Episode 11 - The Other Side of the Mattress

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are we really doing the hello hello hello because we're doing that right guys okay i'm like there with i would not allow it i guess mike could be the fourth harmony and if he does it he doesn't do it because i'm saying hello hello [Music] oh my gosh um welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody we are here with our wives so it might get a little crazy i'm michael gunger hello i'm lisa conger and i'm jenny mccarg and i'm science mike and if you hear me say the honey badger i'm talking about jenny mccarg because she is small quite cute and somewhat dangerous oh hey so our listeners really wanted to hear after our lost and found episodes um how are significant others experienced the the craziness that we experienced on the other side you know of of the the mattress i think we should call it the other side of the mattress i forget being completely self-centered there's this whole other angle to anyone's story if you're married or or have a close family relationship or are in a significant relationship there's this mere copy of your journey and for a lot of people who are either doubting and wondering how to continue on in a marriage they value through that or people who aren't actually doubting but live with someone who is um there's a limited value in hearing my experience putting my faith back together it would actually be more faith helpful to hear the experience of someone who's been on the other side of that story because frankly i don't i don't know what that's like i only know what it's like to be the one uh trying to tear the whole world down brick by brick uh and so the first question we have from a listener is how did this affect your relationship um how did how did you how did you feel about them once they revealed their doubt and lisa why don't you go first it started i think when i was pregnant and we were kind of waiting for our daughter to be born and i remember us taking these long long walks every night and we just kind of hash through what we've been thinking and where we were at but i do remember a specific moment that threw me it wasn't obviously like a massive shock but i remember it definitely was a bit of a game changer and he said it so so flippantly because we had been on the journey together i think he wasn't really expecting me to be taken aback by it at all it all always been questioning what we believed about god you know but never i don't know if god actually exists at all i think in his mind we we just kept walking and he kept talking and for me i felt like the earth had been removed under my feet um like wait wait no that's not supposed to be the question you know that we ask we ask the other questions and we wrestle with the constructs that we've made but not actual god his existence as we were walking after michael had said that i thought what's going to happen to us and i'd never thought that ever before and it was so frightening um in that moment i felt like i had a choice of well what are you going to do here because this is the guy you love and are you going to lean into this or are you going to run away because if you run away i i just had this feeling of knowing like if i run away from this and i and i stop the conversation here it's going to hurt him like it's going to make him have to pretend to be someone that he's not so he can't be who he is around me and that's going to destroy our marriage like i kind of just like saw all these dominoes just kind of falling down um in the future on like how do i react to this and what what what do i do what does what does love do in something like this and i'm not going to be so presumptuous to say that i have the answer for everyone's situation but i felt like love would lean in and accept one of our the most popular questions we got from the audience jenny was your side of the experience and i i've never even heard it and i'm i await with baby breath i i want to hear it let's hear my story through your eyes well she got it out of me i actually didn't even plan to tell her ever and it's funny how he remembers it the way he remembers it because a lot of times he doesn't remember much of anything but he actually remembers it a little bit even better than i do because i think i think there was a period of two weeks there where i kind of lived in a fog afterwards you know um things have always been really good with us i mean it was kind of like what you see is what you get um not any kind of knock-down drag out arguments you know in our marriage and um pretty much an even keel i hate to say we rocket that because i don't want to ever take that you know for granted because it's a special thing you know um to actually be married to someone and to have that kind of relationship where um there's the fully trust fully um you know love even in the best and worst times and so um i don't know really what it was that caused me to you know start thinking something was wrong except that he just kind of felt a little distant our conversations didn't seem like they were going as deep lately as of during that time and um i just finally one night the girls were in bed and we were sitting on our love seat in the living room and i said i said what's going on and he said nothing you know he said it was nothing and um i said no i said there's something there you know i mean and he could come up with anything you could say well things have been stressful at work or things are just you know i've just been kind of out of it a little bit lately but no i just i i knew that that couldn't be it because you know it just didn't feel like that same kind of vibe and i just felt like there was something like i said that distance and um so i kept prodding him a little bit but it didn't take too much prodding because he finally did say yeah i don't know if i really believe in god anymore i kind of thought he was joking because i'm like yeah you do yeah and then we kind of just got to you know talking and i in my little like i said childlike faith trying to bring him back on board and finally when he kept you know he was really trying he was really trying he's like you know kind of i want to believe what you're saying but here's why i don't and try not to go too deep of why he didn't because i think he would he