[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
Amy, I cannot help but tell you that I am, like, the tiniest bit jealous of your background because you have houseplants that are big and beautiful and alive.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they're alive. I don't know. My husband used to pick on me when we were first married because I wanted to be a plant lady then. And I didn't really take care of them well enough, I guess. But I was also, you know, working a lot of hours outside of the home. Then I have. I don't even know, like, oh, you can't see them all.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: So many.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness, I've got tons. And then behind me here, this is.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: The one I'm eyeing. What do we even know?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: That's a Monstera. That big one.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah. That's really cool, how the leaves open up like that. And then in the background, I have a Thai constellation, Monstera. That's a baby. So the leaves haven't started opening yet, but it's got, like, white variegation and white spots in it.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: And the other one's like this Swiss cheese one.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: I think that's. I. I have a lot.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Anyway.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: I have a lot of issues with houseplants, and I can't do it. I really want to, and I try. And my kids will make fun of me because I'll, like, come out of some store. They're like, mom, you went in for whatever. And I'm like, I know, but isn't it great? They're like, yes, and it's going to be dead in three weeks. And I'm like, I know, but I'm going to try.
I'm going to try this time, and it doesn't work. But this is going to be happy. Maybe. Maybe someday.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: And some of them have real stories, like a neighbor girlfriend that I made at a time where I was really having trouble making friends in a new neighborhood. She ended up moving, which was kind of sad, like, far. But, like, she shows up on my porch with her big California jade that wasn't going to make the move and asked if I would like it. And now I probably have at least 10 jade plants.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: That one.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Friendship.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: I love it. I love it so much. I just passed by one of mine today that was just looking very, very sad, and it made me sad. Anyway, we're not here to talk about plants, but I couldn't help it. They're just so. They're just so gorgeous in your background.
We are here to talk about your newest book.
I feel like I need to take a deep breath because there is so much in this book. So I want to thank you, first of all, because there's so much of yourself.
It really is this book.
So I felt really honored to read it. And, you know, half of the time, I was kind of thinking about imagining what it must have been like to write some of those things or to put in here what you've already written, because there are so many journal excerpts.
But I'm just really grateful that you did share that with us.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: So.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: It's called Saving face.
Finding myself.
Two words that was important to me. As I was down this morning, I was like, oh, the self is capitalized as a part of that subtitle. Finding myself, God, and one another outside a defaced church.
Amy, this is the first time we've chatted. I recognize your name from when I first joined Twitter.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Way back at the beginning of the pandemic, because I was like, okay, we're all home.
And I'd never been on Twitter before, but I was like, I don't know, maybe my excuse at the time was maybe this will be a way to get the news kind of quicker. You know, like, things will come in and I'll see this. And you were one of the people that I saw just having conversations about, you know, things that were happening in the church, things that had happened with you and your family in the church, how the church was navigating the pandemic at the time. And I found a lot of those conversations to be really rich, and I'm grateful for those. But it wasn't lost on me that even though I didn't know the whole story, I hadn't. I hadn't been around that long, that you guys had experienced quite a bit of pain at the hands of the church. And so I'm wondering, as you're.
As this book is really talking about, like, how do we begin to see one another? How do we get. Begin to, like, I don't know. For me, it felt like just kind of reshaping our own self image for those of us who have been hurt by the church, which is supposed to be such a safe place. And then how do we kind of reform these images of God when those have been tainted as well? And so what I'm wondering if we could start is kind of, you know, not necessarily out of your particular situation, unless you want to share, but I'm wondering kind of how that your particularities open up this conversation to the wider folks in the church who have had experiences that are similar. We've been hurt, we've experienced harm. We've been disillusioned, maybe.
And what this book brings to that wider conversation.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Yeah, because going through what I went through was a very public form of spiritual abuse by leaders in the church who were harassing me online and plotting against my vocation as a writer and speaker, calling ahead of my speaking engagements, you know, warning churches to guard their families from me and saying horrible things about me. I mean, you know, there's pastors going online calling me the Great of Babylon, you know, and Twitter. Well, guess what? My kids were on Twitter. You know, my youngest at the time was in high school. And so, you know, if they see their mom being called Jezebel or shut up and make me a sandwich, you know, things like this.
And it was shocking to me that they were, A, doing it and B, getting away from it, getting away with it. But, you know, sabotaging my Amazon page, making memes of me, also pretty much punishing everybody who hosted me, you know, by going after their jobs, their reputation. They were certainly trying to destroy my reputation publicly.
And I went through a long process of two years trying to use the proper church order to confront this.
And each step of the process was more traumatic than the last.
And I found out that I was really in a culture and a theology that enabled this kind of thing.
And that was terrifying and very disillusioning. And I know everyone's stories are different, but that's just a really short version of mine.
And, you know, this is because I was writing about the agency of women as disciples in the church.
So, you know, very shocking stuff. But anyway, I had, you know, I wrote a book before this called the Hope in Our Scars, and that was really about rising from disillusionment and. And working through some of my theology of church and what that is. And I shared, you know, some of my story in there, and I really built a theology of hope in that book. I felt like. And so that was maybe stage one of you know, really helping me and my mind and soul with this whole healing process, you know, one step of it anyway.
But meanwhile, you Know, I'm journaling about the pain of even trying to visit another church. You know, the pain of leaving a church, the vulnerability, the many questions I now have about God and myself.
