Ann Maree:

Hello, and welcome to the Safe to Hope podcast. Safe to Hope: Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity exists to offer women space to tell their stories of suffering and loss with care, dignity, and honesty. Though all suffering is loss, we ground that belief in a God who cares and remains present. This is our hope.

 

My name is Ann Maree, and I am the executive director of Help[H]er and the host of this week’s podcast. This podcast is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting the dignity of women’s stories and creating a space for truth-telling without pressure or performance. Together, we listen for God’s redemptive thread and look for ways to join Him in His transforming work. Before we begin, we want to take a moment and care for our listeners. The Safe to Hope podcast typically includes discussions of abuse, and this season will as well. In particular, we’ll be talking about spiritual abuse. However, our conversations may include other abuses. Please listen at your own pace and take breaks as needed.

 

If at any point you need to pause or step away, that’s okay. Your wellbeing matters. Hello, and welcome back to the Safe to Hope podcast, and again, another storyteller for us in our series on Is It Spiritual Abuse? And I am thrilled because of the guest that we have today, a very sweet friend who has impacted my walk significantly.

 

In fact, I was just talking with somebody else this morning who was asking me for advice, and I’m like, “Well, I have a friend who told me,” and I used my friend here’s advice to pass on. I have no new ideas. I only use the ideas of my friends. I guess that says something about me. Anyway, so I have lived alongside this wonderful friend’s story in some ways, very few, but enough to know the impact and also to feel some of the hurt with her, and that’s why I wanted her to share her story with us today.

 

I think our audience will be able to not only identify with many of the things she’s been through, but also find rich and powerful language to help put your own story into a framework. I don’t think, and I’m gonna call our friend today Elyse, I don’t think Elyse would disagree that probably none of her story was on her radar in the beginning and could never have even represented itself in the beginning as devastating as it might have been and is and has been.

 

But I’m gonna let her just speak to us today and I’ll perhaps ask a few questions, but I just really wanna hear her voice. And so welcome to our storyteller, Elyse. Thank you for being with us.

 

Elyse:

Thank you, my friend, Ann Maree. It’s a blessing to be with you and I just wanna say, listen friend, there’s absolutely nothing new under the sun.

 

So if at any time I told you something that was wise counsel, it was undoubtedly because I heard it from you beforehand or someone else. It reminds me of a time when you had Dan Allender on the show and we tried to end the show by saying thank you and he said, “No, thank you.” And we said, “No, thank you.”

 

“No, thank you.” And I just loved-

 

Ann Maree:

Exactly.

 

Elyse:

I love that humility.

 

Ann Maree:

Thank you. So anyway, I don’t know where to start with this and I don’t know which direction exactly that you’ll be going with the stories. You have many and so I’m just gonna begin with perhaps asking you to share with our audience a little bit more in depth about you, maybe your history with your family of origin, anything you wanna tell us that would get us kinda inside your life before we get into more of the details of the abuses.

 

Elyse:

Thank you. So my family of origin, I was basically raised by a single mom. I have an older brother and my mother, she’s a single mom so she’s working. She’s trying to provide for my brother and I. She had a very traumatic childhood herself and so she didn’t really know what to do with us and she, like a lot of women in her generation, really favored my brother, favored the sons.

 

And so I came into Christianity. I really wasn’t raised… I mean, we would go to the Lutheran Church from time to time, and I was actually baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran, but it really didn’t have any effect on me, didn’t feel like I was part of a church. And so I really wasn’t raised in a, what we would call a Christian home.

 

And then right before my 21st birthday, I moved. I was living a terribly debauched life. I had been pregnant, married, and divorced before my 21st birthday. And moved in next door to a woman named Julie, and Julie talked to me about Jesus. I became a Christian. God saved me. And part of what I was longing for in Christianity was to be part of a family. And as I have thought back, particularly most recently as I’m in counseling myself, as I have thought back about what motivated really a lot of what I wanted my whole life, what was motivating me was really this desire to be part of a family.

 

Which, I mean, it’s not a bad thing. God made family, and God made us to be in close, intimate relationships, and so that’s not a bad thing. It’s not a wrong thing. I may have wanted it, in some ways, too much, which—I think that’s part of my story. But I wanted very much to be part of a family. So my friend Julie tells me about Jesus.

