62. Help! Our Sex Life is Troubled by Past Abuse: An Interview w/ Anna Mondal & Nate Brooks

Welcome everybody to the For Freedom podcast. This is your host John Hollifield and I just wanted to start off today with a little bit of a trigger warning. You're going to get an introduction to the subject matter that we're going to be covering in just a little bit and we're going to give you a little bit of a warning about that with little ones listening. But I also wanted to give a trigger warning because the subject matter of today's episode centers around sexual abuse and you're going to hear also a testimony of that. So if that is something that has been in your past, I just wanted to give you a warning about that. There may be a moment where you have to stop, pause, take a break and come back to it. And maybe today's not the day to listen to it. So I just wanted to give you a warning for that before we get started. But we're excited about the episode and here's our intro and then we'll get into it. I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. You obey your pastor. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got, hey, you don't have a King James. You don't have a Bible. But you know there's something about that local new guest, but independent from the middle cell, when you separate the King James, I don't believe that you're going to be a man, these people have a free tribulation to the man of the Baptist church. I still believe there'd be a cold day in hell before I get my talents from a woman. I'm a preacher. The young preachers that do love God get pulled off in the Calvinist. And I'll fight it. I'll fight it. I'll fight you in the parking lot over it. I'll get personal with you. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom podcast, a podcast that is part of the RFP network that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of Scripture, but the defining principle in Scripture is love. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. Bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. Welcome everybody to the For Freedom podcast. This is a podcast where we try to bring Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, to the conversation of legalism, and show you your freedom in Christ through that. And it's good to be back. We covered Galatians in the last episode, James. Again, working through that book, covered chapter 4. And now we're back today with another interview. How you been, James? Man, I've been doing good. We're excited about this interview today, but it's good to not have Hudson here. We talked about that in the pre-show, but it is always good when we're able to record without a baby running around. But yeah, we're doing good on our end, and church-wise, still doing well. Still searching for a pastor. You guys just got back from some kind of men's meeting, right? Yeah, we went down to Johnny Hunt's men's conference. It's been going on for 30 years now. You may be familiar with it. And Jeremy Morton, which is the pastor there at First Baptist Woodstock, is the pastor. And then Johnny Hunt spoke as well. Man, the best breakout session I went to outside of Johnny Hunt's, of course, they had a Michigan State defensive captain who came in. He's actually a pastor there now at First Baptist Woodstock, and Charles is his name. And he spoke on just reaching men, specifically men who have been sort of neglected. And, you know, he's inner city Detroit where he was from and didn't have a father in the picture. So it was a great time there. We took about eight men from our church and about five college students from Southeastern down with us with our group. It was a good time. Good deal, good deal. Well, we're excited to have our guests on today and the subject that we are covering. And so I'm going to bring him on. We have had Nate Brooks, Dr. Nate Brooks, on before, where we talked about a few episodes ago, we talked about his article he wrote on Church Hurt. And Nate teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. And so, Nate, it's good to have you back, sir. It's so good to be back. Thanks for having me again. And we also are thrilled. I mean, this is really something that we've been really anticipating and building up to for a long time, to have Anna Mondal with us. And for those of you who don't know, me and James have been reading her articles on spiritual abuse that she's done over the years for a while now. We actually covered one way back when in early days and had, I think, even mentioned in that episode that we wanted to reach out and try to have her on. We finally have had it. We got it done. And Anna is with us. Anna, will you just welcome to the podcast. Will you just say a little bit about, you know, where you are at in life and what you're doing? Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This is really fun already. I'm happy to be here. I am living in San Diego, California. Me and my husband have a 10-month-old baby, which is a whole new life and really fun. I have my own trauma-informed soul care practice and see about, I don't know, maybe 20 women through that. And so that's something that I'm able to do about part-time and have been doing for about five years or so. And it's really life-giving. And one of my favorite things to do is to be able to work with women who are recovering from spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and going through other just, yeah, big griefs and losses. And just being able to bear compassionate witness to that and connect women with Jesus is just such a fun thing. So that's kind of where I'm at and what I do. I enjoy my family. I enjoy reading. And I go to the beach. It's kind of my life right now. So yeah. That is awesome. That's awesome. Well, I want to go ahead and start getting into our subject. But we are going to, let me just give sort of a quick word to those who might be listening right now. We are going to cover a subject that's a little bit sensitive, maybe sensitive to little ears. We're not going to get detailed or any type of things or inappropriate by any means. But this is going to cover a theme that if you have little ears, you may want to be cautious or careful about that. But Nate and Anna wrote a book in the Lifeline mini book series that was put out by Shepherds Press called Help, Our Sex Life is Troubled by Past Abuse. And so we put out a filler on the RFP community page and asked if this would be a subject that anybody would be interested in us covering. I know that we cover sometimes broad topics that maybe are off a little bit on what