And that's the thing, is I was in this denomination that really put a lot of stock in doctrine, doctrinal precision, and certainty. And I was attracted to that, you know, for the security that it offered. And I then saw just how cruel and evil even these leaders can be using their theology.
And I saw the absence of Christ, which was just terrifying.
And it's easy to step away from that and be like, okay, these are the bad guys. I'm the victim, you know, and this is oppression and blah. You know, all the things. They're all very true, and I have to work through all that. But there's also a lot of complexities in that. It's not like, oh, all these people are bad guys.
There's people that I really respected and loved who just were complicit, right, or felt too comfortable in their positions to really care that much.
A lot of painful stuff going on. But what I needed to do was ask myself, you know, what led me to be attracted to this?
And that is a hard question right there, you know, because here I am in my mid-40s at the time time, thinking, how did I get here? You know, how I thought I was raising my children in this wonderful church, and now everybody's disillusioned.
I started this whole thing wanting to do things right, be a good Christian woman, and what is going on? I'm being called the great of Babylon on Twitter and all these things. But why was I attracted? Why was I looking the other way when other people were harmed?
That's the stuff I wanted to start evaluating in my own self. And another thing that happens when you've been traumatized is that that brings up the raw feelings from other times in your life where you've been harmed that you maybe haven't processed through as much. And so my parents divorced when I was 15. That was a big event in my life, I think I spent a lot of my adult life trying to do better than.
And be the better mom and wife and all these things. So I had to dig deeper than even what happened to me in the church and look at the different faces of myself.
And that includes the faces that I put on, the Personas that we build unknowingly because we get these messages from church and society, culture, from our family, about goodness and truth, and. And then we want to try to be okay. This is this is who I think I'm supposed to be.
And we start building this, like I call it the good me, you know, the. The good version of myself that I think, you know. And you realize when you go through something as severe as I did, that, oh, like, not all that is really me.
And I don't know if I'm on board with some of these things that I even said that I valued before. So it's disruptive and it is deconstructing, even though that's a bit of a buzzword. But so I really wanted to get to my real face.
And that's the work I'm doing in this book. It's vulnerable.
I am. I'm sharing journal entries, and a lot of those are wrestling with God.
The chapters are short and more meditative, contemplative.
A lot of them begin with a memory. And I'm doing something called, like storied memory work. And. And I'm modeling that because I want the reader to maybe try that out for themselves because I found it extremely helpful and healing.
And I think it's important to share my real self, if that's what I'm talking about.
So I just went for it.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah. There were so many parts about this book that felt encouraging to me, that felt scary and hard for me. There were similarities. I think it's important to name it. We've done it so far. But even when you went through something very, very public with this spiritual abuse, and a lot of people have gone through this in private, you know, spaces and intentionally private, you know, you know, one of, one of the ones for me was this, like, closed door meeting, you know, with only certain pastors there and, you know, things like that. And, and it was, it was one of. I had this kind of list of quotes that it was like, oh, my goodness, this was so. It was. It resonated with me so much. But you talked about when you would try to go through the process and you said that you just didn't really understand the full impact of those, you know, some of those meetings and until after it was over, reflecting on it, maybe even months or years later.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: And I really resonated with that. You know, I was like, oh, my goodness. It wasn't even until I had listened to another podcast and they even named. I'd never even used the term spiritual abuse before. I'd never even heard it. And I was like, oh, that's what happened to me. I mean, you know, that's a. That's a hard thing to name. And so I just want to say that your book for me was an. Was another tool and I think it can be for folks who are going through this.
One of the things that I want to, that I want to name is just like a.
It was a lens for me as I was going through the book. And it may end up being a lens for our conversation, which is why I want to share it. But this idea that you bring up of reflecting one another in our, in our faces, and I just thought about how hard that is for those of us who've experienced abuse at the hands of church people.
Because so many times it's not just my story or your story. There's so many times when people with, and I think in our settings, I don't know if you would use this language, but people with what they would say is spiritual authority or we have given them some sort of spiritual. Spiritual authority come and say things about our person.
You know, I was told things about myself in, in this closed door meeting. I was told things about myself and then the little was like, kind of there's the rub was you may not even realize that this is true about you, but the Holy Spirit told us it was. And so. And then it was this vomit of all of these really awful told by the Holy Spirit.
How do you argue with the Holy Spirit? You know, if the Holy Spirit has told your pastor, sorry, you know, but. But it's like in, in their faces that was reflected back to me.
And then gratefully, you know, the same week that this happened, I had a very dear friend who I didn't confide the whole situation because I was so shocked at the time.
But, you know, I said our relationship with this congregation is over. And you know, but when I, but when I called her, she reflected back to me what she knew about me. And I didn't, I didn't tell her any of this partially because I was, I was ashamed, I was embarrassed.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: I was put all the shame on.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: You know, I didn't. So I didn't say because I was still processing it very much. But her response to my, to the pain that she could see, see that she could sense was to reflect back to me true things about myself.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: That's beautiful.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: And so in that I think this was one of the lenses that I read this book through. Not just that particular situation, but how many of us have had these. You know, you use the analogy in your book of like the, the funny mirrors at the carnival. Like we've had some reflections back on ourselves that are not accurate and they're harmful. Some of them are intentionally harmful. The horror of Babylon is intentionally harmful. Jezebel is intentionally harmful.
