The Ferris wheel still gleams at Pripyat Amusement Park, deathly quiet in the Ukrainian sun. It sits in a liturgy of silence, forever haunted in a suspended reverie. It is a symbol of a future that stalled in the cradle, a reminder of life before the disaster hit.

I have my own haunted memories. There is a crate of family photos in the garage where my ex-husband and I smile with a maddening innocence, as if we really believed the whole horizon would simply roll out before us. We were building a life together, but like Pripyat, the pictures are now a reminder of a future that was never meant to be.

The Chernobyl disaster was one of the most horrendous environmental catastrophes of the twentieth century, and much of it could have been avoided if those watching the signs of the nuclear plant’s meltdown had been willing to admit something was broken instead of maintaining the illusion that nothing was wrong.

Plant operators feared the loss of their jobs, the demotion of social status, or the disciplinary reach of powerful military and government bureaucrats if they failed to tell authorities exactly what they wanted to hear. Their silence allowed the tragedy to escalate into destruction that still affects that region today.

The story is a reminder that truth rarely tells us what we want to hear, but almost always what we need to hear.

My marriage was not Chernobyl.

I’m not insinuating anyone’s broken marriage can be compared to a global disaster. But what I can relate to is the extreme pressure of preserving an image while ignoring internal collapse. Admitting that my Christian marriage was on the rocks to a family that saw marriage as a sacred sacrament felt riskier than simply pretending everything was fine.

But what is the cost of placing more value on perception rather than reality?

There is only one thing I can tell you:

It never leads to anything good.

There were warning signs along the way that something was very wrong, but everything in my Christian upbringing and in my culture told me not to look. I overlooked his distancing behavior, buried my doubts, and accepted excuses so thin they disintegrated the moment they were voiced into the open air. I ignored every warning light because I was too afraid to press the big red button.

Clearly, I was overreacting.

Why did I gaslight myself? Because my marriage, my years of seminary training, and my vocation were not just parts of my life; they were the core of my identity.

If one collapsed,

everything collapsed.

I collapsed.

Three weeks after the Chernobyl disaster, Soviet authorities began building a giant concrete sarcophagus to contain the radiation. It was a liquidation process. The structure was built at record speed. The liquidators worked under radiation exposure with only the slightest hope they would succeed. Their desperate efforts were a makeshift measure, a last-ditch effort to soften a regional catastrophe and keep it from becoming a global crisis. It would be conceived at great cost—so many would die over time as they were exposed to the worst of the radiation.

They stepped in to clean up the mess, but they weren’t the ones responsible. Their bodies paid the cost. At the time, the risks of what they faced were not fully known. Some workers understood the dangers more than others. They arrived with inadequate equipment, clothing, and knowledge, but they arrived, they worked, and they attempted the impossible: to contain what could not be contained.

I too tried to contain something far bigger than what I could fully understand. I was the liquidator of my own marital mess. I absorbed the silent radiation of my husband’s betrayal. I tried to keep the “regional catastrophe” of a private affair from becoming the ministry scandal of a “global crisis” of public shame.

I was in over my head.

The Chernobyl liquidators felt fine at first, but the cellular damage was already done.

I too pushed the dark thoughts down, shoveling the debris of my marriage out of sight, even as my internal world was in a full meltdown I refused to acknowledge.

I was absorbing damage and magnifying my trauma all for the sake of appearances.

So much was at stake. I was a Christian minister, a pastor’s wife; my reputation and career would be destroyed. I wouldn’t just lose my marriage; I would lose my world, my status, my pride. Containment was the first course of action. But it was costly. Delaying the truth while the rot, decay, and destruction continued only meant that when I finally faced the problem, it would be catastrophic.

Years of cultural Christianity had taught me to build concrete tombs over crises. It wasn’t discretion or protection of our marriage; it was make-believe. The containment was the act of a desperate woman, more intent on saving her reputation than accepting the truth.

We hoped that if the shell was thick enough, the radiation of the truth wouldn’t seep out.

The biblical phrase “the truth will set you free” from the Gospel of John is often quoted but rarely understood. In context, it is spoken to believers who must first recognize with clarity and honesty the things in their own lives that enslave them. Many people do not realize they are in bondage. Our worst vices can look respectable, even friendly, on the surface: I want a nice family, an orderly life, but what if we’re not really honest about how we get there? Spiritual awareness brings what is hidden into the light. All of us need to make room for the truth, even when it’s ugly.

This is easier said than done. It is perfectly human to want to avoid pain, awkwardness, and suffering. That is what most of us are doing when we turn away from the truth to stay comfortable. Ironically, avoiding pain often becomes the worst kind of pain. As I did everything I could to cling to what I wanted to be true rather than what my husband was showing me through his actions, I set myself up for the worst kind of fall.

I’m a writer. I’m very good at spinning narratives. But if you feed a delusion, you eventually reach the place where the delusion meets its limits, where the truth is too big to ignore. When we pray for godly wisdom, it can be a double-edged sword. Wisdom comes at a cost, and that cost is the stripping away of our comfortable illusions so we can see clearly. I spent a good chunk of my marriage floundering in the dark. But eventually the illusion shattered.

I realized the truth: the marriage could not stand, because he did not want it to stand.

The sarcophagi stand now as grotesque monuments. The first structure, built in the 1980s at the expense of human lives, bought fifteen more years of radiation containment. The second, built in 2019, was constructed with the goal of 100 more years of protection from the rotting core. Imagine the different outcome if plant operators had just told the truth from the start.

Chernobyl is a horrifying lesson, but not one without value. I thought I would crumble after losing what I had built my life around, but I didn’t. The expectations and illusions I had wrapped around my faith were not faith at all. When the marriage finally broke into public view and I lost position, community, and the friends who had once filled our calendar, I also lost the exhausting work of pretending.

I was forced to rebuild slowly, without the concrete shell of respectability. There were Sundays when I slipped into the back row of a church where no one knew my story. There were long walks where I told God the truth instead of rehearsing what I wished were true. In those small, unguarded spaces, I finally found my feet.

Outside of containment, I have found a different life. I no longer feel the need to hide or pretend, and I can accept that healing comes at its own pace. Peace has not come all at once, but I can finally breathe in the open air.

Healing has been a long road, and I’ve learned a great deal along the way. Life is messy. Even in blessed circumstances, it’s a mess. This no longer fazes me. I used to think faith was the concrete I poured to keep the mess contained, but I am learning that the greatest wisdom is not found in the safety of the tomb, but in the ruins.

Faith is not the structure that hides the rot; it is the sunlight that finally hits the ground once the dust has settled. It is the quiet realization that I no longer have to build a shell to survive the truth.

If you’ve been holding things together longer than you should have, you’re not alone. This is where we stop pretending—and start rebuilding.

Subscribe now

This Thursday, September 3rd, Kenny Klinglesmith and I will be releasing a collaboration on church hurt. We are sharing two essays from different perspectives: a Christian who chose to leave after church hurt and a Christian who chose to stay. Both are valid choices, and we want to explore the journey of how a Christian in good conscience might reach either conclusion.

I also want to take a moment to praise my Substack friend, Kenny. He is an accomplished and gifted writer and has published several articles for Premier magazine on worship music. He is a former worship pastor who co-wrote a hit worship song and knows a lot about Christian worship and its inner workings—including some of the troubling things that can challenge our Christian faith when looking at an industry focused on profits.

His articles have been both a revelation and a challenge, and I’ve enjoyed reading every piece.

Our collaboration will be hitting your inboxes on September 3rd.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Sources & Historical Note

Historical details about the Chernobyl disaster, the liquidators, radiation exposure, and construction of the original Shelter (“sarcophagus”) were drawn from reports and historical materials published by the World Health Organization and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. There are inconsistent reports regarding deaths among liquidators, and not all deaths are confirmed to be the result of radiation exposure when looking at official sources.

Sources: World Health Organization, Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident and Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts; Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, historical materials on the construction of the Shelter Object.

Christian women can find themselves struggling with scripture and cultural expectations on how we should use our voice, but what does the Bible really teach about speaking and silence?

Join me for a new podcast every Wednesday for those who love God, but are looking for a less performative, seeking faith. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Summer is almost at an end. For teachers, it’s a bittersweet time. I love summer, the freedom of not being chained to a bell schedule for eight hours a day. I’m sure you remember those student days—how little freedom you had over your own schedule.

Imagine choosing to be a teacher?

Every minute is scheduled, or at least that’s how it feels.

In its worst moments, teaching becomes a life sentence rather than a blessing. Instead of realizing that I’m blessed to have some degree of financial independence, I can only see the never-ending list of things to do and the daunting task before me of completing yet another school year.

You can hear it in my tone.

I have a mindset problem.

Summer is uncharted territory—blissful freedom. I can’t undersell this: How absolutely amazing it is to be able to go to the bathroom whenever you want. It is a luxury I’ve learned to appreciate.

This summer during my small window of freedom, I went to Japan for three weeks with my younger son. I grew up in Japan, so visiting always feels a little bit like going home. I’ve loved every second of it. I’ve practiced my rusty Japanese on poor unsuspecting souls while walking the streets of Sapporo. We’ve visited bakeries and hot springs, and haven’t missed an opportunity to try something new to eat.

But even as I’ve savored every experience like a prisoner’s last reprieve, my body begins to ache for the old routine.

Hey, aren’t we supposed to work out? my body says.

Don’t you think it’s time for bed? it nags.

My body begins to strain under the lack of routine. I feel rootless, a bit out of step. I miss being grounded in my teaching relationships, in learning to rely on what I can expect.

The truth is I can’t be pleased.

Whether I’m full-time teaching or on summer break, I will find something to complain about.

This year, a bigger challenge awaits me when I return to school.

My school is under construction!

I am grateful that our students and teachers will have state-of-the-art facilities in the future. I am legitimately amazed that our community has put money into the infrastructure of our school to support students at cost to themselves.

But I’m terrified for myself.

With construction still underway, I don't know exactly what I'll be walking into when I return. I’m not even certain what my classroom situation will look like.

I find myself facing the same mindset dilemma. I’m blessed to have a job, but what I loved about my job is that it brought order and centering to my life. Now, it sounds like I might be entering a school year where I will not have my usual routines and there will be no clear timetables to rely on. I will have to be flexible, accommodate others, and stay cool, collected, and grounded through it all.

