Ep. 1: Our Stories

It is a truth universally acknowledged that women who grew up in patriarchal churches must be in want of something MORE. We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe we are meant to be more in God's kingdom than we've been told. We believe in the God-given strength of women to teach and preach God's word, be equal partners in their marriages, and find peace and purpose in their identity through Christ. Through this podcast, we will explore faith, feminism, and the women of the Bible. Join us today for episode 1 where we share our stories and why this topic has lit a fire in our souls.

What is We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism?

We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.

We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

Get comfy.

Welcome to episode one of We Are More Sisters Talk Faith and Feminism.

I am Brianna.

And I'm Alyssa.

We are, in fact, sisters.

Yes.

We're going to talk about faith and feminism.

From the same womb.

Yes.

Today we wanted to talk a little bit about ourselves, which sounds a little self-centered,

but you don't know us yet.

That's true.

But you don't know us yet.

So we're going to tell our stories and why this is something we've become passionate

about.

And yeah, then you can kind of get to know where this is headed a little bit.

Yeah.

So go ahead.

All right.

Yeah.

I'm going to start because Bri's being a wimp.

So my name is Alyssa.

And whenever I think about doing this introduction, because I rehearsed it in the shower and stuff,

I always think about I'm going to introduce myself as Alyssa and I'm a mom and I'm a wife

and blah, blah, blah.

But Bri and I have been working through a book called The Making of Biblical Womanhood

by Beth Allison Barr.

And she actually talks about that, about how women, particularly in the ministry space,

but kind of anywhere, define themselves by their relation to their husband and their

children.

So I'm not going to do that because I think I hold value on my own too.

So I'm sure you'll hear about my family as time goes on.

But I guess just sort of my, I'll start with my faith journey a little bit.

Bri and I grew up in very conservative Baptist churches in a pretty conservative Baptist

family.

And when I say family, I mean like our whole family, like not just mom and dad.

Like my big fat Greek wedding, like large family.

Big family.

And so we just, we grew up in that space and that impacted both of us.

And I know Bri will talk about that as well.

But the way that that really impacted me as a kid was just like not often in conservative

spaces talked about as like this loving, wonderful being.

He's more talked about as like authoritative.

Yeah, authoritative.

Like if you mess up, God's going to be mad.

So from a very young age, I learned about God as like angry God.

Like anything you do, anytime you step out of line, you're going to piss God right off.

And good luck with that.

Grandma listens.

She's going to cry.

She's going to cry anyway.

Have you heard the topic?

We put feminism in the title.

But anyway, it was just, it was very much don't break the rules.

That was kind of where my faith landed for a really long time in my life.

And as we got older, you know, we went to maybe slightly less conservative churches.

Still like non-denominational.

Still very conservative.

Yeah, but pushed the boundaries a little bit more.

Bri and I went to public schools through high school, but then I ended up at a pretty small

Christian school.

So what some people would consider one of the more conservative Christian schools, not

the most, but one of the more conservative Christian schools.

I could wear pants.

There were, boys were allowed in the girls dorms for like one hour a week with monitoring

doors had to be open.

But it was kind of there that I started to see God as more than just angry God.

Like, Oh, Hey, we can talk about God as like being loving, like as wanting to have a relationship

with me, whether I sin today or not.

And that the goal for me isn't like be perfect or God will hate you.

Just love God and love others and God will be right there with you.

And so I kind of started to develop that.

I had to take, I had to take a lot of Bible classes in college.

And so like I learned a little bit more of the history of my faith and what, I don't

know what I was not taught, I guess, when I was younger about God.

So fast forwarding a little bit, I got married in between my junior and senior years of college,

which yes is very, very young.

You were a baby.

I was a baby.

But if you haven't been to a Christian college, they push marriage like you just would not

believe.

I feel like it's abnormal if you don't get married either in college or right out of

college.

It is almost.

And so I like I remember the president of my college getting up in chapel one time we

were required to go to chapel and saying like, look at all these beautiful Christian women

out here, boys, what's wrong with you?

How are all of you not married and blah, blah, blah?

Did you look around and say where?

I was beautiful.

Thank you.

But I mean, like he's saying this to like 18 year old kids.

But I did get married.

You did.

I did do that.

I listened to him.

I did.