 

The Lord graciously saves me in the summer of 1971, right in the middle of the Jesus movement here in Southern California. I got baptized in the ocean. Was actually my second one, ’cause I had been baptized as a Lutheran, and I joined a church. That church had a Bible college. They said, “You’re gonna come to Bible college, right?”

 

I thought, “Well, I guess that’s what you do.” So I went to Bible college. It was there that I met the man who is now my husband, Phil, lovely human being. We’ve been married for 50-something years. Some. 50-something years. There’s a discussion about that. I don’t know. We ended up with my child that I had already had, and then two other kids, and then they have kids, and now I have a great-grandson.

 

Woo-hoo. Crazy. Yeah, really nuts. So from the very beginning of my Christianity, I was immediately, uh, plunged into Bible college, and then from there, very quickly, I was in a church context that had no problem with women speaking to men. That’s what that context was. And so we were there for some time. I ended up working in lots of different spaces, teaching Sunday school, preaching from time to time, working in their Christian school, training my own children in that Christian school, et cetera.

 

And then we moved, and we went to another church where it still would not have called itself complementarian, but I don’t even think that was a thing then, because this is sort of the late ’70s, early ’80s. Maybe that’s not really that much of a thing then. And I was teaching Sunday school, and I got training eventually in biblical counseling.

 

And so I was invited to counsel there at the church, and so that’s all fine, and I was part of that context and really was welcomed. I wanna say. Now, I personally had been changing my theological perspectives. I was becoming more Reformed and really felt like, okay, this is a church where I can use my gifts, but I want to be at a church, at that point I would have said that’s more sound theologically.

 

And then there were issues at that church I was at with what was happening as far as, we’ll just call it church polity. Okay, so then we go from there to the PCA. But I’m gonna be really honest with you. Now, you have to remember the overriding theme of loving Jesus and being part of the church and loving His Word, an overriding theme in my own heart was to be part of a family, and I don’t think I knew that as much as I see it now.

 

I was really driven to be respected, welcomed, loved as part of a family. And I don’t think that’s, any of that’s wrong. So then we come into the time of complementarian and that whole complementarian reformation, and I bought into it along with my biblical counseling. Okay, so you see what I’m doing, which I come to understand.

 

I’m trying to be part of, feel part of a family of people who I think are really strong theologically and really honoring God’s Word, and I worked really, really hard to be part of that family. Ann Maree, it drove me. Okay? So I start writing books. Because I had by that point gotten a master’s degree in biblical counseling, I was writing books, and because, as you know, when you write books, you get asked to speak at conferences.

 

So I’m writing books, I’m speaking at conferences, and honestly, I was just cheesed. I was so happy to do it, you know? And there is a church in Southern California that I was very much involved with, not the church I was going to, because at this point I was in a small PCA church. I was being asked to speak at national biblical counseling conferences, national Bible church conferences, and then I was being asked to speak at this large church in Southern California.

 

And it’s all groovy because what I’m doing is fitting myself into their mold. Okay?

 

Ann Maree:

I get it. I very much understand what you’re saying. Okay? And working really hard, as you have. Gotten the education, working really, really hard to fit into their mold.

 

Elyse:

Now, if you would have asked me at that time, “Elyse, are you doing this because you wanna be part of a family, you wanna be accepted or so on?”

 

I would have said, “No, I don’t think so. I think what I’m trying to do is help people that I think are doing God’s will,” or something like that.

 

Okay, so we’re cruising along and that’s all fine, and I’ve got book contracts— And I mean, Ann Maree, if you wanna talk about being driven, I got saved in 1971.

 

I really didn’t start writing books until, like, 19— I think it was my first book, 1998. I’ve written over 20 books. There’s a level,

 

There’s a level of drivenness there.

 

Because I was trying really hard. And I don’t wanna say, “Oh, n—none of those books are worth anything,” or, “It was bad that I did.” I mean, I think that they’ve been helpful.

 

Ann Maree:

100%.

 

Elyse:

But, you know, the Lord used mixed motives. So let’s just put it out there. Really mixed motives. Motive to love God, serve His people, get the bus moving forward, minister to people, help hurting women, all the right things. And then also this sort of subterranean motive to want to be part of a family that welcomed and accepted and respected me.

