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Naughty by Nature is a show about finding a god that accepts all of you.
Filmmaker, performer, and former-Evangelical Christian, Treen (Katrina Lillian Sorrentino) is on a mission to find humor and wisdom in all our spiritual journeys, whether we’re being born again or deconstructing from toxic religious relationships.
In this cheeky and subversive series about how to keep the faith, Treen talks with guests about how they processed their religious baggage and carved out a unique spiritual path for themselves.
Oh, and God will be there too, played by a different mystery comedian on every episode.
To join us on this hilarious ride make sure you follow the show, subscribe to our channel here YouTube.com/@nxnpod, and follow along on Instagram @nxnpod for more goodies!
Produced by:
https://www.rainbowcreative.co
https://www.verna.studio
https://www.treentreen.com
Treen: Welcome to the Naughty by Nature podcast. I'm Treen and I'm your reluctant host on this vulnerable ride. This is a show where we talk about what the Christian church told us was taboo through storytelling, humor, and a little role playing so that we can be born again on our terms. In each episode I've invited a different comedian to play ‘God’ in order to help us relate to the big guy upstairs.
And I'm using the word God intentionally here. So the word God actually comes from, I learned recently, Germanic pagan roots. And it was originally gender neutral until the Christians got involved. And it actually means to invoke. So God, are you, uh, ready to kick us off?
GOD: I told you that we had people coming over on Tuesday night. I thought you said next Tuesday. No, this Tuesday.
Treen: God? God? Hi!
GOD: Uh, yeah, we're good. Do you want to kick? God, do you want to go or should I go? Um, I'll go. We go in unison. Yeah, let's go at the same time. This is episode two, “Good Wife”.
Treen: God, it's so good to have you on the show. And you know, I'm working through my Catholic, Christian upbringing and I'm not used to having two of you and, and also, you know, a man and a woman, so I just wanted to give you a second to tell us what's going on here.
GOD: Yeah, no, we get that a lot. A lot of people obviously have an idea of God as sort of like one guy. Yeah, one guy, like an old man with a beard. Some people think, you know, it's an old woman, but we're actually, we're actually two people. People think one person could have created the universe, but that is ridiculous. We are married. We're married.
Treen: Oh, wow.
GOD: We should have led with that. We are married to each other. We're just out here living our best lives, doing the God thing. We've been God forever now. I think since the beginning.
Treen: That makes sense. Well, um, I have a lot of questions for you on this episode, but I want to introduce, uh, our guest for today. So we're here today with Audrey Assad, who is an incredible musician and artist.
And Audrey, I just want to give you a second to say, Hey, to me, to God, to our listeners.
Audrey Assad: Hey, God and listeners and Treen, um, God, I'm so confused because I was raised. I thought you were three people.
GOD: Who's the third person?
Audrey Assad: I'm not sure. I mean, maybe you guys are in an open relationship. I don't, no judgment I don't know.
GOD: We talked about adding a third but it’s like early stage conversation.
Audrey Assad: The Christians would love that. They would love that. They really would.
GOD: Just a third to sort of do things around the house, like.
Audrey Assad: Yes, a sister wife.
GOD: Yeah, well, neither of us are particularly handy. Having somebody who can install an air conditioner.
Treen: Y’all created TaskRabbit, so can't you just like…
GOD: TaskRabbit? When you give a rabbit, when you give a rabbit a job? We actually do that a lot. You'd be surprised. That's one of our favorite things to do. We've got a rabbit doing our taxes.
Audrey Assad: Tax rabbit.
Treen: Amazing. Well, um, that aside, I just wanted to share that Audrey, it is so amazing to talk to you right now, because it's a full circle moment for me seeing that the way that I first heard about you and your music was through my ex husband, because y'all overlapped in the Christian music world a little bit. And um, and then actually when I was going through my divorce, I listened to your music a lot, so.
Audrey Assad: Great to be a divorce soundtrack. That's the first time I've heard that one, but I love it.
Treen: I'm sorry. Is that okay?
Audrey Assad: It's great. It's awesome. Um, I love it.
Treen: Your voice got me through some hard moments.
Audrey Assad: Thanks for having me. Aww. Yeah.
Treen: Before I kick off this episode, I wanted to take the moment to do a quick Vybes check. One thing to know about me is that I have struggled with chronic fatigue since I was 28 years old and I'm addicted to coffee. I've recently discovered Vybes. They're an all natural energy drink. This one has passion fruit juice. Yum. It doesn't make my breath smell like a dirty little rat. So I'm enjoying drinking them. Check out the vibes. The vibes are good. The vibes are good here in this can. We're here today to discuss and talk about our former roles as Christian wives and so Audrey my first question for you is what were you taught to think about marriage growing up?
