Why Most Christian Divorce Podcast Stink

Oh I wish this podcast existed when I was going the the dissolving of a 19 year marriage. 

Divorce and the new single life is hard but it is even more complex when you made a promise to God to "keep your marriage till death do you part." American Christian culture doesn't make navigating the decisions and ripple effects of divorce any easier. Christian marriage and divorce advice runs rampant yet often conflicts with the realities of pain, abuse, loneliness, and the real world. 

God has a lot more to say than, “I hate divorce.” God gives a standard and then graciously restores and renews people even when His standard isn't met.

Those of us who are navigating the life changing event of unYoking from a spouse and/or uprooting a family have to journey through some dark, lonely, and confusing places. Our issues aren't frequently tackled from the pulpit and the advice we receive isn't always relevant to our current place.

The UnYoked podcast is just for you. A safe place to wonder, ponder, relate, and consider your steps of navigating a divorce, singleness, and the future. A place where we live in the tension between God's plan and the realities of living in a broken world with broken people and broken relationships. Buckle up... remove the mask.. and let's get real about discussing the ripple effects of divorce and equip ourselves to survive being unYoked as a Christian.

Transcript

The unyoked podcast navigating the pain process and possibilities after a Christian divorce. Hello, I'm Todd,  and I've never heard a podcast like this before, but, oh, I wish I had. I built what I wish I never had to use or even listen to. But after navigating a pain, full dissolving of a 19 year marriage and the post divorce like unraveling in my life, I searched for real talk from real people who walked the walk well, and you know what? Where's the playbook for the journey through the valley of divorce? Where is it? I looked what I found generally fell into like two different categories. So I either got, like, generic biblical advice from somebody who's really never walked the walk, just sort of given some loose Christian t shirt theology, right? We've all heard it. We'll get into that in a minute. And the other one really was from the pulpit. And it's just I'm using the word theoretical, but it's Genesis chapter one and two advice of what marriage is and what it's supposed to be. Here's what God says about this. But what I wanted, what I needed, was real talk from real people who knew about and empathized with the pain and the challenges that I was having to go through and having to navigate, right? Those who haven't gone through it really just have a limited idea of the experience and therefore limited advice. Listen, I was one of you when I heard somebody was getting a divorce. I used to think, oh, that's horrible. Somebody must have deserved it. The other person's better off, too bad for their kids, but it's sad. I'm sure they'll both be happier down the road. And then I just sort of went about my business. I just never really walked in those shoes until I had to do it. I never really deep dove into the details of divorce, much less navigating it as a believer, as a Christian. So while attempting to save my marriage and after I signed my divorce papers, I consumed tons of podcasts and books and had multiple conversations, listened to tons of sermons, and most of them just left a giant chasm between my needs, my feelings, my frustration, and then the marriage and the divorce advice I was offered. I once followed this Christian divorce podcast, and I immediately unfollowed when I heard the pastor and his female co host who were chatting. And the lady said, I don't know why divorcees want to talk about their divorce so much. Like, we love them, we don't really care or even need to know anything about the details of the divorce. The pastor said, yeah, they do that, but they shouldn't. And I thought, oh, no, this is when I knew that the people ministering to us just don't have a clue what's going on and what we're going through and the mindsets we have in our valley. I mean, divorce is a crushing of dreams, adjusting to the whirlwind of changes in our life in countless areas. Like we're feeling lonely, off the chart, stress levels, an emotional roller coaster, physically exhausted feelings of guilt, anger. And we need sound advice and we even need sounding boards. The lady should have been willing to listen, but Many  people that are offering to walk beside us just haven't been in the triage of divorce care, right? We're in an operating room doing emergency surgery on our lives. It's bloody, it's messy, and sometimes our friends just want to come in, paint the walls, sweep the floors, and just clean it up and make it look good and move on. Just go on with your life. You can do it. God's gotten something better for you. All the things right? So, in order to help those who come after me, I've gathered and collected valuable feedback to help navigate the milestones of a Christian divorce. Divorce? But a Christian divorce after literally hundreds of conversations from men and women who've navigated a variety of issues, good, bad, wise, foolish, however they handle it, trust me, I've been involved in all of it. Especially the foolish part, right? I've been there, done it. I've asked others who've been there, done it. But much of the advice we get from Christendom feels sometimes like Job's friends in the Bible, just lobbing shallow advice and assumptions towards us as we mourn. Now, listen, I am not saying that all Christians are do horrible advice. That's not where I'm coming from. It's hard enough walking through divorce, but it's even really hard as a believer as we try to lean in. And sometimes we just don't feel heard. But listen, there are milestones to consider while we execute and rebound from our divorces. I want to put solid advice and talk about the mile markers all in one place. So I chose a podcast because a podcast is a great way to listen to the episode you need when you need it. Sort of like a book turn to the chapter so when you hit the milestone in the journey, you know where to lean in, to read, to talk about the lenses, talk about the things. I sort of want it to be the when you're pregnant, the what to expect when you're expecting. Well, I want it to be the what to expect when you're expecting for divorce. Maybe we'll call it the being rooted when you're uprooted podcast, right? I don't know. But I'd like to set the table a little bit about how this