 

Okay. So we’re cruising along, and wrote a book that talked a lot about the importance of the gospel in everyday life. The entities that I were, was involved with, the big churches, the big counseling organizations, Biblical counseling organizations, really did not like this book I wrote. I shouldn’t say the whole organization.

 

I should say certain leaders within these organizations—didn’t like the fact that I had sort of made a turn toward being what I would have called then more gospel-centered. And honestly, Ann Maree, I was shocked.

 

Oh, yes. Here we go through the part of my life where I get shocked a lot. I was shocked at the response to this sort of turn I made to say to people, “Yes, let’s all serve the Lord, but let’s remember what the Lord has done for us first.

 

Let’s be gospel-centered.” And I was shocked that a certain conference in particular that I had been invited to speak at in Southern California, they didn’t like how sort of gospel-centered I had become. Now, I wanna say, a certain pastor here in Southern California said, “Let’s try to get you guys all together and talk.”

 

And so I had lunch with the main people who had a problem with what I was saying, and I thought we worked it out, and then it turns out we didn’t, but they n- never came back to me and said anything along the lines of, “Yeah, no, we still think you’re wrong,” or, you know, “These are the reasons why you’re wrong.”

 

They just sort of ghosted me. I was utterly shocked that they had a problem with my saying In your pursuit of godliness, have you left Jesus behind? Because they assumed that if you talked about Jesus a lot, then that meant that you weren’t interested in trying to pursue a holy life. Now, about this time, I was also involved ministry-wise with someone who had a national ministry, and I would speak at his conference and other conferences like his. I remember one day in particular, I— and it’s just one of those days that will go down forever as a day of infamy in my mind.

 

So I had gone to my daughter’s house because we had written a book about training your children in the gospel instead of all of these other, you know, have stickers and posters and they’ll make your kids better, which is fine, but that’s not really the point, right? We had found out that this church in Southern California had posted about our book and said, “Don’t read it. It’s terrible. It’s antinomian,” which basically means against the law, like we’re telling people to raise their children and not give them rules or something, ’cause we’re not insane. So I had gone to her house because we were gonna talk to them on the phone and try to reason with them a little bit and say, “No, brothers, this is not what we’re saying.

 

If you actually would’ve read the book, you would know it. Read anything besides the title and a blurb or something, you would know that that’s not what we’re saying.” And tried over and over again for probably 45 minutes at least with this group of men. Okay, so now it’s myself and my daughter on the phone, and there’s this group of men at this church, elders and whomevers, who are telling us that we’re wrong. Which I don’t mind. If you wanna tell me I’m wrong, I would like to hear what you have to say. But they were not even listening to what we said in response. They were just sort of progressing through their list of bullet points. Okay. So finally I said, “Okay. I’m sorry, but I think we’re done. It’s obvious we’re not gonna get anywhere here talking.

 

I wish you wouldn’t have this perspective on this book, but it— you know, you choose—you do you, so okay, that’s fine.” And then one of the main persons said, “Well, let me pray for you.” And I said, “You know what?” No. He said, “I just have one more thing to say.” And I said, “You know what? I think I’ve heard. I’ve heard you, and so I’m— if my…

 

I have a pastor, and if my pastor has something he wants to say to me about this, he can, but we’re done.” And he said, “Then let me pray for you,” and then he prayed all the things he wanted to say to me. “God, please tell Elyse,” blah, blah, blah. Now, that was this one part of this day. We hung up from that phone call, and honestly, I was just– my head was spinning.

 

I was shocked at the way I was being treated, because I had been very much involved in this entity and taught classes and even written a book for them that they got all the royalties from.

 

Does that sound familiar?

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah.

 

Elyse:

Yeah, right. So I did all that. I hang up from that phone call, and I get a phone call from somebody else who tells me that this other guy whose ministry we had been involved with, and I had written for him, and I spoke for him, and I did all these things for him, turns out he had had a moral failing. It was, it was all on this one amazing day.

 

So on one hand, you know, I have this ch—church jettisoning me, and on another hand, on the other hand, I have these people that I, I loved being with, and I thought we had a great relationship. And I mean, we had personal relationship, not anything untoward or anything, but we were sort of in each other’s lives and talked frequently.

