Mary DeMuth: Unleashing the Power of Writing on Healing and Empowerment After Abuse

Unleashing the Power of Writing: Mary DeMuth on Healing and Empowerment (Mary DeMuth)

Just a warning that listener discretion is advised. Do you find yourself contemplating how to get through something and just think that you need someone to talk to to help you figure it out, either something you're currently walking through or in your past? I know I've been in that place, and I've really benefited from therapists who are professionals who could help me see from a different perspective, from their professional lens, how to help me get unstuck. And so I am happy to announce that the sponsor for this podcast today is BetterHelp.com. And we have a special link for you to go to BetterHelp.com Difference to get 10% off your first month.

00:01:22

But also, I just want to say that as I have walked through therapy and have seen some of the tools in BetterHelp that are really exciting to learn from, that it's been a space for me to get healthier and walk through some of the onion layers of the toxic work environment that I was in. And so whatever your situation, whatever your situation has been in the past or whether it is today, if you're having trouble processing that, that's okay. You're living this human life like the rest of us. And when you're human and you live on this planet, things are just going to happen. But you deserve to heal, and you deserve to have somebody help you walk through that.

00:01:58

So I'm excited to give you this offer of 10% off through BetterHelp. So BetterHelp.com difference. Go there today, sign up for a therapist, get a few questions answered, and I hope that your first match is the one. But even if it's not, you can easily switch for no extra cost. They make it pretty easy, and that's normal to not always hit it off the first time, but there's somebody out there for you, and you deserve to heal.

00:02:23

So go to www.betterhelp.com/difference today.

00:02:28

Welcome to the world of Difference Podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown, and this is a podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. Our guest on today's show is Mary DeMuth, a literary agent, international speaker, podcaster, and she's also the novelist and nonfiction author of nearly 50 books, including her just released 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge, and she loves to help people restory their lives. Basically, she lives in Texas with her husband of 33 years and is the mom to three adult children. You can find out more about her literary work at Mary DeMuth.

00:03:13

We're going to link that in the show notes or be prayed for on her daily Prayer podcast with 4.5 million downloads. Pray everyday show for any cards or prints or artsy fun. She also has stuff@Marydemutes.com art, which is a lot of her art stuff that she does. And she's a literary agent at Marydemuthliterary.com, so not only is she an author, she actually helps other people write. And we're going to talk a little bit about just what it means to write today and her journey of writing 50 books, as well as her experience of living overseas as an American for a while.

00:03:56

And she just sort of matches this show in every possible way because she also is not only an abuse survivor and speaks broadly about her experience, but also has written a book called We Too about the experience of being a survivor of abuse in a church faith based space. And her book has really impacted a lot of people. So we're going to talk about not all of her books because that would be a lot for one podcast. But we're going to talk about her book We Too Today, and then her latest book about reading the Bible in 90 days all the way through. So a very warm welcome to the show today, Mary DeMuth.

00:04:46

Hi, Mary. A very warm welcome to the World of Difference podcast today. So great to be here. Thanks for having me on. It is great to have you, and I am excited for any of the listeners around the world.

00:05:00

If you've not heard of Mary DeMuth before and you are a reader, you're going to love the things we're talking about today because Mary has written quite a few books and we're going to talk about a new book that she's just released, as well as another one of my favorites out there. But my first question for you is sort of writers have different journeys that they are on. What got you into writing and is your story typical or atypical, would you say, in that way? I would say my story is doing all the hard things in order to get published. So I grew up loving words and graduated with an English degree, but it wasn't until my first child was born in the 90s that I just started feeling like I wanted to be published.

00:05:52

And so I spent about a decade of just writing and writing unpublished words. So that when I started to work toward traditional publishing with an agent and big publishing houses, all that. I'd already had about a decade of a lot of practice. And so I kind of am the, I don't know, the crash test dummy of authors because I've tried everything and there was no romantic story about being discovered one day. It was just a hard slog.

00:06:22

But it's been also a joy of being able to just be able to write books. It's been such a blessing to be able to do so well. I know that your books have blessed many, including me and others that I know that needed to read words that you put onto paper, and sometimes just the power of putting that down, it can give language to people who otherwise don't have it. As you have become a writer, and I know you also help others in the process of writing, do you have any advice for people out there who are struggling with the whole concept of becoming a writer from your perspective and your journey? Well, thankfully, now is a really great time to be a writer.

00:07:10

When I started in the early two thousand s, you could either be self published, which meant you'd have to shell out like $20,000, or you would traditionally publish. And that was my only option because I didn't have $20,000, so I had to. But nowadays you can upload your book to Amazon today and hold it in your hands in a couple of days. So I would just say write. Just write.

00:07:35

Pull the English teacher off your shoulder to get that first draft down. Invite her back into the conversation once the first draft is down so that you don't write dribble. And that it's.

00:07:47

Grammarly. I don't know how to say that. We're going to make up a word. The grammar is correct. That's right.