And then we have some wonderful experiences where people that know us and love us and we love them reflect things back to us that are. That are true and affirming of our own selves. And because of these situations of spiritual abuse, in this case, it's hard to navigate sometimes what is true and what isn't. And then you throw in the other things you named of like, I am bringing my own face of what I want, you know, my. My good self.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: The self that I want.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Fooling our own selves.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Right. You know, into the picture. And then of course, obviously with this all we get these also distorted pictures of God. You know, did the Holy Spirit say this of me? Would the Holy Spirit, you know, communicate that? And why not to me? Why does someone else. And does that say about the character of God? And is that reflected in the actual biblical God that we see? And, you know, in the love that we see, you bring in creation, which was, you know, so beautiful to me, this, you know, seeing God reflected in the world around us. And so I guess it's just like a lot of these.
We're getting a lot of things reflected back to us. Yeah. And that can be really difficult to.
To navigate, especially I think, when we're just coming off the heels of some sort of traumatic experience or we're in the process kind of this, the gross, nitty, still dirty process of like, you know, figuring out, you know, what that might look for us moving forward.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I kind of start the book talking about how we all come into this world looking for a face, you know, looking for a face that is delighting in our face.
And so the first mirror that we really have is the face of another person.
And so, you know, whether it be your parents or the first faces that you see, like you're looking for that delight. We long for that delight. And it lets us know that we're valued and cherished and it gives us meaning and purpose even.
But ultimately, I think we're all looking for the face of God.
We are looking for God's face, delighting in our face. And that is our great hope in the beatific vision is to see God's face in the incarnate Jesus Christ, delighting in our face.
And I think, you know, I hope one walk away from this book is to really take seriously the great honor of our vocation and responsibility to. To be that, because, you know, we have this blessing that you know, errands to give to God's people.
And it is in number six, 24 through 26. And it is, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
And I talk about in the book how, man, I've heard that as a benediction, being sent out of church so many times and never really thought deeply about it. You know, you just kind of sit there and, you know, be blessed, and you think of it as a future thing.
But I think the reason why that's given as a benediction, as our blessing to send us back out into the world after the church service, worship service, is because that's also our vocation.
If the Lord's face is to shine upon me, like, that can happen in little ways through other faces. Like, we are Christians. Like, one of our core beliefs is that the Holy Spirit dwells in us, so that if I'm with you, that means the Holy Spirit dwells in you as well. And if I could really get behind the countenance of your face and really feel the holiness of your humanity and bless you, you know, not in a, oh, bless you, Alexis, you know, kind of way, but truly to let you know in my own posture and demeanor and my time that I take to check in with you, that your presence, that is good. It is good.
It is good that you are here. It is good that you are other. And in your otherness, I find that I'm. I'm other, but that your face actually provokes me to join the Holy Spirit in blessing you.
And doesn't that feel so good when somebody really knows us and delights in us?
That's what we're called to do.
And. And. And then if that person is suffering, if you're suffering, to come alongside, you know, to be in the room, to be present, to feel with. And so I think it sounds so simple, but we just don't do it.
And I believe that that is a huge vocation. I mean, it's the whole greatest commandment. And the second one that's like it. To love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and to love our neighbor as ourself. And so philosopher Emmanuel Levinas says that theology begins in the face of the neighbor, that God descends in the face of our neighbor, and that the blessing is to see the act of God in your face, awakening my face to love.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: It's beautiful.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Thank you. And I Just think, just how would our relationships be and what will we learn about the love of God, you know, after being in one of these church meetings like you're talking about? And I was in one that was a regional meeting of leaders in our region.
And mocked. I was mocked by these leaders, laughed at, you know, jokes were made. And I was called that lady.
They didn't even say my name.
And I saw such darkness. And I saw pastors, you know, breaking down the book of church order like lawyers, you know, the whole time. But Christ was not in that room. When I left, I realized that I just escaped darkness.
And to think, you know, here are these people who pride themselves in their theological precision, like they're closer to God for that reason.
And they're missing the main thing, love. They're missing Christ.
And so, you know, Christianity is way more even than a doctrinal matter. It's way more even than a moral matter, which those things are important. But Christianity is a mystical matter. We. We believe in a spiritual life.
So that's what I think we're being called to. To act like.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I have a dear friend who often asks the question, what is love calling us to do? What does love.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yes, great question.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: It's often capitalized for her.
And.
Yeah. And I think that's just such an important question.
Gosh, I want to talk about Jesus because you talk about Jesus.
Like I said, there's a lot of mirror talk in the book. And.
Which is. Which was great for me because I love analogies and I love pictures.
But you talk about Jesus as a mirror, and I'm wondering if you.
Yeah. If you can just elaborate a bit specifically on that Christological idea.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting just when you look in the stories in Scripture where Jesus, like, has a true encounter with somebody else, which is all the time. Right. And they're never actually looking for him.
They don't recognize him, you know, even after the resurrection, Peter fishing, you know, doesn't recognize him.
And yet every time, it's like Jesus is holding up a mirror to who?
Like, they. When they look at Christ in. In this encounter with him, they find their true self.
And. And they find that in a face that is in a posture of love towards them.
Right. It's not in a condemning way at all.
It's in an invitation to be all that they've been created to be. But not just that. It's, I delight in you this way. Like, I delight in you, and I want to spend time with you.
And so I think that's the most important right there that we see with Christ. But, you know, God's given us a face of God in Jesus Christ, which is amazing. And he uses the faces of each other then to beckon, you know, with the commandments alone, can't. Empathy and love.