 

And then I find out that this person has been living this double life the whole time, and just honestly lying about things. Okay. Of course, I could talk about how I was invited around this time to come up to another church in the Northwest and met with a guy who was sort of a famous pastor-type person, and he was telling me I’d be involved with their publishing and all of this, and so I wrote a book for them, and then he goes off the rails.

 

Okay, fine. In the middle of all that, there was a problem in the PCA church that I was in with people being duplicitous. I should say leadership being duplicitous, and particularly in regards to a situation with a woman and what I would have called at least sexual harassment, if not assault. And so she had come to me, of course, and asked me for help, and I tried to help her, and I went and talked to the people in charge, and basically it ended up with certain parts of that group not being honest, and I left.

 

So then go to another church, and we were there for maybe eight years or so. Really liked it, but church fell apart. Let’s put it that way. Church fell apart. They were uber complementarian. Church fell apart, and really I was not really used there very much at all because I didn’t sort of fit the homeschool, stay home, be quiet kind of mold that they had for women.

 

But that was okay. I was okay. It was okay. That church blew up and fell apart. So we leave there. Shall I continue?

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah, I mean, I’m just sitting here envisioning– I have this picture of you standing in the center of, like, all of the ruins in, like, Ephesus and- … you know, and all of the ruins that we know were cities in the Bible, and they’re all collapsing around you, and yet at the same time, you’re out there speaking, I would agree, truth.

 

I mean, you’re not talking about-

 

Elyse:

Yeah.

 

Ann Maree:

anything different than what Paul talked about in him, and then dot, dot, dot, dot. You know, all the rest-

 

Elyse:

Yeah.

 

Ann Maree:

of the book of Ephesians. Anyway, so I have this vision in my head, and it’s not surprising to me, although I will say it is, it is heartbreaking. So the tears are, like, the knot in my throat and the tears in my eyes are just right there.

 

So I will ask you if you want to continue, please do. But I hear it.

 

Elyse:

Yeah. It’s– So from the church that blew up, we went to another church where we’re very happy for X number of years. Wasn’t really… I mean, I would teach, like, women’s Bible study at this church. But, you know, very complementarian church. I was writing.

 

I was speaking publicly probably at least 15 times a year. That means traveling out of San Diego, going around wherever. Okay, so sort of happy at this church, and this is all going on at the same time, and then the pastor at this church has a moral fail—moral failing. No. Okay, just hang on. So I tried to stay.

 

I tried to stay, in part because my husband was an elder there. And I wanted to encourage and support him. But it was maybe a year or so later, I finally said, “I can’t do this anymore.” He has a moral failing. He’s not at the church anymore, but the person who’s taken his place is… No, thank you. And I don’t mean that mean.

 

I, I mean, as a human being, this guy’s a really nice guy. I just don’t want him to be my pastor. Yeah, I think he was just probably too young.

 

Um, so finally then, I was involved– See, and this is the deal. If you’re gonna be a counselor of the people in your church, which you know very well, then you know what goes on in the church, and you know how people whom you’re counseling are being treated.

 

So I was counseling this woman, who actually I still correspond with all the time. We text each other. And a series of events—she had been employed at the church. Leadership spins, obfuscates the reason why she’s not working there anymore. They’re not honest about it. And I said, “Just be honest.”

 

Just– This is, this is another one of the sort of themes of my life, which is telling people, “Just be honest. Just be upfront.” Right? I find out that that church way, you know, the Southern, big Southern California church, they’ve got a Facebook group, and on the Facebook group, I find out that they’re saying that I’m an apostate.

 

Listen, if your whole credo is speak the truth, then speak the truth.

 

Right?

 

Ann Maree:

Right.

 

Elyse:

So they’re not being honest, and I— finally, I said, “Phil, I’m really sorry. I know you love what you’re doing here, and you can keep doing it. I’m not going back.” ‘Cause it’s just too ma—too many lies. So then we go to another church, which we joined a couple weeks after the lockdown of the pandemic, and it was a very, very conservative church.

 

And I would probably not have joined that church except I had friends there in leadership who, they were telling me, “We’re changing this church. It’s not going to be like it is right now. Just hang on. Wait for the change. We’re trying to respect women. We’re trying to open the door for women to have more of a, more of a voice here.”

