like abstention is one of them. And then wine with her friends, perhaps maybe we could talk a little bit about those. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So there's a chapter that talks about something that I have thought about before called I call it the abstention bias. But the idea that I think women tend to assume that the burden of proof is on permissiveness.
So like if you have a friend, if you're in a conversation with a friend and they don't say, own a television or they don't celebrate Christmas or whatever it is, like if they, if there's something that you do that they don't do on, even on legitimate conviction, I think that women just tend to have a knee jerk reaction of. I think maybe it's more righteous to not do the thing than to do it. I think maybe it's more righteous to abstain from something than to partake in it.
It feels more righteous. It sounds more righteous, you know, And I just think, I don't know, I don't know why that is. I'm not sure where that comes from. There's a sort of guess in the book that maybe it's because Eve's sin was a sin of commission instead of, you know, because she partook. But I just think that for whatever reason, when we hear that someone's not doing something, we immediately start checking ourselves like, oh my goodness, so I am doing, I am doing this thing.
So I think with food that's just. Food is just one of the many ways that this shows up. But you find out that someone is not eating a food group, it definitely causes you to wonder, do I need, should I be looking into this too? You know, and maybe you should, but I'm just, I just, I want, I want to be aware of the fact that you shouldn't be assuming necessarily that abstention is holier than, than the opposite. So. And then with the wine night. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, please.
So the wine night was just the, the whole chapter was mostly a social thing. I mean, there was some commentary I guess on, on drinking behaviors. But mostly it was just about spending time with these worldly women. And this was actually an almost direct copy of one letter out of the Screwtape letters that I just loved and wanted to use again. But where he has friends who are worldly and then friends in this sort of church, in the. You know, these Christian friends and these worldly friends.
And he bounces back and forth between the two groups. And both of the groups make him feel better about himself because he keeps a foot in both camps when he's with the worldly people. They make him feel like I'm holier than they are, so he can kind of hold that little part of himself. And then when he's with the Christian groups, he thinks how much more, you know, cultured he is because he also has this other worldly group of people. So he just. It's a way. It's a pride. It's a pride thing.
So that's what the mom. In this letter, the mom is spending time with her old college friends who are worldly, and they make her feel like she's better than they are because she doesn't do. She wouldn't go as far as they would in certain ways. She wouldn't say that about her husband or she. She doesn't have that extra glass of wine or whatever, but she's being influenced by them, even.
So. So. So as you think back on the book and the writing process and now that it's been published, do you think that. Do you think you lived up to the standard you set for yourself to do honor to CS Lewis Legacy? It's a terrible question to ask anybody. Oh, probably you don't have to answer it then. Just cut it out. I just mean, like, there have been times when I was rereading. When I was rereading the first draft, which was incredibly rough. It was a super rough draft. This is my third book.
The first book went to. Went to press basically in the state that I handed it to the publisher because I had had five years to work on it and, you know, edit it basically over time myself. The second book was a little rougher. This was by far the roughest manuscript I've ever turned in. And I just had. Because I just couldn't look at it anymore. And it just was such. It was all over the place. There's so many different topics. You know, it was just a. It was a weird book to write.
And the editors, the Canon guy who they gave, he was awesome. I mean, he was. He was so helpful just in forcing me to get more logical throughout the book. But I say all that to say, like, there have been many times when I picked up this manuscript and I thought, this is the worst. This is so bad, and no one should ever do this. And why did I decide that this would be a good idea? So I don't know if I feel that way now, but I have to say it has. It's just don't do this sort of thing.
Don't invite people to compare you to CS Lewis. It's just a bad idea. It's a recipe for disaster. I don't know that. I don't know that that's. It says apples and oranges. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah. But I'll tell you, I think it's a worthy compliment. I think it's a worthy compliment to CS Lewis work.
I think it fills in an enormous cultural and perhaps even, I don't want to say theological, I don't want to make it sound grander than it is, but almost like there's a blind spot that it's being filled in, especially because we live in a post feminine mystique era, right. And the feminine mystique is this kind of cultural value that's not really spoken. It's like, oh, women can't be understood, perhaps not even by themselves. And I don't happen to believe that.
And I think it's a very dangerous idea to suggest to women that they can't be understood, nor can they understand themselves, because the Christian life demands that, demands that they understand themselves, particularly so they know they're sinning or not. So I think it was. It's a worthy compliment to C.S. lewis's work. That's a very good point about the just women being told that they can't even understand themselves. I don't know if I've ever heard that put in just that way.
But, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And as far as it being. I mean, obviously to. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I love, love, love Lewis. And probably, I mean, every book, everything I've ever written has been influenced in some way or other by Lewis. So this is just more of that can relate. So just if you don't mind, just one more quick question, if that's okay. Okay, so you're a wife and a mother of multiple children.
How and where do you find the time, the focus, the energy to set aside time to write in a focused way? I'm sure that there are lots of men and women who would be wondering about that. In particular Yeah, I take walks with a baby in a stroller or whatever. But we live in the country. I take walks and that's how I plan a piece of writing. That's how I get ideas is walks. And then I, and then I'll. I'll get up early mornings and, and work on something if I'm in the middle of something, you know.
And my husband actually has given me writing days too, here and there, you know, on a. He's a pastor, so he gets Mondays off. That's usually our family, you know, knock around, go and hike kind of day. But if I'm on deadline for something, he'll. Something, he'll give me some time then. So. Yeah, I mean, it's just different ways. You just steal. You steal the time here and there. You find the time here and there.
But I don't know, there's seasons in life when it's just not time to write and I might be in one of those right now. I mean We've got an 18 month old and, and my other three kids are 9, 7 and 5 and they're. We're homeschooling. So you know, it's. It's just, it's a, It's a time when my mind is full of just what I'm doing with them and it's plenty enough to keep, you know, to keep my mind satisfied. So I don't know, it may.
I don't know if it's going to be a long time before something else comes up as another project. Screw Tape Letters for kids. Yeah. Oh yeah. A co write with a 975 year old. I'm sure now that will be a project. Yeah. Sounds fun actually. Yeah. Well, Tilly, thank you so much for the generosity of your time. I know you have a lot going on and thank you for your work and thank you for this book. I really was very blessed by it and I hope my listeners will be too. Great. Thank you.
Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do? Oh goodness. I. I guess Facebook or the Canon. Canon is put this book out. You could go to the Canon page. I don't, I don't. I'm not on Instagram anymore and I don't have a website anymore. So I just, I just got rid of both those things. So I guess Facebook. Great. I'll send them to Facebook into Canon Sa.