*Trigger Warning for those women who have been spiritually abused I am convinced scripture is meant to be a scalpel that facilitates healing and leads us into the painful holy act of repentance and transformation. Yet often scripture can resemble a crowbar. Looking to pound, shame, and control those who [...]
It’s important to note this article's intent is not to be used to justify abusive behavior but to more clearly define it. If you are a woman in an unsafe situation, get safe, immediately. I have been working with abusive men in my private counseling practice for ten [...]
Many women long for good and safe men in their lives. Sadly, they are rare, so much so that my wife keeps a list in her top drawer to remind herself that they even exist. Women need more good men. But men also need more good men. We long [...]
In 1955, Housekeeping Monthly published an article called, "The Good Wife's Guide," telling wive’s how to be a “good wife” to their husbands. This is the social norm that laid a foundation that our parents were born into and still permeates in the patriarchal, misogynistic air that we breathe. [...]
It’s rare, but it happens. Abusive men can heal. But by rare, I mean the data is abysmal. Becoming safe and doing the work of healing only happens among roughly 1 in 10 abusive men. Your abusive husband can heal when, and only when, he fully faces the depth of [...]
Merely being a living, breathing human in this gloriously fallen world is a task in itself. Yet throwing in living in partnership, both people attempting to authentically with full desire even more daunting. Marriage is grueling, at times feels like an impossible invitation to the heights of Heaven and the [...]
We love a good narcissist. Like flies drawn to the organic matter within feces, we hover close to a narcissist to try to catch some of what they seem to have, but what they actually offer us is clearly already decaying waste to those who are not the flies. Crude [...]
*trigger warning: Degrading language, graphic sexual abuse described Patriarchy’s influence on popular culture has made objectification and violence against women normative. We are so accustomed to violence against women, we don’t even react to it anymore. Songs I grew up listening to, for example, “O.P.P." by Naughty By [...]
I am proud to feature the work of Dr. Nancy Murphy on my blog today. Dr. Murphy is a professor, former Executive director of Northwest Family Life, and created Speaking Up online course to help educate churches in navigating issues of Domestic Violence. She has been my teacher and supervisor [...]
There are many stigmas that need to be broken in the Christian tradition. The stigma of divorce in the Christian community is a phenomenon where folks are, after much pain and heartache, retraumatized and relegated to a second-class-citizen type of Christian and branded as damaged goods, a failure, or both. [...]
I am a bowling ball heavy with holes, unwilling to be used by you any longer. You finger me at your will then Throw me away again and again, and again. I have become hard to survive; your grip is squeezing the life from me You toss me away, send [...]
Reader's Ask Andrew, My 20-year marriage ended in a rapid divorce last year. We share three children ages 9, 6, and 3. As a pastor's kid, I was steeped in patriarchy and lots of chaos in a dysfunctional family that over-spiritualized life and moralized disagreements to perpetuate enmeshment. I married [...]
I was attending a professional training group to improve my therapeutic skills when I was brought face to face with deep, lingering fear and shame around my past treatment of women and idolatry of beauty. One of the exercises we were asked to do was to pair up with another [...]
Some of the most committed Christians I know have suffered the heartbreak of a divorce. Each story is different, each heartache unique. Some are the result of infidelity and betrayal or covert abuse. Other times, contempt extends so deeply over the years that the other begins to look more [...]
As I've become aware of the complexities of sexism, I see the world much differently than I did before. I am beginning to look for ways to raise my children to not “drink the kool-aid” of sexism that is so ingrained in American society, especially in evangelical culture. Recently, my [...]
In Honor of International Women's Day and all the Fierce Women in my life. I am grieved deeply by how many women attempt to become small; I see the way you try your hardest to become less than. Less attractive, less brilliant, less strong, trying your damnedest to become something [...]
Here is Part 3 of this continued series of letters both to and from an honest misogynist. May it stir your heart to action against violence. This piece was written in collaboration with Rose Gwynn. Part 1 Part 2 Dear Honest Misogynist, What a journey this has been. I have learned [...]
One thing I have always struggled with is learning how to fight clean. In my family of origin, we won arguments by any means necessary: belittling, demeaning, and making the other person feel as small and as insignificant as possible in order to gain the upper hand. If that sounds [...]
Internalized sexism and patriarchy are deeply entrenched into American culture. Even the Christmas season is not immune from this plague. As we celebrate the baby Jesus’ courageous entry into our world, sexist songs and rhetoric attempt to make light of sexual entrapment and the complete disregard of female voices and [...]
I recently did an interview with Northwest Family Life on the intersection of Pornography and Domestic Violence. I find this topic and conversation vital to the healing gender violence and healing masculine violence. If you are interested in this topic, please sign up for my online course What About the Men in [...]