And we do, each one of us long to see that face then in the beatific vision of God in Jesus Christ, delighting in us. But it's just. I love reading the different encounters and I share some of those in scripture, you know, in what we find in Christ's face.
I spent some time there, just charity, poverty, you know, humility.
And he. We can in prayer. And it's kind of scary to ask him to hold up that mirror, you know, to help us see our own face. But if we see that, then we're seeing it through the eyes of Christ. So it's not scary in that way at all.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
I want to ask you to say more about that. I will. I'll tell you part of what I think about often.
I love the woman in John 4.
She's one of my favorite women in all of scripture. But just what you said, it's kind of scary. But we're seeing ourselves through. Through Christ.
I am.
I have been intimidated, intrigued, afraid, embarrassed, all of the curious, all of the things. When she goes back to the town and says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: I'm like, okay, Spoiler alert. That would never be my. This is not how I'm telling anybody I've met anyone.
Because there are so many things.
If I jump, like, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. I'd be like, yeah, but he's not going to tell you everything. I. You know, like, that does not fit. Feel like an invitation to me.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Well, and he transformed who she was in her own eyes.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: I mean, it's an invitation.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Amazing, right?
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Like, that. That difference to me feels just kind of incomprehensible to me to that. So I'm wondering if you would say more about that. Seeing ourselves. But. But through that lens or mirror of how Jesus sees.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And at the end of.
So the book has five parts and they're different, like parts of the face, like the naked face, the fractured face, the maturing face, you know.
But at the end of each part, I. The last chapter of each part is like a short retelling of an encounter, you know, something in scripture. And some of them I do take, you know, I'm trying to see, like, how these people felt, you Know, in. In these narratives.
And I've also talked a lot about. A lot about the woman at the well.
Man. That's one of my favorite stories too. And it is the longest recorded conversation we have with Jesus, which is interesting too, in the Gospels. And, you know, here he is going through Samaria, chatting up a woman at a well, which this is setting up all kinds of metaphor for us as well, because, well, first of all, you know, obviously, you know, he's going through Samaria, which is dirty like that. He shouldn't be talking to anyone anyway. And then lo and behold, he's going to talk to this woman in the middle of the day at this well. And wells are symbol. And you have this throughout the Old Testament for weddings. It's for finding your. Your mate. And so, you know, we've got other, like, well, women, I call them in Scripture, like Sephora and Rebecca. You know, like, it's kind of like the dating website.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yes. 100.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And so there's another story going on before we even get to the woman at the well. Like, John leads us in, he gives us a hint with John the Baptist, saying, like, you know, once you find the bridegroom, you don't need the best man anymore kind of thing. And then the next thing you know, here comes the bridegroom on the scene, Jesus Christ. And so you've got this woman, you know, at the end of the story when he tells her who she, you know, that she has these however many men in her life that she's had, and the one that she's with isn't even her husband.
You know, this woman's been passed around.
The only way women were taken care of a lot of the time then who didn't have money was, you know, through a man, through a marriage. And there is an allusion to a text in Deuteronomy about marriage and divorce and protecting women in. In that whole end of the story.
But it's unlike that woman who was passed around from man to man in Deuteronomy. Jesus is showing up as the true bridegroom with the living water.
And so, I mean, you just think of how his face and his conversation with her completely transformed, how she saw herself and knew her value and her worth. And why else would she go run and evangelize to a whole town? Which is absolutely amazing because now here you have a woman evangelizing a whole town, which is absolutely beautiful, and she's an outcast. So I just love, you know, now. And so much of the battle that I went through in the church was, you know, the faces of these leaders telling me how I'm not worthy to share the gospel, you know, how I'm not worthy to enter into conversations about theology, how I need to shut up and make me a Sam, you make you a sandwich kind of thing. And my looks were being picked apart and all kinds of stuff. So to then see like a completely different story.
And, you know, she represents all of us.
He is our bridegroom. And so, like, I love reading that story and having that mirror be held up to me as well. And then what is my response then, too?
Because how does it change you when you know deep in your bones, not only that you're love, but like, that you were created for love?
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, it may be the only poem I've ever written in my life, but years ago, when I was meditating on the scripture quite a bit, yeah, I wrote one in it, but one of the lines was, what, what kind of love is this? You know, like, this is what you're referring to. Like what, what kind of love is this? This is something that is, this is otherworldly, you know, this is a foreign kind of love. But as you, but as you say, but our vocation is to live that out. Yeah, our vocation is to live that out.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: It's a great honor and joy, you know.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Right. No, that's right. That's absolutely right.
I think that leads into one of, one of the things that you wrote really struck me because when I think about that story and I think this is what I want, and these are the kinds of things that I'm asking, God help me to see this. I want to experience this. I want to experience you this way.
I didn't pull up exactly, but this paraphrase of a quote you have, that we have a hard time seeing what's real. Like, we're asking God for something that's real, but we have a hard time seeing it because we're at the same time trying to shed what you call faux securities and faux certainties. And that resonated with me so much because I think I interviewed another author a few years ago, Becca McNeil, and she calls so much of our American church culture, we have, we worship certainty. We have an idol of certainty. But it is, as you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, like you were drawn to this denomination that had these, these things, you know, these doctrinal certainties. And so I don't know if this is everything that you're referring to me referring to in that segment but that is one of the places where that resonated with me. It's like I've got these other things I'm trying to figure out, you know.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: What'S real, because we like to fool ourselves.