 

And when I say trying to open the door for women to have more of a voice, I don’t mean like women are preaching anywhere. What I mean is they’re allowed to pray publicly on Sunday morning. I mean, they wouldn’t let women be ushers because they would tell men where to sit.

 

Ann Maree:

Oh, okay.

 

Elyse:

But the people who were my friends who are in leadership, they’re telling me, “Okay, this is gonna change.

 

Be patient. We’re working.” They asked me to come in and talk to them about what I thought they could do to make it better for women in that church. I was encouraged by that. And then years go by, five years go by, and really there’s been a little bit of a change because now they’re allowing women to read the passage on a Sunday morning, but really that was all. And then a series of circumstances happened. Now, all this time I’m podcasting. So that book comes out, and now I’m getting canceled again. Speaking engagements are being canceled because we don’t talk in the book about how women are supposed to submit to men. As though you can’t say the word woman without the word submit right next to it.

 

Ann Maree:

Exactly.

 

Elyse:

And it was like– And I, again, go back to the people and say, “Could we talk about this? This is not a book about gender roles. This is a book about how God used women. So there are 5,000 books about how women should submit. This is just a book about how women were used by God in the historical narrative.””No. Sorry. You didn’t talk about women submitting.” Now, that happened a number of occasions. So people who had contracted me to speak rescinded the contracts. Okay. Now, all through this time, all these things are happening in all the same time. All through this time, I have books with a very well-known evangelical publisher, the publisher that most Reformed people really enjoy, and then I get a letter that they are stopping the publication of my books.

 

Again, I was shocked.

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah. I know. I get that too.

 

Elyse:

Again, I was shocked, and I called a friend of mine who worked there and I said, “Well, why are you doing that? Why? Why?” And she said some things that I’m not gonna repeat here. And then I said, “What? What are you talking about?” And she said, “Well, let me call and find out exactly, and then I’ll call you back.”

 

And so she did. She called back and she said, “Well, you’re just not… Your books aren’t selling enough,” which let’s just say it sort of stretches the bounds of credulity. Listen, any publisher can choose to publish or not publish any book they choose, and that is fine. They have that prerogative to do that.

 

Let’s be honest, shall we? Okay. So I get jettisoned by them, and I’m at this church which I think hopefully is changing to be less conservative, and I believe that one of the pastors there, who’s a good friend of ours, is really trying to push this forward. And then I was recording, at the exact same time, a podcast with Mary DeMuth, our friend, and she said that there was the time in her life when she finally realized that she was like Jeremiah, and the word of God was shut up in her bones, and she was tired of holding it in. And Ann Maree, she said that, and it was not in the context of, like, what’s going on in my life or anything like that. She was just talking about her life. And at that instant, I believe, Holy Spirit just drops it into my heart, “You’re exhausted, and this is over.” I just knew it. So I, I got off recording that podcast, and I said, “Phil, we need to talk.”

 

And I said, “Honey, I’ve just had this amazing conversation. I’m telling you, I don’t know what this means, except I know I have to, I have to change. I have to be in a situation where I’m not all the time holding in the Word God has given me or holding in my desire to serve Him. I have to be free from this.”

 

This was a Thursday, Ann Maree. Saturday, this pastor, who was a friend of ours, texted— He and his wife texted and said, “Can we come over? We’ve got something we need to talk to you about.” We said, “Yes, please.” He came over, and he said basically that he was getting let go from the church that we were all part of.

 

It wasn’t a moral failing on his part at all. So then we go to church that Sunday, and then again—the leadership, I believe, is not honest about what was going on with this pastor and why he was not gonna be there anymore. So we left. Never went back. That was the end. It was just so interesting to me that, like, on Thursday, I have this conversation with Phil, and I’m saying, “Okay, God is, like, releasing me or something from having to fit in and holding God’s Word in all the time and listening over and over again to decades of not really great sermons and knowing that I could do that better, but I’m not allowed.”

 

I hope that doesn’t sound proud or anything. I know I had a g—I’m gifted. And then all the time, Ann Maree, and you know what this feels like, all the time saying, “Oh, God, forgive me. I must be so proud. I must be so ambitious. I must be so whatever because I’ve got this word of God, and maybe it’s not really the word of God.”