the theme of our podcast is about. And this may be a little bit like that, but the response we got when we put that filler question out there was actually, I don't want to say surprising, but it did throw me off guard a little bit. And a lot of people were very interested in hearing about this subject. So we're going to discuss, we're excited to have Nate and Anna with us so we can talk to them a little bit about the subject and then encourage you to purchase this book. And we'll have the link to that book and the show notes for you to be able to purchase that as well. But I guess the first question, guys, and whoever wants to go first, I just made it difficult. Should have made it easier. But this is a very specific subject, a very specific subject. And so why this subject matter? Why this mini book? I'll go ahead and go first on that one. So I initially came up with the idea for this mini book because I was doing counseling and kept running into this issue. And there was nothing from a Christian perspective that I found necessarily hit that niche specifically. And it's a topic that's difficult to broach. It's a topic that's difficult to talk about. And I wanted something that was thoroughly Christ-centered and sensitive in nature that I could put in someone's hands and say, hey, tell you what, you, your spouse, go read this and come on back and we'll talk about it and such. So that's kind of where the origin point came from. You're right, it's very specific. It's something that isn't talked about very much. But if we understand that about one in four individuals within our pews has suffered some form of sexual violence or sexual abuse, it's something that is likely pretty common. And so part of the rationale for it was to write something that did help lift some of the stigma from that, that this is something that God in his word talks about. And it's something that the church shouldn't be entirely silent about. I wrote it in an initial manuscript that was not nearly as good as it should have been. And I had a handful of readers who said, ah, I think there's ways that this could be improved. And there was one reader of that in particular who was so phenomenally helpful that I determined we needed to just start over. And that was Anna. And so the, well, the perhaps ideological origin of this was me, all the benefit from it, I think comes from Anna. And I'll let her kind of talk about why she wanted to go ahead and join on a project as this. She spent many, many hours writing this thing with me. Hmm. Yeah, this is a really fun project to do together. And I think something that was important to me is to write from the perspective of not only a woman, but also from the perspective of somebody whose personal story includes sexual violation and sexual trauma and sexual abuse. And so I wanted to bring in, not that there's one voice, not that there's one kind of sexual abuse survivor with one perspective, but I brought that a little bit and it was actually really helpful to work with Nate, someone who brought a different perspective from a male perspective as well. And to sort of have that, I don't know, symbiotic situation going where I might get pulled into the weeds in one part, Nate could have a helpful meta view. So yeah, that was a helpful dynamic having, because a lot of what I'm finding is that a lot of resources written about sex or marriage or sexual abuse, many times they're written only by men and not from the furnace, right? Not from a place of knowing what it's like to be sexually abused. And so, yeah, we wanted to have all of that range covered. And then just a last reason why the specificity was important, I think, for this topic of, okay, past sexual abuse, how does that impact your current relationship with your spouse? That level of specificity is important because that's how we heal. If we talk about everything in ambiguities, if we talk about everything in, oh, trust God for the general trial that you might be suffering in your marriage and we'll just leave it there, that's rarely helpful to people. We hurt very specifically. We have been hurt very specifically and God heals us with a lot of precision. And so to actually use words that are specific and situations that are specific and counsel or suggestions or perspective that's specific can maybe be more practical than generalities like a struggle in your marriage relationship. Yeah, that's really good. While you say that, Anna, perhaps just one thing that we should note early on in the podcast here, and we note this probably within the first three pages of the mini book, is that, you know, friends, many of you who are listening to this are coming from just different places in your marriage. And Anna and I specifically wrote this to individuals, couples who have suffered abuse in the past from someone other than your spouse. Okay, so some of you may have listened to this or may be listening to this and you're in a environment right now in your marriage where your spouse could be described as being sexually abusive. Your relationship is more pornographic in nature, something of that. And I just want to say that, you know, what we're talking about here that doesn't necessarily apply to your situation. And Anna and I's heart is, for our words, not to wind up hurting you additionally. I think there's other things that could be said in your situation. So we wrote this book specifically to individuals who'd suffered abuse in the past from a source other than your spouse. Yeah, that's a good note. James, before you ask the next question, I also wanted to say thank you for doing that. I liked your answers. And I just want to say thank you for it because, and I know that Anna had mentioned about, you know, having a male perspective and a female perspective, but I also sort of have looked at it too is it's, you know, Nate, correct me if I'm wrong, if we could edit it out if I am, but it also seemed too that you were having a, like you said, an experience from someone who's been through the fire of it, but also someone who's offering encouragement who hasn't. And I like that because of the subject material so often what you're dealing with this is that dynamic. You have a marriage where one spouse has experienced it and one spouse has it. And so there's like that understanding. And I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself in the questions, but I think that that's such a good dynamic because, you know, it's just so hard for someone. You know, a lot of those things are just kept secret. They don't want to talk about it. And it's years before even the other spouse even finds out that that ever happened. I know for me in the writing process, there were times when Anna was able to put kind of the poetry of words onto a feeling or a trouble in a way that I could only be slightly vague about. And I think there were other times that, as Anna mentioned earlier, I'm able to kind of help not view the entirety of the topic through the lens of someone who has struggled with the impact of this. Is that fair, Anna, would you say? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes, absolutely fair. Yeah, that's great. And I really appreciate you guys taking the time to even write this tough topic and to put, pin the paper to even put the correct words down. But we know that victims of sexual abuse, the pain doesn't always go away. A lot of times, someone who's never been a part of a sexual abuse, we can't even understand, you know, why are you still dwelling on this? Or we may say something harsh to someone. But the question we sort of want to ask is, what are some things that non-abused spouses need to understand or know of how they can help their spouse in this situation? So maybe it's a wife or a husband that was abused as a teenager. Now they finally come out and they've told their spouse, hey, this happened to me as a kid or as a teenager or as a young adult. How do they even begin the process of understanding or even relating and trying to help out their spouse as they go through this process together? What would be some advice that you guys would give? A couple of things. I asked my husband about this too. just his perspective. But a couple of things that I think are important for a person who is, who hasn't, who doesn't have an abuse history but is entering into the story of their spouse that includes abuse. One is just ask, get to know what is it like to be you? Like, tell me what it's like to be you. So get to know about more. So many times we just bring assumptions like, okay, you were sexually abused. That probably means this. That probably means you think this. That probably means you feel like this about me. This probably means you. Those are all imaginations. Those are all assumptions. It's very important to, for the spouse who hasn't been abused to slow down and take the time to, to find out what is it like to be you and to know, to know your spouse in that way. So, asking questions, respecting if they're not ready to talk about it yet, noting it in your mind. I'll, I'll follow up on that in a couple of weeks or months. Um, and just, just being an eager learner instead of, instead of assuming, like, I already know what this means or I already know how my spouse feels about this or I already know what the answer is going to be. to, to not make any assumptions to not operate off imaginations but instead ask questions and wait and be, be patient, go slow, just take, it takes a lifetime in some ways to understand another person's pain and you never, I mean, that's a role that belongs exclusively to Christ to fully identify with us in, in our deepest pains. Um, but I think just going really, really slow and getting to know more about that, about your spouse than just their sexual abuse history, getting to know, so how does this influence how you feel about the world? How does this influence how you show up at church? How does, all, all the different things. So just being a curious student of your spouse I think would be because that builds trust and that draws, that draws a person, it invites a person into safety instead of demanding answers or demanding solutions. It's invitational. And so I think just being a student of your spouse would be the first thing I would, I would think about. I think that's so, so good, Anna. Um, I think another thing that I recognize, I have recognized is, you know, all of us are human and as such as humans, even though we don't experience the same things and the things we do experience don't affect us all to the same degrees, oftentimes there's little, there's little windows that we can look through into someone else's experience that help us understand. So I, I know from an, from a, from a perspective of a, of a non-abused spouse that sometimes it can be very frustrating and very difficult of why can't you just step past this, right? Like, I wasn't the one who abused you. Like, sexuality in marriage is a beautiful thing. You think it's a beautiful thing and like you want this and yet you can't seem to get to the spot where, you know, it's just confusing and messy. And I think as, as Anna's talking about patience, oftentimes impatience is, is driven by a lack of understanding of how complex things can be. So, you know, for me, as, as I've counseled individuals who, who have suffered things that I have not suffered, who have suffered things that would make my jaw hit the floor if I haven't practiced my counseling poker face well enough, is, what do I have in my life that I can use as just a tiny little porthole, a little tiny window to see into what it might like to be with them? And actually, after we wrote this book, I have a smaller example in the book, but after we wrote this book, I was involved in a pretty significant car accident where I hit a, well, no, I didn't hit the deer. The deer actually hit me. It was an eight point buck, about a 70 mile an hour collision. And told my car, when, when I made it home, my, my children actually ran from me because my face was just covered in dried blood. Had to have, you know, some stuff pulled out of my eye and all sorts of things. And, you know, that was probably six months ago now. And still, now, driving my much larger truck that I own now than my tiny little car that I had then, driving now, if I'm driving at dark down, or in the dark down certain roads in rural South Carolina where I live, there's a baseline of anxiety that I know is not connected to reality right now. Right? Like, the chances of me getting hit by another deer are almost, almost zero. And yet, there's this anxiety that I cannot simply reason away. I can't shake. It's just kind of always there. now, driving's a, something I enjoy, but it's not pleasurable in the same, it's not vulnerable, it's not intimate in the same way that sexuality is. Right? What happens when you drop that kind of anxiety into something that is so, for lack of a better term, intimate. Right? That is so vulnerable. And that helps me as someone who has not been abused. Again, that doesn't mean that I understand. I can't look at someone and be like, I totally get you now because I got hit by a deer. Very, very different. The deer did not intentionally harm me. It was a dumb animal. Right? There wasn't an exploitive aspect to it. But at least in terms of the internal processes of like, I want to get somewhere, but I'm really having a hard time getting there and it's just challenging and frustrating. That's been something that's helped me care well for my counselees who have really wrestled with issues in their sex life due to past abuse. Yeah, I liked it whenever you put that illustration in there because, and you were very clear even with that answer, it's not the same. It's not the same. But I think that for someone who doesn't get it, that illustration can help them understand the hypervigilance maybe. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe their wife could feel entering into like a church and a man at church walking up behind her. You know, that hypervigilance is there because of a past situation. and in like, like, like, just reiterate again, it's not the same. But maybe it's an inroad and an open window just sort of help you start getting there. I think of it like it's a little window that lets me get a tiny little glance into the room to at least I can understand. Okay, I can understand how you can be there even if I can't be there with you. Yeah. Good. Okay, so we have another question we're going to talk about sort of the dynamic, like, you know, the situation between maybe the abuse spouse still getting to that point where they're even comfortable. But, I was going to ask if, I think there's some listeners out there that I think would really benefit from hearing a little bit of your testimony. Anna, if you wouldn't mind sort of sharing a little bit about, you know, we've already mentioned you understand, you brought that perspective to the book, but maybe mentioning a little bit if you don't mind about that understanding. Yeah, yeah, no, thanks for asking that. I, there's so, there's so much comfort that can come through sharing stories. Sometimes it's not the most comforting thing to read a theology book or a devotional that tells you, like, God is with you. Though that's true, sometimes we receive more comfort through hearing someone else's story who has, maybe can put into language something that you feel and you can't yet. And that's a way that I think God intentionally gives us comfort. So yeah, I love this question. But yeah, I was, when I was about in my mid-20s, I was on the mission field in a rural Southeast Asian context and a lot of member care things fell through and I ended up being pretty much alone, pretty much defenseless in a pretty, pretty isolated part of the world that has a very, just a very violent way of relating toward women. And I, as a very naive, even mid-20-something, I just didn't have any concept of how to prepare for that. And I just thought everything would be fine. And very quickly into my stay there, there was a teacher at the school, a teacher who was a national or local who, within, within probably a couple of months, just, and grooming can happen to adults too, this is something I didn't realize, just made me feel safe, sort of got me to depend on him for my water supply and my food and for medical treatment and he was sort of the one with the car, the one who could speak English better than others and so really drew me to himself in, in trust when I was in a helpless situation, which is really similar to like a child in some ways when adults prey upon children, they're preying upon that vulnerability, that weakness, that power differential and so there was a power differential there, not only because he was older, bigger, stronger, but also because he had an intimate knowledge of the language, the culture, all the things and so, yeah, probably within a couple of months, he, he started breaking me, started just pulling me into this sexually abusive relationship, calling it a relationship, calling it something that was good, and I didn't know what to do, I just didn't know what to do, this was before the Me Too movement, this was before people talked about it as much and I, I think I just immediately perceived and this is where it ties into our theology of life and our theology of the world, I thought that maybe this was just part of my suffering for Jesus, right, like I'm trying to be on the mission field, I'm trying to do a good thing, maybe this is just part of it and I didn't ask for help, I could have, but I didn't know what to say, I mean, again, I'm not a child, I'm not a teenager, I'm a woman in my mid-20s at this point and I just, some of the inactions of abuse, it renders you voiceless, you lose your voice, you lose your sense of power and you lose your sense of connection, of feeling like you can say something and it matters and so for the next nine months, I was sort of trapped, six to nine months, I forget exactly, somewhere around there, just trapped in this holistically abusive village, he was drunk, he was violent, he was big, just a lot of things happened and when I came and I ended up getting, I stored all of that in my body, I got really, really sick, had to be medevaced to Singapore and get medical treatment and it turns out that I was pulled from the mission field and they were like, hey, and people didn't even know what happened, the mission board didn't know what happened but they just said, hey, you're really sick, also the 2012 New Delhi gang rape has just happened, people are not going back into the country right now, you should, yeah, you should probably not go back and the worst of it didn't happen on the mission field, the worst for me was recovering afterwards, was coming back to the US just shattered, having nightmares, having flashbacks, getting panic out of nowhere, I'd never had panic attacks in my life, I didn't know what they were and just feeling completely, completely disintegrated and I didn't know what it was, I didn't know how to make sense of it, I turned, I mean, I started drinking, I started like eating too much and then not eating at all, I was angry all the time and so all these big things were happening that I couldn't make sense of but for me and I'll try to wrap it up here but a big reason for me why everything felt so overwhelming was that it was, I was not sharing my story, it was a secret, I kept it for my mission agency, my mission agency knew something was wrong, my parents, my friends when I came home, they knew something was wrong but I, for some reason I did not feel like I could tell, I didn't feel like I could say anything, I didn't feel like it was, yeah, there was a