It sounds awful!

This is where my faith actually counts.

How will my belief in God and the endurance I’ve developed so far help me face the day-to-day struggles of a chaotic workplace? How will I stay faithful to my job of teaching students even if I don’t have a classroom to teach in? Can I continue to teach The Great Gatsby, even as a power saw is going full blast in the next room?

Oh, Jesus, help me.

I turn to the letter of James in desperation to find some words of wisdom. The author writes about trials, endurance, wisdom, and divided loyalty.

Preach!

Here is the practical problem: What do I do when I’m in circumstances I don’t know how to navigate?

Wow, this sounds real.

In James, the people were experiencing peirasmoi, πειρασμοῖς, translated as trials or tests. These are things that test our endurance, our strength.

My strength has been tested many times through a harrowing divorce, parenting, and teaching. It’s amazing to me how often I can survive a huge trial like an intense job interview, a family tragedy, or a stressful work incident, but then the thing that breaks me is something tiny like my garbage disposal breaking.

Endurance is no small thing.

I’m worried about my own lack of endurance as I enter a setting where I have to be good to my students and stay focused on my teaching even in the midst of chaos. It is a trial of no small proportions, at least for me.

According to the author of James, this is nothing new. He begins his letter addressing people who are experiencing trials (peirasmoi, πειρασμοῖς). Trials test faith, and that testing produces endurance.

I also need to be humble here. James was writing to people enduring much harder struggles than mine. Yet I still find myself poring through the pages for help.

Lord, help me make it through this school year.

I hate the word endurance. It reminds me of what my junior high P.E. teacher used to say right before we had to run an agonizing mile around the track in the hot sun. When someone says endurance, all I hear is, Oh no—tough times ahead.

The letter of James is about just that.

What do we do when we’re in circumstances so stressful and difficult we have no idea how to navigate them?

James tells us to pray, which seems a little too easy to me.

“If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly…”

— James 1:5, NRSVue

He also tells Christians not to doubt.

“But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.”

No problem, James. I’ll pray and just snap my fingers and stop doubting.

Ignore my sarcastic tone, but on the surface, it seems trite. I can’t turn God’s blessing on or keep the doubting out like a faucet.

But when we delve into the Greek, the passage becomes more helpful.

The person James describes in verse 8 is called δίψυχος (dipsychos). This word is layered and interesting. The most literal translation comes from di-, meaning two, and psychē, meaning soul, self, or life.

In other words, “two-souled” or “double-minded.”

When trials come, perhaps we should be less concerned about whether doubt ever enters our minds and more concerned about what we rely on when the doubt comes.

James returns to this idea of being double-minded later in his letter. In chapter 4, he connects it explicitly to divided loyalty—to wanting friendship with God while also being pulled toward the world. The problem isn’t simply that a Christian has questions. The problem is that our center of gravity has shifted.

The word translated “doubting” is diakrinō (διακρίνω). It can mean to distinguish, discriminate, dispute, hesitate, or be divided within oneself.

The word is not beating up on a Christian who doubts their faith.

We will all have doubts.

Welcome to the club.

Biblically speaking, when our Christianity fails us, it is usually not because God has failed us, but because over time we have positioned our worship around something else that isn’t God.

It’s frightening because idolatry can creep into our lives in subtle ways. We may even believe we’re worshipping God and find that what we really value is not God at all but money, pride, respect, and all the other idols that bring false and misleading comfort.

Some of these idols can even be good things, but when they replace reliance on God, we lose our center.

The cost of idolatry is to lose the very thing that grounds us, to live a life that is forever off balance—teetering on the edge of collapse.

James gives a powerful image of being tossed in the sea.

κλύδωνι θαλάσσης (klydōni thalassēs) — “a wave/surge of the sea.”

In this sea is the person internally divided. They are ἀνεμιζομένῳ (anemizomenō)—being driven by the wind—and ῥιπιζομένῳ (rhipizomenō)—being blown/tossed about.

That second verb is especially vivid. Rhipizō carries the idea of something being fanned, blown, or driven about.

I hate to admit it, but I can easily see myself in this image, flailing in the water, terrified—especially as I think of the construction site I’m walking into.

I end this meditation thinking of Moses.

I can think of very few biblical figures who were entrusted with more. He walked toward the Promised Land with the entire Israelite people behind him, following and trusting him. Then he reached a chaotic obstacle: the Red Sea.

There was no way across, and the Egyptian army trailed them.

I can’t imagine being more against a wall.

If I were Moses, I would have fallen to the ground in a puddle, but he did something that seems more and more amazing to me the longer I live.

He says:

“The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

— Exodus 14:14

You only have to keep still.

But then something fascinating happens. God says to Moses:

“Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.”

— Exodus 14:15

Keep still.

Go forward.

Those instructions sound almost contradictory, but maybe that’s the point. Moses didn’t have to figure out how to part the Red Sea. He did have to trust God enough to walk toward it.

The Red Sea parted before them, and they walked across.

As I enter this trial, the struggle will not be to figure out beforehand how every problem will be solved. That is not my job. I will fight to rest, to rely on God as my strength, and then to move forward when it is time to move.

I don’t have to know how the sea will part.

I just have to keep my center.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

My marriage ended because my husband had an affair. He refused to stop. I had no choice but to leave him. It was what everyone told me to do. It was the right thing to do.

But… that didn’t mean I was entitled to a happy ending.

I remember walking through my house, an apparition of my former self. With each creak of the floorboards, my back tightened into painful knots. When I disciplined the kids or set boundaries, my voice felt tremulous and weak, a wisp of warm breath in cold air. The walls were quiet. There was no one to back me up.

At night, I missed his presence, the soft, steady breathing that had quietly anchored me into sleep. I missed having a husband.

Leaving a marriage is never easy, not even when you’re justified in doing so. One of life’s hardest lessons is that there is a cost in doing wrong and a cost in doing right. In the real world, right and wrong are rarely clean lines. We are human—flawed, messy—and divorce is the embodiment of that mess.

Betrayal was at the center of my decision to leave, but the pain of infidelity forced me to face the fears of the unknown. If I left my marriage, what would be waiting for me?

I already knew the answer.

A lot of struggle. A lot of suffering.

This is what the feminine empowerment books don’t tell you. Choosing to leave your husband, even one who is cheating on you, carries a cost. You might regain your dignity, but you may also lose your financial stability, companionship, comfortable routines, the family unit, your sense of belonging, even parts of your identity. The list goes on.

What it means is this: if a woman decides divorce is the best option, it is only because she cannot stand who she will become if she stays.

The truth is, I wanted to save my marriage. Despite my anger at my husband’s deception and lies, I could still look back with fondness on parts of our life together. I remembered the good times, the laughter, the way we once approached life with a sense of adventure.

But longing could not change his choices.

I could not make him leave the other woman, choose me, and live a clean life.

There’s a Bible story from Genesis 19 that used to confuse me. It’s the story of Lot’s wife.

Sodom was set near a beautiful, lush valley. It was a prosperous city, but only on the surface. Beneath it, the city was wicked, openly defiant of the goodness and order God had established. The author of Genesis describes an “outcry” rising from the city. God was not responding to people having a good time. He was responding to cries of anguish.

Because sin, by its nature, is not harmless. It is exploitative. It thrives on the sacrifice of innocence. That was the true engine of Sodom—and exactly why God chose to destroy it.

Lot and his family are told to flee and given one clear command: don’t look back.

The narrator never tells us why she looked back. But the reason feels painfully human.

Sodom was still home. It was familiar. It was where her life had been built. Turning away from it meant turning toward the unknown.

The symbolic significance is hard to miss.

When darkness pervades our lives, we have to run from it. We may have to leave our belongings, our comforts, the lush land of Sodom for the dry plains ahead—but we cannot turn back and look longingly at what is destroying us.

If I had stayed in a marriage where my husband continued to cheat on me, I know it would have eaten me from the inside. Instead of facing what was broken, I would have tried to pacify it, ignore it—do anything to keep the surface of my life intact, even as the inside was rotting. I would have made what was rotten and corrupt my new normal.

It would have consumed me.

When I left, life was harder. I took a financial hit, an emotional hit, and I was incredibly lonely. Most would call it rock bottom.

I didn’t really have a choice—but I did have the opportunity to rebuild my life on a different foundation.

Now I see it as an incredible gift.

Growth often looks like pain and grief, but there was opportunity in it. There was truth in it.

Sin is not harmless, and softening it is not a theology that brings us closer to God. My husband’s choices were hurtful and destructive, but they also opened the door for bitterness, anger, and resentment to take root in my own life if I wasn’t careful.

I credit my faith for helping me survive the separation, divorce, and healing. I also credit it for helping me recognize what was dark and destructive in my own heart.

Because sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is refuse to keep looking back at a life that is slowly destroying them.

Not because it doesn’t matter.

But because it does.

Grief doesn’t just change what we feel—it changes what we can live with. And sometimes, it leaves us facing things that will never be resolved the way we hoped. If that tension feels familiar, you might resonate with this:

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Leave a comment

Share

Each week we have a podcast here at No Pretty Bow for those seeking a less performative faith—the faithful homeless, who love God but have not found a place that feels like their spiritual home.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

It was a secret, but I woke up that morning with the vision of catching a monster fish, perhaps a blue fin tuna or a halibut. The ocean stretched under a hazy morning sky. It promised adventure—opportunity, perhaps even a miracle or two. The 28-foot fishing boat we had chartered for the day was a white dot on an endless plain of blue.

I gripped the sides of the boat as we rose and fell several feet at a time over the choppy water, my stomach lurching with the rise and fall of the waves. Twenty minutes into our trip, my nephew began to experience the first symptoms of seasickness. Within an hour he was clambering to the side of the boat in misery. We empathized, but could do nothing to soothe him other than offering the occasional soda cracker, a sip of water, and our sympathies.

As we took our stations around the boat, it became clear we were playing a game of luck. My mother and uncle were soon catching one rockfish after the next. We stared in envy at our own empty lines. The captain was mystified.

“It’s usually the ladies who reel them in,” he said, staring at my sister and me in mock exasperation.

“It’s not like we’re not trying,” we protested.

We experimented with different bait and changed the way we cast our lines, but in the end they were simply the lucky ones.

Finally my sister caught her first fish, and then my son caught his. It was his first time ocean fishing, and I felt pride warm my cheeks as I snapped photo after photo.