It feels safe. You know, it's. It's scary being in, you know, a liminal space, which is like this in between. You know, it's. It's also exciting, but it requires a lot more faith.
It's so much easier to go ahead and put God in a box and say, if I do these things and I worship at this church and I know this much about him and I live this life, you know, we. We turn it into a transaction and we expect certain things. And I think, you know, a huge question I had to ask is, like, what story am I telling myself about who God is and what he wants from me?
And the huge thing is he doesn't want any of that stuff, you know, and learning who he is, it's so much bigger, so much full of wonder and awe. But it's. It's also kind of scary for me because I can't.
You know, there's things that we can know about him for sure, and we have Scripture, but Scripture has opened up for me. It's so much bigger, and there's so much more going on. And we spend all this time on these doctrinal letters, epistles, and things like that, when that's really a minority of the text.
It's like, I don't know, 60 or 70% of the text is narrative.
Why?
And story is so powerful, and there's so much to learn in there and to glean from. But then I also just deeply love the poetry and the Song of Songs has.
That's where, you know, my jam is right now, is like, that's where my healing was. And I know that I've learned so much about who God is in there and that allegory of Christ and his love for the church.
So it's still a struggle for me, though.
I want to put those false security blankets on and, you know, I call it. I think it was in my other book, just like, you know, gallivanting around, like, everything. Like, you've got it all figured out, you know, and it's frustrating to see people like that now. But I think part of it is because, man, I really had convinced myself then that I was in the right place, doing the right things. And now it takes a lot more faith. It takes a lot more leaning on God, a lot more not knowing.
And yet the reward is so much greater.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: I.
Yeah, I was thinking about that scripture opening up and being in places where there's a lot of doctrinal certainty.
And I think for me. And I don't know if. If this would be true for you in your experiences, but when you talked about this, the song of songs, and then at the beginning, you know, about how we just were seeking a face that would delight in us, and it has only been in the last, I don't know, several years, less than a decade, where God's delight in me even showed up on the scene.
And that feels weird because I grew up in church. You know, I got baptized when I was, like, eight, you know, or something like that.
But it's like, why just now am I kind of hearing or beginning to understand that God might, you know, scratch that, that God does delight in me, and. And. And that that realness is one of those things that, for me, has been hard to accept because these other things feel more real, because I can, you know, kind of quote, control those things. You know, I can follow the rules. You had another. Another place that was just kind of one of those snippets for me that you mistook commandments for a map. And I'm like, listen, I can follow a map. Look, I can follow directions. I can follow instructions. I am a checklist kind of girl, you know, and all of these things. And if I do all of these things, then God's going to be okay with me.
But for me, if I did all of those things, like, God would delight in me. No, that's not a thing. It's like, are you. Where. Where are we on this. You know, on this map?
But thinking about, you know, our parents delighting in us, you know, I think I have four kids, and I'm like, I mean, oh, my goodness. Every time they come down the stairs, I'm like, it's you. You know, like.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: I mean, like, addiction. Yeah.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: They're born, and I'm like, you know, smiling, changing their poop. You know, I mean, it's like the greatest thing.
And, you know, but it's, like, weird to think that, you know, that God would see me with that kind of delight, that he would see me with that kind of, you know, wonder even feels odd, you know, And I think that there. It's not just me. I mean, I think there are a lot of religious communities and circles where that's not really the focus. Even though, as you're saying, like, there's so much narrative. And even if we just take the gospels, like, Jesus was all about like just delighting and people just being near to them and, and wanting to help them see their true selves. You know, we didn't finish the, the series, but I loved the beginning of the. We watched several seasons, but I love the beginning of the Chosen, you know, because I'm just like, it just depicts Jesus in this kind of magical way almost, you know, the way that he's interacting with Mary Magdalene or. You kids didn't watch, only watched a couple episodes, but I showed them the one where Jesus making like fart noises when he's with the kids, you know, and I'm like, this is great. You know, he loves being, just being with them and being near to them and you know, think about God, you know, traveling with the people of Israel in the desert, you know, like he just, God just wants to be, you know, with them, just wants to be near to them. And at the same time he's like saying, hey, you should probably like shape up and you know, do some things differently and treat each other well. But that's really what it's about, you know, wants people to treat each other well.
Not necessarily just like follow the system of rules for the sake of, you know, of following it. And I think even that, like, for me, that dissonance is.
Made it really difficult for me to see, see that part of God's face, God's, you know, smile at me and I. And it feels hard that, that, you know, for so many decades that really wasn't the focus.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: That's why the Song of Songs, I think is ministered to me so much. You know, being a woman in the church, being told that, I mean, I didn't even have a voice in my whole two year process.
The men, you know, were in charge of my case and spoke on my behalf and everything else and made decisions about me behind closed doors.
And you know, here in the song you have, you know, at a very patriarchal time when it's written, the woman's voice is dominant in the song. It opens the song, it closes the song.
She bursts on the scene like immodestly saying what her desires are.
But then she also shares her insecurities.
She talks about her abuse.
There's times where, you know, so she, she represents the church, she represents God's people. And the man figure in the song represents the incarnate Christ.
And you know, there are times where she can't find him. There are two times, they're called the night scenes. They happen at night and she can't find him. And she is either neglected or abused by the leaders in the city then.
And how often are we in search of God, right? Like, we just don't know where he is. And so it's. So I really identify with it. But then I think, wow, I can talk to God like this.