podcast is going to work and how I want your lens to be on as a listener and me as the podcast host, right? So here's the thing. One... divorce is already tragic without being a Christian. But since we wear multiple hats, right, not only are we one of the hurt parties of a divorce, maybe we're parents to children who are struggling with their new realities. We've lost our family, our homes. Maybe our churches. We've lost friends, but we also serve a holy God who we don't want to disappoint. And there's the kicker, right? We have our Christian families and a culture which are quick to judge let's be honest and assume and cancel and throw half baked advice our way. We get the normal phrases like I was just talking about, like, you just need to get into church. Like date Jesus. Oh, that one frustrates me. God has a plan. You're better off without him or her kids are resilient. Just open your Bible, god will tell you what to do. God has something better for you. The list goes on and on and our stress has compounded. Like, we often feel alienated in our own churches and distant to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Why is this? Well, pastors and church leaders are the husband of one wife, right? And so that is part of the issue, is most of the stuff we're going to get from stage is, once again, genesis one and two and they haven't walked the walk. Most of the pastors preaching from stage haven't walked the walk. So our divorce is trauma and while we're in the triage, our doctors have rarely been there, done that. As a side note, this is where megachurches really come in handy. Care pastors, like that pastor who can shut the door and talk to you on Monday through Friday of what you're going through. And there's some really good people out there. I don't want to paint all of Christendom as just, oh, they're doing us a disservice. That's not where I'm going. I'm just setting the table that it is a problem. And I found real good solutions with care pastors because that's their expertise is to sit and help people walk through the challenging parts of life, the white parts of Scripture that maybe is just god doesn't give us super big details, but people who can walk through the principles and help us through things, right? So the other issue is what we do here from the stage is the Genesis one and two world of the perfect world, but we live in the Genesis three world. And so teachers are teaching the garden view. But here's what God says about marriage. Here's what God says with divorce. But couple all that with the fact that we also as Christians in America, we are swimming upstream in a church culture that really pushes family. Family centric. And I know that sounds normal and right to most of you, but if you really study Scripture, it's sort of a new phenomenon that family is everything. I mean, it is everything. God created the family, don't get me wrong. But the New Testament doesn't push family the way churches do. It pushes the gospel. And I challenge you to show that you have to have a family to preach the Gospel. Like Paul even goes out of the way to say it's better to preach the gospel and go out than it is to have the cumbersome burden to be in a relationship and to raise the It's family. I don't want to rip families. Oh, I've got three kids, love my kids to death. I'm just saying that we swim in a culture upstream, in a culture that pushes family. I'm going to just give you a tiny example of that. So I'm sitting here, I'm probably around 51 years old. I was divorced for a couple of years by now, and I went into a church and I went to the Sunday school, and I was going semi regularly. I was just coming out of my pain. I was probably ready just to see sunlight again. Of course, my divorce happened through COVID, and so it was already a weird time in the world, but I decided to get out, actually semi brush my hair, put on some decent clothes, and go to church. And I was just getting used to the culture of the classroom. And then it was your Christmas party. And so what they did is they said, okay, we're going to pass around this clipboard, and Christmas is $40 a ticket, and that's going to include our babysitting fees. And I'm just sitting there thinking like, well, is it 20 for me? Do I have to pay the 40? Or do I drink half the food? You want me to bring drinks? I don't have kids. I do, but they're all older. It was just an assumption that everybody and they was married, everybody had a family, and they picked the time that was best for that. And it just felt like they don't see me. They didn't even see me or consider that there may be somebody that doesn't fit in the narrative of everybody else. So I know that sounds a little crazy, but it's just true. I feel like I'm nitpicking, but we're talking about how I felt and how others feel sometimes when they go to church, because church screams family. Now, those of us who are just divorced, we live in the reality of uprooted lives, navigating our kids adjustments, dealing with changes in work, church friend groups. And we often, many of us have a painful reason why we got divorced. And then add on top of that financial issues, all the things like we have tragedy in our lives and we need to process and we need to reset. Our world was turned upside down, and sometimes we just don't wake up with purpose. We're in a free fall and we're not really tethered to anything. It's a tough place to be, and we need to talk things out. And most Christian podcasts and books that I've read just don't get this. And I know there's a lot that are trying to minister, but I feel like sometimes the Christian ones, which was the ones I was trying to listen to, still stay in this weird place, and they avoid tough topics. And so sometimes going into church after a divorce feels like we're walking into a hospital all bloody and we're being shown a chart of what a healthy body looks like. How does that help at all? And our pain, sometimes we get looked down on, like we're broken until we find our new partner. So then we can just be a happy Christian family again. This is how we feel sometimes. Imagine telling a heroin addict like, hey, just don't do it. See how that works? That's not going to help the heroin addict at all. Well, imagine telling a newly divorced Christian, just go to church somehow. That's going to solve the problem. It doesn't. Church Jesus may be the answer. Don't get me wrong, church isn't necessarily right. Okay, so heroin addicts know how to talk to other addicts because they've been there and done that. Well, churches are screaming, just come to church Jesus. Small groups, all the things. But the Unyoked podcast is going to talk to encourage, lift up and guide those who are traveling the road of unrooting their marriage and to start recovering and build their new lives. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to do something that's probably very different than some of you are used to and a few of you won't even feel comfortable with. We're going to speak in realities on the Unyoke podcast. We're going to question the church, we're going to question traditional advice. We're going to question American Christian culture. That's not all we're going to do, but it's part of what we're going to challenge some of the advice and we're going to talk through the milestones with a Christian lens on. We're going to talk about how we feel, not how we should feel. If that makes know if you want a podcast that tells you here's the biblical view of marriage, well, just move on and go to YouTube. There's plenty of other people out there talking about that. But if you want to discuss the realities of your feelings and the facts of how your marriages destroy our souls, our families, sometimes our future, and how we can navigate them well, even when our church and our friends don't always walk well beside us. So subscribe and let's journey together. Now, this is not going to be a negative podcast. Like we're not going to wallow in our misery and have a pity party and we're not here to church bash, even though I just got through it sounds like a little bit, but it's going to be quite the opposite. We're going to talk about all of it, the good, the bad, the opportunities of being an older, wiser single adult. And we're going to talk about the tough phases, the landmines, the ways to rebound and excel as a Christian single adult. Now. Quickly. Who am I? Nobody. I've got no formal theological training. I've got my master's in divorce to the School of hard times. That's it. But I've been blessed with a life in church and in Christian ministry from a toddler up to a 53 year old. My world was turned upside down by my divorce, but I was an oddity. I was a single dad with custody of three kids. I work in the Christian bubble, if you will. I work with ministries and churches. I love God and I love his word. But I honestly despise religion and Christian culture and some of the American church models. And you will hear that come out. I highly value touching, questioning, pondering, and I'm okay being as a disruptor. I believe it's healthy to poke and to question, and I always want to keep that lens on, right? But here's what I want you to hear from me. God and His Word is to be trusted. His laws are to be followed, and his love is boundless. Keep that on no matter what I say. No. I believe that I want to walk beside those of you who are hurting and you haven't found a buoy worth grabbing onto that takes your journey into consideration, that acknowledge that the struggles of a Christian navigating a life changing event is tough. A good friend once told me something. It was really good. There's going to be a while after you come out of that fetal position that you're going to feel divorced. You come out of the fetal position, you walk around, you feel divorced. Because then your next milestone is you're going to walk around, you're going to feel single. And then one day it's going to click if you will. It's never that fast, but you just realize, oh, I start to feel like myself again. And each one of these phases have feelings, pitfalls and opportunities. So I want to talk about I want to keep a theological lens, but deal with the tensions between real life and feelings in a broken world. We're going to talk about all these stages now, listen, Christians are quick to cancel. We all have varying theology and denominations. Let's power through the differences while we navigate the landmines of unyoking and gaining our new legs as single Christians. I'm going to say things that I'm sure we won't see eye to eye on. That's okay. We can move forward without having 100% agreement in everything that comes out of my mouth. I just want to make it real and raw. And a podcast for Christian divorce that talks about the ripple and tsunami effect of unhinged lives and breaking apart your family. It's a trauma event. Not just the decision for divorce, but the ramifications of the decision, living out the decision. It's all trauma. Now, this is going to be a limited podcast, maybe like a book, like, listen to and pick your chapter. We're going to identify the suck and we're going to navigate it. The ugly, the messy, the grind of getting up from that fetal position, crawling, walking, jogging and even running again, maybe even faster than before. Here's a quick rundown of the episode titles and the themes of the episodes I'm going to make. So subscribe. Come along for the ride. And I want to travel with those and let you know I feel your pain. And I have identified the spots. We're going to talk about the milestones. So lesson one is going to be points to consider. Fight for your marriage. For anybody that's going to listen and you're not yet divorced. I am going to beg you to protect your marriage and fight. Fight. But number two. The decision how to navigate your decision once you've decided to dissolve your marriage. Then. Episode Three the first 90 Days the Do's and the Don'ts Episode Four your Friends the ripple effect of ended relationships. And then five dating and the Dating Apps. The when and how when loneliness strikes the number six. We're going to talk about the church when the Solution Hurts. And then seven lonely. Oh, it's okay to scream because it's a tough place to be. And then, lesson eight sex and the Single Christian. Buckle up. We're going to talk about it. We're not going to sweep that under the rug. Episode Nine coparenting like Each Step Can Be a Landmine And we're going to talk about it. Episode Ten your Kids, the Forgotten Victims. And then eleven grace. You need it, and so do they. And then episode Twelve the New You The great reset. And then 13 counseling. Don't argue, just do it. I tell everybody. Get into counseling. No matter what podcast, what books you read, none of them are as good as going to a good Christian counselor. And Episode 14 who is Next? Finding your next partner. Episode 15 broken World, broken Dreams self evaluation and new goals. Episode 616 your Backstory What chapters do we read out loud? And then episode 17 helping Others. What is the silver lining to all of this? So subscribe. And let's help each other as we unyoke.