The luck seemed to shift for the whole boat. I felt my stomach lurch with a different kind of excitement as I reeled in my first fish. I wondered what I would pull from the water, my mind racing with possibilities.

Just as I was about to lift a black rockfish over the rail, I spotted a ling cod the size of a mermaid. I’m not kidding—huge. The monster was trying to eat it. We froze, hoping he would latch onto my hook.

“Come on. Come on,” I urged.

“A hitchhiker,” our captain said, reaching for the net.

But at the last second, with a primordial urgency, the monster fish sensed the danger. He released the rockfish, his fins flashing for a brief moment across the surface before disappearing into the dark blue depths. In that second I finally understood what all the fuss was about in Melville’s great novel.

We spent the next two hours hoping to catch him, but he evaded us. The sensation was strangely familiar.

Instead, we turned our attention to the crab pots.

The captain warned us about their pincers.

“They can cut your fingers clean off.”

I immediately dropped the crab. The captain laughed, but my sister rose to the challenge. She confidently wrangled crabs, throwing more than half of them back after determining their sex and size. By the end of the trip, she had earned the title of deckhand.

We followed the captain’s tradition and kissed our first catch. I have the pictures to prove it. My mother, who is nearly eighty, wrinkled her nose in visible disgust before kissing her fish—something I’m fairly certain she’ll never do again.

Despite not being the best fisherwoman—or even the luckiest—I had a fantastic time. We laughed so hard we cried, enjoying the mystery of not knowing what would come out of the water next. Even my nephew laughed once we were back on shore.

“I feel better,” he sighed with relief. “I should have taken that Dramamine.”

He leaned in and lowered his voice.

“I probably shouldn’t have eaten that cupcake and drunk that acid black coffee either.”

“There’s no way you could have known.”

For some reason the words lingered.

I repeated them in my head.

There’s no way you could have known. There’s no way we could have known.

There is so much in life we don’t get to choose.

My nephew certainly wouldn’t have chosen to get sick. If I had a choice, I would have caught the ling cod instead of watching him disappear into the ocean. I also would have possessed my sister’s courage around crabs, but I like my fingers exactly where they are, thank you very much.

We were all at the mercy of the sea, the weather, and the unknown.

The captain shrugged.

“Just cuz you do everything right doesn’t mean you’ll catch anything.”

He was confident we’d all catch fish. He does this for a living. But there were no guarantees.

I could see the disappointment on my son’s face when everyone around him was catching fish and he wasn’t.

Why them and not me?

I’ve asked myself that same question before.

I asked it when my husband cheated.

When my sister’s husband died.

When my uncle got cancer.

Yet here we all are, still casting our lines into the sea while the saltwater sprays our faces.

I untangle my line. The hook catches for just a moment, grazing my thumb and drawing another wound too small to notice. I thread a strip of squid onto the hook and grasp the weight.

I’m ready to cast again.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
—1 Peter 5:7

I am casting, not waiting with my hands soft and still.

There are no guarantees about what I’ll pull from the water today.

But there is always a promise in the casting, in the waiting, and in the courage to cast again.

Just for fun: This is my 79 year old mother, Carol kissing her first catch. She is fearless.

If you’re learning that faith isn’t certainty but the courage to cast again, you’re among friends.

Join me each Sunday as we look for God in the ordinary moments, the disappointments, and the unexpected mercies that remind us He is still with us. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

If you have been in churches where it’s felt like God has left the room, this is the space for you. At No Pretty Bow, our desire is to draw close to God and not settle for something else in His place.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

You never know how grief will appear. My first taste of it was when my grandfather died. He was in Oregon and I was in seminary in Tennessee, which spared me the agony of watching his prolonged suffering. He was eighty-four years old and had lived a long and good life.

I grieved for him when he died and regretted that I had not been there to say my goodbyes. I dreamed about him for several nights, but felt a certain peace, a strange confidence that he was, in whatever way that matters, with God. My grandfather had loved me, possibly more than anyone, and I knew he would never hold it against me that I wasn’t there at the end. He had only ever wanted what was best for me—not even death could change that.

When Milo died, it was different. I didn’t really know him that well, if I’m being honest. He was a fifteen-year-old boy and a student in my class. What I did know about him, I loved.

He was bright and enjoyed reading in class, although he vehemently denied it. He asked deeper questions about the content, which led me on wild deviations from the lesson plan, which was of course his intent from the start. He was good-natured, kind, and there wasn’t a student in the class that didn’t love him. He lived for baseball season, was popular, and an overall strong student.

Then, he died suddenly.

I heard the news at church. I had gone to drop off my son at a youth group activity. A former student met me in the lobby and as I picked up some sheet music to take home, he said, “You know, Milo died.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Milo died.”

I stared at him, unable to process.

“A bunch of kids went to the quarry to go swimming and he disappeared. They spent hours searching, but couldn’t find him.”

I pictured his round, blue eyes, his inquisitive face, and suddenly it was like the wind had been knocked out of me. I grabbed the back of a pew. The teenager suddenly covered his mouth, realizing he had said something wrong. He didn’t know Milo well; he was reporting an interesting fact. But I was reacting like the world was spinning out of control.

It was.

My mind was racing. The finality of it made it impossible to breathe. I would never see him again. He was gone. I couldn’t accept it; I refused to believe it. I imagined his mother and father, his brother—the magnitude of their loss. I cried for my own sons, imagining now with a strange painful clarity what losing them would look and feel like.

I had never known grief like this. It was a shock that ran through me, separating my mind from my body. I tossed and turned the entire night, praying this was a nightmare—that it wasn’t really true.

I went to school the next day. I don’t remember it well. There was a teachers’ meeting where the news was given to everyone by our principal. Milo had been swimming with friends and then just went under and never came back up. No one really knew why. Did he have a leg cramp? An aneurysm?

We would never know.

The other boys had spent hours diving under the water, but the quarry was too deep. Professional divers were called. His body was recovered hours later.

As the details surfaced, I replayed the scene over and over again, imagining the horror of those other boys diving in desperation to find Milo in the black water. I refused to accept that any of it was real.

I will wake up and this will just be a dream, I thought.

My face was so puffy I hardly recognized myself when I looked in the mirror. I splashed cold water on my face, but the tears seeped out of me. I didn’t feel them. My colleagues looked at me with concern. They took turns stepping into my classroom throughout the day to check on me and offer to cover my classes.

I didn’t feel sad, just disconnected. My body seemed to be doing the grieving while my mind remained permanently frozen. I had learned this before: our bodies grieve before the mind catches up.

As much as I cried over Milo, I was confused. I was grieving Milo as if he had been my own son. I grieved over him more than my own grandfather, who had been like a second father to me. Why?

I knew why, but I didn’t want to admit it.

Milo died only a year after I found out about my husband’s affair. His death highlighted what had already shifted inside of me. Before the collapse of my marriage, I used to feel invincible and protected, but now it felt like anything I loved could be stolen at any moment. Milo’s death was the proof that someone so beautiful, kind, and full of life could be taken without warning, without reason. It was an in-the-flesh reminder of the life that had been stolen from me—a reminder that I was still vulnerable, that I would never be safe.

I hated that my grief was so much about my own trauma, but I knew it was true. I had come out of my broken marriage raw. I was no longer the same woman I had been. Living life in this raw state was frightening. I felt out of control; my emotions were driving and I was along for the ride. But the ride was taking me somewhere important—into the reality that our lives are inexpressibly fragile.

As I sat in a room of teachers, I tried to understand why I felt ashamed. Most of the other teachers, except a few of us, were able to keep their decorum. They were holding it together. I was ugly-crying, my face so puffy I was nearly unrecognizable, a box of deconstructed tissues crumpled next to me. They were the strong ones and I was the weak one.

Debby, be more professional. Hold it together, I thought. My inner voice was powerless against the weight of my grief.

My principal came into my room later during the day. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said softly, “you just ask.” I thanked him, genuinely touched by his kindness. There was nothing I could think of for him to do.

I went home later that night and tried to watch Netflix, but really I was wondering why my grief had made me so ashamed. Why did it feel like weakness?

The next day, the grief counselors came. I did something I’ve never done before. I left my class with the substitute and went to the grief room with my students. I didn’t hesitate. I colored and pet a therapy dog. I shared and listened to memories of Milo with my students. I learned things about him I had never known before.

Something had shifted again.

As I stroked the soft fur of a yellow golden retriever and felt his wet nose graze and then sit in the palm of my hand, I took a breath. The room, the students beside me—everything felt painfully real, fully alive. I was fully present in the moment, because in that room I had brought no one else but me.

In the grief, I didn’t have to talk, I didn’t have to do anything; I could just be. I felt the still weight of his furry head against my knee.

Was it so terrible that my divorce had trained my body to wear its heart on its sleeve?

Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. I was a certified mess, and I would be a mess again. No one could deny it.

But I had masked everything beneath responsibility, work, efficiency, and professionalism. I had buried everything without even a funeral. Now I was tracing an image of Dory from Finding Nemo with a blue colored pencil, occasionally blotting my wet face with crumpled tissues, my other hand buried in the dog’s soft fur.

This was the first moment I could remember sitting in a room and masking nothing. I felt no need to talk, no need to perform—just to be present.

It was not grief.

It was relief.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

“The church is not a museum for saints; it’s a hospital for sinners.”

It may be a bit of a cliche, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The Pharisees judged Jesus harshly in Luke 5 for eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus responded by saying, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

This is where I interject to state the obvious. If you had the choice to hang out with judgmental Pharisees or open-minded tax collectors and sinners, wouldn’t you choose the sinners every time? Who really can relax and have fun around people who are determined to find fault in you?

The Pharisees struggled with a deeper spiritual problem: the temptation of wearing the mask of spiritual superiority. I don’t need help. I’ve got my shit together.

What if the people at the hospital refused to acknowledge they were sick? What if, despite the evidence of their hospital gowns and patient arm band, they envisioned themselves as helpful assistants to the doctor, nodding their heads in vigorous agreement—“That’s good advice for a friend of mine.”

It is laughable, I know, but one of the most challenging struggles for Christians today is accepting our own spiritual depravity.

I include myself in this farce.

When I first started ministry in college, it was a bit of an accident. My parents were missionaries to Japan. I had grown up attending a small mission school and worshipping in my parents’ tiny church. Despite living in Japan, my world was small.