And. And then it's erotic. It's very ironic erotic as well. Like, it stirs our desire, it directs our desire. And I think it gives us a pure holiness, a picture of desire.
And, you know, on their wedding night, he looks at her and he says, you are all together beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you.
And I just think those are the. That's the words of Christ to his people. Those are the words we're going to hear on that day when we get to see his face.
And so I feel like, you know, that's an expression of true delight.
And it's because of him, right? It's because of Jesus. And there's another scene where it's called the wedding and springtime wedding invitation. And he's calling her out. He's coming towards her and he's calling her out and she's expressing like she was just saying she was lovesick, right? And.
And he tells her to come out from the cleft of the rock. And he.
Because he wants to see her. And he says, for your face is beautiful and your voice is lovely. He says, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice. Which was the opposite of what I was hearing, right? And yet that picture, like the cleft of the rock, where do we hear that? But in a similar scene is with Moses wanting to see the face of God, but God tells him he can't see his face and live, he can only see his back. And he's going to hide him in the cleft of the rock. And here you have the Christ figure calling the woman out from the cleft of the rock to see her face, to see her face looking at his face.
So we can see the face of God now because of Jesus Christ.
And it's so evangelical, right? Like, let me hear your voice.
It's like the woman at the well. What do you do?
You call out, right? You tell people to come. That is exactly what you see in the picture of the church in the end of Revelation, coming down out of heaven from God. She's a temple, she's a city, she's a bride, she's all these things. And she joins her voice with the Spirit and invites come to these living waters.
And so it's also such a Picture, I believe, of the, the symbolism, the typology of woman as temple, as holy space, as bride as well.
And the Song of Songs is just dripping with that metaphor and allegory all over the place.
And you know, you see that the waters and the winds and all these things, the garden and the temple. Simple.
And the way that she ends the song is evangelical as well. And so she's calling out and it's just amazing. There's so many treasures in there.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: I love thinking about that book as a, as an instrument of healing.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: And as a place in the scriptures where, where we see the face of a woman and where we hear the voice of a woman.
And as you say, like, that's one of the places. But there's so much of scripture that is, that is narrative where we, where we see and hear women as well. You know, I'm thinking about Esther and I'm thinking about Ruth as to like low hanging fruit, you know, situations. But, but then I think about the spaces that you and I have been in where women's voices are muted, where women's voices are, you know, we've been told we don't have a voice.
You know, I remember just really a long season struggling over, you know, this again. I just think about this space. Like what was reflected to me about my personhood was that I was just less than, you know, because of my womanhood. And you know, even as a girl, that it was, you know, God had designed me to be less than, you know, designed me to continually be, you know, under a man's. Whatever authority. If you want to say that, you know, whatever it was to where my voice and the voice of my peers were rejected, they weren't to be heard. She was not calling out and, and God was not calling for.
To see our faces or to hear our voices. And so to have that reflected back in different spaces who say, actually God, let's, you know, it's, it's not. Maybe it's not as hard to see God.
Wow.
God not just like, oh, I value women. This is what.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: We could talk about that. Mother's Day is coming up soon as we're recording this, we're like, oh my goodness, like the worst day in so many churches. You know, my husband's like, it's like the patriarchal way of this guy saying, like, I want you to know I value women. Well, he doesn't, you know, and so it's, it's tough, you know, it's, it's, it's a hard place. But but, but anyway, but to think about the places in scripture where God.
God is calling women. God is, is desiring to, for women's voices to be heard. God is assigning tasks of preaching the gospel to women over and over and over again. And that's very powerful. But you said something earlier about the theology and the culture of the spaces that you had been in. And I think that's something that has come to recognition for me over the last several years is that we often say, oh, well, this, it's just that the culture of this denomination is xyz. And we go, well, but the culture is actually built on their theology.
That's what's determining these things. And when the, and when the theology tells us that women are xyz, then obviously the culture is going to reflect that. But it's not just a culture thing. It's not just a few guys who have kind of decided this is the way it's going to be done. They're doing that because they honestly believe that this is what God would have them to do. And again, that's just, it's very harmful.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: Oh yeah. I mean, it's a bunch of nonsense when they talk about men and women being equal, you know, equal in being but different in roles. And roles are just something you put on. But they use that word role as if it's like ontological, like they're speaking about our actual being. That's right. In our eternal state.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: And it's very infantilizing as well.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Anyway, I could talk all day about that, but I won't.
I think I have a, I have a couple of more things that, that stood out to me. I don't know if we'll get to everything, but one of them is, I think as you're writing and you'd mentioned you're in your 40s. I am in my 40s. And. And you have this great. I laughed when I read this. Oh my goodness. My 33 year old self, Amy, our 33 year old selves. Like when you. I probably wouldn't have called that number, but as soon as you called and Lamont.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: And Lamont.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: Lamont. That's right. That's right. In her. She was 69 when she wrote it or something. I was like, oh my goodness. I was like, my.
Yes. Like my 33 year old self.
I could, if I could go back and have a series of coffee dates.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Right. And be like, oh honey, oh, you're so cute.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: And 33, you're real sweet. And I.
But, wow, are you 33? Yes.
Talk about her. Talk about your 33 year old. But also, but more, I'm like, but you're now, right.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: So Anne Lamont wrote that, that piece for the Washingtons.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: And the title's something like at 69, I know way less than I knew at 33.