00:07:53

Grammarly. I don't know. Anyway, so that it's correct. I think the main problem that most people have with writing is they make it into a big thing when really it's just laying words down on the page. Give yourself permission to do it, and give yourself permission to do it poorly because it will be poor the first time you do it.

00:08:13

I love that advice. It's so good. And it really is consistent with, I feel like, my podcast journey and so many podcast hosts that I know. And I know that you also have a podcast that you work with about prayer. And I think that the more voices we get out there, the better off we all are.

00:08:34

And some of that perfectionism can get in the way in all kinds of areas of life. But one of the things that compelled me to start this podcast is I just want more voices in my life speaking into my life, helping me understand how to make a difference, helping me understand how to live this human life in a better way and help others flourish at the same time as myself. Right. And I think women's voices in particular, or other marginalized voices are ones I really crave hearing from. And so that advice is really spot on for this podcast.

00:09:08

So all you listeners out there, take Mary's advice and just write.

00:09:15

Yeah, so good. But I do want to dig into and we're going to talk about you have like so many books, we could not cover them all, but we're going to cover a couple today. One is your newly released book, which we'll save for a little bit later. But I want to dig first into We Too, which is a book that really made a huge impact in a community that I came out of, which is the Southern Baptist Convention World Denomination. And so let's start with we too.

00:09:37

I'd love for you to share what inspired you to write this and what message you hope readers will take away from it? Well, I think what inspired me was brokenness and pain and the church not doing. And when I say church, I'm talking about global sea church of religious institutions. We saw the beginning of it with the Catholic Church. And my friend Boz Chavigan back in the day, like back in the 2000s, said, the Protestant Church is worse.

00:10:08

And I was like, no, it can't be is worse. So it was born out of just this frustration that I believe faith communities are some of the best places to heal from trauma and abuse, or they should be. But so often they've become not only perpetrators of that kind of violence, but also secondary trauma of not believing, of blaming the victim. And oddly, for me, the church for me was a very healing place. I completely acknowledge that for many people, that is not the truth and not the case.

00:10:50

But since I experienced it that way, I knew that there was a standard by which we could create for our churches that they could become safe havens for people who are traumatized and hurting. So beautiful. I was just at an abuse panel at a church here in the Bay Area where I live in Fremont. It's a church that's just wonderful and really having these hard conversations around abuse and trying to be preventative as well know a healing. Um, so I've spoken on a couple of their first panels, and then the one I went to this weekend is a survivor of the same church where I was spiritually abused as well.

00:11:32

And it takes a while to tell your story. People are so brave when they do. And this particular survivor was so brave to share in this community because the church is still going. There's still people everywhere. But one of the survivors that spoke there were three different ones and three different stories, had a similar story to what you're saying had come out of an abusive situation outside of the church.

00:11:59

And it was the church where they healed. And it is so beautiful to hear those stories, because it is how our bodies and our souls and our brains expect it to be. And yet, when it isn't, it can be the absolute worst thing that we didn't see coming. And so, as you wrote this book, I know that you had a lot of statistics in there. You did a lot of research for it.

00:12:22

Talk about there's different types of abuse. You're largely dealing with sexual abuse in there, and I do want to dig into that in a minute. But what is the impact of some of that spiritual, emotional, psychological abuse that you encountered when you were writing the book? Yeah, I actually wrote a big viral post about spiritual abuse because I had a friend that was going through it and it made me so mad. And so I definitely just want to affirm that it's a complicated grief because it's all tied up with your faith.

00:12:58

And so a lot of people will just deconstruct and walk away because they can't untether the two. And I totally understand how hard that can be, but I think it's worse when you are in a religious environment and you've suffered some sort of abuse, whether it be spiritual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, because it's convoluted and everything is couched in religious language. And so then the triggers are normal things you would hear when you walk back in. And so for a lot of my friends who have experienced that in the church, walking into an environment where those words are being spoken, that used to be used as weapons and certainly may not be meant that way by the leader of the church that you're walking into or the religious place you're walking into, but you can't help it. It's just and so it's a more complicated healing journey than if, like in my instance in the sexual abuse, the boys who sexually abused me were Mormons.

00:14:01

So in a sense, there was a faith element to it. But it wasn't until later, when I met Jesus, that I began to walk that healing journey and encountered people who really loved me through that.

00:14:17

Yeah, I remember just hearing that part or reading that in your book, and it gave me pause. And it's just so heartbreaking to know that you went through that as a child. And I know many people who've read that story that you wrote or have heard you share it are heartbroken with you. It's not okay for any child to have experienced that. I, for one, just want to let you know that I believe you, and I'm heartbroken that happened to you, and you are so brave to share it, to write about it, and to want to help others, and I just appreciate you for that.

00:14:53

Well, thank you. Sharing it's part of the healing journey. And no matter what kind of abuse you've been through, I often say to audiences, an untold story never heals. When we let it fester inside of us, it grows bigger, like a monster. And we do need to find safe places to get it out.