I was determined, despite my mother’s concern, to never attend a small Christian college, like everyone else in my family, but a University. I wanted to leave the nest and experience the “real world.”

At the University of Oregon, I was exposed to a new reality for the first time: loneliness. In retrospect it was a bit traumatic. My parents took me to my dorm room, gave me a hug, and the next day were on a plane back to Japan. I had never spent more than two weeks away from them; I was 17 years old. I was at a new college where I knew no one.

Out of desperation, I called my grandparents who lived in town. On Sundays, like clockwork, we went to church and lunch. The routine centered and helped me adjust as I made friends and ventured out into the world of adulthood.

The small church we attended was in need of a music minister. I had some gifts in that area and was looking to earn a little money. The pastor kindly offered me the part-time position. I accepted.

In many ways it was a magical time. My grandfather was in my tiny choir and my biggest supporter. Almost everyone in the choir was in their 50s or older. I was 19 years old and didn’t know what I was doing half the time. I had many years of experience from growing up on the mission field, but very little academic experience. He would always chuckle and beam with pride whenever I introduced a new song or we worked out the parts together.

I owe him so much. We made some of my favorite church memories. He always made me feel valued, worthy, and loved. My grandfather instilled in me so much of the strength that has helped me get back on my feet when life has beaten me down. He has restored my faith in men—in humanity. I remember his support, his kindness, his deep love for me.

But not every experience was wonderful. Every Sunday, I was nervous. I recognized the performative aspect of worship ministry from the beginning. It was me, standing in front of the whole congregation. I had to be prepared, look professional, and at the same time facilitate people into a transcendental spiritual experience.

No problem. I got this covered.

I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Part of the experience was flattering, to be the center of attention. The other part was nerve-wracking. It didn’t feel the same way the mission church in Japan had felt. There, I never felt like there was a pressure to perform. My parents were the ministers; I was a decorative ornament.

But this was a job—this was different.

Of course, the minister in me today would say God should have been the center of attention, not me. But we all know that if you’re standing at the front of the church, who is the congregation looking at? This is perhaps the most difficult burden of being a minister.

We are stand-ins for God, and very poor ones.

As a college student, I was still learning how to operate as a functioning adult. I often stayed up past midnight eating pizza, “studying,” and hanging out with friends. I purposely scheduled my classes for after 10 am for this reason. I did not like early mornings, and Sundays were hard.

I arrived late and a little flustered. I was wearing a new yellow skirt I had bought with friends a few days before. Wearing something new was one of the confidence tricks I had learned. It helped me feel more secure when I stepped in front of the congregation to lead music.

It was a beautiful spring morning. The sun filtered through the stained glass windows and the sanctuary looked cheerful in the colored light. I felt my confidence grow with each song. I could hear the congregation singing with me. That was always a good sign. I led the choir through a musical number and then we sat down to listen to the pastor’s sermon.

I felt the relief of a job well done as we began to leave the sanctuary. The pastor’s wife signaled to me.

“Debby,” she said in a hushed whisper.

I made my way over to her.

“Your skirt,” she said. “It was see-through. You really should wear something else.”

“Really?” I said in shock. “I’m wearing a slip under it.” I showed her the edge of the white slip underneath the yellow fabric.

“Oh.” She frowned. “The sun was coming through the windows and you could just see everything.”

I felt a wave of shame.

I tried to deflect the humiliation with humor. So people could see my legs? Don’t we see legs all the time? Already a part of my brain was busy with rationales and justifications. Christian women wore bikinis all the time at the beach. What had I done that was so egregious?

Her eyes shifted from me to the busy foyer. “Well, anyway. I thought you should know.” She gave me a grim smile before dismissing me.

“Thank you?” I wasn’t sure how to respond. It hadn’t felt like a pleasant encounter, especially after I had been so nervous about leading and so relieved to have survived it. Any victory won had now been stolen by shame.

I told my grandparents about it over lunch.

“Well, I think you have lovely legs,” my grandmother told me. “They look just like your mother’s at that age.” My grandfather just shook his head as he drank his coffee. I could tell he was angry.

Life continued after that, but something had shifted.

I have never been able to walk into a church space again without realizing that people were watching me, and not always kindly. Before that morning, church had felt safer. Where my grandparents could see me only with love, that was not how everyone saw me.

Perhaps that realization was good for me.

I’m not sure what my pastor’s wife saw in me that justified the criticism of my skirt, but she had looked at me with disapproval—or perhaps fear. Maybe she saw my insecurity. Maybe she saw how badly I wanted approval. Perhaps she had once been that same young woman with no situational awareness, standing in a church wearing a see-through skirt.

I know she thought she was doing me a favor. I imagine she wanted to save me the pain and embarrassment she had experienced under the cruel lens of being a pastor’s wife.

I cannot fully understand her motives, but I choose to believe there was kindness buried beneath her crusty exterior.

I also learned something about myself.

I was naïve. I believed a yellow skirt could be worn like a medallion to gain me favor. I believed people would receive me with the same affection my grandparents showed me. I believed presentation could create connection. I believed performance could open hearts.

But this is not how God works.

Our idols come with gifts and curses, and the yellow skirt was no different. I wore it because it made me feel beautiful and confident. It earned admiration from my grandmother and criticism from the pastor’s wife. I had not anticipated that reality. I had walked blindly into a room full of sick patients without recognizing that I was one of them.

In God’s space, we do not need yellow skirts or any of the masks we wear to protect ourselves. We do not need to impress Him. We do not need to perform for Him.

All God requires is a heart honest enough to admit it is sick.

If I could go back and talk to my nineteen-year-old self, I would give her different advice.

I would tell her to tell the truth.

I would tell her it’s okay to lead worship in a sweatshirt and jeans. It’s okay to admit you overslept. It’s okay to admit you’re scared. It’s okay to admit you don’t know what you’re doing.

You don’t have to pretend to have it all together before you walk into God’s house.

In fact, that’s the one place where you shouldn’t.

The church was never meant to be a gathering of people who have conquered their weaknesses. It was meant to be a gathering of people honest enough to confess them.

Only then can the Great Doctor begin His work.

This is the part I don’t like. I would also tell her that honesty comes with a cost.

Not everyone will love you in a sweatshirt and jeans, when the yellow skirt comes off.

Not everyone will welcome the truth.

But that is a lesson for another day.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

No Pretty Bow is for the “faithful homeless”—those of us navigating the wilderness after the structures collapse. This is where we stop pretending, take off the masks of performative purity, and find a faith built on survival and raw truth. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

I threw up into the toilet the night my husband told me he was having an affair.

After a few hours of processing his confession in a state of disbelief, I started shaking. I was confused. My mind seemed fully intact, but my body seemed to have a mind of its own. I was lightheaded. I needed to lie down, but then I was hit with nausea. I ran to the bathroom and knelt at the foot of the toilet bowl gripping its sides. I vomited over and over again till there was nothing left. My body continued to shake with violent spasms. I was exhausted.

The tile floor at the foot of the toilet looked as inviting to me as the softest feather bed. My face and chest felt like they were on fire. I desperately wanted to feel the cool of the tile on my cheek. I spread out on the bathroom floor and brought my knees to my chest.

I didn’t pray. I didn’t call out to God. In the fetal position, I rocked back and forth to ease the spasms and cried.

I didn’t know it then, but this was grief.

He came for me, his presence as heavy and impenetrable as river mist. It didn’t just settle over me, it seeped into my very pores.

By the time you reach middle age, he is no stranger. At least, he is no stranger to me.

Grief is the companion of trauma and loss, and we cannot move through the world without his presence. The moment we choose to love, to care, we open ourselves to the pain of losing. It leaves us with a haunting question:

How do we move forward when we lose what matters most?

The reality is that we will move forward whether we want to or not. As a minister in the field for over twenty years, I have watched grief transform people. Some emerge forever embittered. You can see the anger carved into their faces, expressions frozen in a permanent winter of pain.

Others come out different—softer, kinder—as if they looked the reaper in the eye and reached a certain understanding with him. Some even learn to laugh again, because the reality of death has made the gift of life all the more precious.

Emily Dickinson explores this in her poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. She portrays Death as a polite, civil companion sitting beside her in a carriage. They travel through childhood, middle age, following the path of the sun:

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –We passed the Setting Sun –

As the ride continues, the mood shifts. The speaker is dressed in gossamer—the gown of the dead—and driven toward a “House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground.” The poem reminds us that from the moment our lives begin, death rides with us. His presence shapes the human experience, and every experience must eventually end.

Our cultural coping mechanism is to do the opposite of Dickinson: we simply don’t think about it. We focus on the “good times” and ignore the dark passenger in the carriage. This works perfectly well until grief plops in your lap, uninvited and aggressive, leaving you woefully unprepared.

This is why we need these three rules. If we know grief is inevitable, we must be prepared. Think of these rules like carrying a navigation device through a large and dangerous city; do not walk through life without the tools to find your way.

And if we are to share a carriage with death, as Dickinson suggests, we must learn to look him in the eye rather than distracting ourselves with the pretty sights outside the window.

Rule #1: Stay Busy (At First)

In the first few months after my husband revealed his affair, I would have completely fallen apart if I hadn’t had my job and the care of my boys to center me. My thoughts were wild and unharnessed. When grief flooded me, I was incapacitated, unable to even leave the couch. I desperately needed a reason to wake up—a distraction from the agony. The raw necessity of survival saved me. Supporting my sons forced me to push the thoughts away just long enough to function.

My survival instincts forced me to stay busy, but when I discovered the Stroebe & Schut Dual Process Model, I realized that survival wasn’t just about getting through the day—it was part of how we move through grief. Stroebe & Schut’s work emphasizes that healthy grieving is not a linear climb; it is a wavy line. Grief is disjointed; you move through emotions like lightning, feeling fine one moment and hitting the depths of despair the next. We are not equipped to process the totality of loss all at once. Staying busy allows us to “dose” the pain. We do this all the time when we take Ibuprofen for a headache. The pain doesn’t disappear, but becomes manageable so we can still get through the day.