Audrey Assad: Well, I was raised in a denomination called Plymouth Brethren. And as I shared with you off air, um, it is exactly what it sounds like. It's sort of like the prequel to the, is it the Handmaid's Tale? Is that what it's called?
Treen: Yeah, yeah. I think I was sharing, like, I saw bonnets when you were discussing this.
Audrey Assad: You know, we didn't wear bonnets quite, but we wore head coverings to cover our hair, long skirts and, uh, modesty, and women were not allowed to speak about spiritual matters in front of men or boys at the age of reason, which is roughly 12 to 13 years old, um, depending on the boy I guess but, um, so marriage was sort of a system in which women were placed at the bottom of the totem pole in a lot of ways.
Um, Although they played a huge role in raising the family, of course, men were the spiritual leaders of the relationship and the household, and so marriage was a place where women were taught that marriage would bring order out of chaos and a peaceful life, um, if you stuck to your role because it was quote unquote God's design that that would be how you would feel the most fulfilled and how you would be the most happy. It was also taught to me that marriage was the only appropriate place for sexual activity of any kind.
Treen: Can't do that anywhere else.
Audrey Assad: Yeah, it was for life. It was between a man and a woman. Um, and then later on when I was in my mid twenties, I became a Catholic actually on purpose. Um, that's the whole story, but I was taught there that marriage is a calling, a vocation. You were either called a marriage or singleness either in the priesthood or convent or just being single. But I, I definitely didn't believe that marriage was a thing you just did because you wanted to. It was like a way to serve the world, a way to serve God.
Treen: Right.
Audrey Assad: And that children were definitely part of that, uh, because you needed to proliferate the population of Christians who would continue to kind of go out into the world to create disciples and build the church. And I would say that's, uh, That those are the attitudes I had towards marriage before I got married.
Treen: Woof. I'm just chewing on, I'm, I'm chewing on that. Wow. I, so wait, age of reason 12 to 13, you couldn't talk to women anymore after that about?
Audrey Assad: You couldn't, you couldn't, um, like pray in front of a boy who was that age because if you did, you'd be usurping his spiritual authority and he had to be the one to pray for the meal you couldn't, um, lead them in a Bible study at that age. Like you could teach your Children, your male Children about the Bible and God without your head covered until they were 12. And then at that point, like, It got interesting. It was like their, it was their job now to sort of take that leadership role.
Treen: Got it.
Audrey Assad: And so women didn't, like at our church, women did not, um, we were silent, our role was silence and it was taught to us that way. And so we kind of just sat there silently with our heads covered while all the men and boys talked about everything. Um, yeah, it was a very, Patriarchal environment.
Treen: Yeah, yeah. I also call that environment spooky.
GOD: Because you mentioned God, what, what did you learn about us? What was kind of our vibe?
Audrey Assad: Your vibe?
GOD: Yeah what did you think about us?
Audrey Assad: Oh, you definitely had like, um, what are those called? Mutton chop sideburns?
GOD: That part is true. We do have those.
Audrey Assad: I mean George Washington era sort of masculinity.
GOD: We both do have those. We have, we have those.
Audrey Assad: Okay, cool. That was accurate then. It’s so good to know that. Um, I would say the vibes were, um, were like standard white supremacist vibes. It was sort of like, God is the creator of man and man is created to honor God and women have to cover their heads to not usurp the glory of God and his creation, his primary creation, which was man. And so, I just kind of thought you were mainly an authority figure.
GOD: Interesting. Because, you know, man was a mistake. And we didn't mean to do that. So it's interesting that you guys have made such a big deal about it because it wasn't on purpose. And we don't really care. We couldn't we couldn't really figure out how to undo. We were like, Control, Alt, Delete.
Treen: Well, I guess thank, thank you?
Treen: It's interesting, even though I didn't have any programming about like marriage growing up. I mean, I was raised Catholic. All I knew is that I wasn't supposed to have sex before marriage. Just like, do not do that and you're going to be good. So that was the one rule that I abided by. But being Catholic, we like drank, we smoked weed, we, you know, I don't know, it was like German, Italian, Catholic. Yeah, it was, it was very strangely suburban, Chicago, Catholic, but all of the programming, right? Like the subconscious programming from just being in that environment. When I converted to Evangelicalism at age 23, it was almost like all this subconscious programming that I had picked up in Catholicism that nobody really took seriously it was like, “Oh, now we're gonna, now we're gonna turn on.” I would say that, like, I never romanticized marriage growing up. But when I became Christian then culturally, it really felt like, oh, unless you were married as a woman, you were always going to have something be lacking. And so there was like a race to get married and there was also a race obviously to have sex.
Audrey Assad: That makes sense. Did you feel that when you got married, did you feel like the sex part was natural or did it feel?