00:15:13

And my advice is and we'll go back to writing for a minute my advice is maybe you're so traumatized that you can't even think of one safe person. At least write it down and then as you encounter people and you seem to find someone who loves you and is kind hearted to you and is safe, just push the piece of paper across the table and let them read it. It's a really gentle way of beginning to tell your story, but you will not heal if you keep it inside. So true. It's so true.

00:15:46

The cost of silence is born in our bodies and our souls, our brains, and it comes out, it spills out like hot tea that's overflowing and it's not something you can really keep a lid on. And so there's like a way to handle it and there's a way to handle it. And I know that it's not an easy road ever, in any circumstance, but that is really good advice to find a way to share it, even if it's a small step, like writing it down. I really like that. The therapist that I worked with for a really long time, in the beginning of the aftermath of coming out of recovering from abuse at our church, my husband and I went to a therapist that a lot of the survivors from our same abuser have gone to.

00:16:28

You just say the name of our former church and then she knows she's worked with a lot of us, does EMDR and brain spotting and all the things helped a lot of us recover. But when we were with her, she said maybe it's good just if you could write down, maybe even just write a letter. And so we wrote letters to our two abusers that we never sent. And it was so powerful because talking about it was a very huge part of our healing and sharing our story. Like Dr.

00:16:56

Diane Lamberg says, as many times as it know and have those people that will listen again and again as you peel the onion layers back. But also there was something about writing it down that surprised both my husband and I at where the betrayal really was. And it wasn't clear how we could walk through the betrayal until we'd actually written those letters down. And I do think that even if you're not a writer, there is something about that part of the brain that happens and the processing of it all that can be very helpful. Have you found that in writing you process your story differently?

00:17:32

Yes, because I definitely told it a lot at first when I was safe, I started telling my story at 15, the abuse happened at five. And that's pretty rare. Most people wait until their late twenty s to disclose an abuse like that. So I was a bit early on that and that was very helpful. Lots of healing happened because of that.

00:17:59

But it wasn't until I started writing for publication in the 2000s, early 2000s, that I had to confront the fear of it. Because when you're writing it for a wide audience, you can't take it back once it's out there. It's out there. And I recall the first time I wrote my story in one of my earlier books. It was called Building the Christian Family.

00:18:24

You never had. And so the point of that book is, how do you raise kids when you didn't have a very good example growing up? And so you're kind of starting from scratch. You're a pioneer. In order for people to relate to me, I had to just in one chapter share my story.

00:18:41

And I was terrified, and I was afraid that one of my alive parents would say that it didn't happen and withdraw their love from me. And my editor said when we were all through the editorial process and I told him, listen, I don't want this to be punitive. I don't want it to sound like I'm the victim and they're the you know, I don't want to be finger pointing. I just want to plainly tell the story. And after we'd gone through all the edits and did all of that, he said, you need to tell that person that you wrote that chapter.

00:19:17

And I had all those fears, and I sent that chapter to them, and everything that I feared came true. It didn't happen, they said, and I'm going to withdraw all my love from you. And what was cool about it, this sounds like a sad story, but it's actually a really happy story. So I had the worst thing that could happen to me happen, and I was still standing, and I realized that that person had been like 12ft tall. And when they did the very thing I thought that they shouldn't do, but they did anyway, they shrunk in my mind to a normal human being's size.

00:19:53

And that one chapter then gave me the courage to go ahead and write an entire book with my story, which is Thin Places a Memoir. So it has that whole story in there, and then those then became the foundations of the next. And so you go from fear to fear to fear, but you also go from strength to strength to strength. Oh, man, that is so powerful. And I'm sure that other people have had various versions that can relate to what you're saying.

00:20:23

It's that thing you're most afraid of, that if you actually just are brave enough to face it and name the fear and just go forward anyway, even if you face everything you thought, somehow it catapults you into something so much bigger, and now you have this huge field to run and play in and be brave. I had a similar experience in the sense that in my particular story, when my husband and I didn't sign the NDAs tied to Severance because we felt that that was abusive in itself to ask someone to not share their story once that happened. And then I began to be slandered by the leading executive pastor to the staff two different weeks in a row with different false narratives. They had to keep switching around. It was like, wow, you've publicly ruined my reputation.

00:21:15

But the thing is, once they did that, it's like, well, if I'm afraid of speaking out because of my reputation, well, that was kind of not a very good chess, actually. Now what am I going to mean? You've. Literally, I'm called Jezebel. I'm called evil.

00:21:32

They have prayer meetings that, you know, Lori's being evil or whatever, and most people that have left or either are still there and still believe me, don't fall for it. And so it's kind of like, well, you've really done the worst thing that could happen. So now I might as well speak to the press because most people I know and have known throughout my life for decades of, I'm not a perfect person, but my husband and I have good reputations because we've tried our best to care for people and learn from our mistakes and that kind of thing. Do repair when necessary. And so those people have all been like, yeah, we believe you.