 

And I just think, you know, all of that business. And then I’m freed from it on that Thursday. Series of events happen. Sunday, we’re out. Now, I do need to say, for the years prior, I wanna say the five years at least prior, I had been studying the Bible about women and their place in the church and what we can or cannot do. And I could show you, I’ve got this massive stack of books that I’ve read, because if I’m gonna do anything, if I’m gonna believe anything, I need to believe it because that’s what the Bible says. And praying over and over again, “God, please keep me from any sort of deception.” So I study and I study and I study, and then I realize, okay, I can’t even– I can’t say I’m complementarian.

 

I cannot use those words anymore. I think it’s a false system. So that’s going on. All of this is going on. And then we leave that church. We go to the church, a church here locally, where our daughter is one of the pastors, ’cause at this point, I’m done trying to fit into the mold of guys who, first of all, I think are wrong theologically, and who want to try to silence the voice of half the church.

 

I’m done. So if I’ve got to go to a teeny little church and, you know, one of the pastors is a man and one of the pastors is a woman, and women are invited to do whatever, use their gifts, and men are invited to do whatever and use their gifts, then that’s where I’m gonna go. And if it’s a funny little church, then it’s a funny little church, and that’s where I’m gonna go. And that was a year ago, little over a year ago. So Ann Maree, one time I preached, and I’m on the teaching team now there, but I think it was, like, the first time I preached there. The pastor, he came up to me after I preached and he said, “Elyse, that was amazing. Thank you.” And I said, “That’s the first time in my life that my pastor has said to me that a message that I gave was amazing or good.”

 

So 53 years. Listen, I don’t wanna live for that, but there’s nothing wrong with it. To have your pastor say to you, “You have amazing gifts, and I’m so sad they haven’t been used.” Right? And to have men there in that church who are so secure in their masculinity and personhood that they can welcome a woman to speak to them.

 

And I mean, having men in the congregation, lovely, godly guys, coming up to me after church, giving me the old, you know, evangelical side hug and saying, “Thank you so much. You really ministered to my soul today.” He said, “Elyse, you were made for this.” This coming week, I’m gonna preach on the Lord’s Prayer, and I’m just chomping at the bit.

 

I’m so thrilled to have these opportunities. And I mean, maybe I preach once a month or something. In one sense, I’m really glad that it’s been a while. I’m really sure that the Lord had so much work He had to do in me and is still doing in me. I’m glad that I’ve had 53 years to study Scripture and to know what the Spirit wants to say to the Church.

 

I’m really glad for all those years of training. But I mean, really, the way that the American evangelical church is– I should say white evangelical church, is presently constructed with the power dynamics that are there. My heart just breaks for all of the women, thousands and thousands of women, that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on so that they would prophesy, so that they would have words from God to speak into their context, who are silenced and heartbroken, and who all the time are second-guessing themselves. Probably the only reason, you know, thinking, “Oh, you’re just not happy here ’cause you just wanna l—want the limelight.” I, I mean, all of this insanity that so many women… And it’s not that. I don’t wanna say, you know, I’m sinless in this. I’m not at all. But, uh, the way that the gifts, the gifts of the Spirit are being silenced, it’s really no wonder that the American Church is where it is Because the prophetic voice that God has given to women is not being heard. So anyway, that’s where I am. 53 years in an hour. The church is small. It may or may not survive. It’s been around for about eight years, so it should be okay, but who knows? But you know what? I’m never going back, and if I am not part of some big, respectable, fancy group of people with buildings and whatever, then fine. I’m just never going back to a place where I’m going to be silenced. And I’ll quit with this, and you can ask me questions if we have time. I don’t know.

 

I see that there was within me this desire to be thought of as respectable and to go to churches that looked respectable. And then I, I’ve been thinking about the early church, the very early church, which really consisted of ragamuffins hanging out in somebody’s house, and most of them were women or slaves. And as Paul said, “Not many noble.” Right? I mean, scum of the earth. But see, we don’t want that scum of the earth thing. We want big buildings, and we want power structures and all of that. And so people go to these churches. And finally, for me, I got to the place where I said, “I don’t want any of that anymore.