Treen: When we were dating, we were doing like Christian sex, which is everything but P in V. And so when we got married, I noticed, uh, well, actually when we got engaged, I noticed a severe decrease in my sex drive.
And I was like, this is interesting. I was really attracted to him. I loved him very much. It just confused me because that decreased. And then when we got married, it steadily continued to decrease. My body was actually this sort of canary in a coal mine, um, alarm system that was like, “Hey, there's something out of congruence here and you can either listen to me and go on this journey or you can continue living in this sexless marriage that is both torturing you and torturing your partner.” So that was actually the seed of my My deconstruction. What about you?
Audrey Assad: I did not do Christian sex. I did not do any sex. In fact, did not kiss anyone until I was 26 years old.
Treen: Wow.
Audrey Assad: Because I was like, very committed to chastity. Very. I was like, if I could have had a chastity belt, I would have had one.
Treen: What would it have looked like?
Audrey Assad: Ornate, heavy, impenetrable. But I was so committed because I felt terrified of the consequences of any of that. And I felt, um, extremely. I mean, when I say I'm OCD, which you may hear me say, I mean, I've been diagnosed with OCD. And my particular form of OCD is called religious existential spiritual OCD.
And so what I tend to struggle with, even in the absence of a religious belief is a sort of compulsion to cleanse my conscience and to be as pure and right and holy as possible. And I still, I still manage those symptoms. And it's really interesting when you don't have a religion anymore, but you're still obsessed with being perfectly truthful or perfectly well behaved.
And so I was that way. I didn't know that at the time, but that was what kept me pure. I was like obsessed with being perfectly like, okay and making sure God was pleased with me. And so when I got married, then theoretically, all bets are off, right? Like, it's allowed now, and the chastity belt can come off, but it turned out that, like, all my neuroses and my fear of it didn't disappear just because I got married.
Treen: Right.
Audrey Assad: So it was extremely complicated for me, actually. Very, very emotionally painful and confusing. And I did not have a good relationship. with sex in marriage. And so, well, maybe my body was the canary in the coal mine, but I was so dissociated and so disembodied that I didn't even know how to begin to interpret those signs.
I can in retrospect now see that my body was, from the years and years of repression and the years and years of, um, anxiety attached to it, it was, it was definitely speaking through my experience in sex and marriage, but I didn't know that. I didn't understand that until much later when I started trauma therapy.
Treen: It's just so painful. Like we're taught in the Christian, Catholic patriarchal system that our bodies are sinful, our urges are sinful. So we're just going to repress, repress, repress that. And then there's this day that you get married and you're just all of a sudden expected to flip a switch.
Audrey Assad: It's traumatizing. I must say. Sex was traumatic for me because I just expected something so different. And I had no education, no experience and all of the neurosis and all of the fear. And it was like, uh, it triggered a lot, you know, but I look at it now as a beautiful thing. It's sort of like it was painful, but it began, like you said, it was a seed that started the deconstruction because it wasn't what I was promised, and I think that was a good disillusionment.
Treen: God, I know you said we were a mistake and an accident, but you've obviously designed us for pleasure, and we're just wondering, like, how is sex supposed to work?
GOD: Well, you really, I would say. Well sorry to interrupt. Yeah. You should be. I would say. Oh yeah, keep going. No one's gotten it right yet. Exactly. That's all I was going to say, is that no one's gotten it right. I don't want to reveal too much. Not really for us to say, but let's just say part of what we did wrong was we just gave you so many holes and that's on us. You don't actually need all those holes, but since you have them, you know, you might as well use them. You should do whatever you want. However you want it, whenever you want it, and that's not really for us to say.
But we did accidentally give you a lot of holes.
Treen: That part is clear. Thank you.
GOD: This is a fascinating conversation for us because we honestly know very little about religion. We were shocked when that all came about. We were like, um, okay, you know what I mean, we were like what? We were a little embarrassed. We're not people who like it to be all about ourselves. We were like, who? Me? This is so, we, we just have so many more questions. The, the Christianity, Evangelical, Catholic, there's so many different words being thrown around. We're honestly not even familiar with all of these words.
Treen: You've been busy doing a lot of other stuff, like other planets, galaxies.
GOD: We have a whole, we have a home remodel going on right now. Yeah. We're, we are redoing our kitchen. I can't even get into it right now, but, ugh. But we're learning a lot just from, we're, I'm getting an education.
Treen: We're gonna, we're gonna keep it going and, um, you know, feel free to give us clarity. Honestly, this is great news that you’ve given us an abundance of holes and I'm allowed to use them however I deem fit. So thank you for that permission.
GOD: Use your holes.
Treen: Use your holes.
Audrey Assad: I can't wait to find out what these other holes are. I don’t know what they are. What are you talking about?
Treen: Yeah, the deconstruction goes deep.