00:22:05

It was just the people inside. And I think that in abuse cases, there is always that fear that you won't be believed and that people will withdraw. And that's a pretty common trauma response. And so I recognize that, and I'm sure other people listening do, too. Your book, We Too, though it delves into the topic of sexual abuse within the church.

00:22:23

And so I am curious to know what kind of impact do you hope your book will have on places like the Southern Baptist Convention, other denominations as well that are facing this, or specific churches and individuals? Well, I learned something about myself when I wrote that book, and I definitely had a prayer team praying for me through the release of that book because I knew that bad things were going to happen to me if I release that book. So there was going to be backlash and all of that. I learned that I am not good at politics, so I do attend a church that is loosely affiliated with Southern Baptist. And so because of the book, I was invited to come on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention and pray and also do presentations and things like that throughout the conference.

00:23:13

I had to ask my church to send me as a messenger. They hadn't sent someone since, like, 1985, so it was definitely that's how loosely affiliated they are. Yeah.

00:23:24

I didn't grow up in the church. I'm from the north. I'm not a Southern Baptist in my mind. And the fact that I go to an SBC church is really weird because it doesn't feel like one. Anyway.

00:23:35

All that to say, I didn't feel like it was my job to reform the SBC, but I did have a very public role in it for a period of time during that book when it was released. And so there was a lot of being accused of being woke. I don't even know what that means. It's so silly. But for whatever reason, and I don't understand this at all, and maybe you can help me because maybe you know more about the SBC than I do.

00:24:10

But there's a very strong concern about the liberal drift. And so somehow caring for people who have been sexually abused is liberal. I just think it's Christlike. But that's the one question I kept coming back. When I would get in trouble or whatever or yelled at or whatever, I would just be like, okay, let's just get back to looking at the life of Jesus.

00:24:34

And if someone and we've seen it in scripture, people who had been abused, people who had been harmed when they came to him, how did he respond? Now let's just choose to respond that way too. We err on the side of belief. We listen, we dignify the person we hurt on behalf of the sin that's been perpetrated against them. We stand for justice.

00:24:56

These are all things that Jesus did. And I guess if that's liberal, then Jesus is liberal. But yeah, it was just the most ridiculous.

00:25:06

Yeah, I guess I learned I had to take a three month sabbatical after the book released because I couldn't carry anymore. And mostly it wasn't the stories, although that was hard. I carried a lot of stories, and I won't diminish that. Right. But what was harder was all the politics involved in trying to change a system.

00:25:28

I realized I'm not the girl to do that. I just want to talk about healing and providing safe places for people. Yeah, it's a lot to expect any survivor to fix any system, even their own situation, which often is the case. Right. We don't center the survivor, the victim survivor and their needs.

00:25:51

We do things like use forgiveness as a weapon or monitor their forgiveness status and our own opinions of what that should look like and all that kind of stuff. And so it's just unreasonable. But it's absolutely unfathomable that somebody who just wrote a book would be asked to be involved in that and then be called names in the process. But it's also not shocking. I think know, even Dr.

00:26:16

Scott McKnight and Laura Behringer, who've been on the show a couple mean Scott especially, is to I don't want to fix this. I don't want to be a church consultant. Right. I'm just writing. Right.

00:26:28

I'm not academic. It is a lot to ask, and I think that one of the things that is so difficult about these situations is that the system is doing what it was designed to do and trying to fix it from the inside. Many of us have come to the conclusion that it's not actually possible. I do have a lot of respect and admiration and allow for all of the perspectives that are inside trying to make a difference, because I think it takes a lot out of people to get in there for that long and be that patient. And I think that's really admirable.

00:27:03

But for me and others, we've chosen to be outside, maybe in a sense of like, if there's somebody inside experiencing spousal abuse that it's really hard for them to stay in that marriage and fix that marriage. They really need to get to safety. And so some of us have come to that conclusion and used that metaphor with this. You use a metaphor. I don't know if you remember it in your book.

00:27:25

I actually loved it so much. But if you remember your poop brownies metaphor, I'd love for you to explain this and how it helps us address abuse. Yeah, there was that scene in the movie where she serves the poop pie, which it's a similar metaphor, obviously. But I think what I've learned is we tend to want every I don't know how to explain it necessarily, but if a church is perfect in every way, which there's no such thing, but there's a religious system that's perfect in every way except they are harboring people who are harming people, whether that be sexually or leadership wise or whatever It's offering a poop brownie. So you wouldn't want to take that knowing that there was something in there that really stunk.

00:28:28

And even though there's a lot of chocolatey goodness masking the taste, I believe we're called to purity and justice and erring on the side of helping the one who is victimized. But as you mentioned before, our church systems, at least in the United States and you and I have both lived overseas. We've both been missionaries overseas. We have the advantage of coming back into the American church system with better eyes. And the American church system is very much built on celebrity.

00:29:06

It's very much built on fame and platform. And I'm in the writing industry, it's all built on platform. And that system has to protect itself because ultimately that system is about making money. And in order to protect money and all the jobs underneath, then you have to silence anyone that points out the poop because you have to protect the institution at any cost and the institution becomes more important than shepherding your people. And if that happens, then something is wrong with the church.