I was 21, which yeah, very young.

And so my husband and I, Nathan and I moved off campus and kind of like that's when things

really shifted for me because I went from, you know, when you're a kid and your parents

go to church, you got to go to church.

What else are you going to do?

You don't get left home alone.

Pretend to be sick.

You could pretend to be sick.

We did that sometimes.

But like for the most part, like you're stuck.

You go in there whether you like it or not.

And then when I went to college, like we literally were required to go to chapel and to church

and they checked.

Like if you didn't have so many chapel credits, you didn't graduate.

You didn't get credits.

Like it was...

You nearly didn't.

Yeah, I nearly didn't the last year.

And then all of a sudden like we moved off campus and there's nobody monitoring this.

Like nobody's making sure we go to church.

So my faith definitely took a dip there.

But Nathan is just, he's someone that he's the complete opposite of me.

As you'll find out, I'm very like introverted.

I very much like my own space and my own company.

My husband is the most extroverted human alive.

That's really rude of him.

He will become friends with anyone he comes across.

And so he wanted that like church community.

So we wound up in a much bigger church than I had ever been to.

And he got super involved really, really quickly.

He was in the worship band and he was, I think, he was a small group leader in the youth group.

Which was things that he had done growing up too.

So this was right up his alley.

But I started to like notice people really wanted to know him, but didn't care that I

was there at all.

Like people would come up and say hi to him and he'd introduce me and they'd be like,

oh hey, and then turn immediately to Nathan and only talk to Nathan.

Moving on.

Yeah.

Like I just was not important in that space at all.

And so I, I, it wasn't a church I liked.

And we struggled there after a while.

I don't know how to say that without getting into like a lot of details.

But after some time, Nathan had gotten close with someone that he was in the worship band

with and they kind of bait and switched him.

We were in a really bad financial position and essentially they offered him a job.

And after he had worked towards that job for a while, was really counting on it.

We had a baby on the way.

It was right before Christmas.

This person was like, yeah, no, I'm not going to give you this job.

And I have never seen someone so broken ever in my life as when he came home and had to

tell me that.

And that was like, that could have been the end of my faith right there.

I mean, I was done.

I was out.

I was never stepping foot in a church again.

Cause I think it's something different.

It hits different when people in a church who you're supposed to think like, oh, I can

trust them and they are followers of Christ and then they hurt you.

It hits different.

It does.

And this was someone too that was like a leader in the church.

And so I'm sitting there going, okay, God, like you're letting this person lead the church.

This person is probably still leading at that church.

Smite them.

Smite them.

Really?

Like that's what you want.

You're like, I want some revenge.

But that didn't happen.

And so we spent a couple of years completely out of church.

I was just done.

Eventually we moved back over kind of near my family, near Bree, cause she had left me

at that point.

She was living with us for a while and then left me.

So sorry for your loss.

It must have been devastating.

It was.

I have a picture of us holding hands.

Very depressing.

And so we moved back over here.

We had a little girl at that point.

She was three or four when we moved.

And I got it in my head that like, God, I believed God existed, but I did not believe

God was good.

Like I sincerely believed that God played favorites and that the Bible was essentially

like propaganda.

Yeah.

Like are you on the nice list or the naughty list?

Exactly.

And that I was not, I was not on God's favorites list.

I thought that.

But I thought at least my daughter could be on God's favorites list if nothing else.

What do I have to do to get her there?

So we started going to this really big, well-known church in our area.

Just because it was honestly somewhere to get lost.

It was the easiest place to go.

I didn't have to talk to anybody.

I didn't have to get to know anybody.

Small churches are hard.

You go in and people ask you questions.

They want to know you.

They want to know you.

They want to know people.

Big churches, you can sit in the back row and no one's going to talk to you.

And that's what I do think like big churches for all the crap they get.

I think they have their place.

For me, it's just a little harder to grow there.

But anyway, so we went there.

We got so involved.

Like, you know, you drank the kool-aid.

We did.

And it was really good for a while.

Like we had a really good community for a minute.

And I mean, we volunteered.

We were in a small group.

And this was, like I said, I'm an introvert.

So this was like weird, weird for me.

Nathan was once again in the worship band.

We were helping out in kids church.

Like, I mean, we were, I think we were there more than we were home.