Treen: How did what you were taught growing up about marriage influence like, how you got married? When you got engaged?
Audrey Assad: I didn't believe I could be sexually active unless I was married. And so there was a lot of motivation subconsciously there to get married, even though I didn't even, um, I wouldn't consider myself at that time, particularly horny person.
I mean, I was, but I was so ashamed of it that I repressed, repressed a lot of that. Like I said, I didn't do Christian sex. I was very like careful. I think I had a desire to be a mom. Definitely. I wanted to have children. I wanted to be good and so marriage meant, you know, being good meant being married and having kids and not doing it this unconventional way or exploring sexuality outside of that.
And so I think that added way more pressure than I realized to the pursuit of the like MRS degree as they called it. Um, but it's so interesting cause I'm like, I didn't date very much at all before I got married, at all. I held hands when I was 18 for the first time and felt horrible about it. It was difficult for me to get past that. I didn't know the OCD was playing into all that as well until much later. And so, yeah, I think I got married in a lot of ways because I just felt like that was the only way I could be safe from making these horrible sexual mistakes that would somehow tarnish me. And so I think that that probably heavily influenced why I got married and when I got married.
Treen: Dang.
Audrey Assad: Did you feel similar pressures?
Treen: So we had broken up a year prior because I had discovered that he was still, maybe in love is a strong word, but he was still like really hung up on this other Christian girl in our community. And I was devastated. And actually that first breakup was what led me straight into Jesus's arms.
Like I was suffering so much and I had been going to church then for two years that that suffering of that breakup because I loved him so much. Like he was definitely the first person I've ever, ever loved. And sometimes I'm like, Hmm, will I ever love anyone again? Unclear. Um, but I, I was suffering so much that I, I was praying like for a month straight in my parents house.
And I had a spiritual experience at the time I called it Jesus. But like, I think if anyone prays for eight hours a day in their their childhood room with no other stimulation, something's going to happen. Fast forward, we get back together a year later he proposes to me, by surprise. We've never concretely talked about marriage before. And 30 of my closest friends and family are at the proposal.
I'm dressed up in a Halloween costume as a Blue Travelocity garden gnome with a really tall red cap, and I'm already 5'10” so I'm like 6'9”. Uh, he's dressed as a Franciscan friar with a bald cap. He gets down on one knee in the robe, and it starts raining, and I'm looking at the rain fly off the bald cap, and he pops the question.
Audrey Assad: Did you feel a yes in your body to that question, or was it sort of like a, I should say yes to this because, and here are the reasons, so I'm going to do it.
Treen: I, all I knew was that I loved him and I was terrified and I couldn't figure out how to reconcile those two. I could have, if I had, I'm just always like, uh, if I could have known myself and how I was feeling a little bit better, I could have saved us both from so much emotional turmoil and, and also, and so it is.
Audrey Assad: I hope you can forgive yourself for being a human being who you said yes to an experience that ultimately shaped you, you know, you wouldn't be you today without whatever happened. God, I think you should be saying this. I feel I feel like I'm taking over your counseling role right now I'm so sorry, but I just felt like she needed an affirmation. Do you have anything to add?
GOD: We couldn't have said it better ourselves. And we didn’t say it better. We didn’t even try.
Treen: God, I just want to give you a second to share about your proposal story. If you want to share anything about how you all popped the question?
GOD: Kind of similar to yours, really. I mean, the Friar's costume and everything. The Travelocity gnome. Yeah, well, the real Travelocity gnome was there. Do you want to tell the story? You tell it. You do a really good job of telling the story. I'll do it. I'll tell it. So, you first proposed to me, we were just like, sitting around, binge watching The Great Void. And you just were like, should we get married? And I was like, uh, I don't think, I don't think that's like the way to do it. I wanted like a grand gesture. And so then you were like, okay, give me a second. And then we did, we did the Big Bang. And then you did the Big Bang. The um, we kind of came up with this idea.
Treen: Got it.
GOD: For the Big Bang and I wanted, you know, the fireworks to be going off in the background, like a big romantic moment and. And then that sort of created the universe, and then we were like, “Oh”. It was our proposal that created the universe.
Audrey Assad: Wait, the Big Bang was sex? Is that what happened?
Treen: No, the Big Bang was their proposal.
Audrey Assad: Oh, sorry. I misunderstood.
GOD: It was more of just like a fun thing to do. Like people who get proposed to at Disneyland when the fireworks are going off, that kind of thing. Yeah, but we did the Big Bang.
Treen: And then we were born.
GOD: And that was a mistake.
Treen: We've talked about that before.
GOD: Honestly, a beautiful, a beautiful mistake that I wouldn't. I wouldn't take it back, but we just wanted to be clear that it was a mistake.
Treen: Right, that's, yeah, it's been, it's been reinforced four or five times now.