00:29:46

So true. I really love the metaphor one because it's funny and we always need a little bit of humor in these situations. Yes, definitely. It helps us with processing our trauma in different ways. But also it's so clear because I think a lot of what and if you've had a chance to read Pivot, which is the follow up to a church called Tove that Scott and Laura just know they use like a tree metaphor in there a lot.

00:30:17

So, like, what are the roots like, what is the fruit like? And sometimes trees will produce both good and bad fruit. Like, not every tree always produces. These perfectly juicy peaches every time, right? And that can be so confusing but the reality is you don't want to eat a rotten fruit.

00:30:30

Nobody wants that even no matter how it looks on the outside. And the same with poop brownies. And I think that sometimes people decide to stay in an abusive system or an abusive marriage because of that cycle of abuse that is common in all the situations. It's not all bad or you would never stay. If the husband wasn't love bombing the wife, she wouldn't stay or they didn't have these trauma bonds or whatever.

00:30:56

These things that happen in a church situation. It can be like the free mugs, the free t shirts, the endorphins that get created from these contagious joy values of partying and the way that your brain gets really tied to this community and won't let it go no matter how much bad is there. And that's why the Poop Brownies is such a perfect metaphor. When you were encountering research for this book or even in the aftermath as you have spoken, do you have any words of knowledge or wisdom in your experience of what you've learned to speak to that person now that might be wondering should I stay or should I go? In a situation like that it's such.

00:31:38

A difficult decision and I just want to verify that it's not as simple as saying well, you're being hurt so leave. Right. We know that in cycles of abuse we understand that particularly in an abusive marriage, very clear. It's not as simple. There's a lot of economic realities as well, especially in the marital sphere.

00:32:01

But in terms of church, my husband and I are working through those questions as well. You get to a point of what's the straw that breaks the camel's back and I have found that I was in an abusive situation a couple of years ago and it wasn't a church related one but it will be a good example for this. So I was in it and I kept having these body responses like these trauma body responses that I only had felt from other things that were much what I thought was much worse like sexual abuse and whatever. Yeah. So I was continually in this state of anxiety and I was having these traumatic body experiences but my mind was like oh, I should stay because this will be good for me or I'm going to learn something or this is what you have to do to pay your dues.

00:33:01

Just all those kinds of things that I was thinking. And it wasn't until I made that leap and I did process with very safe friends outside of that situation but once I left now I see so much more clearly the whole rottenness of the whole thing. And God has been so gracious to me to show them to me you'd made the right decision, it was the right thing to do. Look at this bad thing that's happening because I knew I had tried, and this is maybe what you're getting at. I had tried from within that broken system to repair it.

00:33:37

And every single time I tried, I was shamed, I was pushed against. My body would have a reaction, and no matter how hard I tried to change this unchangeable system, they would push back. And so the only thing that I could do is leave. And I think that's one of the straws that breaks a camel's back is if you've tried five times, what has been the response? Each of those five times?

00:34:04

Has it always been pushing back? Have you had a body reaction? If that's the case, it's time to go. Yeah, good advice. I hear a lot of people saying, well, God hasn't released me.

00:34:15

I need to pray about it, or things like that. And I'm not saying that that's never the wrong response, but by and large, I don't believe God is abusive or God wants us to stay in systems that abuse us and cause our bodies to react or silence us or don't let us know. Scott McKnight would say if a leader can't be questioned, that's a sign of a tyrannical leader. Right. That's not a good thing.

00:34:41

And if your leader can never be questioned or your system can't be questioned, that's really a toxic situation and abusive in many cases. And so if power is being abused, probably there's other abuses going on, too, in different ways. And so sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire. And so I agree we get the frog being boiled situation, because that's hard to navigate. Definitely.

00:35:09

Well, one last question about this book, and then I want to move on to other parts of your writing and your life, but what are some common misconceptions or challenges you think survivors of sexual abuse in particular probably face when they're trying to find healing and support within a religious context especially? I think one is that these religious systems on the most part are not trauma informed and so they're just not going to get it. And I think we hope that they are, or we expect that they are, because they're supposed to have the metaphor used throughout the Bible is shepherd and sheep and shepherd. Shepherds are supposed to take care of sheep. We see.

00:35:53

I believe it's in Ezekiel 32 or 34, where there's this damnation against shepherds who didn't take care of the sheep and ate the sheep. So, yes, there is definitely things written about bad shepherds in the Bible. And so I think that's part of the problem is just this kind of wide eyed this is supposed to be a safe place and kind of walking in expecting it, which I don't blame anyone. I expected that too. But unfortunately, there's just not a lot of training going in for churches about this.

00:36:29

I wish that there was more. And then I think the other thing is just we live in our culture and so this may not be a problem with the church per se, but in our culture, we live in an instantaneous culture and we want to be able to snap our fingers and tell our story and be healed in the same moment. And trauma is it may have taken 1 minute for that trauma to happen to you. It may not even have taken ten minutes of your life. It takes a lifetime to untangle.

