Join me and Alisha Roth for a honest conversation about what it takes to leave a marriage when you’ve done everything “right”—the Christian college, the missionary training, the four daughters—and why the church’s fear and control around divorce leaves women trapped in unsafe situations.

Topics Covered

* The question that changed everything and why the answer unlocked self-love Alisha couldn’t access when it was just about her own safety

* Why “your husband has a right to your body” made it impossible to trust what her body already knew, and how one therapist naming abuse as abuse cracked open the church bubble keeping her trapped

* The stat the church doesn’t want you to know

* Why women who choose to leave face different judgment than women who get left

* What happened when Alisha’s therapist refused to tell her whether to get divorced—and why learning that taking ownership of your own life (instead of keeping everyone else happy) is the holy work

Timestamps:

01:00 When Everything Looks Right But Something’s Wrong

05:00 Having Someone Name the Abuse Changes Everything

10:00 Why the Church Blames Women Who Leave

15:00 Fear, Control, and Managing God’s Image

20:00 Finding Hope and Community After Loss

24:00 Why It Matters to Talk About Choosing to Leave

29:00 Taking Ownership: “I Have to Make This Decision”

32:00 Rebuilding Faith: Love Over Rules

35:00 Finding the Book and Alisha’s Work

Join us for this podcast crossover episode! I’m bringing you our I Read Something Bad discussion about bad Christian art. If you’re into spicy fantasy books and spiritual formation, check out I Read Something Bad Podcast biweekly!

Today your Matron Saints of Spice are tackling the ever-controversial question of why so much Christian art feels thin, didactic, and aesthetically weak—and just plain BAD.

We’re getting real about how flattening the Bible into surface-level application points has destroyed our capacity to engage layers in any medium, why making Ruth and Boaz into a love story completely misses the point about welcoming the stranger, and how capitalism turned humans into resources to be used up—which means our entire identity got wrapped up in usefulness instead of Imago Dei.

Topics Covered:

* The definition of good art as opening perception and making room for the reader versus bad art that reduces experience to propaganda with predetermined conclusions

* Why Christian art often fails the hospitality test—inviting someone over just to lecture them about what to believe instead of offering actual coffee and conversation

* Post-Reformation history of shifting from visual imagery (icons, stained glass) to language-only emphasis, and how the printing press made accessibility a priority that accidentally flattened everything

* The Enlightenment’s need for certainty, empirical knowledge, and being on the same page—which bled into making messages crystal clear at the expense of mystery and layers

* How “Facing the Giants” versus “Remember the Titans” shows the difference between heavy-handed Christian messaging and wrestling with justice/humanity through storytelling

* Why Ruth and Boaz isn’t a romance about finding your person—it’s about Boaz depicting how Jesus welcomes strangers and provides for the vulnerable (Ruth said “where you go I will go” to NAOMI, people)

* The collapse of context and layers in Bible reading, and how treating Scripture as flat application points instead of artistic literature kills our ability to engage depth anywhere else

* How usefulness became our framework for existence instead of beauty, and why that’s devastating when your productivity disappears but you’re still made in the image of a creative God

Good art invites wonder and makes space for mystery. Bad art tells you exactly what to think and then wonders why you’re not engaged. 🎨✝️📖

Timestamps:

02:00 Defining Good Art: Hospitality vs Heavy-Handed Messaging

06:00 Intimacy and Openness as Framework for Beauty

09:00 Why People Want to Be Told What to Think vs Asking Questions

11:00 Facing the Giants vs Remember the Titans: What We’re Wrestling With

14:00 Stained Glass Windows vs Sharpie Statements: Losing the Layers

16:00 Post-Reformation Shift from Visual to Language-Only Emphasis

20:00 Teen Talent Competitions and Performing for God’s Glory

23:00 When Church Art Became Branded Word Art from Hobby Lobby

25:00 Iconoclasm and What We Lost by Rejecting Visual Beauty

28:00 Ruth and Boaz Isn’t a Love Story About Finding Your Person 3

1:00 Reading the Bible with Layers: Literature, Language, Lifetime, Lenses

34:00 Why Translation Is Always Interpretation

37:00 Ruth After Proverbs 31: She’s the Woman of Valor, Actually

39:00 When Usefulness Disappears and You Lose Your Framework for Beauty

41:00 Imago Dei Isn’t Broken or a Mission to Accomplish—It Just Is

43:00 Capitalism Turned Humans Into Resources to Be Used Up

45:00 Creating Without Goals: The Church Art Studio Experiment

47:00 Redeeming Love Scammed Us (The Bible Story Is Different, Y’all)

50:00 Mount Pilgrim’s Stained Glass: Good Christian Art That Inspires Justice

In this episode …

Topics Covered

* Understanding the difference between performance and presence

* How busyness and transactional living keeps us from noticing sacredness, but the deeper barrier is internal fear—not of other people but of what we might reveal if we stopped performing and showed up authentic

* Why conversation as sacrament doesn’t mean using Christianese or performing religiosity, but practicing noticing these moments as important (maybe even sacred) until you graduate into sensing holiness far more often than you used to

* The radical claim that if you just pay attention you’d find one or two moments that were everything you’ve been looking for in the next week

* Changing our mindset around interactions to being sacred rather than battlefields

Timestamps:

01:00 Everyday Sacredness and the Fear People Will Miss It

04:00 Reclaiming “Church” as the Space Between Us

09:00 Performance vs. Presence: The Conditioning That Keeps Us Safe

14:00 Finding Freedom to Just Be in the Pews

19:00 What Keeps Us from Seeing the Ordinary as Holy

26:00 The Holy Work of Silence and Listening

31:00 Abiding in the Vine: Relationship as Spiritual Practice 3

6:00 Practicing Sacred Conversation Like Crooked Yoga

40:00 What Changes When We Notice This Moment Matters

43:00 Finding the Book and the Between Ministry