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Article 1: Introduction Fear, Faith, and Marriage Colliding: A Personal Journey Toward Trust
It was our wedding day. I stood at the altar, full of excitement and nerves, repeating my vows after the preacher. He said, “Where I go, you will follow,” and I repeated it. Then he said, “Where you go, I will follow.” Somehow, I repeated the same line again: “Where I go, you will follow.” The entire church of our family and friends burst into laughter. The preacher smiled and said to my husband, “You will have your hands full with this one.” At the time, it was just a funny moment. Looking back now, it feels like a small glimpse into a much deeper journey that would unfold in our marriage.
When Growth Isn’t Enough
Fast forward ten years. I am sitting in my living room, overwhelmed and frustrated, caught once again in a cycle of fear and control. This was not new territory for me. I had spent years investing in personal growth and development—reading, learning, and trying to become a better version of myself. And yet, there I was again, face-to-face with the same old struggle: fear. In that moment, I cried out to God, “I need your help, or I may lose all these good things in my life.”
The Reality of Anxious Attachment
Throughout our marriage, I struggled with anxious attachment. Beneath the surface, I carried an ongoing, irrational fear that my husband would leave me for someone better. I understood the concept. I had read the books, listened to the podcasts, and could intellectually explain exactly what was happening. But knowledge alone was not enough to set me free. I found myself feeling intense anxiety while simultaneously knowing it did not make sense.
My husband, understandably, reached a breaking point. He told me, “If we don’t have trust, we don’t have much in this marriage.” That moment hit hard. I felt defeated, isolated, and exhausted from battling what felt like an anxious voice I could not silence. And the truth was difficult to admit: I did not trust him. In fact, I did not trust many men at all, aside from my dad and God. My past experiences had shaped that reality—both the ways I had been hurt by men and the ways I had hurt them too.
A Turning Point
Despite everything, my husband remained steady. He is not perfect—none of us are—but he is a good man. Strong enough to call me out when I needed it, yet kind and loving in the process. That strength mattered. It created space for something to shift.
Back in my living room, in that moment of desperation, I did something I had not done in a long time: I truly prayed. Not casually, but with honesty and surrender. I realized I had slowly drifted. I believed in God, but I had not been actively walking with Him. I had not fully understood how much I needed Him in my daily life and especially in my marriage.
Choosing a Different Focus
The next day, I made a decision: I would become the best wife I could be. That morning, my husband left to spend time with a close friend. He was still upset, and rightly so. I am deeply grateful for that friendship, because those conversations helped soften his heart. When we spoke again, I told him plainly, “I want to be a better wife.” It sounds simple—almost obvious—but it marked a shift in focus.
For years, I had been working on becoming a more “spiritual person.” That was not the right focus, which I will discuss in another post. I redirected that same energy toward understanding my role as a wife. Again, not quite the perfect focus for me, but I will explain more as we go deeper. I began searching, learning, and revisiting something I had overlooked: marriage as God’s design. Through that lens, things started to change.
What Changed Over Time
I began applying what I was learning—not perfectly, but consistently. Over time, my perspective shifted. My reactions softened. My understanding deepened. This was not an overnight transformation. My aim was far from great. It was a process filled with both progress and setbacks. But slowly, trust began to grow where fear once dominated. Praise God.
Why I’m Sharing This
That turning point happened about six years ago. Since then, I have learned a great deal through both successes and struggles in marriage, faith, and trust. In this blog (and accompanying podcast), I will share lessons learned through real-life experience, the challenges that tested our relationship, and practical and spiritual insights that made a difference.
If something inside you is quietly thinking, “Things could be better in my marriage,” this may resonate with you. If you have ever thought, “I want to show up differently as a wife,” you are not alone. And if you are simply trying to figure out what it means to do what is right, girl, you may be in the right place!
Article 2: Delivered from the New Age God’s Rescue of My Heart and My Marriage
I want to talk to you about rebelling against God in the context of marriage, but first I’m going to share the story of a huge step away from rebellion that happened a few days after I cried out to God for help in my marriage. You can find the broader marriage story in the previous podcast episode.
Waking Up to “More Than This Body”
Let’s start here: you have an extraordinary experience where you realize there is more to you than just this physical body. It points you toward the idea that there’s more to life than what you can see and touch. For some people, that shows up in a spiritual experience—a vision, a dream, something that feels bigger than normal life.