obviously he was worried about what it would do to me um but you know he just nicely sat there and then i finally was like you just need to get right like for us it was our social group in a way it was our life together um you know he goes to work i'm home with the kids but church was such a big part of our lives uh that's what i did like for my volunteering you know in the women's group with the children's choir he was a deacon we both taught the high school seniors you know we had led a couple's class before that from the time we were married so to say you don't believe in god anymore that's pretty much the foundation of what brought us together we met in church at in a college group um so yeah i mean it was it was a big thing it was a big deal and um for the first time when we went to bed that night there was definitely on the other side of the mattress there was a curtain between us um you know it became like it was the the elephant in the room that you couldn't get around so uh at night kids go to bed well what is there to talk about there's this you know this big thing there that you really can't ignore um i will say that in a moment of drastic because i tend to be a little drastic sometimes when we have our honey badger [Laughter] it was one of the nights and i don't know if it was the first second or third night it was right there at the beginning um i said before we went to bed i don't know if we can stay together i knew when i said it that there wasn't full meaning behind it but there also was this what is our future because this is what brought us together this is the foundation of our marriage that's what we've been taught growing up in church that you marry fellow believers you know that's how your marriage is gonna stick you marry a fellow believer and and here we are where you know what are we going to do for a while there it lasted a couple of weeks where i just felt completely we were on our own because i said one of the first things i said is what we can't tell anybody because if we tell somebody then it's gonna rock our whole social sphere and people at church will not like this you know um when they find out that you know you don't believe in god and you're a deacon and you're teaching sunday school which by the way i was great at teaching sunday school as an atheist like i said i mean i lived with him and i never even knew that that was what was going to come out of his mouth you know part of me thought okay what's he gonna say is he stepping out but i knew him well enough to know he's not stepping out because he would wouldn't dare and so i held it in for probably about two weeks and then told his mom i knew a mom a mother's love right she's not going to give up on her son she's not going to turn her back on her son and i had to purge myself in some way i couldn't keep holding on to it and she prays i knew she she prayed and she believed in prayer you know here i was i didn't think i was equipped to pray and um if anybody could get through to him maybe she could so yeah the the drastic thing of saying i don't know what's ahead for us or i don't know if we can stay together the war that you have inside of you and you touched on it lisa for sure is that you know this man you know he's a good man he's a good husband you love him he's a good father these were all the things that were at war with me because growing up in a culture where christianity that's the foundation that's what makes you the person you are so it kind of goes against when you say oh you don't believe anymore then how can you be all these other things and be good at all this other these other things these other qualities you know and that was the war i was having because it's like you know him you know who he is at his heart you know the kind of person he is um so you're not gonna leave him because you love him you know you have this life together and and like so the weird thing is for her i guess you guys sort of were walking down this road together of you know what do we really know about god how how how how good are our constructs compared to what we see in the world whereas i was like full on every sunday southern baptist and then jerked the rug out from under her so at the time i thought man she's she's really reacting strongly like i was afraid she would say i'm not sure we can be married anymore but when she actually said it i was like well i've been like the same husband without god like it's been no different um but like that whole trust issue of for two years lying about one of the most important things in our lives i didn't understand i couldn't extrapolate out how that could make her question other things or really the the depth to which um particularly in the south particularly among certain strains of conservative evangelicalism we're told that people can't love without god and that that being taught to someone from the age of very small childhood when people go through doubt it can create marital stress that otherwise is probably unnecessary or at least shouldn't be so severe well atheists are so demonized oh yeah in a lot of circles like that where it's like this card to say well you have to believe these things because what are you gonna you're gonna become an atheist and then you can do whatever you want and you kill people and only murderers you know just go sleep with any anybody that you ever come across like you just well you just have no morals you have no ethics you have no standards uh if you don't have god and that was kind of the view that was taught to us as a way of like don't become an atheist you know yeah the only person i have told this to was michael so yes the the next step is to to do it on a on a podcast but i i was i was an atheist for a whole day half a day we're gonna say that it was a whole day because it sounds better i'll maintain it not much better okay so i'd had this occurrence in my family um someone in my family had had cancer and trying to get on this transplant list because he was having kidney failure and he could not get on the transplant list because he had cancer so everyone's praying for him praying for him and it was for for me it was kind of my my last attempt at grasping at those strings like all right i'm going and i believe like i believe i'm praying for him and i'm believing for his healing and we get a call one day and