GOD: Because we, we know very little about Christianity is your proposal story, is that pretty common? Is that the traditional like Christian?
Treen: Oh no, no, I would say no, but it's very common for things like that to happen in my personal life. And many have since happened like that. Um, but no, I would say that's pretty unique.
Treen: What was Christian marriage like for you? What was it like being a wife?
Audrey Assad: I think I came into the experience with a lot of, uh, pressure internally about how to be a great wife. And then, uh, found that all of my, um, people pleasing and fawning behaviors were actually like antithetical to being a good partner.
Because all my life I thought that if I flattened myself as much as possible, that that would be what would pump up, you know, my husband in a good way. And when I look back, and I mean, those are still things that I'm trying to work out to be clear. I'm not just suddenly all of a sudden, like free of those things.
Treen: Oh no I do it in dating. It's really weird then.
Audrey Assad: Yeah, it really is. I, in fact, my husband now, um, Jeremy, he has been maybe one of the biggest instruments of healing for me in this way because he sort of just like refuses to accept that from me. He doesn't want that. It's not in his list of like qualities he's looking for and so if he feels me shrinking he's like, well, this, why are you doing that right now? You know, who am I talking to? It's been really challenging but in an amazing way and I think unfortunately, my ex husband and I didn't have that type of communication. And so it was just very confusing. I was so confused. I was like, I don't understand. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. And I sought all this like guidance and spiritual counsel. And I had a spiritual director who was also a man and a priest. And, you know, I would like go to him and kind of, you know, I didn't have a therapist at the time. He was basically standing in as a therapist without being a therapist, which now I'm like, why did I, but I just didn't know any better. And I'd be like this, this and that, and he's this way and that way. And he would just kind of always advise me to be meeker, milder and more, um, Christ like, you know, um, in order to like, softly encourage this relationship in this certain way, and it really enforced, like reinforced all the things I came in trying to do, but it never worked. It never worked. And then eventually we did get divorced, and it was the best decision that I could have made for myself. Um, and I think for him, too. I think we both needed to be set free from the shackles of this, like,
Treen: strange little rodeo.
Audrey Assad: Yeah strange ride we were on. So it was a confusing experience because I did everything right and nothing worked.
Treen: That's so fascinating you, you say that because I was actually raised by my mom and my Oma to be a pretty like raging feminist. And then when I converted to Evangelicalism and then I got married again, all this good girl programming, like flattening myself, making myself small. But the funny thing, was my ex and I at the time were living in this artist house in Brooklyn with two other couples and a bachelor. So I took on this role of like, from my interpretation, housewife, you know, like I was the one we, I was living in this artist house of all these other artists and I saw them self actualizing and I saw them making their art and I was like scrubbing the kitchen. And then I would be like mean to the other roommates because I was like cleaning all the stuff, fluffing all the pillows. And so it was really this neurotic like housewife persona came out. And I look back at myself at that time and I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I would not have liked that version of me.”
A lot of anger came out in that time as well but it was because, being this modern woman, programmed to be this Puritan girl, um, just did not did not mesh. And again, it was until I was ready to look at that that I could start to detangle, you know, the role that I was playing. But I will say a breaking point for me was we also had marriage counselors, Christian marriage counselors. It was a man and a woman and they were married. And there was this breaking point where it was three years into our marriage and we had not had sex, not even Christian sex. And, um. Yeah. Like sexless. I, I started to question. I was like, do I even have a sexuality? Do I even have a sex drive? Maybe I don't.
Audrey Assad: I did too. Maybe I'm asexual.
Treen: Maybe I’m asexual. And I just remember calling the wife. She told me to just lay naked in bed, waiting for him to come home. And it was at that moment that I was like, you don't understand anything about me. There has got to be something else in the world that can support me.
Audrey Assad: That’s bad advice and you just knew.
Treen: I just knew.
GOD: I was just going to ask, the marriage counselors were themselves a married couple.
Treen: They were.
GOD: Wow. Okay relatable.
Audrey Assad: What would your advice be?
GOD: Well, I was just going to ask, did they themselves seem like they had a healthy and good relationship or, you know, do you think that they were also then going to their marriage counselors who are a married couple?
Treen: And then their marriage counselors that…I think they did have a good relationship. I think that for folks who and this is why on this show, I can never say like the folks that listen to this and find that this have to be ready to receive this information. And it has to be at that point that I was at where it's like, there's got to be something else, but that for folks who are still find freedom in Christian cultural lifestyle and values, it's very comforting.
There's a safety to quelling the existential terror of being on this planet flying 47,000 miles per hour through space on a rock towards other rocks. And I you know, they seem to be great with that, with that structure, just for me, something wasn't working.
Audrey Assad: That makes sense.
Treen: God, how gender roles and marriage, like, tell us about how your, your partnership works out?