million barriers for me to, I was like, well maybe people won't believe me, well maybe they'll say I should have, they'll blame me, I should have said something different, I was too friendly, this is like, I don't know, maybe I wore something wrong, maybe I should, and so I was afraid of being blamed, I was afraid of being misunderstood and I was afraid that maybe nobody could help me and so it took years for me to say anything and so I think for me the most agonizing part of this whole journey and it's had a lot of different phases and it's had a lot of different cycles to it but the most agonizing part was those, it was not maybe two, two and a half years, where I was just completely like this is going to, I'm going to take this to my grave, nobody's ever going to know, I'm never telling anyone, that was when the pain was most acute, that's when the problems were most acute, that's when I felt most isolated and alienated, is when it was a secret, when I was holding it all close. finding people who were safe to share with, getting really good trauma informed soul care and therapy and counseling, making good friends who loved me and were safe and could understand, that was a massive part of learning to get, not to get over what happened to me, there's no such thing, but to integrate what happened to me and to say, this is a line of my story but it's not who I am, it's not the whole of my story, it's not all that there is to me, so that would be a summary of my, I guess my interaction with sexual abuse and healing and Christ and all of those things. Thank you so much for your courage to just share that and use, and if I can say it this way, you know, using that, you know, also to help others like you're doing now and that actually the way you ended that part of it really goes well with what we're going to go into next and that is the struggle that maybe the abused spouse has with even sharing that with their partner, you know, their spouse is supposed to be that intimate one that does know those things and even what I've seen in just a very, very limited experience that I've seen is that there's such a hesitation even with their spouse of wanting, maybe it's even a type of if I say it that makes it even real and that type of thing and accepting it. What are, what is maybe some things that might be helpful to either the spouse that knows something's going on but doesn't know what it is or maybe the spouse that is just still scared to talk about it with their partner. Nate, do you want to go ahead? Sure. Yeah, I'll go first and then you can fill in. You know, I think one thing that's important to recognize is that this issue doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of marriage, right? And so, you know, who a spouse is in the non-sexual moments of their marriage has a huge impact on how trustworthy they're found by their spouse for even the most intimate details of our life. you know, in terms of, you know, a spouse who is wondering if something's going on, like you mentioned, John, wonders if something's going on, but doesn't seem like other spouses ready to talk about it yet or something like that. I think one question to step back and just ask is, how do I treat my spouse across the entirety of our relationships? So, you know, for example, me and my wife, one of the things that I've tried to do, and I am no like white knight perfect saint here at all, but one of the things that I've consistently tried to do in my own marriage is to make sure that in every kind of toss-up situation in our marriage, we wind up going with what my wife wants, right? So, where are we going to eat out for dinner? If we both have differences of opinion, I want to go where my wife wants to go. What do we do with this extra, you know, however many dollars it is kind of from the budget that we've had this year? What do we do with it? What do we prioritize? What do we do for entertainment options? All these things. None of those seem directly related to challenges of sexual abuse, but a spouse who has suffered abuse is weighing how trustworthy is my spouse? What will they do in response to me if I disclose this? And so, you know, for my own marriage, I want to do those things for my spouse, one, because I love her and the Bible calls me to consider her as more important than myself, but two, when there are those decisions that have to be made and maybe we don't agree on it or something like that, and it comes down to well, we just got to choose. I want there to be such a strong culture of holding up and preferring my wife that she can just inherently trust me and know that I'm trustworthy and know that there is no human being who is more for her than me on planet Earth. And I think that gives us all something to grow towards, right, as all husbands are inherently selfish, as human beings are inherently selfish, but the culture and tone that you set for your marriage is going to largely determine how open your spouse is able to be in this kind of thing. And I think the second thing I would just say is, you know, friends, know that it's going to be a difficult road. There's no way through this that's easy. There's going to be pain. There's going to be hard topics to talk about. Some of my students who have read this book have said, we're able, like, you're this detailed in counseling? Oh, my goodness. We have to be this detailed in counseling. And I think one of the reasons, like we said at the beginning, we wrote this book is to remove the stigma of talking about this, which is good. But removing the stigma doesn't mean it's not going to be challenging and hard. But the joys on the other end of it are so great that it's worth it. Anna, I'm sure you have other things that would be super helpful to hear. No, I love, Nate, I love that about the culture of the marriage and how who you are sexually, how you relate sexually is how, it's just a small part of how you relate in every other way in your marriage. So, yeah, culture building is massive for this conversation. Is there a culture of trust? Is there a culture where both partners have a voice and both partners are honored and respected and believed? So, yeah, that's awesome. But another thing, speaking particularly to the individual who has experienced sexual abuse, and maybe they're just really afraid to mention it, just does, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel safe to say it, just because it's scary to disclose and maybe they haven't before. Something that I would just encourage is you don't have to start with your spouse. You don't have, they