00:37:01

That's unfair. And I affirm that it is completely unfair. Why do I have to spend my whole life with what happened in a short period of time? But that's just how it works and that's our physiology if we walk into it, which I've done. And that's why I said this in my twenty s, I was prayed for for four years during college.

00:37:20

And so I went like this. I was like, okay, I'm done. I have been prayed for. And I had a lot of healing, don't get me wrong, lots of great things happen, but I assumed it was over. And then when I got married, things arose and when I started having children, things arose and these layers of trauma kept coming off.

00:37:38

And I was mad. I was like, no, I did the work, I prayed, I told my story, I did it. And the Lord so gently was like, there's another layer. And this is a long term obedience, not a quick one. And done.

00:37:54

Although I wish it were. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I don't think I've met a survivor of any type of abuse yet that doesn't want to trap door every single day out of this nightmare and also wasn't surprised by how long it takes to find healing. And it comes in stages and it goes through cycles, like grief cycles, and comes back and surprises you and you carry it in your body whether it was a physical or sexual abuse or not. And so it is so difficult and I hope that anybody listening, if you have walked through any type of abuse or trauma that you'll just be patient with yourself because it does take time and it takes as long as it takes, as a lot of us say.

00:38:39

I know that you spent some time overseas and some of that was a mixed bag. But if you had anything that you could say about that experience that gave you a whole new perspective on life, a lot of people who go overseas come back and say, wow, I just don't see the world in the same way. Did you have any experience like that for you that you could point to? Yes. And again, I think it was just I needed to be divorced from my home culture and be completely discombobulated in another culture.

00:39:08

In my case it was France, in order to kind of shake me out of my lethargy of what does a Christian community look, you know, trying to establish one in another country. You try to look at what's more universal and what is the Bible saying when it's the second chapter of Acts and we're getting together and we're breaking bread and meeting each other's needs, and then you compare that to a megachurch and you're like, how do these two things connect?

00:39:46

I think that's the thing that really helped me. I also think that I became less black and white. I still love the Bible. I affirm it very much. I love it.

00:40:02

But there wasn't a lot of room for nuance before, and now there's a lot of room for the fact that everyone's different. Everyone has a different story. And I don't have to agree with someone to bear their burden, if that makes sense. So good. Yeah.

00:40:21

I think so many of us who read scriptures of various kinds and live overseas and learn other languages start to see them in a new way in some ways that they reject those scriptures altogether depending on which ones they read and which ones are dear to them. And other times it becomes richer and more meaningful. And so I know that, like you said, you continue to love the Bible and you've written a new book that I want to talk a little bit about, and there's different ways to read the Bible. And I know that somebody who is a writer and you've actually got a degree in English, I think, right? And there's so much different a lot of things that people don't talk about is that the Bible has different genres, right?

00:41:00

So there's letters, there's poetry, there's story. And so as you were kind of working on this book, what parts of that spoke to you? And is there anything you want to say to our listeners about what you discovered about the Bible as you were writing this book? Well, as a storyteller, and so when I started writing, I was only writing fiction, so I am definitely a storyteller. So I am coming to the Bible with that lens.

00:41:27

And a couple of years ago, I just felt like I didn't have the whole Bible in my head, like, what's the story? And so I started reading it rapidly, which is what this book, it's called the 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge. Read the whole Bible, change your whole life. So this is hard. This is 90 days of reading everything.

00:41:48

But what I learned and what it helped me do was I finally grasped the whole story from beginning to end. What the fall of humankind and the great redemptive journey that we are on and God is on, and what that story arc looks like, where I am in the middle of the story. And so that's really why I embraced this practice. This isn't something you're going to do every three months or anything like that. It may just be a once in a lifetime thing that you do, but there's so much richness in having all of that squished together so that you can kind of grasp the whole narrative of scripture.

00:42:31

Yeah, it's so impactful just to do it. It's almost like a crash course, I guess, in the Bible. Yeah. You don't have time in between to forget what you just saw. Like, if you're watching a show on Netflix and they've had a delay because of the writer strike and their new season doesn't come out until two years.

00:42:49

Yeah, I need to rewatch the last season. Yeah, do it all at once. Yeah. It's an interesting way to do it in the sense that you're trying to find the whole picture. I know sometimes people come at the Bible and they get a little confused in different parts, and obviously there's parts where they are shocking or seem really hard to even interpret or hold.

00:43:17

And so some of our listeners may be in that place right now. Have you had experiences like that? And if you have or haven't, what is your advice as somebody who's read the Bible, I guess in French and then in English and any perspective on that? I haven't read it in French. I should that would be really lovely, just to be honest.

00:43:39

I think you're always going there's any scripture, any book that's holy, you're going to have questions. Any book that you read, you're going to have questions. And so I just want to affirm that that's super normal and that it's okay to hold that intention. There are still some things that I hold intention that I don't have the answer to, but I know the nature of God is to love me and care for me and rescue me, heal me. And so I keep that in the back of my mind while I am messing with something that doesn't make sense to me.