 

What I want right now is a group of people who love Jesus that I can hang out with.” So this church I’m in is filled with people who’ve been burned by the church. They’re hanging on by their fingernails, and some church that they can hang on and hang out with other people who’ve been burned by the church but love Jesus. It’s a growing number.

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah. Sadly so.

 

Elyse:

Mm-hmm. Sadly so.

 

But I mean, in a way, think how hard it must have been for the early church, ’cause you got Rome and all the power of Rome, and structures of Rome, and Roman temples in Rome. Well, maybe, you know, if you’re in Jerusalem, it doesn’t mean anything. But if, you know, you’re in Ephesus and you look at the Temple of Artemis, you’re thinking, there’s a lot of safety there, ’cause it’s got, got all this structure.

 

Ann Maree:

If the structure could be safe, yes.

 

Elyse:

Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But it’s easy to think that.

 

Ann Maree:

It is.

 

Elyse:

Or if you’re in Jerusalem and you look at the temple, and you say you got the temple, and you got the law, and all of this, and you got the priesthood, and so that’s safe. And that’s not safe either.

 

Ann Maree:

Mm-mm.

 

Elyse:

It fell.

 

Right, it fell. And all that is gonna remain, you see, and where we have to be comfortable. And it was so hard for me, ’cause again, I’m looking for that being part of that family and respectability in all of this business. To be part of this little group of ragtags who, you know, women and slaves. Women and slaves.And some guys.

 

But it wasn’t primarily a male church. I mean, there were men, but it wasn’t focused on being a male church like the church in America today is.

 

I’ll just put it that way. Okay.

 

Go ahead. Ask questions.

 

Ann Maree:

Oh, dear, my friend. I’ll have to regulate myself, I think, first.

 

Elyse:

I’m sorry.

 

Ann Maree:

No, no, don’t. No, I’m so appreciative. I just didn’t expect for me to be able to find language while you were talking.

 

Elyse:

Yeah.

 

Ann Maree:

I need to process my own thoughts of family, the desire for family, and respectability, and structure, and all the things I’m c—following so closely behind you and always have been.

 

Which I’m sorry to say I’m grateful, I’m so incredibly grateful to you for and, you know, we’ve said this in so many places. Others have said it to you. You are a pacesetter. You have done

the really hard work. I think about you so often. People like Beth Moore, your contemporaries, not very far ahead of me in age, but boy, have you lived the hardness of your situations and 

in doing so, you know, opened the doors for us to walk through. I was thinking as you were talking about writing the book with your daughter about raising children, and how many of those books are coming out now, and the idea of gentle parenting and how they’re getting attacked, but they had no idea-

 

Elyse:

Right.

 

Ann Maree:

what that attack began as and looked like in the beginning. So again, imagery, I’m thinking visuals, and each time you walked into a church, you shined, shone, a light of truth in that space, and God did a work. You know, some people might see a wake of destruction behind you and not recognize that the destruction was what God was doing.

 

He wanted, He wanted to change those people and situations, and He was using you, uh, much as He used the prophets. But, ugh, yeah. So that’s my processing part of it. But I do… I hear this, I hear this thread, and I just wanna make sure that our audience hears the thread as well, and that is the love of the Lord throughout.

 

I am so encouraged that you are able to walk away from studying gender-

 

Elyse:

Yeah.

 

Ann Maree:

and not have to write about gender or s—speak and preach on a Sunday about gender. That you can look into the things that interest you. I’m sure gender did at certain points-and maybe still does. But to be able to have the freedom to study and speak about something else is just a breath.

 

Elyse:

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah. Well—

 

Ann Maree:

It’s—

 

Elyse:

Go ahead.

 

Ann Maree:

wonderful. You know?

 

Elyse:

And I know very well where, of all the stuff that’s going on about gender and women’s roles in churches and all this, I honestly, I just wanna talk about Jesus.

 

I’ve done the fighting. I’ve done a lot of it.

 

But I’m just in a place now where I can just say, “Please let me just talk about that one I love. Let me just, let me just talk about Him.”

 

Ann Maree:

And if you would, for just the last minutes that we’re together, tell me about how did all of these things pave the way for you in your relationship and getting so much closer and loving the Lord so much more?

 

How did… I mean, give our audience some hope that the hard becomes the good.