“A person who is grieving needs to ‘take a break’ from the pain. This is not a denial of the loss, but a necessary respite from the overwhelming nature of grief.” — Stroebe & Schut

After my husband left me, there were moments I beat myself up. Maybe I’m working so hard and pouring myself into my kids because I’m just avoiding what happened to me? What if I’m delaying my healing by not directly facing my grief? The Dual Process Model is not avoidance of pain, but a pacing through it. It is the difference between drowning in a flood and navigating a river. You cannot ride every rapid at once.

Biblical stories provide similar wisdom. Grief is a recurring motif in Biblical tradition. The Old Testament is a narrative of siege, exile, and rebuilding. It is the story of a people who understood that survival itself is a form of spiritual growth. They were a people who lost everything, yet continued to wake up and rebuild. This is why the author of Ecclesiastes insists there is:

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” — Ecclesiastes 3:4

Ancient wisdom recognizes that grieving is a natural stage and healthy progression requires moving through it. There is hope living on the fringes of mourning, because this too shall pass. Grief is not a moral failing, but a journey. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

Lewis reminds us that grief is a landscape we travel through. If we travel, we must keep moving—one foot in front of the other. Physical therapists often say, “Movement is Life.” Grief is no different. Stay busy, keep moving, and allow yourself to process the weight only as it comes.

I remember being exhausted when I came home from work. My sons asking me what was for dinner was not a frustration, but a life-restoring routine. Cooking dinner, washing the dishes, even folding the laundry became a silent prayer—a reminder that my blood was still pumping through my veins.

I’m not dead yet.

Rule #2: Clean the House (Restore Agency)

The power of grief lies in its ability to make us feel helpless—convinced that the loss is so absolute we can never restore equilibrium. Grief came to me through intrusive thoughts that fed mercilessly on my deepest fears. They told me my family would never again be whole, that I would never find joy—that I was undesirable and destined to live my life alone.

In those days, my house had the distinctive look of a crime scene. Artifacts of our failed marriage hung on the walls—each corner of the house carried memories that haunted me. I couldn’t muster the energy to fix it, but with each dirty plate stacking higher in the sink, I felt sick. After a while, the combination of the messy house and my mind’s darkest fears on constant replay forced me to action. Something had to be orderly. It just had to be.

I started with the sink.

Cleaning your house is one of the most accessible ways to reclaim emotional balance. Psychologist Carol Ryff defines this as “Environmental Mastery.” When you organize a physical space, you create a positive feedback loop for the brain. Fixing a mess releases dopamine, providing a small but vital victory. Conversely, clutter and chaos increase cortisol—the stress hormone—which can trigger a “fight or flight” response. Ryff’s research suggests that simply organizing your surroundings can calm the mental state and reduce physiological stress.

The night I lay at the foot of the toilet, I knew nothing of “Environmental Mastery” but I did know this: if my personal life was a disaster, something in my life needed to simply work. I remember spending an entire Saturday organizing my kitchen—even labeling the shelves. Afterward, I sipped my coffee surveying the work. I wasn’t miraculously healed, but in a spotless kitchen I could envision a future that felt a little less bleak—almost hopeful.

The ancient writers of the Bible understood this intuitively. The Kingdom of Heaven is often described as an organized, intentional space—a place prepared with care:

“In my Father’s house are many rooms... I am going there to prepare a place for you.” — John 14:2–3

The old aphorism that “cleanliness is next to godliness” carries a profound psychological truth. God is the architect of order. In the Genesis story, He exercises His agency to create order from the shapeless void and declares it “good.”

God creates structure and beauty from ugliness—hope from darkness. While cleaning a room may seem small compared to the creation of the cosmos, we must remember that we are created in His image:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him...” — Genesis 1:27

Like our Creator, we have agency. We can create, we can think, and we can move. Within our limitations, we possess the power to shape our immediate world. Cleaning your physical space is a way to exercise that Imago Dei. When we act in ways to create order in our lives, we begin the slow climb out of the hole of grief.

Rule #3: Create (Delve into a Passion)

I became a writer from my place of grief. A year after my husband left me, I began writing and I didn’t stop. The processing that couldn’t happen in the first year when I was too close to the pain became my medium of understanding what had happened to me as I was able to process it. Putting my thoughts on pen and paper, shaping and refining a narrative helped me to plan a hopeful course for my future. My story felt important—not just my experience anymore, but art that transcended it.

Creativity, from a scientific perspective, is one of our best weapons against grief. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who pioneered the concept of the “flow state,” provides the reason why. When we are fully absorbed in a creative task, the brain releases a specific cocktail of neurochemicals, including endorphins and anandamide, which act as natural pain relievers. These chemicals, combined with deep focus, create the sensation that time itself has disappeared.

During this state of total absorption, the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex”—the part of the brain responsible for self-monitoring and your “inner critic”—essentially moves into a state of transient hypofrontality, or a temporary “power down.” The result is a literal vacation from your own self-consciousness; a break from the relentless cycle of negative thoughts. For the person in grief, this is a blessed relief.

Furthermore, the act of creating something new—a song, a piece of furniture, a poem—triggers a dopamine release in the brain’s reward center. This tells our nervous system that while much has been lost, growth is still possible. It is the chemical cocktail for hope.

The Biblical storytellers were writers themselves. They shaped purpose, meaning, and identity through narratives of promise and hope. For Christians, “The Passion” is the culminating moment in the narrative—Jesus’ death on the cross. It was an act of love displayed in the heart of chaos. It was his life’s work, his passion for us.

What looked like the end became the turning point. The lesson for us is clear: passion is suffering transformed by love.

When we create—when we lean into our own passions amidst our pain—we are performing a small, hallowed act of resurrection. We are proving that meaning can still be forged despite the pain, despite the brokenness. It is a beautiful act of resistance, an act of hope.

Creation from a place of pain is resurrection.

Writing was resurrection for me. It helped me rise each morning with purpose. I found myself excited by the uncertainty—where the writing might take me, how the story might be shaped in ways I didn’t expect. The pain of my broken marriage, the betrayal, the heartbreak—it changed me as a writer.

I finally had a voice.

Conclusion: The Choice in the Carriage

We cannot avoid pain, and we certainly cannot avoid the dark passenger who eventually comes for us all. Dickinson was right: Death and his companion, Grief, ride with us. However, we are not helpless passengers. These three rules—Movement, Order, and Passion—are tools for the journey.

It is a rare and beautiful thing when the wisdom of the ancients and the clinical data of modern science agree so perfectly. Whether we practice environmental mastery or lean into our agency as creations made in the image of God, both point to a single reality: Action is the antidote to despair.

When we stay busy, we respect our brain’s need to pace itself. When we clean our homes, we exercise the divine agency within us to create order from chaos. And when we lean into our passions, we take the very “suffering” that threatened to destroy us and transform it into an act of resurrection.

Grief may have stripped away everything you thought mattered, but it cannot take your ability to move, to organize, and to create. By choosing these acts, you aren’t just surviving; you are engaging in a beautiful act of resistance. You are proving that even in a world of brokenness, hope is not just a feeling—it is something you build with your own two hands.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

If you are just getting started with No Pretty Bow, you can catch up on my field guides here:

• Starving in God’s House

• The Slurpee and the Apology I Never Got

• I Couldn’t Look in the Mirror After My Divorce

Subscribing means a new essay and podcast delivered to your inbox each week. This is a place for Christians who are no longer satisfied with the pretty bow—people who want an honest faith strong enough to face the ruins.

Leave a comment

I thought I was happy, or at least content. I was co-pastoring a church with my ex-husband. He was the senior minister, and I was the worship minister. We had a good thing going—honestly—a lovely congregation full of sincere, kind people. There were challenges, of course. There are always challenges. But compared to many of our ministry friends, we considered ourselves deeply blessed.

But then, my husband realized he was unhappy, bored, and discontent.

He had an affair with a woman who was barely an adult.

Our world turned upside down.

I’m not sure I have ever regained my footing, because I learned not to trust the ground. Everything collapsed beneath us. It happened so fast.

I’m not a big fan of wrestling. It is very hands-on—sweaty, visceral, and raw. In basketball or volleyball, players maintain a respectable, civilized distance from one another. But wrestling requires full-body engagement and an uncomfortably tight intimacy. Participants must contort their bodies. They bend, twist, and balance—one moment locked in a desperate embrace, the next clawing at the dirt as they strategize how to outmaneuver each other’s weight.

I may not like wrestling, but apparently it is God’s favorite sport.

God once met Jacob beside a river to engage in a wrestling match. Can you imagine? Wrestling with God Himself?

What would it even mean to wrestle with God?

Like physical wrestling, spiritual wrestling must embody many of the same qualities: intimacy, movement, contortion, and calculated thinking. We are frequently told in modern religious spaces to simply trust God, to be content with our lot, and to quietly accept “God’s will.” We are told this from curated stages, by well-meaning spiritual leaders, and by our sometimes defensive religious institutions.

But I cannot help wondering if acceptance and obedience are sometimes easy words used to avoid a far more significant calling: the call to wrestle with God, or at least to allow Him to wrestle with us.

It is both a terrifying and freeing thought.

Biblically speaking, wrestling with God is not an anomaly; it is a clear, recurring motif. Jacob wrestled with God at the Jabbok River, and Jesus wrestled in prayer in the crushing darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. As Christians, should we really be encouraging each other to sit safely on the sidelines, or should we be inviting each other to wrestle more?

If God intends for us to wrestle with Him, how do we even begin?

The Flight from Beersheba

The story of Jacob’s encounter with God and the ensuing match in Genesis is a strange one, and it hinges on two historical accounts that are deeply, structurally connected.

Jacob was no saint. He stole his brother’s birthright, and his mother actively helped him do it. He did something quite awful: he deceived his old, blind father by pretending to be his brother, Esau. Because of his performance, he intercepted the blessing his father had intended for his oldest son.

It was a theft. It was a betrayal.

Jacob did what many of us do when we wrong others: he got out of Dodge. His actions placed him in mortal danger. Esau, to put it mildly, was displeased; he decided he would kill Jacob as soon as their father died. Rebekah, Jacob’s mother, warned him and told him to flee to her brother Laban, far away in Haran, for his own safety.

Jacob left Beersheba and embarked on a grueling 500-mile journey on foot. His future was entirely uncertain, his life stuck in a violent transition. Certainly, in the quiet moments on the road, in the relentless desert heat, he wrestled with the heavy guilt of what he had done to his brother—how he had left things at home with Esau, leaving his family to pick up the broken pieces.