00:44:19

It's just normal. And if we don't allow for questions and we don't allow for nuance and we don't allow for gray areas and we don't allow for the fact that it's a giant book and there's a lot in there, like you said. I think sometimes we though, will just throw the baby out with a bathwater. We might have like ten questions about ten things that happen in the Bible, but there's thousands of other things. The wisdom of the Proverbs, the beauty of the life of Jesus that we might miss if we throw out the things that are conundrums for us.

00:44:57

Yeah. I remember back when I was getting my master's degree when I was in seminary, and there were certain seminary books that we would read, and I would be like, I just really adamantly disagree with this author and the way they say this or whatever in one of my classes. And it's like but I really love this other part. And I think that I've had that posture with books that I read too. I don't think I've ever read a book that there's not a part of it.

00:45:21

That it's like, oh, I would say that differently. Or you question that? I mean, I'm an enneagrammate. We just challenge. That's what we like to do.

00:45:29

Married to one of those. Oh, are you? Yeah. It's like, why do you have to ask so many questions? So many questions?

00:45:36

Call him the questioner all the time. Yeah, we're good investigators, actually, I think that's a whole different enneagram, the investigator. But anyway, we like to ask questions. So systems that don't allow it are not places we want to be. Right, exactly.

00:45:51

But at the same time, you probably, as an author, look back at some of your earlier books and think, well, at this point in my life, I might even write that differently or word that differently. And I think that that's important to recognize. The Bible is these ancient scriptures written by a lot of different people over a lot of years with a whole different ancient way of living and that kind of thing. So I think we need to keep that in mind as we read it. But does it have something to say to us today?

00:46:18

I believe it does, and I do want to keep in mind that there are different genres of what's written. Not everything is prescriptive. Sometimes it's just descriptive. And understanding the difference between descriptive and prescriptive is really important, I think, when reading the yeah, yeah. Yes.

00:46:36

Because when you look at the story of Bathsheba for yes, it's not saying that if you're a king, you should look at a lady and then rape her, kill her husband. Please don't. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. And she is never once blamed. And if you read that story plainly and you divorce all the bad theology that you've gotten from the past or what you've heard from the pulpit, never once does the Bible blame her.

00:47:01

She is listed in the genealogy as Uriah's wife. Like, she's definitely not blamed. And yet we hear know pastors that she was being all slinky on the roof. Well, that's never mentioned in the Scripture. And so that's why we have to look at the difference between descriptive and prescriptive and even just look at the plain reading of the text.

00:47:25

Yeah. I mean, even the part of, like, Nathan nathan has a few choice words for David about everything he did wrong that he needed to repent of. There's nothing about Bathsheba having to repent know, breaking purity culture rules by taking a freaking bath on where she I mean, apparently taking a bath there was, like, normal. Like, she wasn't doing anything. Heck.

00:47:46

Why were you looking you're a yes. What is wrong with the creeper? Yeah, exactly. So, yes, not prescriptive. Absolutely.

00:47:56

And also understanding, even though the word abuse isn't used, because that was probably not a word they even understood the way that we do now. Definitely the implications are there that something had been done wrong by the king, abused his power. And Nathan kind of had few choice words for the King about that. So good illustration of that whole point. Well, it's been lovely to have you today.

00:48:15

I want people to be able to find you and your writing. So if we have people that are interested in learning how to write, also interested in your books, how do they find you and learn more from you? So you can find me at Mary DeMuth and all the social platforms. And then my website is Marydemuth.com. If you happen to want to do a 90 day Bible reading challenge, we're going to do it together in Community in January.

00:48:38

So you can go to Marydemuth.com Bible. And then if you want to know about writing it's, Marydemuthliterary, that's myliteraryagency.com perfect. Thank you so much for your words today, for all your writing. What a gift it is to us and also for helping authors out there to have their voice be brought into the world. We need more voices, for sure, more diverse voices, more voices from women and people of color.

00:49:04

It would be great to hear from you and so get in touch with Mary and learn more from her. She's definitely put in the work and knows a few things after all her experience of what she's walked through. So thanks for being on the show today. We're also going to have you with our supporters in the Difference Maker community. I'm going to ask you another question there, but for this interview, thank you so much for your time today.

00:49:25

I really appreciate you. So good to be here. Thank you. Well, that conversation was so impactful for me. I don't know how you're processing some of the things that Mary said.

00:49:36

Not only is it just very sacred when somebody shares their story of abuse, but there's something just especially poignant about sharing abuse. One experience as a child and such a young child, it is so unusual for somebody to speak out at only 15. Typically the development and what happens in the brain is that that often doesn't really click in for people until they're 2021. Just the ability to even socially to overcome what it takes to share that out loud. But, yeah, she's obviously so courageous to share that in written form.