 

Elyse:

I wanna say that just the one thing that has held me, put it this way. I mean, of course I’m, I’m married to Phil, who’s-

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah. Well, there’s that.

 

Elyse:

… who’s just my rock, you know? He’s just so delightful. I mean, you know, he’s a guy, but-

 

Ann Maree:

Phil-er.

 

Elyse:

He is Phil. A friend of mine who actually has walked away from church, she said, “Yeah, but are you… Why are you still going? Are you gonna just stay in it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, ’cause Jesus.” ‘Cause Jesus, I don’t wanna confuse the church with Jesus. Jesus, if Jesus saw the American church, I’m quite sure He would have words to say. But he’s lovely and so kind and gracious and filled with so much light and beauty and goodness. And you know what? He walked away from respectability, and he walked away from safety. He purposefully hung out with women. He walked away from all of that out of love for us. Yeah, there are hard things, but you know what? They’re no harder than what He’s gone through for us. And the very people who should’ve loved Him executed Him.

 

Even His own disciples, His own followers deserted Him. And as we say at communion, on the night He was betrayed.

 

So, you know, in whatever betrayal or desertion or unkindness or, you know, whatever, in whatever of that I’ve walked through, I know He knows. I know He feels it. And Ann Maree, someday, and hopefully soon, someday we’ll see Him face to face.

 

And it will make all of this just seem, as Mother Teresa says– said, like one night in an inconvenient motel.

 

Ann Maree:

Yeah. I didn’t hear that.

 

Elyse:

So how do we make it through the hard? We make it through the hard by walking with the one whose hands bear scars.

 

We hold His hand. And we do that through prayer, through study, through His Word, through just sort of musing on Him in your heart all the time, thinking about Him.

 

And then all the times that you forget He ever existed, then go back and think about Him again, and He’ll still be there waiting. But Ann Maree, this isn’t all there is, and that’s my only hope. Period, exclamation point.

 

Ann Maree:

Well, I thank you for the vulnerability of sharing so many harmful and personal situations, things that you’ve had to listen to and endure and experience. I continue to pray that your story will matter to our audience, people who have also been similarly harmed, that they will also glean from you your walk.

 

And gosh darn, I’m so disappointed that you’re so gospel-centric. I mean, those were some of the first things I heard about you, and I thought, “Wait, what? This is a problem?”

 

Elyse:

Yeah.

 

Ann Maree:

She just always talks about the gospel. Ugh. It’s horrible. Please do not stop.

 

Yeah. I could live in one of your books because that was where the gospel met me, and I will say, I won’t say the title, but yes, there are…

 

It runs throughout everything you’ve ever written. I can feel and hear the beauty of that gospel. And so I hope that’s what our audience takes away, and also knowledge of the hope of our future—and how that can sustain us in the present. Anything else that you wanna share? Anything else our audience should know before we close this?

 

Elyse:

Just because I’m preaching on the Lord’s Prayer this week, I’ve been really struck by the fact that this is Jesus’ prayer, and His prayer is that His Father’s beautiful kingdom and rule would come, and all His Father’s desires would be fulfilled here on Earth as they already are in that other dimension, Heaven. And that’s our hope. Jesus prayed that. the Church has been praying that for thousands of years. Things are going to change. Things will change. Let’s just hang on till then.

 

Ann Maree:

Thank you. That is the promise that we can trust in. Well, again, thank you for spending time with us.

 

Thank you for sharing yourself with us, and especially in the busy, important work that you’re doing, that you took time away today.

 

Elyse:

 

I appreciate you. Thank you, Ann Maree. Love you so much.

 

Ann Maree:

Love you too. Thank you.

 

Safe to Hope is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting survivors and honoring the dignity of their stories. Their support allows us to remain independent, trauma-specialized, and committed to truth-telling without pressure or performance.

 

We are deeply grateful to our donors for their partnership. If this conversation stirred something for you, please know you do not have to carry it alone. Support resources are listed in the show notes, and you’re welcome to reach out in the ways that feel safest for you. Safe to Hope is a production of Help[H]er.

 

The podcast is executive produced by Ann Maree Goudzwaard, with audio production, mixing, and editing provided by Forward Agency in Raleigh, North Carolina