he's healed and i couldn't like i just i couldn't believe it i was obviously you know just beside myself so excited ran out told michael you know we're we're both excited but at the same time i'm i'm there's that that thing in the back of my head going wait is this is this real you know is this is it because i've heard and and i believe in healing like i i've heard of these crazy stories of people being healed and it happening and i had just never really experienced that and so i was so excited to think that something you know that i was raised to believe in like something like that this thing this huge thing is real so we're super excited um again just the tinge of wondering like is this real and we get a phone call and they say okay well he uh these tumors shrunk like they were they were real big but but they're just like a little bit smaller and it was like that i'm in this huge hot air balloon like i finally found the heat for this this hot air balloon and i'm floating through the sky uh floating through the sky with the angels and the clouds and the rainbows and and i'm just so excited and then just lightning strikes it and i'm plummeted to the earth well but not the earth into the ocean and the yeah like this shark comes and like drags me to the bottom and then and then a whale eats the shark and then we find out there's this sea monster that no one's ever heard of and he eats the whale and it's just like no no no you know just one thing after another really so you could say i was having a bad day we'll call it a bad day and i i just i i was a total wreck i mean i yeah i was crying and it was just kind of the last straw for you yeah it was it was it was the last thing um and so i'm talking you know a few days had gone by i'm talk i'm just spewing to michael one day i remember we're sitting outside having lunch together and as i'm spewing my michael i love this look that michael kind of gets on his face it's like he's he's just kind of pleased when i go on like this spewing tangent because he's always got something cooking up you know like it i mean it's normally just like well just let it go you know just let go and so he's got this little smile on his face and i'm just going to town on my anger you know just i'm so angry at this and why why would a god why would a god do that you know as like a trick like like i'm i'm gonna kind of heal you i don't buy into a god like that i would never do that to my child i remember some people had said when you have a child you're gonna understand god so much more and i had my child and i understood him less the constructs that i had of god i just was gonna throw in there just so people might know the kind of construction god you were talking about we met at a school where uh at the chapel service god was literally compared oh yeah to a coke machine yeah where you know you just need to do the right thing say the right prayers believe the right stuff and and god will do what his word says he's got his promises and it's like it's a it's a system where basically you get to control god and yeah i i remember reading a book even as a kid like saying you pray this prayer like there's this there's this store house in heaven but full of like feet and hips and faces and it's a gruesome story it's like a it's like a it's like a nightmare storehouse but they're like all of these things exist there when you pray for it the angel goes and gets that thing and the angel is coming down but if you sin between the time you prayed before the angel can fight the demons to come down and give you your new foot if you sin then he's taking the foot back like you're evil person you're that foot's going back to the storehouse for someone else who doesn't sin you know so um so that's the kind of constructs that we're talking about that's like the most awful thing i've ever heard there are other things there are there are other things i was taught about god that are very good they were very very good you know i think there's always something that even as a parent right now there's something i'm gonna teach my child that she's gonna be like that thing ruined me you know she's gonna she's gonna have to deconstruct something so getting back to your questioning face so so so getting back thank you jenny getting back to this derailed that's the honey badger oh yeah so i'm at so i'm at the bottom of the ocean that's where that we're in the bottom of the ocean with the the beast at the bottom of the ocean and i'm talking to michael about this and he yeah he just kind of looked at me and he said well what why don't you just let go and i said well i can't like i can't god is everything you know in my life i've i've been a christian since i was a little girl and i remember god feeling like god speaking to me as a young child and as a young child feeling like i wanted to give i wanted to give my life to the church and to helping people and that's all i wanted to do and uh so letting go of that was letting go of all those things and so michael had said well if you if you let go what do you think is gonna happen you're gonna run into the street and like murder people you know just become this crazy person he's like love you're still gonna be who you are like your love still exists and that was just a profound idea you know for me and so i so i tried it i was like all right i'm all right i guess i'm i'm an atheist you know but for me there was something that didn't feel right about that you know i know for some people there they have this experience of like this opening and and and letting go was a good thing for me letting like just letting go but not of god like i i it may sound cheesy but it was like like god it doesn't let go of me you know my ideas of and constructs of who god is have absolutely changed i feel like i am uh you know what someone call coming to know the father's heart god is such a foundation of my life that for me letting go of god i become a worse person you know i'm much more selfish than i normally am i'm angry i just feel like i'm i'm spinning when i'm not believing in god so i thought you were nice enough for that afternoon that you didn't believe in god that's nice thanks babe so yeah i just wanted to clarify from the from from me being over there in the corner sounding like uh the devil taunting lisa to not believe anymore um i wouldn't