We were there all the time.

And we live like half an hour away.

So it was a commitment.

But I did, I saw God a lot at that time of my life.

I felt like I was growing a lot and just, I don't know, trying to trust again and in

a different way and recognizing that God can fix situations and work through things that

we had dealt with up until that point.

But I have a lot of church hurt in my life.

And that kept right on.

You may find as we go on that it is a miracle that I'm still in church.

Because of what, maybe two years after we started going there, it all happened again.

And I'm sure we'll get into more details on that story eventually.

It's not something I'm quite ready to share about.

But I started actually working for that church, like as an employee.

And a situation happened that made it very difficult for us to attend anymore.

Something with someone that, again, we trusted.

And I went to the proper people to talk about it and nobody wanted to hear me and nobody

wanted to fix it.

They wanted to put it on you.

Exactly.

So I felt very unsafe in that situation.

So despite being employed by the church, I was no longer actually attending the church.

You're so sneaky.

Which was, interestingly, part of my contract.

So the end of the year came around and you know, it's a big church so nobody noticed.

That was kind of the bummer.

It was nobody as involved as we were.

We stopped attending right after I had my son.

And it was like a good eight months before anybody noticed we didn't come back.

And that was pretty heartbreaking.

Yeah, because people who you have like almost become family to you and then all of a sudden

they don't see you and they don't notice.

I think big churches, that's just the attitude.

Like people come and go and...

No one's going to check in on you.

So once someone finally did notice that we weren't attending...

Really rude.

Yeah, it was rude.

I got a sit down chat with my boss who honestly is a lovely person.

But he had to sit me down and say like, hey, this is in your contract.

You have to be here.

And I was like, I just, I explained it to him.

But at that point there was just nothing the church was willing to do.

And additionally, the church was going through a lot of financial issues.

So we were headed into like three rounds of layoffs.

And I was an easy target because here they had all these problems with me now.

So I got laid off and I lost my church.

I lost my family.

I lost my job.

I lost everything.

All in one swoop.

Yeah, from something that wasn't my fault at all.

And it took me a while to feel like it wasn't my fault because if God's going to let that

happen it's got to be my fault.

So we, this was a shorter time away from church.

We spent a few months just out of church entirely.

But I really started to realize that like that wasn't working for me.

Like, all right, every time you get mad at somebody, you can't just like say, forget

you God, I'm done.

So we tried a couple more churches.

And that's kind of where we're at now.

I don't know that we're really settled anywhere specific.

We've we've found a place we've been attending for a while.

We're semi happy with it.

We have some doctrinal differences specifically related to feminism that we'll talk about

in a little while.

But that's kind of like my faith journey and where I am.

I'm just getting to know God in a different way now and a God that loves me and a God

that is still gonna hang on and chase me even when I run away 5000 times.

And you're a runner.

I am quite a runner.

Not like literally, but no, if I tried to really run, I would probably die.

All right, your turn.

Um, I think jumping off of what you said from the beginning, like people always like a lot

of women introduce themselves based on their kids and their husbands.

And it's different when you don't have that.

And you almost feel like you don't have value right from the jump.

When you introduce yourself like, oh, my name is Brianna.

I'm single and alone.

I'm childless.

And then people ask like, what do you do with your time?

Well, I work.

You don't take care of my kids.

But yeah, we grew up in very conservative spaces where the goal was always marriage for

women and that's where I feel like most of the value is placed on women in my life and

surrounding me.

And to not have that is harder, I would say to build up your own confidence and make yourself

seem valuable just for who you are.

And so I went through a lot of times, like I didn't get married in college.

I didn't really date that much in college.

When I also went to a small Christian school.

Yours was a lot bigger than mine.

But just I've been on this journey of like finding my faith for myself because you're

right.

And we just, it was something that we always did.

We had to go to church and I remember counting the tiles on the ceiling and I remember making

up stories in my head.

I never made my faith my own until probably I went to college and I had to.

And you go through those areas of depression and you're wondering if God really exists.

And at my school, actually, we weren't required to go to chapel.

So that was an easy out for me.

How many times did you go to chapel?

We would go to church sometimes on Sundays, but not regularly.

You know, you're out hitting the bars on Saturday and going to church on Sunday.

That was the life.

Or sleeping in on Sunday.