In the midst of this upheaval, he slept uncomfortably, using a hard rock for his pillow in a place he would later name Bethel—the “House of God.” In this spot, Jacob had a prophetic dream. He saw a ladder rising from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.

He heard the voice of the Almighty. God renewed the ancient promise He had made to Abraham, assuring Jacob that his descendants would be as abundant as the sand of the sea. Then, God promised even more:

“I will be with you and will keep you wherever you go.” (Genesis 28:15)

God did not abandon Jacob because he behaved poorly. He promised to abide with him. This seems amazing in itself, given that Jacob had proved himself to be a rather unsavory character.

But God’s presence is not a promise of eternal comfort and emotional validation; it is a promise of spiritual growth and terrifying closeness. Often, being chosen by God is a call to something spiritually and morally difficult. This was the case for Jacob.

In his dream, the portals of heaven opened, and God and His heavenly hosts came and went as they pleased. The separation between God and man was remedied by a ladder, a thin space between heaven and earth. But although God drew closer to Jacob, Jacob himself remained passive. He was sleeping, albeit uncomfortably.

God made the promise to abide with Jacob, but Jacob was not yet fully abiding with Him. He was content to stay safely on the sidelines. God was doing all the heavy lifting.

The Edge of the Jabbok

Jacob moved to Haran and lived there for twenty long years. He married the sisters Leah and Rachel. He prospered, attained wealth and children, but he was not truly home. He was a refugee. It was Laban’s questionable hospitality on borrowed land that sustained him, and over time—as these things usually go—that relationship became profoundly strained.

Laban’s sons grew to resent Jacob and his success. Jacob soon realized it was time to face this reality and go home. God confirmed it:

“Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” (Genesis 31:3)

Jacob found himself in a remarkably similar place to where he had started twenty years before. He was fleeing uncomfortable human environments. He was following God’s instruction, and God was technically with him, but Jacob had not yet truly wrestled with God.

Beneath God’s blessing lay an unresolved past—a reckoning he could postpone, but not escape.

Jacob traveled home, and it was a trip that must have felt heavy on his soul. He knew he would finally have to meet his brother, Esau. He would have to face the consequences of his history without flinching. In biblical literature, especially throughout Genesis, a brother is more than a mere sibling. He is one’s own flesh.

It is a motif that runs from the very beginning in the story of Cain and Abel: when we harm a brother, we harm ourselves, and we distance ourselves from God. Jacob’s spiritual arc could not continue until he faced Esau. And before he could face Esau, God had to wrestle with him.

God met him at the Jabbok River. Before Jacob could cross, he had to experience an unforgettable encounter and finally do the internal work he had left undone for two decades.

The scene is enigmatic. In the Hebrew text of Genesis 32:24, it simply says:

וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר

“And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

The Hebrew word used here for man is אִישׁ (‘ish). Who is this man? The author of Genesis reveals very little, but the story drops small, vital clues. He possesses supernatural strength; He touches Jacob’s hip socket and instantly dislocates it; and He changes Jacob’s name to Israel. He never gave His own name. He does not need to. Jacob seemed to understand that this encounter was with God.

The word used for wrestle in the Hebrew Bible is exceedingly rare. The verb is אָבַק (‘ābaq), and it appears exclusively in this passage.

וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ (vayyē’āvēq ‘ish ‘immô) — “A man wrestled with him.”

The match is striking because it lasted all night long. The man initiated the grip. It was a full-body engagement—bending, balancing, one moment embracing, the next clawing as they tried to outmaneuver one another in the dark.

Jacob carried his past—the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of it—into the match. When he was a young man, he had received a blessing, but it had been a ruse, an act of deception. Now, when Jacob met God in person, he didn’t steal or manipulate a blessing. He asked for one directly only after he had sweated and toiled through the night, just as he had sweated and labored for Rachel.

The Jacob who wrestled with God was different. He was wiser, stronger, and more mature. He finally understood the value of a blessing from God.

He knew he had wrestled with God, and he did not come out of the night unscathed. He carried a lifelong injury. But in return, he received a new name and a completely new identity. He was now Israel.

Why did God choose this specific moment of crisis to bestow a new name?

The man came to wrestle, and He stayed. Jacob faced Him and came out of the encounter humbled and broken. Something in Jacob had changed. He was becoming a man who could draw close to the flame.

When Jacob crossed the Jabbok and met Esau, it was not the violent homecoming he had spent twenty years dreading. He prepared himself for his brother’s anger and wrath, but he received tears, love, and mercy instead. He did not deserve it. It is a stunning story of redemption.

Training to Survive

Now that I am older, I feel this story far more than I understand it. I know that the wrestling is agonizingly difficult, and I know that we do not get a choice about when “the man” comes to find us in the dark.

We can try evasion, but it is postponement, never freedom.

My ex-husband’s affair came like a thief in the night. It dissolved the ground beneath my feet. But when the Almighty arrives to wrestle, you wrestle, because what other choice do you have? It may be painful, but it might be the exact environment you need to train yourself to survive—to claw your way out of the wreckage of an old life.

You will feel His presence in the struggle. You will not come out of it unscathed, but you will have God with you and that is enough.

In a modern church culture that has grown increasingly complacent and performance-driven, we can no longer afford to sit on the comfortable sidelines of faith. We cannot be content to watch God from a safe distance while enjoying pretty words, comfortable church chairs, and pleasing music. In all honesty, you will not be able to, even if you try.

When tragedy knocked on my door, none of these things came to my rescue. It was the wrestling that allowed me to bend without snapping.

It was God conditioning me to finish the match injured, but not broken.

The wrestling is a grueling struggle. We will learn exactly where we are weak, and we will discover the places where we cannot win, no matter how hard we try.

But what will we gain in the morning after a long night of struggle?

It is not salvation we work for, but an unbreakable closeness with God and a wisdom that can come only from Him. And when life brings the next catastrophic challenge, we will not be broken, because God has wrestled with us—and we have wrestled with Him.

If God has wrestled with you, and you are currently walking through the world injured but not broken, this space was built specifically for you.

Thank you for walking this wilderness road with me.

No Pretty Bow is a reader-supported sanctuary. To receive new essays every Sunday and access our new podcast each Wednesday, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

.

Thank you for listening. Leave a comment below.

We often hear, "Hurt people hurt people." I agree with that sentiment in part, but when does that explanation stop being enough? Have you ever felt it was time to leave a church—and what made you realize it?

Leave a comment

“Lord Jesus, I am at your mercy. You can have everything—my life, the air I breathe—but please let me just keep this one thing. Please don’t take it from me.”

I prayed this silently, begging God to save my marriage. I would have sacrificed anything, if He would just save my family. In the middle of the crisis, I didn’t do a deep dive into my motives. I couldn’t even imagine what a magical fix might look like; I just prayed for a miracle.

My husband was a pastor, and he had cheated. Not just once, but a full relationship with a girl young enough to be my daughter. On the surface, I was completely morally justified. I wasn’t the one who strayed; I just wanted to save my marriage. Jesus himself preached against divorce, so I was in the right. Wasn’t I?

But what was I fighting for?

God would show me later down the river. For now, I could only beg and plead as the swift current swept me away.

The 18-Year-Old’s Map

Most of us live our entire lives mitigating risk. In high school, I began to plot my path forward: college, marry a college-educated man, have children, work, and enjoy the occasional vacation while raising our family. It seemed a meager ask from God—just a respectable, “bourgie” life, as my students would say.

Agency is a wonderful thing, but at 18, what do we really know about who we will be in twenty, thirty, or forty years? If we spend our lives mitigating risk, might we miss out on truly living? As a believer in Christ, was I called to mitigate risk, or was I called to follow God wherever he might lead? Was it possible He might lead me far off the protected path?

At 18, I was a fledgling Christian, raised in a sheltered home. I knew so little about life.

That was before the river.

The Detour on the Deschutes

Recently, my son and I traveled with my sister down the Deschutes River in inner tubes near Bend, Oregon. This area is called Sunriver for a reason. We bathed ourselves in SPF 70 sunblock, packed a few snacks, and set off down the current—a true act of faith.

It’s a strange experience to float in an inner tube in June. The water is still glacier-cold. You can see the snowpack on Mount Bachelor and the Sisters standing majestic against the skyline, but the sun is blazing hot. My bottom was practically numb, submerged in the icy water, while my legs baked in the torrid sun. The scenery was spectacular, but the experience was punishing.

My son had started the trip agreeably, but as our progress slowed, he began to complain. I didn’t blame him. Hours into the journey—and only halfway to our destination—we made our way painfully to shore. We hobbled out of our tubes, deflated them, and hiked toward our car, still miles away.

Thank God for modern technology. I used my phone to call an Uber. The driver met us at a State Park and drove us, gear and all, to our car downriver. It was an adventure—in moments stunningly beautiful, painful, and frightening.

The Unprotected Places

We had mostly avoided sunburn, but my son had not. Throughout the day, I had repeatedly doused him in sunblock, but his feet had not gotten the memo. They were lobster red. I knew we had sprayed them, but not with the same gusto as his arms and legs. His feet had been submerged in the water where it was difficult for sunscreen to stay put, and now he was paying a price.

“I will never, never do that again,” he told me as we slathered his red feet with aloe vera.

“I’m so sorry.” I felt like crying. I had failed to protect him, and he was in pain.

I reflected on all the ways we had tried to protect him. He was wearing two kinds of sunblock. We thought we had covered every part the sun could reach, but we forgot his feet. They gleamed bright crimson under the shine of the aloe. It seems almost impossible to apply sunscreen without missing a spot. As I watched him rub lotion onto his skin, a thought crossed my mind: Was I any different?

How many times had I asked God to cover every part of my life while quietly holding one piece back? How often had I surrendered everything—except the one thing I clung to most tightly, or the one thing I conveniently forgot to place in His hands?

My son’s feet were a painful reminder of my own limits. Despite my best intentions as a mom, I would always miss something. Without surrender, I would be left relying only on myself, and I knew that would never be enough.

Terrifying Surrender

“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.” — 1 Corinthians 13:9–10

How many of us hold something back, even with God? Full surrender is absolutely terrifying. This is what I learned when my husband chose a life apart from me.