00:50:19

I really appreciated her talking about walking through that fear of what it was like to put that out there and even send that chapter to the person she was most afraid would not believe her and then say, I don't really love you or want you in my life anymore, basically. And that's a lot. I know that there are several of you listening to this episode right now that have walked through that personally. That rejection when you've been so vulnerable about something that was not your fault, that was done to you, not because of you or anything you did or didn't do. And I hope that you can find some inspiration and some hope in her story that that was a real moment for her, a real pivot, a transformation where she could move forward in a way that was free.

00:51:06

As hard as that was that she said, this is actually a happy story, even though that was a very devastating moment. And I really appreciated just the nuance of how she shared that. And I would really be interested to know if that brought up anything for you that was impactful. I know that many of you listening to this podcast are believers in therapy. I am, too, in our family.

00:51:30

I mean, I'm married to a man with a marriage and family therapy master's undergrad in psychology. So obviously our family very much values the role that therapists play in all of our lives. I remember my husband saying years ago, it's sort of like if we're going to take our car to get an oil change and get checked up, we want to make sure we're maintaining our lives in terms of our emotional and mental health as well and how we process things in relationships. If you're living on this planet for any length of time, you're going to experience some form of conflict or trauma or harm, because humans just tend to experience these things here on planet Earth. And so, yeah, in our family, we love therapy.

00:52:18

And if you are looking for a therapist, I'll put a link in the show notes, but you can go to BetterHelp.com Difference and get 10% off. I'm starting a thing with them where we're able to get a discount for any of you who want that. And it's also a place where there's all kinds of different therapy. You can put in information about yourself, whether you want a Christian therapist or not. If you identify as Christian, and just because you identify as Christian doesn't mean you have to choose a Christian therapist, that's okay, too.

00:52:48

You get all these different choices of what would work best for you. Do you want to be able to text your therapist, do video? There's also different classes you can go to. I saw one the other day that was about if you've recently lost a pet. Many of you know that I did lose my pet, our beloved pet coco that we brought from Singapore.

00:53:06

Our little rescue dog, she passed away in February. If that's something you're walking through right now, they even have help for that. So, yeah, BetterHelp.com Difference is a place where you can get 10% off. As my listeners, I'm really happy to provide this for you. But also, I just wanted to say as we talked about these heavy topics today, whether you have experienced abuse and trauma of any kind or you're walking through that with people.

00:53:31

Mary DeMuth is one of those people who's writing about it and speaking about it and doing it in ways where she understands as a survivor herself and also wants to be in a space where she can give language and tools that have been helpful to her to others as she processes some of that. So her book, We Too is really helpful for me, just thinking through some stuff. I know that you heard us both say we don't agree with everything we read in every book. You don't have to agree with everything you read in her books, but I hope that you find her writing helpful, as I have. So, yeah, check out Mary DeMuth for more about her books and especially her latest book, like I Said, that just got released, that many people are really excited to have in their hands 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge.

00:54:17

And you can read the whole Bible. The subtitle is that you can read the whole Bible and change your whole life. So yeah, for some of you, this is something you might be interested in checking out or reading as a group with different people. And I'd love to know if you do that. I'm sure Mary would too.

00:54:33

So definitely reach out if you do that 90 Day Challenge together. Or you could join hers in January and wait for that. Also, as she mentioned, she is a literary agent and helps other people get their writing into the world. So Mary DeMuth is a space where you can find her work around being a literary agent, and I'm sure you will find that very insightful. And once again, please check out her Podcast.

00:55:05

If you want to be prayed for, or if you just want to hear her talk about prayer and Pray, you can be prayed for on her Daily Prayer Podcast with 4.5 million downloads. It's called Pray Everyday show. And also for cards, prints and artsy Fun, go to Marydemuth.com Art. Yeah, Mary DeMuth, she's doing all the things she's lived around the world in different places, and really a great fit for this podcast. She intersects with all of our spaces.

00:55:35

So it was so much fun to have her on the show today. And if you are going to the Restore Conference in Chicago, you'll get to hear her speak. And my husband Jason and I will also be speaking at a dinner that Friday night and talking about our experience with Christian Journalism and what it was like to go on the Record and speak Whistleblow and go on the Record with Julie Royce as the journalist that we chose to speak out with first. So we're going to be speaking at a dinner at the Restore Conference. Would love to see you there.

00:56:08

And I'm excited to get to finally meet Mary DeMuth in person. So if you're going to be there, let me know, reach out. It'd be fun to meet any of you listeners in person and also be bringing some stickers for the podcast. Free Stickers. So if you come to me and say, hey, I want a sticker for the podcast, I will give you one for free.

00:56:28

Happy to do that because I am so just honored that you listen to those podcasts. It makes a difference for me. And I'm really honored to meet any of you who listen and hear about any of the episodes and guests we've had on that have been impactful for you. So, yeah, they're going to be at Restore conference in Chicago the second weekend of October. Definitely come say hi.

00:56:48

In the meantime, keep making a difference wherever you are.