Yeah.

Hungover on Sunday.

The trick was at my school, because my school required that you go to church, you turn off

all the lights, you turn off anything that makes sound and you hide under your blanket

so if they look, it doesn't look like anybody's in your room.

Geez.

I know.

So that's what I did for smoke alarms.

Safety.

Safety.

Don't come for me college.

But yeah, right now I've been on this journey of, especially with the book that we're reading,

I feel like I didn't realize that I wasn't feeling the love of God until I experienced

the love of God, if that makes sense.

Because I felt like so much value is placed on having kids and being married and all of

these rules that are placed on women that I was not following and I did not embody.

And it's been like this slow burn of learning about feminism and learning about God and

who he really is and what he really wants for me and that he loves me just because I'm

me.

So yeah, that's been my journey so far.

I know that mine's a lot shorter than yours.

I don't have a lot of milestones.

I feel like mine was too long.

I went to a Baptist church and I went to a non-denominational church and then I went

to school.

So let's talk about our feminist journeys now.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm a woman.

Good.

Thank you for that information.

Alyssa and I have been learning about feminism for a while and it's kind of a topic that

Alyssa brought up to me because honestly, I didn't really ever think about it.

I was just like, yeah, I guess if I get married along the road, the man is the head of the

household and that's probably why I am not married currently.

It feels like it's going to be this natural thing that just happens that even though you're

independent and strong, you're going to get married and you're just, it's fine.

You don't need to be independent or strong anymore.

You'll be fine.

It's a lie.

As Miley Cyrus says, I can't be tamed.

That's true.

Neither can my hair today.

Yeah.

But slowly learning about this and realizing maybe all these things that we were learning

about when we were kids about women and what God thinks about women, maybe we're reading

it wrong.

And I was thinking about subliminal messaging for Christians.

The other day I had this epiphany.

She wrote it down.

I did.

Back in the day when I was in high school, it was really popular to watch these videos

and all of a sudden a bottle of Coke would flash on the screen and all of a sudden you'd

be like, oh, I really want some Coke and I don't know why.

I think in some ways the church does that to women.

You don't see a lot of female pastors or women of the Bible being talked about except for

maybe on Mother's Day.

Almost mother.

Yeah.

Value is placed on women as mothers and wives.

And so you don't think about how important women are.

It's like their background characters.

Yeah.

And it's like you don't even think about it because they're just not showing you that

aspect.

I think it's major indoctrination too.

For me, I remember in junior church, and if you're not a churchy person, junior church

was back in the day, I don't think they do it anymore.

It was when the adults would go to main service, the younger kids had their main service.

You went to Sunday school and then you went to junior church and it was your main service.

I remember them talking about, well, your dad is the head of your household and he's

the leader and he's the spiritual leader.

And when you get married, your husband will be the spiritual leader and he will guide

you and show you God's love.

And they make it sound like a nice thing.

Why?

I mean, yeah, but I was like six.

And I think about that, these little girls at six.

That they're not very important.

Well, I think it comes down to, and I saw this in many aspects of my life, but I think

it comes down to like, if you tamp these girls down early, if you squish them so much that

they think, yeah, I really don't have any value outside of my husband or outside of

how clean my house is or how good of a cook I am or whatever, they're less likely to rebel.

Or that's the theory.

And if you let them get to sixth grade or something like that, thinking, well, I'm an

independent woman and I can do whatever I want.

And then you try and squish it.

That's a lot more difficult.

So let's get them when they're young.

Let's indoctrinate them from the start.

And then maybe they won't rise up.

I remember it was always when we were growing up so taboo that you specifically, you always

said, I don't want kids.

I want to be a career woman.

And that was very unheard of.

To this day, I get crap about that.

I mean, I was a very outspoken, independent child.

I did not fit the quiet.

I've said I'm very introverted, but when I'm around my family specifically, I'm not so

much that way.

And so I'll be very outspoken about opinions and I'll I have all these political thoughts

and thoughts about religion and whatever.

And I would say these things.

And I remember people in my life, women in my life would tell me things like, well, you

need to not be so vocal about that stuff because your husband might not like that opinion someday.

Now, mind you, I'm like 10.

Nowhere near a husband, but he might not like it.

I'm not really in the business of being a child bride.