I was clinging to normalcy, legitimacy, and security, but God was leading me to the wilderness and shaping a path through it. I resisted at first, choosing to cling to what felt familiar, what didn’t terrify me half to death.

In the freezing cold of the river, the floatie was a lifeline, but it was not a place I could stay. The sun was blazing overhead while the river was cold and inhospitable. Our limited stash of water, crackers, cheese, and Peachie O’s became more meager each time my son reached for a snack. None of it was sustainable. God knew that before I did.

I didn’t want to float down the river, especially in a floatie, with no way to control where the currents might take me. But eventually, it was exactly what I had to do. It is what we all have to do.

The Gift of Isaac

My son’s name is Isaac. He is well named; in Hebrew, it means “he will laugh.” For fourteen years, he has been my companion through thick and thin. Both of my sons are my heart and soul. They are, in so many ways, my everything.

That is why Abraham’s story has never felt abstract to me.

Biblical Isaac was not simply a beloved child; he was the promise itself. He was the son Abraham and Sarah had waited for through decades of barrenness, the child through whom God promised to build a nation. Abraham was one hundred. Sarah was around ninety. When my doctor called my pregnancy geriatric at thirty-seven, I reminded him that compared to Sarah, I was practically a young chicken. He laughed.

But then God asked Abraham to place that promised son on an altar.

It is an atrocious story in many ways, especially for a parent. God does not ask Abraham to surrender a convenience, a possession, or even a dream. He asks for Isaac—the child Abraham loves and the future God Himself had promised.

That is a straight-out no for me.

Perhaps that is why I cannot reduce this story to a tidy lesson about obedience. It is about surrender, yes, but it is also meant to trouble us. My son Isaac is everything to me. I imagine biblical Isaac was everything to Abraham, and whenever a good gift becomes everything, we stand on unstable ground. We can build an idol out of almost anything: comfort, legitimacy, security, a marriage, a child, a future we believe God owes us.

Still, that does not make the story easy. Abraham prepared to offer his son as a burnt offering. Some readers try to soften the horror: perhaps Abraham misunderstood God, perhaps age had clouded his judgment, or perhaps he knew Isaac would never truly die. But if nothing was really at stake, where is the heartbeat of the story? What does faith mean if it never requires us to walk toward what we fear most?

Perhaps Genesis leaves us there on purpose: disturbed, without a clean answer, still floating down the river.

Ultimately, Isaac is not sacrificed. In Abraham’s ancient world, child sacrifice was not unheard of, but the God who called Abraham was different. He would not require human sacrifice from His people. Instead, He would offer Himself. As I wrestle with this story, that is the part that keeps coming back to me.

Learning to Surrender

Marriage had become the structure that held my life together. I trusted God, but I also trusted the life I had built. I had been clinging to a predicted course, and an unexpected detour uprooted everything—terrible, unsettling, yet also strangely wonderful.

I thought I had trusted God with my life. I trusted Him with my salvation, my career, my ministry, even my reputation. What I had not trusted Him with was my future. I wanted the respectable middle-class life I had imagined as a teenager. The husband. The family. The predictable path.

When that future slipped beneath the current and disappeared around the bend, I felt as though God had taken everything.

But He hadn’t. What He had really taken was my illusion of control.

I had lost my husband, my identity, and the future I thought I needed. But I could not see what God could. My life stretched far beyond that bend in the river; I simply couldn’t see it from where I stood. Like my son’s feet forgotten beneath the water, the deepest places of my heart had simply been exposed under the raging sun.

I no longer have any illusions about my strength. We are all more vulnerable than we imagine, and the currents of life can carry us places we never intended to go. I will never believe that God delights in our suffering, but I do think He loves us too much to let us build our lives on anything that can be lost. We can rest and enjoy the riverbank, yet still realize it is a poor place to settle. We should absolutely delight in our children as Abraham did, without losing sight that we are mortal and vulnerable.

Looking back, I can see that God never abandoned me in the current. He simply refused to let me settle on faulty ground. The river carried me somewhere I never would have gone willingly. Through rapids, detours, and wilderness stretches, He remained faithful.

The life I lost was real. So was the grief. But so was the God waiting for me around the bend.

Thank you for joining me here at No Pretty Bow. My writing is an offering to those who have traveled the rough road of grief and struggle, always in search of quieter, less performative faith.

If this ministry speaks to you, please consider pledging your support. Each pledge helps me commit more time and energy to creating space for these honest conversations.

Subscribe now

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

As you listen to The Gospel of Winco, when was the last time someone surprised you by being more than your first impression of them? Drop a comment below.

Leave a comment

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Subscribe now

There were sins I committed that I had no intention of stopping. There. I have confessed them aloud.

The repentance of sin is crucial to Christian growth, but it’s the hardest aspect of being a Christian. Why? Because life on earth is indescribably difficult and God’s way is often the hard way. Sin on the other hand is unhealthy, destructive, and even painful, but it’s also fun, at least in the moment.

Christians live in the shadow of Christ’s goodness, his perfection, his selfless sacrifice. It is a lot to live up to. Can we be honest enough to admit, that there might be some relief in running to sin. During times of stress, grief and unhappiness running away from God might feel like a brief vacation from the arduous day to day of picking up our cross and following him. We are human beings, easily overcome by temptation. There are days we fall under the strain of it.

In the film The Matrix, Cypher was presented with both the red and the blue pill. The blue one would bind him eternally to the Matrix. He could live each day in pleasurable hedonism enjoying steak dinners, fine wine, women, wealth—whatever he desired. In the wake of such temptation, most of us would likely succumb. Who cares if my body is being used as a battery to operate AI? If my mind believes the simulation, then it’s good enough for me.

Cypher took the red pill first. Morpheus woke him from the mirage of the Matrix, but when he encountered the unpleasant aspects of life on the outside he said, “I wish I’d never taken it” And if we’re honest, we can admit we’ve all had moments when we regret embracing the truth.

It is Neo, our hero, who chooses the red pill. There will be no steak dinners in this scenario, but for Neo the truth matters more than the delusion. He awakens from the matrix mirage to face the brutal reality and hardships of life when it’s the least glamourous. Despite hardships, he chooses to stay outside the Matrix of delusion and to help others find their way. When Neo takes the red pill, he enters suffering. It is the cost of truth.

If I’m playing devil’s advocate to conventional cultural Christianity, it’s for good reason. The prosperity gospel and toxic positivity practiced in mainstream Christianity has the unfortunate consequence of minimizing the power of sin, allowing space for it to grow. If churches avoid honest conversations about suffering, they can unintentionally preach a gospel that denies the cross. Instead they offer exactly what the world already does, the dream of a life that circumvents pain, if we just find the right formula. Perhaps fear perpetuates it, a medieval superstition that Christ can be worn like a medallion to ward off all evil and misfortune.

Some Christians choose a blue pill form of Christianity, because the red pill would do the most frightening thing imaginable: undermine the narrative of their good intentions.

It is an ancient delusion. Centuries before Hollywood gave us the language of simulations, the medieval monk Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) famously observed that “hell is full of good wishes or desires”—the historical root of the phrase the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Bernard gave up wealth and privilege to join a strict, puritanical movement at Cîteaux Abbey in France, quickly rising to become an influential spokesman, counselor to kings, and spiritual advisor. His writings beautifully capture the importance of a personal relationship with Christ, a theology of self-examination, and the spiritual dangers of pride. Yet, even in the monastery, temptation found him.

Bernard ultimately couldn’t resist the lure of power and advocated for the Second Crusade—a military campaign that would kill thousands. His messages of love and self-examination became tragically woven into a bloody, power-hungry movement that offered none of the virtues he wrote so eloquently about.

The paradox of Bernard is a universal one. It is easy to proclaim aloud what we believe, but much more difficult to live it. When it comes to conquering sin our biggest hurdle has always been ourselves.

Sin itself is less to be feared than the narratives we spin to justify it—the subconscious plan we had all along to nurture the sin and allow it to grow so we could secretly or not so secretly indulge in our darkest pleasures. This is the power of the blue pill. It masks our sins as a virtue so we can sin freely—so we never have to admit we knew it was wrong from the start.

We know when our behaviors are unhealthy, but it is easier to feed the narrative of good intentions; it just stops being pleasant when people get hurt.

This is the grandest delusion Christians carry. It is our unwillingness to recognize that we hurt each other and to take action to change it. This is repentance—the ability to carry the weight of our actions. The Christian who chooses the red pill, chooses to carry the weight—to change their heart and their behavior, the Christian who chooses the blue pill reframes the narrative so they don’t have to.

The blue pill church leader says:

I’m protecting the church.

The red pill reveals:

I’m protecting my reputation.

The blue pill adulterer says:

I’m finally pursuing happiness.

The red pill reveals:

I want pleasure without sacrifice.

The blue pill embittered person says:

I’m speaking truth.

The red pill reveals:

I want revenge.

The blue pill workaholic says:

I’m providing for my family.

The red pill reveals:

I need achievement to feel valuable.

The blue pill soothes us. How easy it is to give ourselves noble intentions that perhaps are partially true. How seductive it is to gaslight ourselves into spiritual complacency. This is exactly what Jesus cautioned against in the Sermon on the Mount.

“You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

—Matthew 5:27-28

Jesus uses antitheses to show the blue/red pill dynamic—the paradox of what we present to the world and the darker things we hide in our heart. The “You have heard, but I say…” statements range from murder to divorce and each statement challenges the listener to examine themselves. The law can expose behavior, but Jesus exposes the heart.

He reveals the truth that if our heart is set on anger, lust, or vengeance, we are already walking the highway to hell.

Fleeing from God isn’t always dramatic. Sin grows in the quiet minutes before sleep or in the long drive to the grocery store. The darkness thrives in the stories we shape—what we desperately want ourselves and others to believe.

We convince ourselves that we are justified in placing ourselves in close proximity to the most seductive of temptations because it is reasonable under the circumstances. We walk a path where our feet are firmly planted toward our desires, even as we gift wrap it in our tidy stories of good intentions. We are never villains, only victims or heroes.

I know more about this than I wish I did. My husband and I were both Christian ministers. When he confessed his affair we made the decision together that we would leave the ministry. We made up excuses, that he was burned out, that we had decided to change careers due to God’s leading. It was a lie. I told myself, I was saving my husband’s dignity. People in the church did not need to know my personal business. I was protecting our marriage and allowing my husband the opportunity to heal.