say that to most people but having gone through that i could see this devastation happening and i knew i could see the like the clenched fists and at that point um having experienced that i i and i still do believe that if there's a god worth believing in uh it's a it's a god that's big enough to be able to handle this sort of thing to be able to handle uncertainty you don't it's god is not something that you have to hold yourself and contain yourself that you are contained within god that god is something bigger than that so seeing where she was at having experienced what i experienced letting go she wouldn't have to be afraid of trying to hold on to belief i think that's a very different thing than just telling somebody he's got some questions yeah well you know believe in god don't believe in god i wasn't being flippant if if it sounded like that what do you think about that mike because i i think there's also something you've been very careful even when you were an atheist you were a closet atheist because you didn't want your doubts destroying other people and how do you balance that like not wanting to destroy other people but also uh not wanting people to be become closet atheists themselves and not be have all this darkness just shut up in the secrets but just to be able to trust and and move where where the light is for you i think sometimes people need to be atheists i think sometimes that's the right thing because science tells us that what you believe about god is a huge part of your identity formation it encompasses a significant amount of neurological real estate it's something you invest in deeply and an understanding of god that has been beneficial can begin to chafe and begin to bind as someone grows and develops and changes in the same way that your favorite jacket from third grade really doesn't work for you as a senior in high school you're still the same person in a lot of ways but that jacket doesn't fit anymore so when people email me or call me or come meet with me about doubt the first thing i try to do is ease their anxiety about all their uncertainty and highlight for them that it's actually a good thing that they're going through this this period of questioning and this period of doubt because something new is being born in their lives so whether god exists or not let's forget that for a second the way you see the world is changing because you are growing and changing so let's just stop for a second and realize that's a great thing and let's stop freaking out about where we are today and trying to land the plane as fast as possible because you might end up just landing in new jersey when you're really meant to land in italy right so let's let's just keep this this this process of searching going it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists um and that actually uh has come in handy in my own marriage because jenny didn't have uh an afternoon of atheism um you know one of the most common questions i get from people is where's jenny at today and uh i almost never answered that because i don't want to answer for her but what's interesting about doing this today is she can actually answer that for herself um so how do we handle that jenny how do you and i talk about where we are first off it's open our fate is more now uh um definitely i'm not afraid to share with him he's not afraid to share with me anymore it's out there on the table that's comforting because you know he was right to be concerned about what would happen once i found out um you know be living in the same household being together and i was that the stereotypical taking the cues from your husband you know the spiritual leader of your home kind of thing and he doesn't believe in god well what do i really believe then you know and i think it was probably about a year later we were still at our old church so after he had told me on the love seat we were back on the loveseat a year later and i remember i think i was probably crying um and he was just comforting me because i was like i don't know if i believe anymore um i don't know what i believe but i don't feel god's presence anymore that was scary but it was also comforting because i knew he had already gone through it you know but at the same time here he was he had already gone through it and was on the other side well when was i going to get to the other side of it or seemingly to the other side of it you know in a place where he was comfortable where he was you know i still feel like i'm on that road of trying to figure things out for the people who are listening that you're doubting or that your spouse is doubting and you don't know how to talk about it like the important thing is that you talk about it and it doesn't matter who's right or who wins or where you land you might have like a conception of marriage that you know you're you're this uh equally yoked jesus corporation because that's taught in churches a lot but i feel like i can say because i'm in my 15th year of a fantastic marriage that's not how this thing works you are enjoying the journey and gift of life together and this back and forth in our vows of rich or poorer sickness health good times bad times that's real i mean i almost wish we would say in deep belief and atheism right like through all these things the core thing is we love each other and we're doing it together i don't know about you all but i thought we were mike and i our relationship was so close like that we were so together before all this and i feel like we're way more together now than we ever were you know even though we weren't like a part before it's just we're so much more on the same page there's no fear of sharing these deep thoughts you know with each other anymore it's a deeper level in our relationship my parents were both christians growing up but they went to separate churches and and i kept thinking of them as we were as we were like walking through this and it really scared me you know because um a lot of their problems were were blamed on religion and in hindsight i i feel very badly for my father because i see how he was totally looked down upon for not believing the same way or like going to the church that my mom and i went to you know like we were like the strong christians and i remember times of like him trying to accept the way that we believed but he couldn't