don't have to be the first person that you tell the story if it feels threatening or you're just not sure how it's going to impact it. That might, for some people, it's better to begin with a counselor or a friend or a mentor. It doesn't have to be, your spouse doesn't have to be the first person that you tell. About your past, your trauma story, you can work that out and sort of rough draft it with Christ and with other people. And then that can, the more that you bring something into the light, that can help how you even frame it to your spouse. Because I know, and just an example from my own life, when I first started telling the story or just telling what happened to me, I absolutely framed it in terms of I committed sexual sin. that is how, on my own, I saw the story. And it wasn't until I worked with a counselor who was actually trained in sexual abuse and trauma that she was able to tell me, okay, well, actually from the details you're sharing, I'm not going to frame it that way. You don't have to agree. But she, so she helped me frame it in a way that was different. So a person's story can take, sometimes it takes some other people to help you through it a little bit, not tell you how to think about it, but to shape how you think about it and maybe give you more confidence to share it in your marriage. So just an encouragement, if it's between not sharing your story at all or sharing it with your spouse, don't, like, find someone, find someone to tell so that you can begin somewhere. So that would, that would just be a small thing that, that I would encourage. And, and again, go slow and you don't have to tell everything at one time. It could even just be, look, I experienced something, something really bad when I was a kid and I don't know how to talk to you about it yet. And it feels scary, but I just want you to know the distance that you may be feeling. It's, it's not personal. It's not you. It's something that I'm working through and I'll tell you soon or sometime, but so you can give little pieces. We can give little breadcrumbs for your spouse to find you. Yeah. And I don't know if you guys have ever sort of experienced this type of thing, but this is actually something that has come through and, um, and somebody that I've, a couple that I've, I've seen and worked with. And, and that was a situation where something had happened in the past. Then it was almost buried and so buried deep down that life went on 10, maybe 12 years into the marriage. Now that has come back up and the wife reckoned, oh, wait, that happened to me. And then all of a sudden there's a turn in their marriage and their intimate relationship. And it was just like the spouse, wait a second, everything's been okay for 10 years. Now all this, all of a sudden, and it was just like that confusion, that frustration. It was like, it didn't, they didn't get it. And it was like, wait a second. Are you saying that that happened? It's always been there, but now all of a sudden it's having an effect with our relationship. I don't know. That's legitimate. And, and I think that that's also something that, you know, can be, can happen, be pointed out. You know, it's something to, uh, like you guys have been saying, uh, preferring your spouse in that kind of situation, you know, maybe even educating yourself on some of the dynamics of that. And I think to that point, John, you know, one thing that's important to remember is when we marry our spouse, we marry a person and we make some really, really intense vows for better or for worse through sickness and in health until death do us part. right. And it's entirely possible that you have very smooth sailing for years. And then, like you said, something gets brought up and it wreaks havoc and things that used to be easy and joyful and simple now are, uh, painful, complex, and confusing. And hear this the right way. that's not, that's not a bad thing. In the, in the sense that our own personal happiness is not what everything is keyed off of. And if, if some, if some triggering event, if some, uh, seeing, uh, seeing a face from a long time ago that hasn't been seen for a long time, if a particular smell is run across that activates some kind of trauma response that did lie buried, you know, it's actually the honor and privilege of the non-abused spouse to walk through whatever valley comes with the spouse who's remembering. And that pushes us right. Like who, which would we rather have a easy, free, delightful sex life or one that's a challenge. And yet at the same time is just as deeply rooted in, I love you and I'm with you and I'm for you. That's hard, but that's what it means to be like Christ to a spouse. It's hard, but it's beautiful. Yeah. And you're growing together. You know, you're not, you're not just over here in Lala and you're actually doing life together, which is so modeled so much in scripture for us. John, anything before this last question? Yeah, no, go ahead. Take it, man. All right. So we've talked about the spouse that hasn't been abused and how they deal with it. Then we've talked about how the spouse who's been abused struggles even talking about it. What are some practical ways sort of to marry the two together to give some hope for the couples going forward who are saying, man, I love the, what you've said so far about being patient, being slow, being willing to wait. A lot of times us, I know men, we're not patient at all. And we, we just want to find the answer, figure it out and deal with it. And so giving that advice of saying, Hey, just calm down, slow down, give some, some patience here, which is a good thing. But what are some other practical ways of hope of how they can sort of move forward and going forward together, growing together in that area? What would be some things that you would say? I love that. Yes. Yes. I was so excited. I already started. No, I love that. I love the question about hope because it can be, it can be overwhelming to uncover and to, and to sit with a spouse who has a deep trauma history that maybe, you know, maybe you're just learning for the first time. It can feel really dark and really heavy. And sometimes that theme can dominate the conversation. Like, Oh, okay. You as the unabused spouse, you're going to just need to be, to be patient, to be heroic, to be kind, to be noble. And then you as the one who's been abused, you just need to see Christ and try to grow. But there's actually so much fun and hope and beauty and light that is actually part of the process of post-traumatic growth. It doesn't end at post-traumatic