GOD: Well, we are a bodiless entity that does have mutton chops and is redoing our kitchen. But almost nothing, just mutton chops and almost nothing else. No other defining features.
Audrey Assad: You're just hair.
GOD: It's pretty much just the mutton chops. I would describe ourselves as mostly genderless. Yeah, gender is pretty boring to us. I'm trying to think if there's any other, like, dynamics between us that. Well, it's like, I picked out the counters. You picked out the cabinets. And I created tigers. Yeah, and I created dogs. And so, is that gender?
Treen: That seems pretty fluid to me.
GOD: But I do think we relate to the idea that Audrey mentioned about people pleasing. We don't want to please people anymore. It's hard as gods to make everybody happy. And if there's anything we've learned, it's that no one will ever be happy. Treen, I'm curious to hear more about the house that you were living in, um, at that time. Like, how did that all come about? How did that, were you already living there when you began that marriage? Were you?
Treen: Good question God. I'm surprised you don't, and I'm surprised you don't remember, but you were probably off on in somewhere else going on, going about a tour of the other galaxies.
GOD: Well what year was that?
Treen: Uh, 20-2016.
GOD: Oh, that's when we were doing that whole backyard reno.
Audrey Assad: Yeah Donald Trump was also president that year. It was busy.
GOD: Oh, I've heard it was a busy year. We've been a little bit checked out from politics.
Treen: You’ve been checked out from politics. Yeah, makes sense.
GOD: Yeah. We just don't really read the news.
Treen: Yeah. I mean, I, so we, we lived together for one year as a couple. And then again, as part of our, um, our values in this Christian world. We had a pastor at the time who really preached about the importance and significance of doing life communally. And I'm really inspired by my ex for, for starting this, like he was really inspired by that messaging to as artists be collaborative and share life together.
And so we moved into this, this brownstone with five of other friends and you know, some of them were actually not Christian. So that was an interesting dance. Yeah, it was just fascinating for me because I saw this version and this is where it gets a little complicated as well because, um, my Oma, for example, she was like relegated to the role of housewife because being a German woman of her age, she couldn't go to college.
And so I saw this like angst with her as a housewife growing up. And then my Mom, she had an amazing career. And then because of life circumstances had to step away from it. And I saw her becoming a housewife again, and again, felt that angst of like, “Oh, okay. I couldn't, you know, do my life's dream. So now I'm just a housewife.”
And so it was almost like when I became the matriarchal figure of this artist home, like all this anger and rage came out and it was not a cute, it was not a cute look.
Audrey Assad: I think anger is so important. Um, it's such a notification on your iOS, like that something is a mess, something is out of alignment. And if we were more able to feel anger and let it pass through rather than shoving it down, I think a lot of relationships would be healthier.
A lot of us would feel healthier. Um, anger finds a way to, it manifests in disease or dysfunction. Um, it, but it will be expressed, you know, I think anger is amazing. It makes sense that you felt angry scrubbing the floors. It makes sense that you saw anger in your female, um, figures in your life. That is an appropriate response to feeling repressed or held back.
Treen: I think anger is a, a truth serum. It's like whenever I feel anger or resentment or frustration now, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, where am I not being honest with myself? Where am I not being honest with someone else in my life or with circumstances? Like it slows me down now so much, but you know, being 20, so I was 26 when I got married, 25 when I got engaged, like I was still, I look, that was 10 years ago. I look back on that and I'm like, wow, my brain was still forming into the adult brain that I have now. Like I did not have the tools to even know what I was feeling at any given moment.
Audrey Assad: I really relate to that. I wasn't necessarily young by Christian standards when I got married. I was 27. But I would say that I was young in self knowledge, young in philosophical development, young in experience in every arena.
Um, and so, yeah, I mean, I don't I mean, no, I'm not saying no one should be allowed to get married until they know those things because I think getting married is part of how you can learn those things, whether you get divorced or not. I mean, that relationship is a mirror. It does bring about a lot of opportunity for growth and self reflection, whether it's permanent or not.
Um, but I will say that If I were the me I am today, um, I would have done a lot of things differently. I just didn't know anything about myself, really.
GOD: We waited until we were 60 million years old to get married and I don't regret it. And I think we did each learn a lot from our previous relationships as well. Yes. I was previously engaged actually to the concept of time.
Audrey Assad: Oh, that must have been very non linear.
Treen: And, um, what I'm perceiving as male god, who were you previously married to?
GOD: Also the concept of time. We were in a throuple. Complicated situation. For me, it was in the past and for him it was in the future. It's actually how we met. It's actually how we met. Mutual friend. It's really hard to explain, but it was concurrent.
Audrey Assad: Everything, everywhere, all at once.
GOD: It was concurrent and yet…incredible film. We loved that movie.