For me, the first memorable moment like that happened in my first year of college. I had a dream where glass was breaking all around me. It felt intense and negative, but at the same time I had this deep sense of peace. The very next day, my friends and I were driving to go snowboarding. We hit ice, slid off the road, and rolled the vehicle. I heard and felt glass shattering all around me, and that same peace from the dream was suddenly there. I just knew we would be okay. And we were with only minor injuries. Experiences like that can be powerful, but they can also be dangerous if they’re not pointed in the right direction.
A Vision of Jesus and a Subtle Shift
Fast-forward to another moment. I had gone to an expo, and afterward there was an event where a group talked about a man who helped a lot of people heal. At the end, they asked everyone to close their eyes while they played classical music. As the music played, I had an intense vision of standing in front of Jesus. The love I felt in that moment was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was beyond words. It was so overwhelming that I cried through the whole song.
This is the part of the story where I wish I could say, “After that vision of Jesus, I dropped all my strange spiritual interests and followed Him wholeheartedly.” But that’s not what happened. I actually came out of that experience thinking two things: “Wow, Jesus loves me more than I could ever imagine” (that was true) and “How do I feel that way again?” (that was where I went wrong). I started aiming for the feeling, not the Source of that feeling.
It would be another decade before I truly surrendered my life to Him. And even then, surrender doesn’t mean you suddenly start doing everything right or magically stop struggling. At that time, I just couldn’t fully comprehend what had happened. I knew, from Sunday school, that “Jesus loves me,” but my understanding of that love was stunted. I was focused on myself, the world, my own ideas, and I wasn’t following Him or growing in wisdom. Looking back, I think I also came away from that experience thinking I was somehow special or “extra spiritual” because I could perceive something like that. The truth is, it had very little to do with me and everything to do with Jesus.
Pride, Rebellion, and Spiritual Vulnerability
The Bible warns us about this kind of pride and rebellion, and about what will happen in these times. In 1 Timothy 4:1 it says: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”
That’s exactly what happened to me. I never woke up and said, “I’m going to follow demons today.” I didn’t consciously seek anything dark. But when you’re exploring the spiritual realm without wearing the armor of God, you’re in dangerous territory. When you’re not grounded in truth, not actively seeking to be right with God, rarely praying, lacking peace, and your faith feels…weak. You’re vulnerable. You are, at the end of the day, just a human, disconnected from the Source of strength and power over unseen forces.
Crying Out for Rescue in My Living Room
Fast-forward again about a decade. I’m in my living room, crying out to God to be saved. If you listened to the previous episode, you already know the challenge my husband and I went through in our marriage and what the turning point looked like for us. The next layer of that story is what happened after that turning point: the ways I had been rebelling against God started to come into focus. It was like God slowly turned the lights on in rooms I didn’t even know were dark.
The first big area He revealed was my marriage. A few days later, He started exposing my spiritual seeking. I began to see that I’d been searching in all the wrong places.
Laying Down the New Age
So I stopped. I stopped everything: pulling cards, talking to other people’s deceased loved ones, “reading” people, paying attention to special numbers, all of it. Some of that might sound strange if you’ve never been around New Age practices, but for those of you who have, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I took all of it and laid it down at His feet. I never did another card pull, another reading, nothing. I had developed a healthy fear of the God who created everything and who is all-powerful. And when I put it all down, something shifted. I felt clearer, lighter, more free. I was delivered, and I was determined to be a better wife and to listen to God.
I praise Him. God had already saved our marriage, and then He delivered me from something I didn’t even realize I needed deliverance from. My understanding of where I was going wrong was just beginning. I had, and still have, a lot to learn, but that was the turning point where He started reorienting my heart away from the experience itself and back toward Him.
The Ongoing Journey of Not Rebelling
The journey of not rebelling against God is hard, and I am still on it. I don’t have it all figured out. I still stumble, still learn, and still need His grace every day. But my hope in sharing these experiences is that you can avoid some of the pitfalls and dangers that come with spiritual pride, New Age seeking, and trying to guide yourself without Him.
My prayer is that you’ll be drawn not just to spiritual “experiences,” but to Jesus Himself. And that as you follow Him, you’ll grow into a humble wife who honors God and her husband in her marriage.