stress or trauma. It doesn't end there. It doesn't have to end there. There can be amazing movement toward unity, connection, beauty, enjoyment. And so some of the practical things that I've experienced in my own life and that I like to encourage other women, and this can apply to men too, but this is just from my own context, is one, just practically, don't make this about resuming or having uncomplicated sex. Like, don't make it about, okay, my goal is to figure this out and just to have it so it can just be easy again or it can be easy for the first time. Allow it to be a process and have fun. And so something just a practical thing, play games together. Like, play a board game together. Go on a walk together. Go to the beach together. Do something. Have other shared fun experiences that are not connected to just sex because how you feel about your sexual relationship and that healing is also related, like Nate said earlier, to every other aspect of your marriage. And so if you're sharing a book together, if you're reading, I don't know, my husband and I just finished The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit for like the second time. And it was just so fun to like experience that together and to have those memories and to have the inside jokes and the shared, that is connection building. And so sometimes I think couples can put all of their focus into let's read all the books about sex. Let's read all that. Let's try to go to counseling, which is great. But if you neglect having fun together and having other places of shared connection and shared enjoyment, that's a big missing piece. And so to just to cultivate other places in your marriage and relationship where you feel empowered and where you feel like you're having fun. So if for the spouse who's healing from sexual abuse, sex can often feel like an area of defeat. It can often feel like an area of confusion and frustration and it's not fun always. And so if you can overturn that dynamic and say like, hey, when we play ping pong together, like it's fun and I'm good at that. And like I don't feel embarrassed or confused or when that's not a personal example. I'm terrible at ping pong. But so that's not an area. But just to cultivate other places in your marriage where the spouse who's been abused has a voice, has a sense of power, and there's connection building. So that was just that would be one thing that I would say is that just have other ways of having fun and then let it bleed into your intimacy in other ways. So that's the first thing that's coming to me. But Nate, what do you think? That's super great. I mean, again, like sex is a feature of marriage, but it isn't marriage. Right. There's it's a small slice of a much larger pie. And we want to be holistic in our joy in marriage and not just load it all into sex. I think for us, for a couple who's at a place where they're ready to start moving towards sex and how do we do this? Well, you know, one of the one of the things that Anna and I both talk about in our little book is just kind of some particular steps that you can take. And for both spouses, this is maybe a challenge. Right. For the for the non-abused spouse, it can it's probably going to require holding back from where you'd like to go. And for the spouse who has suffered abuse in the past, it's probably going to be stepping forward in faith. In ways that are a little bit uncomfortable, right? That push and that pull. But as you do it together in a safe context of your marriage where you love each other and love Jesus Christ and are allies rather than opponents, it provides the space for that. So some of the things that Anna and I talk about are, you know, just a couple should should start where they're ready to start and where it's safe and comfortable. You know, for some couples sitting on the couch together, watching a television program with a spouse's arm around, you know, the back neck of another spouse for 10 minutes, for some couples, that's a win because there was touch that didn't produce a panic attack. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like that's something to rejoice in. You know, for other couples may or that couple as they kind of continually progress, you know, moving towards more intimate forms of touching each other, undressing each other, moving towards, you know, kind of more carefully defined, hey, here's how we're going to move to actual sexual intercourse, having a plan, which is never a promise, but a plan, having kind of ideas of if things start to turn a little bit to being this, this isn't healthy for me right now. This isn't good. I think I need to stop. How do we go about doing that? And the spouse is serving each other. We give a lot more detail in our little mini book than could be expressed on a podcast here, but that would probably be a helpful place to start. I think Anna and my heart both is just for all of you to say, look, any of those steps are wins and they're to be rejoiced in and delighted in. And there's no, thus says the Lord, this is how fast you have to go. Rather, the goal is for each couple to enjoy being together as God has designed them in wherever they're able to be on that spectrum. It could be that there are things due to the nature of sexual violence that has been impacted that just should be foregone, right? That there's, whether it be, you know, certain lighting or certain ways that you play with each other, however it may be, that those just say, you know what, for the sake of the health of my spouse, we'll set that aside. And that's a good thing. That's a God glorifying thing. That each couple is going to work together to establish how can we both flourish in this. That's, that was gold. Both of that was just, that was, that was gold. And I especially like what Anna was saying because I feel like maybe we should say something to, to the man because I think that a lot of times I have found that with the Hollywood culture and then the influence of pornography on, on so many men that, that the sexual life can be so boxed away and just like isolated from, from the rest of life within the marriage. And it's like, it's just something that happens and they begin to see and interpret that that's how it should be. And I like that because understanding their wife or their spouse, understanding that is, is really understanding that all of your relationship is connected there. And if you're, if you're, if you're not, if you're not like preferring them or making and working on helping them feel safe and daily activities, you're not