like i i understand it now you know what i mean like i think for as a kid like you think that there's something of like of like maybe he was rejecting it but now i like i look at that and i go oh my god like i was the wrong one and he was rejected and that was awful and and and seeing the pain that caused him in his life of being rejected because not just because he wasn't even just the christian like he was christian but he didn't believe exactly the same way these other christians believed i think that's that's awful you know that's bringing of um so much division in the world and you know that's ultimately what the fear was um by mike coming out with the atheism not only first off what's it gonna do to us but once we realized we were gonna be okay but there's still the thing of what's it gonna do within our community and our community being our church the people that we are around you know on a regular basis and that's why i was like so adamant about we can't tell anybody we can't tell anybody and then um you know when it did all finally surface when mike started writing um his blog which you know i knew it was important for him to do it and i supported it but there were still times when i was like wait you're writing what are you you're gonna post that that's going on facebook wait a minute you know because i get very defensive of family if you mess with mine my me and mine my family then i'm coming at you and that's kind of what started happening you know i like how nicely you said that then i'm coming in it's for real though it's like oh yeah no i feel it it's like a sweet way but i go oh it's like scarier well she said it sweetly well you know you have this community that they're supposed or you feel like they should be supportive and there are people that were supportive we have good friends that were supportive throughout the whole throughout all of this and even if they didn't believe what mike was writing about or thought differently about things you know they still were supportive of us had encouraging words but then there were those few that just i felt like just his presence and i go ahead and i say our presence because we're one you know i started feeling like it's you're attacking both of us kind of you know just our presence there was causing dissension and and then i started getting better about it and that wasn't good for me yeah it's like stages like coming out to or being honest with each other and then coming out with oh the community for us it was an interesting thing with the community there were moments i felt like we felt like we had to hide even back with our band i feel like as a you know quote-unquote christian band playing the kind of music that we were playing there was there's always this certain thing expected of you um you know you don't you don't smoke you don't drink you don't do these things i'm trying to be careful with how i say this because some people have chosen you know not to drink in public because they feel it really harms other people who are struggling with alcoholism and i i really i have come to a point where i feel like you know that's their decision and for them they should hold true to their own convictions for us our conviction was we felt like we were living a double life you know saying hey guys you got to go behind the go behind the church or go a few blocks away from the church to smoke you know because they'd get in trouble if someone saw him smoking or don't have a glass of wine or blah blah blah so early on in the band we'd always tried to stay really honest with who we were at home and in public and so we tried to continue that you know with this the the god question at first we were you know we told our close friends and uh we were you know we started a church in denver and uh so that's really uh it's a it's a difficult thing to uh not talk about you know when you're you know supposed to when you're leading worship and you're struggling and um but we so we stopped for a little while we kind of you know told told some people hey we're we're just kind of we're struggling with some things right now so we think it's best for us not to really be leading much right now and but we eventually started telling our friends and then michael decided to preach about it it bloom just tell everybody great great right that's beautiful anybody just tell everybody it's a painful thing to come out of out of the closet in any way for you know if you're in a closet because you're smart enough to know that those outside of the closet want you in that closet and it's a painful thing like i was a little bit naive and how scary it would be for lisa because we had journeyed through a lot of our deconstruction together already when i told her i remember being a little nervous but i was like when i've let go of god um but i did i didn't i didn't even know that it freaked her out we were just kind of on a walk and i was like yeah i don't think so i think i really believe in god right now yeah i don't think so so you want to get some ice cream i kind of had not realized for some reason how yeah it was a bit too nonchalant the two wives that we're sitting here with with our i feel like you've both been really cool about it and i think there's a lot of people that it's even scarier oh yeah for than for you guys that like that coming out with that is telling your spouse like uh you're going to hell now you know in their world you're going and you're you're gonna might try to bring your kids to hell with them so you are becoming like the wicked you know the the damned the the evil for some people and i get why you'd want to stay in the closet i totally get it but i really in the long term i don't know that it's good for anybody it's not to stay in the closet yeah it's it's like it's like having a knife in you and you just i don't want to take it out because it hurts to take it out it's going to be awful it's going to be gory and bloody if you don't take it out you're going to get gangrene and die you can't live a life to the fullest in a closet you can't you can't live a full healthy relationship with something major just brooding like that underneath the surface that you can never talk about i just don't believe that you can so it's gonna hurt it's gonna be gory it's gonna be like tearing open your skin and pouring out your guts but