But even like all the way up into college and even after I get married, like that was

just always the question is like, well, how's your future husband going to feel like that

when I got a new piercing?

How's your future husband going to feel like that?

So now like my body, my body doesn't belong to me either.

Not just my thoughts, but like my body doesn't belong to me.

It belongs to someone I haven't met.

So I always like I, I, the reason I said I wasn't going to get married or have kids was

because I saw God asking submission of married women and that's what I believed.

It's what I was raised to believe and I knew I couldn't do it.

I knew I couldn't do it.

So I said, all right, well, God's not asking that of single women.

So I'll trick the system, just not get married.

But then, you know, I got married when I was 21.

And then, you know, junior year, Nathan proposed and here we are.

I remember people saying stuff like that when I was in college too.

Like you don't actually have to major in anything of importance because you aren't going to

work for much longer.

Like you're just going to get married and birth all the babies.

Well our mom, she went to the same college that I went to and she picked a major for

no particular reason because she had zero intention of finishing college.

Because that's just how, how women were raised to be, you know, like, well, your goal is

to be a stay at home mom anyway.

And there's nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom.

But the fact that like, that's just, that's what you're supposed to do.

If you do anything else, it's a little shameful.

I think the danger is saying like, and we were told this too, like, isn't that something

that you want?

You want to be taken care of?

You want to blah, blah, blah.

As a woman.

As a woman, don't you want that?

And it's like, well, maybe some women do.

And that's fine.

And that's fine.

But saying that of all women and saying that that's what God wants for you is very dangerous.

That's the big thing I think is assigning, and we'll go into this in future episodes

too, but assigning God to your own thoughts and feelings and saying, well, God says this.

And I hate to tell you guys, but there is nowhere in the Bible where God says the proper

woman is a wife and mom.

And that's it.

Because you think about the women in the Bible and they are not.

They are not.

They are so strong and incredible.

Pushing boundaries.

Yeah.

Funding Jesus's ministries despite their husbands not wanting it.

And those are stories that you don't get to hear.

And I think that's a big part of what we'll explore as we move forward and in future episodes.

Yeah.

I mean, I couldn't tell you how many sermons I've heard on Paul, but I have yet to hear

a sermon on Phoebe.

Yeah.

Not ever.

And honestly, let's forget about the women that are only talked about for a short period.

What about Esther and Ruth who have entire books named after them?

Or Mary?

Have you ever heard a whole sermon preached on Mary?

Maybe once on Mother's Day.

And how many sermons do you hear preached on Esther or Ruth?

It's every so often.

But it's like maybe we throw it in as a token once or twice a year.

And I think that's again, subliminal messaging and gaslighting women into thinking you're

not part of this story.

Right.

You're not worthy of this.

So I think this podcast is going to be really exciting because we're learning too.

This is like a never ending journey, just like the songs.

We'll sing the song that never ends at the end.

But it's exciting because...

I think as we grow together and learn together, you know, Bri and I, our lives have changed

because of diving into this topic.

And we might not change everybody's mind.

We might not reach everybody.

We know the backgrounds that a lot of conservative people are coming from.

We came from there too.

But if we can affect one family, if one couple can come out of this and say, hey, that was

a really good point, and maybe we should reevaluate.

Or one person just cannot feel so alone.

Yeah.

And I mean, for me, that's how this all started.

When Nathan and I got married, and Nathan is not stereotypical, like man is the leader

of the household kind of guy.

He's not who he is.

But I felt like I had to fall into this mold.

Like if I wasn't the submissive wife and he wasn't the leader, we were a bad Christian

couple and God was gonna hate us.

He was gonna smite you.

Yeah.

And I really tried.

I really tried to fit myself into that mold.

And it just didn't work.

And we were miserable.

Until finally, like I said, I don't want to do this anymore.

And I felt so alone.

I felt like I was the only woman in the entire world that had ever dealt with this.

Like Christian women don't deal with this.

Or even I think, too, like in instances where you may have had to step up and be the leader.

In so many situations, I feel like a lot of women say, well, you don't want to offend

his manhood.

Even though like, you have to step up and that's okay.

Well, and there were plenty of times where emotionally, when we first got married, he

was going through a lot of stuff.

He couldn't have stepped up.