progressing and moving forward in that area. I mean, I, I don't know. We could open that to like a whole seminar on, on, on, you know, just marriage counseling, but I just, I just thought that maybe that, I would listen to Anna riff on that for three hours. And I would, she's on West coast time. So it's only what I got time. Yep. Yep. Lunchtime there. It's 11 o'clock. James, you got any, you want to get any final comments? It was really great to have both of you on here. And I know this is going to help people that listen to this podcast and even a part of the community that we're in. And I just appreciate all that was said and how it can help for, for people who struggle with this specific issue of troubled abuse in their sex life. And so I hope, hope this helps. Hey, if you guys want to leave how people can get in contact with you guys, if you feel that freedom to do that, if not, no problem. And then, like we said, we'll be putting this book and how to find it basically on Amazon is the best way or through their publisher. And so we'll have that in our show notes as well. But any closing things from you guys? I have, I'm not a podcast host here, not seasoned in that, but I have a question for Anna. Can I, can I ask that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Anna, say an individual listens to this podcast, which we pray there are many for their help and picks up our mini book, reads through it. And they say, you know what? I recognize this. This is something that I need to work through. But in my more independent, fundamentalist, refugee, Baptist culture, I don't know anybody that I can talk to. I just don't know. Like there's, there's just not the, there's not the language, there's not the currency there for even these concepts. So now I'm stuck. What would you say to a woman in that situation? Anna, what should she do? Yeah. Oh, that's such a, that's such a good one. That's such a good question. Don't, so an encouragement would be don't let your surrounding culture dictate your ability to find help. So if, if you, your, your sense of healing and hope and getting some help doesn't have to be confined to your religious circle, to your church, to the people that you know immediately do, we, it's the, it's the wonderful internet age, do some searches online to just see like who are some reputable counseling centers or are there any trauma informed therapists near me that I could start with? Are there even, and this is how I started, are there people in my life that maybe are of a spirit, different spiritual tradition than me, but who seem very open and well acquainted with the suffering of people? How can I start there and just ask and ask to meet with this particular couple, ask to meet with this particular woman and then see what that person's recommendations would, would be from there. I really like connecting like I'm really hesitant to just give a blanket like go to this website or see this sort of person because for every person's story, the needs are so unique and for every person's area of the world, the availability is really different. And so I think it would be good to start with a personal connection, even if that's outside your church, outside your immediate friend group. Is there someone from your past? Is there someone you've known that they have a sense of, and this requires courage and trust, but is there someone that you trust to handle suffering well? And could you have an introductory conversation with them? And then could they connect you with resources? But some just general things that are really, really helpful are, the website grace, the godly response to abuse in Christian environments that they often will have like a listing of professional counselors who are informed in that way. Yeah. Again, I'm hesitant to give too many recommendations, but start the ball rolling maybe with an immediate relationship and then move from there. Does that, does that sort of some answer what you're looking for? Yeah, absolutely. I think, and I think, you know, once, when someone is ready to try and reach out to, to do more formal counseling, if that proves to be helpful. I know two, two groups that I recommend and refer to would be Fieldstone Counseling. Yes. So that's coming from the individual who runs that is the pastor for soul care at Alistair Beggs Church. And it is, it is a, they'll do counseling by Zoom. So that's Fieldstone counseling. And then another one is called the Gospel Care Collective. And that's actually in San Diego. I'm not sure how close to you there, Anna, but Gospel Care Collective, both those are good friends of mine run those and I've found them to be trauma informed, biblically centered, hope filled. So those might be good places, Fieldstone Counseling and Gospel Care Collective. That's great. Great. Well, I'm going to research those and put, and we'll get links to all three of them in our show notes too for, for anybody there. Is it all right if I read one quote? I want to read, as we close up, I wanted to read this quote. This is one of the things that I highlighted it when I, when, when I read it the first time I read through it. I don't know which one of you wrote it, but it says, Jesus' love is self-giving and splendor bringing. He doesn't love us because we're beautiful and holy. His love makes us beautiful and holy. Husbands, specifically, are called to love their wives just like this. Amen. I love that quote. And thank you guys. Thank you so much for, for, for, for, uh, I said this when I had Brad Bigney on. I said that we, thank you for, for taking time to spend an hour with two nobodies as we, as we try to put this out on the airwaves. But, uh, uh, we really, really appreciate it. And, uh, and, uh, I think that, uh, we'll close it up for now. And, uh, you guys check the links, buy the book. Uh, we'll put a link, uh, we'll put two links to it. One from Amazon, one from Shepherd's Press. And, uh, I thank everybody for listening. I hope that you were helped and encouraged by this and got something. And, and if you have any questions and you'd like for us to sort of, you know, do any research, I mean, you can reach out to James and I as well. And, uh, I believe we have that contact information on the, on the podcast page. So, um, thank you so much. And, uh, until next time to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast to find more content like this, please visit RFP network.org to find more podcasts like this one resources and meetups to encourage you on your journey. Thank you.

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