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Obedience. So how did this word get into our marriages? Or our context of spirituality? And why does this word feel like a threat or a weapon used toward women?
Show Notes
Obedience. So how did this word get into our marriages? Or our context of spirituality? And why does this word feel like a threat or a weapon used toward women?
I’d love to unravel the language, identities, terms, practices, and beliefs that make you feel stuck or even oppressed. So leave me a voicemail at 608-55-STORY. I want to hear from you!
I’d love to unravel the language, identities, terms, practices, and beliefs that make you feel stuck or even oppressed. So leave me a voicemail at 608-55-STORY. I want to hear from you!
Jessicah is a Life Coach helping women liberate their stories so they are free to live the fullest life they can dream of. She is currently living her impossible dream as a traveling nomad with her husband, Casey. She is also certified as a Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming and integrates the practice of NLP through all of her work. Find out more at www.LiberateYourStory.com
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What is Liberate Your Story Podcast?
Liberate yourself from the programming and beliefs that keep you feeling small. Host & NLP Life Coach, Jessicah Travis, will help you unravel from the oppressive religious culture that told you how to think about yourself and the world around you. Let's liberate your story and live the life you want to!
An interesting thing happened. I’m part of a Facebook podcast collaboration group. It's a space to be a guest or find a guest.
Once in a while, they allow you to post in the thread a promo or link to your podcast. So today I decided to post a link for this podcast. I wrote out the description, added my link, and hit post.
Then…I saw how my post fit in the string of other posts doing the same promo for their podcasts. Mine sat right above a podcast with this description:
“I help wives battle shame, reclaim their identity in Christ, and walk in obedience after brokenness in their marriage. The Jar Podcast.”
Here’s the description of my podcast that I posted…right above hers…
“Today I’m sharing my newest podcast called Liberate Your Story. A weekly podcast hosted by life coach, Jessicah Travis, to unravel the language, beliefs, and mindsets that keep women feeling small. Let’s free ourselves from oppressive, religious programming, practices, and culture. Find out where IT ends and You begin. Liberate your story and you liberate your life.”
So..needless to say, the clash of two worlds is right on top of each other. It wasn’t intentional but quite interesting.
That word….obedience. It caused a reaction in me.
My first thought was “I’d love to go on your podcast and talk about liberating women from oppressive beliefs!” but we all know that wouldn’t happen.
My second thought was…” what was she referring to in regards to obedience?” Was it god? Husbands?
I decided to dive down the rabbit hole. I clicked the link to the show.
Here’s what I found.
83 episodes. 75 reviews and all five-star ratings. And this show description:
"The Jar Podcast: Biblical Mindset, Overcome Shame, Hope for Broken Marriage, Identity in Christ.
If you’re done feeling alone, discouraged, hopeless, exhausted and left behind, this is for you. Welcome to the Jar Podcast where we battle shame, reclaim our identity in Christ, walk in obedience to begin the healing process. Join me each week for personal stories, biblical truths, inspiration and practical tools to equip you to heal from the inside out, navigate hard parts in your marriage and partner with God in whatever plan He has for your life, your spouse’s life, your children’s life and generation to come. Gather your broken pieces, girl, it's time to reclaim wholeness.”
The host is a "Christian Wife Coach, Biblical Mindset Mentor, Teacher, and Boymom."
Deep Breath.
I’m not bringing this up in my own show because I want to put down the work someone else is doing in the world. There is space for all of us.
I actually have a more important objective in sharing this.
We NEED to talk about this word…obedience.
I posted this little string of screenshots in my IG stories today. It struck a chord with my followers, too!
I even put another episode I was writing on the back burner to write this one for the next release.
I’m going to reference a belief I talked about in Episode 8. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, you might want to push pause now and go back. These are only 10-minute-ish episodes so it will be quick.
Let’s start with the Webster definitions.
Obedience means “ the act or instance of obeying. The quality or state of being obedient. A sphere of jurisdiction especially: an ecclesiastical or sometimes secular dominion”
So let’s look at “obedient”: “submissive to the restraint or command of authority: willing to obey”
And here are just a few synonyms according to Webster:
compliance,
conformity,
submission,
subordination
So how did this word get into our marriages? Or our context of spirituality? And why does this word feel like a threat or a weapon used toward women?
I also want to address one of the questions that came through my DMs after posting my screenshots.
“Why with Christianity, does obedience always have to be the word for women?”
Great question! It’s a question about WHERE this comes from and WHY it’s a part of who we are.
In Episode 8, I brought up the Creation Poem in Genesis. One result of this poem is a far-reaching belief that women are weak, untrustworthy, and not enough on their own.
My goal in these episodes is not to dismantle Christian theology. It’s possible it happens in the process, but it's not my goal.
My goal is to have you think about the WHY.
Why is the belief and the practice there in the first place? AND what result is it having in my life?
Then YOU get to decide if this is what you want. Do you like the result of this belief in your life or is it misaligned with the values you hold?
Or maybe… what is all this conflict I feel about something I have lived by for so long?
A belief is simply a belief. In and of itself, it's neither negative or positive. UNLESS it harms you or another person.