if there's any hope for the relationship to be real for the life to be real and full i think you have to you have to unearth this stuff i think you have to really deal with it and face it head on so i think there's something i want to get out here um because i i just i'm sort of imagining all the different people in different places who sent us questions and who listen it is absolutely the best way to be healthy to be in situations relationships and communities where you can be your authentic self without being persecuted for that that may not be where you are today it may be that if you're honest that you're not sure god is real that your spouse leaves you and your church shuns you those are real i don't i don't want to minimize that by saying you know that i agree with michael that this is the best way to be healthy so a few points like if you're out there and you're not sure what you believe or your spouse is not sure what they believe and you understand that your community or your marriage is not ready that it will cost you deeply you might not be able to see your children you might get a divorce you might be shunned by everyone you know one find a safe ear now that might be a therapist at first someone who by law has to keep your confidentiality but find one person who you can be honest with completely and process what you're thinking and what you're feeling don't stay alone there's no way to move forward in health hiding all this once you've done that and you've unpacked some of what you're thinking what you're feeling it's time to go and talk to your spouse now if your spouse has certain ideas about god or is completely unaware that you're having these problems this is going to be pulling the rug out from under them okay a rational argument in case your beliefs probably not the most helpful thing you can do you know some some systematic explanation why it's silly to believe in god is is not going to help your marriage instead going with a lot of empathy and a lot of consideration for where they're at where you also used to be express that you are having doubt undermine this this this this new openness with an affirmation of the relationship and the love that you feel now if the shoe is on the other foot and you believe in god and believe in god with great certainty or or great freedom however you approach god and your spouse comes to you and says i don't believe anymore this is not the time to correct them or rebuke them or tell them the right things about god this is a time to affirm how much you love them and you care for them so what we're doing here we're first going to someone ensure shoring up our own feelings and our own experience and then we're working with our spouse to shore up and strengthen our marriage so that it's not the two of you against each other but the two of you moving forward together and from there together it's time to surround yourself with safe community that might be a subset of people in the the church or faith community you're in now it might be a completely new faith community so it might be necessary to find a completely new faith community altogether that's open to doubt that's open to explorations open understanding new things but where the person who still believes can have a community that believes as well and the ultimate goal here is to get to the point where you can be open and not be in the closet right what i'm saying is i understand for everyone just doing that all at once is dangerous spend some time reflection and kind of assess where you are how much risk you face and then move forward accordingly but you know it's absolutely true the only way to be whole and healthy is to be true to who you are and what you believe i want to say a word to the spouses and the significant others and the and just the loved ones of the people that maybe you're maybe you're not deconstructing but you love someone that is or has deconstructed or whatever and it occurred to me as we were all sitting here i i think that a big part of the reason that mike and i are doing a podcast called the liturgists rather than the skeptics or something along that lines is we encountered people that loved us in it because these these incredible women that we're sitting with loved us and stayed with us if if i would have been honest with lisa and she would have left me and my church would have shunned me i probably wouldn't have tried to go like i'm going to salvage something of this faith and re-think it and redefine these words it would have been like no screw this whole thing it's evil it's bad i really think if i wouldn't have experienced christian love in the face of my doubts and my deconstruction i wouldn't have had anything to want to hold on to anyway um it was the goodness that kept me is the reason that i'm on this podcast it's the reason we're doing the liturgist stuff at all is because um so those of you that are the if you're somebody that you're freaked out so you know your loved one has told you these things and you think in your perspective they're going to hell now and they're this on the other side even within that perspective try to imagine how jesus would respond to that and i'd firmly 100 percent believe that jesus when he would encounter people that were the broken the people that were not thinking straight the people that were struggling to believe something how can you imagine jesus shunning them like coming to jesus and him shunning them away no way it was the people that were the taboo people that the culture said should be shunned that he welcomed and that he would talk to and that he would show love to and eat with and mike alluded to something of this in the in some of the i forget which one of the lost and found podcasts but basically you want to you want to witness to an atheist give him a hug and and i really do believe that how we respond to those in our midst that that do deal with doubt and and thinking differently than the rest of us will have profound impact on where they end up the best thing you can possibly do is love and not shun not try to convince them to try to preach at them you love them and that's that's the gospel so we couples find and embrace our weakness and are strong together and things are looking better uh but we're in a new phase where we don't have the same beliefs about god and meanwhile there