For me to ask him to step up and be the leader would have been cruel because he just didn't

have anything more to give.

And so I did.

I stepped up and I was the leader because he needed that.

My partner or my husband needed that from me.

And yet I was told that I was wrong.

And I think where this started for me, too, I got a gift card to Barnes and Noble.

I don't know why.

I don't know why I had this gift card.

God gave you the gift card?

Someone's going to remember that they gave that to me.

They're like, that's me.

But I had it.

And I was like, there's got to be somebody else out there feeling like this, right?

Like I can't be alone in thinking that my husband and I are equal partners.

Like, it can't just be me.

So I did a little bit of digging and I found what is a lot of people's first book when

they start down this sort of Christian feminist path.

And that was Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey.

And I bought it.

And then pretty quickly, I went on a trip with my grandma and my aunts and my cousins.

And I brought it specifically to like annoy people.

You're such a brat.

Because feminist was a dirty word in our family.

The word feminist is like very taboo.

Well, I think Christian media did a really, really great job of making the feminists look

like crazy people.

Burning our bras.

Right.

Sometimes.

I would like to.

Those things are expensive.

You know, they essentially took the really extreme people that are like, I think all

men should disappear.

Things like that.

And applied that to everybody.

Just like people do with Christians.

You take the really extreme conservative crazy people.

And put them on blast.

Yeah.

And like, this is what Christianity is.

And that's what Christians did to feminists too.

But yeah, I read Jesus Feminist and then I tried to get Brie to read it and she still

hasn't.

I read half of it.

I'm illiterate.

You have the audiobook.

No, I don't.

I have the audiobook.

But it just like ignited something because it was just like, oh my gosh, there's other

people.

There are other women saying the same things I've always been saying.

Finding biblical backing.

Yeah.

And I think that's off topic.

This is what I love so much about the making of biblical womanhood is, it's not only diving

into the history of the Bible, but she's telling you how it should be read.

You think about like poetry.

The poetry has different rules of how it, like inflections that you put on certain words

and how you should read it.

So does the Bible.

And if you just read the words alone without knowing the history, without knowing how you

should put inflections on certain words and whatever, I think it can be very dangerous.

Well, and she talks a lot about translation bias too, and that's so important.

And I know we'll talk plenty about that.

And just how, you know, we all want to say that the Bible has been preserved, but the

reality is it was not written in English.

Translators had to choose, like there isn't a one-to-one translation for every single

word and so it gets changed a little bit and it gets changed a little bit.

And it's important to know those things and to be aware of them as you're studying because

you don't want to change what God said.

And I think one of the biggest critiques that most people that talk in this space get is,

well, you're just reading into the Bible.

You're making the Bible say what you want it to say.

So are you.

Well, that's the thing is I think Jesus left us with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit

is supposed to guide us and move us towards wherever it is we're supposed to be.

And that does mean that as you read the Bible, as every single person reads the Bible, they're

going to read a little bit of their own story into it.

You can give the same verse to 10 different people and they can get 10 different things

out of it.

Right.

So I just always think it's funny when that's the criticism.

Like, well, you're making the Bible say what you want it to say.

Well, so are you.

So is the next person.

So is the translator.

Right.

So sometimes we'll do a segment, not always, because I'm not going to commit to that.

I don't read the news.

I do, but I'm still not committed to that.

About just like something that's current, that's happening in the world that we want

to talk about.

And it's our podcast, so we can do that.

That could be our thing.

It's mine, not yours.

So one of the things that I've been watching in just news stories this week, you know,

Taylor Swift is everywhere.

Literally everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere.

And she wore, I'm sure a lot of you have heard about this, but she wore this really incredible

chief's jacket to one of the games.

Beautiful.

And the designer who made it was a woman.

Her husband, apparently under every time that this was posted, like that Taylor Swift was

wearing this jacket, he would comment underneath it and just like hype his wife, right?

Like, oh my gosh, my wife made that.

She's amazing.

Look at her.

I'm so proud of her.

You know, whatever.

That's great.

I think that's wonderful.

Love that.

However, every single news story that I have seen about it, the only reason that I know

that this jacket existed is because every story is about, look at this wonderful man.

He loves his wife so much.

He's so great.

He's hyping her and that's so cute and blah, blah, blah.