Audrey Assad: I did, too. That movie is you I think.
GOD: It's really good. It actually really does describe what our lives are like. We don't get out to the movies often, but that was great. But we did see that.
Treen: While, like, agency is a complex, uh, topic in terms of, of religion, especially like, you know, teaching kids things at such a young age about how the world works. I like to take responsibility for what I can in this, in this realm of like, it makes me feel more empowered. It makes me feel like a more sane person. And I'm curious for you, what did you actually learn that you are taking with you today?
Audrey Assad: I can't say I've ever thought about it exactly like that before. It's a really interesting question. I can say, um, it's a very cliche thing you hear like NBA and NFL coaches say this after the game all the time where they're like, well, sometimes you have to learn what not to do in order to learn what to do. Like we should have done this, but we only know that because we had a bad game and, you know, we're going to come back stronger and whatever. It's a cliche, but it's true. I think, um, like a lot of cliches that when we experience something in reality versus in theory, we can carve out a lot of knowledge and understanding because of that experience.
And that's the way I look at having been married and now divorced, and I'm actually remarried. And in my second marriage, I feel like I've been given the gift of having gone through something that has shown me so much. All of my life marriage was postured as this solution to so many problems and this way to like live God's design for your life.
And if you do that, you will have top emotional health and you will be well because you're doing what God has designed you for. And then I went through the experience and, you know, I was hungry for spiritual leadership from a man because that's all I had ever known and been taught. My dad was my head. I, like, lived there till I was 24. I would have lived there longer, but family circumstances sort of, uh, didn't allow for that. At the times, my parents split up. And I always thought I would live at home till I got married and go straight from my dad's authority and covering, as we called it, to my husband's. And so when I got married and I was looking to my ex husband for that type of leadership, he was like, I don't, what, what?
Like, I'm not, I'm not your Bible study leader. I'm like, yes, yes, you are. I can't lead myself, you know, but the experience of having to go through that, um, disillusionment and surprise and shock of like, oh, having a husband doesn't solve my existential angst at all. Um, it doesn't do anything to help me become myself. I have to do that for myself. And I, I think I didn't want to accept that. And so it was years before I began to really see, um, the amount of self work I had to do. But because I went through that experience, I would say I took with me, um, just so much open mindedness to the fact that people evolve and change.
I filed for divorce, so I have a lot of open mindedness to why people do that. I don't expect that my marriage that I'm in now is going to be static or predictable or controllable because I know from experience that that's not how marriage works because that's not how people work. So yeah, all of the mistakes I made, if you want to call them that, um, have served me because they've taught me lessons that I can now live.
This isn't something I've heard a lot of people talk about so I'm glad that you're doing this. I'm curious if you, um, if it's the same for you or if there are actually things about Christian marriage principles that you still hold on to, or is it kind of like the absence of it that's, that's the gift?
Treen: I mean, the funny thing is, is now as a single person for four years, my psyche is still trying to get somebody else to take the responsibility. And I even see it in the new age circles of like, masculine, feminine, energetics, still of all this, like, men's work of men being being the leaders and women just wanting to surrender so that they can be emotionally and sexually open.
And like, there's still a temptation there for me. Yeah, it would be really nice to be able to like, give the keys to the car to somebody else, and I can just sit in the passenger seat, but that's just not been my experience of life. No task, tax rabbit is coming to do my my taxes. I have to file them with Evan, Evan Glass bless him in New Jersey and, you know, pay him every year to organize my QuickBooks.
GOD: Your welcome to use our rabbit. He's fantastic.
Treen: I would really appreciate that, God.
GOD: It's really hard for him to write and also type because of his little paws, but he just has a great sense of like, what's a write off.
We did, as you can tell, we spent a lot less time thinking about human sex and a lot more time thinking about taxes and yes sort of ins and outs of how all that works. And again, that's on us and we apologize.
Treen: That makes sense. Honestly, no, no sorry is needed. You know, uh, I think we're all, yeah, we're all evolving here.
Treen: Audrey, what was your relationship with God like at the time? And what is your relationship with God like now that you're remarried?
Audrey Assad: Well, I only experience God while I'm married, so I'm glad you noticed that.
Treen: But I In between, God's gone.
Audrey Assad: Um, yeah it's just a void. Um, my relationship with God was so anxious and so fraught with confusion because I still couldn't find this kind of elusive sense of certainty and spiritual peace for which I had been sort of searching my entire life.
I thought getting married would help with all these feelings of spiritual angst and existential dread that I had, uh, because I would finally be like under the covering of my spiritual leader. Um, so bleak. It didn't help. It didn't help even a little bit. And that was a difficult but a beautiful piece of tough love from the universe because it was among one of several significant life experiences that ignited ultimately a transformative process of deep spiritual and inquiry which led me to so much liberation and so much, um, through a lot of difficult work and still ongoing painful untangling.