are bedrooms filled with toys across the house and uh kids that we get up and take to church every sunday um who are wondering what's going on with mom and dad uh how do you teach your kids about faith when you're in a season of doubt i ask more questions i think than i answer to amelie i i think it's hilarious to listen to her i i have like all kinds of sayings in my phone that i've written down about what amelie says about god and i think it's amazing but i'm really trying to give her as little as possible to have to painfully deconstruct later i give her stories and you know talk about god and jesus and stuff but i try to to admit how little that we know but that we have people believe different things they think different things what do you think you know and if she asked me what i think you know i'll tell her but it was funny because her reaction to that tell her what did she say to you the other dish but then talking about my mom yeah but then her mom just makes up for it i love my mom my mama yeah she's she's great so she likes very certain very certain about really everything so oh gosh what was it that i was saying oh amelie said she she wanted something and i and we were just sitting there together talking and all of a sudden she closes her eyes and she says god i pray that i'll be able to do whatever i want whenever i want to and then she opens her eyes and just looks at me i go i go that's not really how we pray she goes nana told me that you can get anything you want when you ask god which i'm sure is an adaptation of what my mother said but something along those lines i of course go into this ridiculous philosophical thing with my four-year-old daughter of how that's not what we actually do how some of those things might not be good for us but that's not how we actually pray to god and this is how we should pray to god you know just it was it was a little ridiculous on my part and i end with my what i think is a triumphant conclusion for my four-year-old and she just smacks her lips says you don't know anything about god nana knows everything about god and walks away and i was like that she's quite the fickle soul she has since told me that i know everything about god and nana knows nothing about god and people are biased towards certainty especially children so if you have like this open honest faith dialogue in your home and your kids kind of grok to that and it works it works until someone else tells them something with certainty at which point you don't know what you're talking about yeah it's true although our macy she has definitely the childlike fate it's childlike but she believes it like she got baptized and um she knew she knew why she was getting baptized what she was doing um and that that was even since all of our turmoil that we've had you know and moving to another church now um our oldest who is 10 she deconstructs she's kind of has mike's way of thinking a little bit and so whenever she asks me a question i say go ask your father she totally does like like twice as smart as i am like twice so i even look at things i thought that i thought were really advanced that i was thinking like 14 or 15 and she's like 9 and 10 thinking the same things um yeah but i mean so that's a key thing we're talking about kids one of one of the other questions we got to ask is you know how do we talk about god in the scriptures in a way that's developmentally appropriate and also honors the deconstruction that we've gone through like your children humans we we mature our brains mature and depending on what stage of neurological development someone's at certain ideas are more appropriate right so very young children can't understand abstract ideas at all democracy means nothing to them but a judge or the president does because that's that's something with facial features it's a noun it's uh it's it's humanized so for very young children i actually think it's okay to go with these like classical ideas about god that god is a person or god is personal or these old stories in the bible maybe not the flood story but other stories in the old testament are great ways to introduce people to god adam eve god being in the garden these things are very appropriate for young children but you'll know your child as they get more and more sophisticated in what they can understand and what i try to do in my home is be very clear when they ask a question this is what i think and i understand and other people believe different things and i might even tell them some of the other schools of thought and then they say well why do you believe what you believe then i tell them in whatever way is the most developmentally appropriate so i i convey my ideas with confidence and with certainty but at the same time i let them know this is just what dad thinks this is not ultimate truth and for our kids that's been a big a big win because they're able to enjoy the church they're able to be involved but they're able to understand that there's different perspectives that there's people who have different ideas about god people who don't believe in god at all people who believe in different gods and and these are things that dad believes and mom believes and like i follow right now but but maybe not always so but as much as possible we've tried to introduce them to god and to the god that we know and the god that we understand but not in a way they have to unlearn through therapy or grief later and i just think it's so important in the same way that you're open and honest in your marriage that you're open and you're honest with your children one thing i've really loved about this journey in our home is we have much more freedom now to say gosh as parents we were wrong it's easier to apologize to our kids we don't have to be the ultimate authority all the time because now we're just two people doing their best i feel like we are freed up in our home if that makes sense we're totally ourselves you know and honest with each other and when our kids do ask us a question we try to give them the most honest answer we know you know and and like mike said we just um tell them that's our opinion that as they grow they can form their own opinions about things but um it's it's working so far and if opinion is a tough word which a lot of kids opinion is going to be a weird weird word to use you can just