None of it was true.

I was protecting myself.

As painful as the affair was, losing my dignity in front of the congregation felt worse. What pained me most was that other women would see me as the kind of woman a man would cheat on. They would feel sorry for me. I would no longer be respected or admired. I had worked so hard for my MDIV, my name, my status—I wanted to save face. I had no intention of telling the truth because it would make me feel small.

So, yes. I had sinned with no intention of changing my ways. Instead of seeking repentance and the repair of what was broken in my marriage, I tried to run. I sought comfort in my own woven narrative, clinging to it even when I knew it wasn’t true.

It didn’t work.

Whether I want to be or not, I am a red pill Christian.

Why?

Because I tried the blue pill and it didn’t work either.

Jesus too was offered the ultimate blue pill.

"I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

—Luke 4:6-7

Jesus was offered what we all desire, power, adoration, and a life entirely free of suffering. But the cost?

Without suffering there is only the empty delusion. There is never hope for anything real.

“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Satan offered the ultimate blue pill.

• A life of pleasure without meaning

• Sex without love

• A crown without a cross

• A mega-church without a savior

Despite the hardships of the red pill, the truth is not without its comforts; it is the very place where Jesus lives. When the delusion is forcefully removed, the angels draw near. It is where I want to be.

True spiritual peace can never live with a lie. When we ditch the lie, we draw closer to God.

Once you’ve seen the truth, it becomes impossible to unsee it.

• I wasn’t protecting my husband. I was protecting myself.

• I wasn’t preserving the marriage. I was preserving my image.

• I cared far more about looking strong than I did about being honest.

I wish I could say that was the last blue pill I was ever tempted to take. It wasn’t.

Every day presents new opportunities to rewrite the story, to cast myself as the hero, the victim, the misunderstood one, the righteous one. Every day offers a fresh chance to trade truth for comfort.

Perhaps that is why repentance is so difficult. It is not merely admitting what we have done. It is surrendering the story we have told ourselves about why we did it.

The road to hell may indeed be paved with good intentions, but the road to repentance begins when we stop believing our own excuses.

If you are willing to take the red pill despite the cost of truth, this is the place for you. Drop your email below so you don’t miss the next field note when it drops in your inbox Sunday morning."

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

The first time I heard the still small voice, I was at the foot of a toilet, my cheek resting on the cool tile floor. It was minutes after I learned my husband was leaving me to build a future with someone else. My body had reacted before my brain could process the betrayal; I ran to the bathroom and found I couldn’t leave.

The porcelain bowl became an ironic anchor, a symbol of what my life had become. Yet, under the quiet roar of the bathroom fan, even though I didn’t recognize it, I heard God’s voice distinctly for the first time. It wasn’t a shout; it was a warmth that surged through my body, even through the cold tile, a clear, quiet thought that I was worthy, valued, and loved, exactly as I was.

As the youngest sibling with boisterous older voices around me, I spent my childhood fighting to be heard. At the dinner table, in the car, in the living room, conversation felt like a competition for oxygen. If it came to brute strength, I lost every competition. My brother and sister could easily grind me into submission. I was smaller, weaker, and not hyper-competitive by nature. If the spotlight of attention ever landed on me, hesitation meant the moment passed. If I softened, I disappeared.

I came into my voice during my high school days when my brother and sister had already left for college and I was finally able to claim some of my parent’s attention. In the age of feminism, I was encouraged to have a voice. Disappearing was framed as the worst fate for a woman—a loss of all the progress made by the generations that came before us. I should claim space; never shrink. I learned to use my voice and fill the space. But no one really explained to me what to do once I held the microphone.

I am a Public Speaking teacher and have been a minister for two decades, yet I have never felt that I mastered the art of communication. Human dynamics are constantly shifting. The ground beneath us moves, leaving us unsteady and second-guessing ourselves when we choose to speak. What is bold in one moment becomes reckless in another. What feels like courage can tip into self-importance before we even register the shift. I have dedicated my life to communication as both an educator and writer, and yet I am humbled by the organic nature of communication, where there are no assurances you will be heard or received with good grace.

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear foolish than to open it and remove all doubt.

—Mark Twain

The line is funny because it is true, and we’ve all been there. The words come out before we fully think them through and the results can be humiliating and possibly hurtful. Words can clarify, but they can also expose our deepest insecurities, opening a gateway to the worst in us. They can defend truth, but they can just as easily feed ego.

For women, and especially Christian women, the tension around voice is complicated. We have often been characterized as gossips, disruptors, and schemers, even when men engage in the same behavior.

Scripture has at times been used to quiet us before we even have a chance to speak. Verses like 1 Corinthians 14:34 have been cited as justification: “Women should remain silent in the churches...”

I have spent years carrying the Greek of these passages like a heavy stone up a steep cliff trying to build a bridge between the chaotic assemblies of Corinth and the fire for ministry God planted in my bones. I wrestled with the word hesychia. Where in the American church, the scripture had been translated as a corrective toward women, in Greek, it felt freeing—no longer tied with such finality to the word silence. “Settledness” or a “quietness of spirit” were stronger, more nuanced translations. Even in my early seminary years, I sensed Paul’s stress as he tried to manage the unstructured setting of the Corinthian church. He was begging congregants to choose peace, order, and stillness over chaos.

Yet this passage has been used by many in the church as a physical gag order. It is a strange stewardship indeed to gift a woman with an M.Div. and twenty years of vocational wisdom, only to suggest that her greatest spiritual contribution is her silence. Yet this is exactly what many Christians, both men and women, practice in churches across the globe.

To treat Paul’s address to a turbulent, uneducated assembly as a permanent muzzle on the modern woman is not just a failure of history; it is a failure of logic. There is a profound dissonance here that educated women feel in their very marrow. I have spent years disciplining and educating myself, yet am I expected to shut my mouth when it comes to the most important spiritual aspects of my existence? We preach a Gospel that breaks chains, yet we often use the letters of the Apostles to forge new ones, ushering good people out of the church forever.

My recent embrace of silence, however, is not a concession to those who would muzzle me. It is a reclamation.

I am not silent because I am “unfit to participate”; I am silent because I have found a form of authority that doesn’t need to shout over the men or women who are afraid of my voice. Perhaps the instruction to say less was never about intellectual inferiority. It’s about a different kind of power.

In my own workplace and church environments, I have noticed what Mark Twain observed over a century ago: the people who speak the most rarely earn the most respect. There is often a subtle desperation beneath constant commentary. Language is our vehicle for truth, but it is also our most effective tool for hiding it. Jesus himself warned about excessive speech. “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans...” He calls out those who use words to impress, control, or manipulate.

James, in his epistle to the scattered believers, takes this even further. He describes the tongue as a small part of the body that makes great boasts—a small rudder steering a massive ship or a tiny spark that sets a whole forest on fire. He notes that while we have tamed every kind of wild beast, no human being can tame the tongue; it is a “restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).

Yet even if we choose to use our voices for good, without governance, the cruelty and thoughtlessness expose itself, turning what was once potable into the undrinkable.

Fighting for our voice is often about ego—our desire to own the mic and drown out other voices. Fresh water and salt water should not flow from the same spring. How can we praise God and lift our voices in worship, yet with that same voice practice daily hatred and condescension toward our neighbors? The culture of clashing voices is exhausting. In the United States, politics—my family’s favorite pastime—has become an arena of anger and hostility. Voices shout over each other, fighting for dominance and power while hating those who disagree. This is the “babbling” that Jesus warned against, our modern iteration of the Tower of Babel, where a competition of pride inevitably leads to misunderstanding.

We are a nation of “wind and fire,” believing that the louder we scream, the more likely we are to be right. But as a Christian, it feels wrong, especially when Elijah followed a still, quiet voice, the true voice of God. Elijah stood on a mountain and watched the wind shatter rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. He watched the earthquake and the fire, but the Lord was not there either. God was in the soft whisper, the still, gentle voice (1 Kings 19:11-13). The whisper is evidence of God’s unshakable power even when the world, the church, and our lives swim in a cacophony of noise.

As a teacher in the high school classroom, I learned the power of the still, quiet voice early in my career. My principal observed a particularly rowdy class and later gave me a tidbit of advice: “The louder they get, the quieter you should get. They will stop and listen.” I didn’t believe it, but when I tried it, I was pleasantly surprised. A class of 30 high schoolers yelling and screaming stopped to hear me whisper instructions. The quiet voice had gravity. They sensed the change. They realized I wasn’t fighting them for the floor; I was governing the room from a place of stillness.

Christian teaching is not about gaining power over others, but power over ourselves. There is no better place to demonstrate our ability to govern ourselves than in our speech. I do not regret the years I fought for my place at the table. I do not begrudge my education or the time I spent honing my writing and perfecting my speech. But I am learning that fighting for space and stewarding space are not the same thing. Just because the microphone is available does not mean I am called to use it.

This has been a season of bringing my concerns to God in prayer. Strangely, the more restraint I practice, the less urgency I feel to speak. I no longer have to fight for the microphone. There was a time when silence felt like erasure, like surrendering the only proof that I mattered. Now I see restraint differently. It is the quiet confidence that truth does not depend on volume. Truth is not fragile; it does not need me to shout it into existence. God is with us. Emmanuel.

Giving up our voice can feel like death. It is a death of sorts—the dying of self. Yet scripture teaches that what feels like death is often life: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Loss can be the doorway to freedom. As I enter this stage of my life, I have many things to say. But not everything I want to say needs to be said.

That word “submissive”—eupeithes—is about being willing to yield. In a world of microphones, yielding feels like losing. In the Kingdom, it is the mark of a person who is governed.

Authority is not forcing the door open; it is knowing when to walk away. I no longer need the loud, frantic defenses I once thought were my only shield. When I am called to speak, I will speak in grace and truth. When I am not, I will let silence do its quiet work.

There is a silence born of betrayal on a bathroom floor, and a silence born of exclusion when the institution fears a woman’s voice. I have borne them both, but the silence of a governed heart is a third thing entirely. It is not the silence of being contained; it is the silence of being whole.

So finally, I can set the microphone down on the podium and walk into the sunlight, unburdened by the need to be heard. Authority, I am learning, is not about being heard. It is about being governed. And that kind of strength, the kind that found me on the tile and carries me even now, does not require a microphone at all.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.

Share