And so she opens it up talking about, like, she talks a little bit about her creaking body and like, you know, her life as a 69 year old and then how, you know, that's nothing like when she was 33 and she knew absolutely everything. And I thought, oh yeah, oh my gosh, you know, she just nailed it. I'm like, we talk about how teenagers think they know everything, but nothing, they got Nothing on my 33 year old. So.
And it's embarrassing now to look back on, I think, but, you know, I was fully living in the good me. I was fully living in that Persona. And I just wonder how many people I ran over, you know, including my children and my husband with my, my good me. And I even talk a little bit about that in the book, how I really harmed a friend, a friendship, a friend and a friendship. And you know, she talks about, Ann Lamont talks about this posture of I don't know.
And it was so freeing for me because I've been going through all this disillusionment and feeling ashamed of myself for having to unlearn things, you know, but what else is repentance but unlearning and turning towards goodness?
So unlearning is a good positive sign, just like learning is.
And to have this posture of I don't know is to get to your older years of immaturity and realize, oh yeah, like, I thought I knew, but I didn't know.
And to be able to hold those things loosely and just to see how much bigger God is.
And that humility that you can't put on, you know, it comes from being humbled by the good self and the good me and all these things and, and by others.
And I'd come to a point, you know, where my whole reputation was being ruined online and what am I going to do about it? How do I convince people that I'm not the great whore of Babylon?
And so having that posture then opens you up to wonder. You get to, to be surprised again about who God is and what he's going to do and how he sees you.
And boy, it changed my parenting. And you know, at this point I had, you know, young adult children, children in quotes.
But to Be able to look again and say, you know what?
I didn't really know what I was doing there, so I'm really sorry if it harmed you to have young adults, children who can come to me now and really talk to me about things without feeling judged, without feeling like, what is mom going to think I'm godly enough or whatever it is to. To just be human.
To just be human and loved man. You know, it sounds. It sounds so ridiculous that I am getting in my late 40s and saying this, but it's absolutely wonderful to have that then and to be able to say, I don't know, but, you know, there's certain things that I do know in the sense of God's love.
So many things that we learn that we can say that we know in scripture, but to hold that with a posture of, he's got more to show, he's got more to show, and there's. There's other lenses in looking through this, and where is he going to surprise me?
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Okay, I've got one more question, and then I'll ask you to. To close us out with some. Some maybe hopes that you have for. For this book.
I'm gonna go back to my good me at 33.
I had toddlers at 33.
[00:55:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: And my good me. Oh, my goodness, Amy. I just didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know, and I didn't know where we would be be some years later.
But that good me certainly had very good intentions of bringing our kids up in kind of a perfect church world that doesn't exist. But, you know, for us, it probably was going to because I'm sure the good me was going to make it happen.
But since then, that has blown up.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: And I felt so encouraged to, you know, your. Your kids, you're just like a. Just a few years ahead of us.
And so it was so encouraging for me to read about your church search and, you know, and feedback from your kids and things like that. We're going through a season right now. We're having those conversations. You know, everybody gets in the car. Okay, tell me what you thought, you know, afterwards.
But I would love if you would just share some of your reflections that you've had and these experiences with your. With your young adult kids as you, as your family had been, you know, as you share in the book, just some of these churches that you had visited and, you know, I mean, I want to put words in your mouth of some of the things that, that you that you had these experiences of what your hopes for church, you know, would look like and what it ended up, you know, what it looks like now.
But yeah, so if you could just share some of that. Because I was, I was so, my heart was so warmed and encouraged by some of the things that you shared because it was not my, my story has not turned out like I thought it might.
[00:57:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: As far as that goes.
[00:57:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I thought I was looking for something pretty simple in church and turns out it's like a unicorn.
And so I, after doing all this, like, I really saw the need for us to be able to show up as our true selves in church. And you know, I call it church face what we put on when we come to church and you know, you have prayer requests and people are talking about, you know, important things like cancer and health problems, but nobody's saying like, you know, I'm struggling in my marriage, you know, or with my child or what, you know, these kind of things.
And if church could really be the place where we come with our stories, I think that would be so powerful because they get woven in then to the big story, the meta narrative and we enter into one another's lives as it's kind of re. Narrated and we can reimagine.
So I was hoping to go to an authentic place where there's like relationship building, where there's, there's, you know, some liturgy. I, I do love the scripture readings and the communal praying time and the benediction and Old Testament scripture reading along with New Testament scripture reading.
And I mean there are so many Christian nationalist churches around me, American flags high on the, the stage and, and there's like, you know, beginning announcements about voting and different things like that.
There's so many patriarchal led churches which I just can't, I can't be a part of anymore.
So, so that is out. There's so many churches that are part of a denomination that is enabling abuse, you know, that it's definitely a deal breaker for me.
And then we went to so many like community churches where the gospel gets turned into like a total gimmick, you know, like they're trying so hard, hard to be relevant that they are making a sermon series on Jesus and parables and 1990s video games. It's just strange, you know, we get out to Rick Astley playing on the speaker and my son's like, wait a minute, I just thought that was for Rick rolls. Like that's, that's real. People listen to that, you know, and so oh, man. We started going to this one church that was non denominational, that was really reaching out to the disillusioned and people who've been har.
And so I thought, oh, this is good. And there were some really good things with it. Simple, you know, but it had some diversity and things like that, too.
And yet sermon after sermon just seemed to be.