Now, I would say, you know, when I met my current husband, I had been through about three and a half to four years of self work. I had been divorced for a while and I had been like, uh, trying mushrooms and like, ayahuasca and yeah, I was exploring the plant world in that way, which brought so much, um, illumination and healing, um, and, you know, other things too that I've had to integrate and figure out.
But I feel like my relationship with God has become, it still, it still contains a lot of anxiety, to be honest with you, but I think because I have the perspective of having gone through that relationship and the divorce and the breakup of that relationship through the deconstruction of Christianity into a more spiritually curious and fluid place, um, that my current marriage reflects that in a great way.
I think I attracted someone who exhibited that curiosity and fluidity in their own life. And I really needed that because even now I sort of struggle to take responsibility for my own self, my own life, my own development. And so instead of attracting someone who would be a foil for that, in the sense of like swooping in and taking over, I've attracted someone who is as curious as I am, and even more comfortable with the unknown than I am.
I'm not very comfortable with it, you know, but I want to be, I want to be more open to the, the fact that none of this might even mean anything. I think my search for meaning has been so obsessive and like fixated. I'm learning to just let go and be here and experience it. Do you want to get married again? Do you think?
Treen: Oh, I am trying. I'm just, I'm like, how do you do it? How do you get anyone to commit to you? I mean maybe I gotta leave Los Angeles.
Audrey Assad: Hinge
Treen: I have tried that.
Audrey Assad: That was my, that was my it worked for me. Um, I know it doesn't work for everyone. But that was what, that was ultimately where I met my partner, my husband. Yeah. It doesn't work for everybody. I've been actually in the back of my mind, like racking my brain for who I know in Los Angeles that’s amazing and single because I’m like she seems so great.
GOD: We’ll do that too, as God.
Audrey Assad: Yeah, I'll be matchmaking.
Treen: Could you, God, could you please, could you please do that? That'd be great. God, how is, how do you think marriage is supposed to work?
GOD: I think there's a problem with your question. And that is that there is no way that it is supposed to work. There is only the way that it works for you. And I suppose if we were to have one advice. One advice. If we were to have one advice, it would just be to be good to each other. In marriage or out. In and out of marriage. And as God, that's sort of my whole deal. Be nice. That was beautiful. That was really beautiful.
Treen: That was beautiful God.
GOD: Thank you I'm crying. I'm crying too. Oh no, be careful. When we cry, it rains in Los Angeles.
Audrey Assad: It's about to rain. Yes.
Treen: Well, God, I just want to say thank you so much for holding space for Audrey and I today to, to open up this box and, um, and Audrey. Thank you so much for being here, for sharing what you did. How can folks find you? How can folks support you?
Audrey Assad: You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and Tick Tock at Audrey Assad. Um, Facebook is Audrey Assad Music, but everywhere else is Audrey Assad. Um, I have a website with some fun things on it as well, and I also have a blog that I really sporadically write with, but I love to write long form, and it's called The Violet Fields. It's thevioletfields.substack.com and that's where you can hear more in depth, um, things that I'm thinking about or I've been through and yeah, I'm busy finishing up an album that will be probably finally releasing in the very early summer and I have three singles out from it already which are on all the streaming platforms It's called the, “Be Still” EP you can find all of that anywhere that you like to stream music.
Treen: Our beautiful omniscient commentators today were played by drumroll please, Rachel Wenitsky and David Sidorov. David and Rachel, can y'all share how folks can find you and what you're up to in real life as a real married couple, by the way.
GOD: Uh, Instagram.
Treen: Great.
GOD: Are either of us on Twitter anymore? No. Wow. Um, we are, we are writers living in Los Angeles, California. Oh, we have, we have a children's book series called “Good Dogs on a Bad Day”, if you have kids in your life, or just anyone who likes. Or dogs in your life. Or dogs, or just anyone who likes fart jokes, you can purchase those at your local bookstore, anywhere else that we are? That's pretty much it.
Treen: Amazing.
GOD: Walking around the dog park. Walking around the dog park with our, with our dog Bagel.
Treen: Their dog Bagel is the cutest.
GOD: Come find us in person. That's the new, that's a new cool thing to say in a podcast. Come find us in person.
Audrey Assad: I love that. It’s so old school.
GOD: And you can find me on the corner.
Treen: Thank you so much for listening to the Naughty by Nature podcast. Did you like that and want to enjoy it all again? Well, we've got visuals baby watch and subscribe to our YouTube channel at nxnpod. Also hit the follow button here to be alerted to following episodes and take one tiny second to tell us what you think with a rating or review. It truly helps us grow. Thank you for listening and I'm wishing you all the best in living your unabashedly free and freaky life.