What we do with it is the ECOLOGY of our life. The result of it IN our life is the QUALITY of our life.
How could a belief system that says it's based on love, have such a seemingly oppressive relationship with the word obedience? Why does it feel like this word is weaponized against women?
There are so so many rabbit trails I could go down with all these questions I presented. I may need to do follow-up episodes to travel down a few of those trails. It’s a big topic that I will not be able to tackle in just one short episode.
I’m going to find us the most direct throughline to a root answer.
According to Christianity, you are called to deny yourself.
Your identity is not your own, it belongs to Christ.
You are not trustworthy.
You are a sinner first and a saved soul second.
You have conditions to whether you can have a relationship with God.
You are made for a purpose that is not for yourself.
You are not complete without a husband.
You are called to holiness and purity.
You have roles that compliment the mantel of male leadership (aka patriarchy).
Obedience is a call to perfection….Which actually contradicts the idea of grace and “come as you are”.
We get to come as we are for a hot second, but our patronship to this grace is holiness and purity. Holiness and purity are acquired by obedience.
We are not enough on our own. We need rules, order, and leadership to show us a higher way.
When I was raising my daughters, obedience was important to their life in our family. Obedience meant order, safety, alliance, public appropriateness etc.
I taught my girls at a very young age that obedience was their first requirement in their life.
I taught them that their highest value was to obey.
Why? Because my highest value was to obey God.
Let me pause for a moment to say that I really regret this programming and expectation.
We have healed from this as a family so I feel that I can talk to my regrets.
And Our daughters do not live under this pressure of perfection any longer.
But …it did do a good amount of destruction to us all.
Why was obeying God such a high value, though?
Fear.
We are afraid of a life without the surety of our afterlife and acceptance by God.
Accept Jesus as your Savior (savior from your sinful human nature), Believe that God is Lord of your life (Sovereign and King) and you will be saved from eternal damnation.
Heaven or Hell.
There is a lot at stake if we get this wrong.
We aren’t just afraid of Hell, though.
We are afraid of the loss of community, acceptance by God, and those that also love God.
When I’m working with a client, we are not only looking for the core problem presented by their struggles. We are looking for what is called “secondary gain”.
This is what we get by holding onto the presenting “core” problem.
In this case, choosing to comply with obedience has a secondary gain of safety.
So even when it logically doesn’t make sense that I would give up what I want or think….
I might not set my foot down and say “ENOUGH” because the cost is so very high.
We then work really hard to sidestep the logic we know.
We instead… choose to support the belief at an even higher cost….
because the secondary gain is the cost we WON’T pay.
For those of us who never knew what it was like to operate outside of the culture of obedience,
the fear is elevated by the unknown, and safety moves into the highest position of our values.
We have now created the strategy for our way of life. Remember that the highest intention of our unconscious self (that place where our beliefs, values, and strategies reside) is to survive, to keep ourselves safe and alive.
So a seemingly simple poem in a very large book, written by and through the perspective of men, can create such a deeply rooted strategy for life that many of us women just go along with.
When I encounter beliefs such as these, I will ask, “for what purpose?”
I wonder, in this case, the purpose is NOT for the flourishing of women. Might the secondary gain of this “obedience belief” be power?
What’s really interesting to me is that the host of the Jar Podcast actually wants to help women heal and find wholeness. The sad part is that the secondary gain is so important that she has to create a way to do that WITHIN the belief system.
Here’s where I differ from this approach.
I believe that we can keep doing those external repairs under the banner of obedience, holiness, and purity OR…
we can challenge the belief itself.
Changing the belief is going to require that we adjust our values so that the secondary gain can be released. So that fear can no longer be fed.
Let me offer you this alternative way of life….I’ll just paint a different picture here.
Your core belief becomes love.
From love, you structure your values to align with that…
Maybe that means you now value self-love equally to others'- love because it all sits within the belief of love.
Now you have alignment between your belief and your values.
Then we release the secondary gain because equality doesn’t leave room for fear.
In the realm of equality, we are not afraid of losing our position, voice, worth, enoughness.
We don’t have to appease, be accepted, do enough, or become pure enough to be loved….because we love ourselves as equally as we love others.
What would be the result of a life lived like this? I’m willing to bet that it would feel free, confident, and hopeful….
and it would dismantle the ability for oppression to rule and dominion to be held up.
Dominion requires obedience, not love.
If love is truly what God is and what humanity collectively desires at its deepest level, then dominion wouldn’t even be necessary would it?
What if the marriage this podcaster was trying to heal and help repair operated outside of patriarchy and dominion?
Might a woman be so filled up with equality that she, too, could find endless possibilities to the levels of love that her relationship could go?
Might she live in a way that brought all the parts of herself into the world without striving and appeasing? The pure flow of her being.
Might she feel safe because she knows who she is and doesn’t have to prove a DAMN thing? To god or her husband.
What would happen if you lived in a way that was not afraid? What if fear was not a motivator or the avoidance of it was not your secondary gain?
Friends, wholeness won’t be found in taking parts of you away or reducing them to “the flesh”.
You will be whole when you allow ALL of you to ALL the parts of your life.
Liberate your fears and you liberate your story.