It just seemed to be like a motivational talk, maybe, you know, something like that. From the New Testament, there was zero Old Testament, there was zero liturgy. And finally after church one day, my. My oldest was like. And she hadn't been alive because she was at.
She was at graduate school a couple hours away. And so when she came home, she would go with us. And so we had been going for a few months trying to give it a shot, even though, like, you know, I do have a lot of, like, theological. Theological inclination.
So I'm starving in that area. But I'm thinking maybe this is what our family needs right now, you know? And finally at lunch, my daughter's like, look, I can't listen to that guy one more time.
And she said what we were all thinking, right? But we were just going through the motions trying to, like, Because I don't want to be the unsatisfiable woman. I want to be able to find a place. And then I'm starting to freak out because I just don't know any other options. And I literally broke out in a rash.
And at first I don't think it's because I'm freaking out, but I realize it's because I'm freaking out and my middle daughter. On Fridays, we would go to our local brewery and you could get food and bring it, and we would get burgers from the local burger place. And, you know, whenever the kids were free, they would join up, my husband and I, or maybe we meet with our friends or something like that. Well, my daughter and my son were with us that evening. And my daughter just saw me, you know, like. And I talk about this so much in saving face, about the naked face. And she saw me and she was just like, mom, we're gonna be okay. She's like, you're stressing out. You. You don't have control over this. You're blaming yourself.
And we're gonna be okay. And you guys raised us well, you know. And, you know, at the time, I think she was maybe 21.
And so that meant so much to me that my daughter saw me, but also that she ministered to me, like, she really did.
And.
And then we had A pastor friend over who is an eco pastor in a Presbyterian denomination that that is fully equal with women and men and leadership and also very concerned about the environment and social justice issues. And pretty neat, but we don't have one in our area. But he comes to visit his widow mom nearby and visits with my husband and I and great pastor. And, you know, we're just. I'm telling them all our woes, church woes.
And he's like, you know, have you tried mainline?
You might not agree with everything, but you know, you're going to get Christ in the liturgy.
And it sounds to me like you're really wanting that.
So we went down to the Methodist church, which is downtown, just two miles from our house, and the woman pastor was on maternity leave.
And I share in the book. I don't want to give away the whole story, but the day she comes back from maternity leave was, like, one of the most powerful services I've ever been in.
And, you know, there's definitely things that we still feel out of place with.
We're not really sure if that's our Landing church, but it's been a great place for us to heal. And Christ is in the service, which is huge.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I thank you for sharing that. I just.
I was really ministered to by your daughter's words as well. You know, just thinking there is, you know, as a parent and I think as a parent who's, yeah. Theologically inclined and, you know, we have these church experiences and I think for me, you know, I want these. Want these things. I kind of want to, you know, do a lot, you know, for my kids in that space, and it's like, well, due to. Due to circumstances beyond our control, you know, these things, you know, happened. But to think, you know, there's more to our parenting lives and our friends, faith, you know, faith integration, our parenting lives, than where we bring our kids on Sunday mornings. And not that that's unimportant, but to think just to get a glimpse that our kids are seeing a, you know, holistic picture, you know, as well as they can, but also be, you know, like what we're going through and our intentions in that for them, you know, that we want to show them God's delight. Right. As well. And. And that's sometimes hard to do in some environments where that, you know, focus.
Amy, I'm so grateful for our time. I'm wondering, as we close out, if you would share.
We talked about a little bit pre record, so I won't give it away for folks, but Just if you would share.
You know, this. You've written a lot of books, but what is. What are some of your hopes for this one and the. And the communities that. And the individuals that you hope will. Will pick it up?
[01:04:56] Speaker B: I wrote Saving Face, really thinking of an audience of people who could use this book if they wanted to grow spiritually, maybe with another person.
So reading the book, maybe just two people, maybe doing a book club of like 8 to 10 people with it. But the stories that I open up with, the storied memory work, I would love for people to start doing that and reading them to each other. You know, people that they can trust with that sort of thing. But.
And to be encouraged themselves to keep a journal and just pour it out on the page because you surprise yourself at what's in your head and in your heart when you're journaling on a regular basis. You just don't know it's in there. So I think that's so helpful, too.
And of course, I would love the Spirit, the Scripture, to really provoke and the philosophy that I'm kind of working with there on the face to provoke people to see things a little differently, maybe, but because it's very existential book.
Dan Allender, you said to me in an interview, he goes, I look at your book as a theological memoir. And I thought, oh, okay, that's. That makes sense. But I kind of hope that that would encourage other people to have many theological memoirs of their own, and not in an academic kind of way at all, but in a figuring out their story, their story of who they are and who God is and what do we tell ourselves about God and what he wants from us?
And that needs to be a conversation, like so much of this book. I talk about that concept of mirrors and faces, and you just can't do it alone. We can't see our own face. And that's such a metaphor that we need one another and we need reciprocity to even learn about who we are. And that's so great because, like you were saying, your friend spoke that to you and you needed that so badly, but we can't do that for ourselves.
So I just think that it would be a great way to get real interpersonal friendships growing, which I think is such a part of our spiritual life.
[01:07:17] Speaker A: And spiritual growth now. Thank you so much, Amy. I appreciate it. Again, the name of this book is Saving Face, Finding Myself, God and One Another Outside a Defaced Church. And the link where you can grab it will be in the show notes. Thank you. So much, Amy for joining me today.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, Alexis, it's been great. Thanks for having me on.
[01:07:40] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, Music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit
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