And look, I'm not saying that he's done anything wrong in doing that.

I think it's great.

I think that's what he should be doing.

However, once again, despite the accomplishments of two really cool women, who are we talking

about?

A man!

Talking about her husband.

Because despite the fact that she has cultivated years of skill and marketing and who knows

what else, to be able to create this thing and get it to Taylor Swift, for goodness sakes.

Like how do you, how does that even happen?

A lot of prayer, I think.

This is a Christian podcast after all.

Despite all of that, like all of the labor and the time and the love that she's put into

this, he made some comments on Instagram and so now we're talking about him.

And I think we need to be talking about her and her skill and how cool this is.

And how common that is though, that we just minimize her.

Well have you seen, there's a lot of, this happens a lot in the media, where if a woman

is married to say a major sports person, major athlete, I forgot the word athlete briefly.

Sports person!

We love sports over here.

We are number one fans of sports.

Yeah.

They, like it doesn't matter what her accomplishments were.

So like there was an Olympian athlete, female Olympian athlete.

She won a bronze medal.

And the title of the article was like, wife of this athlete wins bronze medal.

They didn't even bother to say her name.

I mean I'm sure in the article somewhere they did, but in the title, she's not even there.

She's defined by who she's married to.

So I think we need to, we need to call that out as a society.

That's not even really necessarily a Christian society thing, but as a general society, like

we need to stop just looking at women from the point of view as like, who's your, who

you're married to?

Who are your kids?

What accomplishments have they made?

My accomplishments are important.

Drop the mic.

For a conclusion too, I want to talk about like, so I'm in a lot of therapy.

Um, and when I was talking this podcast through with my therapist, we talked through like,

what if nobody listens?

Like what if absolutely nobody listens to this?

We'll get two listens and just, that's what it is.

And a few judging comments.

And a few judging comments.

But that's fine.

But one of the things that she said that was really impactful, if no one listens, if no

one hears you, at least your daughter will hear you.

And so that's a big part of why I'm sitting here doing this.

Because if no one else hears, when my daughter grows up, I don't want her internal voice

to be all of these pastors that have told her she's worthless and told her that all

she can do is get married and push out 20 babies and clean her house.

Oh my gosh.

Are we just going to wait?

20 babies?

I don't know.

Ew.

You've seen the TV shows.

Ow.

But I would rather her internal voice be this, telling her that she does have value, that

she's defined by who she decides to be as a person and how she follows God and how she

cultivates that relationship.

And that's it.

That's the end of the list.

Go preach.

Hallelujah.

I think that could be the transition.

Because girls can preach.

I think that leads into maybe us talking about our whys.

Mine is because I truly believe that men and women are created equally in the image of

God.

And so far no one has convinced me otherwise.

They'll try though.

They'll try.

But I have earplugs.

Maybe cut that out.

And like in the book that we're reading together, she says that Jesus did more for the liberation

of women than anyone ever.

And I truly agree with that.

Absolutely.

You think nothing else?

Yeah.

Because Jesus trusted and respected and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.

And you can see that throughout the Bible.

Because I believe that Jesus sets women free.

All right.

So parts of my why, I don't know if this is all of it, because I agree with Breeze too.

But another part of it is honestly because I'm tired of seeing women taken advantage

of in the name of my God.

I'm tired of watching.

I just almost broke out in a song.

I'm sick of watching people say, well, God wants this from you.

God wants this from you.

As they abuse women, as they tell them they're worthless, as they say, well, you have so

much value.

It's just less value.

Yeah.

God loves, God has a special place in his heart for women.

Just not a good place.

But a special one, we're all part of the body of Christ, but you're more of the butt.

The butt can be important.

Cut that part out.

No, we're just, we're a stream of consciousness.

I'm sorry.

I don't know how to edit this crap.

Only because we don't know how to edit.

Okay.

And the second one is because we, because we talked about this, so both of us believe

men and women are created equally in the image of God with no discernible differences in

purpose, power, or ability.

So that's pretty much what you said, but I added adjectives.

You added a really good adjective.

Thank you.

I thought they were beautiful.

Wow.

It's like you opened up a dictionary.

All right.

And in conclusion, that's us.

I think conclusion, yes.

And therefore, and such as.

The end.

Now we need some background music.