say we believe that we believe that we believe that because social identity is is a is a huge part of individual identity especially for children and so simply saying we believe that you can then acknowledge that other people believe different things while still affirming that we believe this thing and and as they get older that's when you sort of increasingly introduce that uh what we believe is not absolute young kids don't get it whatever i believe is absolute and and you can kind of see that when they come home and tell you about talking with friends and you get kind of different world views introduced one parent is a rush limbaugh listener another parent is you know a new age spiritualist and all these kids show up to school and have these conversations and every one of them are resolute in the fact that their parent is the one who's right that's just normal that's developmentally appropriate don't stress about it it's okay i also think as parents we have this tendency to be like oh i've got it i've got to do this right i've got it i've got to be the perfect parent all you got to do is love your kids and do your best and just let the cards fall where they do we're not perfect we're people i mean if we were perfect we wouldn't have to do this podcast about what to do when we're not sure what we believe about god um just embrace your imperfection love your kids and do your best and everything else is is fine and i i think most importantly some of the other questions like somebody said how do you authentically raise your child rear your children and the way they should go and that's like in quotations and i'm thinking well and the way they should go is that they should love everybody you know it's pretty basic and we talk about it we've talked about it as christians before all this deconstruction and everything but i really feel like we authentically try as best as we can to express that now in our home and in our life and i think that's the biggest thing is showing love and grace to people and a safe haven when your children see that you're somebody that people like to come to to talk to or that they somebody that people trust or or that you open your home or you willingly love people with open arms whoever they are that that speaks volumes to kids yeah that's true i yeah one of the um i think one of the other questions on there i i thought the same thing jenny when you uh that same question that you just spoke about and there was there another one about how to how you pray with your kids when you're uncertain how to pray and i thought about that when i the times i've been uncertain about what to say when i'm talking our you know our daughter in at night the things we pray for is that is for love you know that god would soften our hearts our hearts wouldn't be enlargened for uh for kids without homes for kid people who are needy for you know to help us be selfless to help us love um it was a thing we'd pray every night right i think sometimes for our kids like you said just praying for love praying praying about loving others and just like basic prayers i think that still helps our children even in mike's time of doubt and when he didn't believe that was some of the most powerful time that he had with our kids and especially with our oldest leading her to make a profession of fate and it was him still going through the motions and i think sometimes you know as parents we might have to do that for a spell for a time as they're young but as they get older you know and maybe more more able to understand then we can reveal more to them and what you talk about changes if you can believe it uh this last year i ended up teaching our vacation bible school at church if you can imagine me teaching a bunch of grade schoolers about god and the reason that happened was jenny was teaching and did a great job but we got to the end of the curriculum which had been a great curriculum and we were supposed to set up a cross in the room and the kids all write their name on paper and you nail the name of the cross and you tell them that jesus had to die because of their sins and their wickedness that was the curriculum i couldn't do it i couldn't do it i couldn't do it either i mean you know i get these there are these ideas in the church certainly those are very dominant ideas about what the cross means um but you know that that was a definite like i could just see half of those people 20 years from now in therapy and this scary guy with a red beard he hammered my name to the cross and said jesus died because of something i did no so i sort of modernized the rhetoric i told a lot of the story about about that moment but then i i emphasized the fact that jesus showed us ways that we can live for others and he did this thing that was painful but he let people kill him because he loved them he didn't fight back so instead we wrote our names on hearts and we covered this cross with little valentine hearts with kids names on it and as the kids would come up and put their name on the cross with tape and not nails i would say hey and i'd say their name god loves you and it was beautiful and it was and it was profound like three years ago i would have gotten the nails and i would have done the whole thing so it's okay to shift and change you might find your kids benefit in their own relationship with god that is not your relationship with god but you might help them leapfrog some of the trauma in your own life by being authentic about where you're going and how you know god so that's what we've got to talk about here i know we've probably missed angles you're interested in so come tell us what we missed we'd love to hear your thoughts you can connect us on twitter at the liturgist on facebook at facebook.com the liturgist or you can comment on the episode at theliturgist.com podcast we have got some really exciting episodes planned uh for the rest of 2015 and uh we'd love for you to be a part of them the easiest way to make sure that you're getting all our episodes as soon as they come out is to subscribe in itunes so if you go to itunes and just search the liturgists you'll get us there you can also go to our website and click the itunes button to connect to the podcast thanks for listening i'm science mike i'm jenny mccarth i'm lisa conger i'm michael gunger have a great week everybody you