Bare Marriage

Episode 248: Making Faith More Tangible in the Holy Everyday feat. Karen Stiller

August 29, 2024 • Sheila Gregoire • Season 8 • Episode 248

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 What does it look like to actually grow like Christ? Like, not from a sermon, or not from some lofty retreat, but just in the here and now? Can we actually grow “holier”? A beautiful conversation with Karen Stiller, author of the book Holiness Here. We tackle envy, joy, contentment—and even grief, as she shares about processing the death of her husband.

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Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.  And wow.  It is almost Labor Day, so that means that a lot of you in the U.S. are probably back to school already.  I think most of us in Canada go back to school next week.  And if you’re in Australia or New Zealand, you might just be in the middle of school because I think it’s winter there or something.  But there’s a lot of transitions coming up.  And so as we’re getting ready for transitions, I just want to tell you about a transition that’s going to be happening soon here speaking of kids going back to school.  For years, we have been selling a puberty course where my daughters, Rebecca and Katie, teach your daughters about sex and puberty, and we also have some amazing guys teaching the boys about sex and puberty.  But we created that course originally in 2017.  And this summer, for the last few months, we’ve been massively overhauling it.  And in a few weeks, we’re going to be launching the new version.  The all new version.  And it is awesome.  I am so excited to share it with you.  If you have the older version and you bought the lifetime subscription, you will get access to this new version as well.  Or if you buy it right now, you will also get access to the new version.  So the link is going to be in the podcast notes, but that’s just a heads up to look for that.  Because if you’re wondering, “How do I talk to my teens and my preteens and my little kids about your period and about wet dreams and about sex and what all that is,” well, it’s coming.  And it’s going to be awesome.  I also—a couple of other announcements.  We, Keith and I, are going to be in South Dakota, in Lead, South Dakota—I think that’s how you say the name.  At the Opera House giving a marriage conference at the end of September.  We’re actually going to debut all of our new stats and our new information from our marriage book, The Marriage You Want, which is coming out in March.  So this is your chance to get a sneak peak.  We don’t do a lot of speaking right now.  We kind of like being home near our grandkids.  And we have so much writing to do, so we don’t get on speaking tours that often.  So I don’t know how many more marriage conferences we’re going to do in the next year.  So this is your chance.  If you want to see us at a marriage conference, then go check out the link for the South Dakota event. And the link is in the podcast notes.  We are also going to be doing a marriage cruise in February.  We’re not going to have teaching, per se.  It’s more like a Bare Marriage cruise where you can meet us and Joanna and Rebecca and the whole team.  Everybody is coming including their kids.  And we’re going to have some just fun events, some Q&As.  We’re going to tell you all about your new stats from our marriage research, our new book, and more.  So you can take a look at the information for that too in our podcast notes.  And then, finally, before I come to our new special guest today, I just wanted to say thank you to our patrons, who support us on a monthly basis and who make my life so much easier online with our amazing patron Facebook group.  And you can join that for as little as $5 a month at patreon.com/baremarriage.  And, of course, if you would like to give a tax deductible receipt, you can also do that through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation.  We talk here at Bare Marriage a lot about what is wrong with sex and marriage and teaching in the church.  But did you know that we also have courses to help teach you what is right? We have an orgasm course, which is just awesome.  If you are one of the many women, who has had trouble reaching orgasm and you’re just not sure if you’re ever going to get there, we have something for you to give you hope and to give you really practical help.  It’s totally evidence based.  We scoured the literature looking for all the essential ingredients to orgasm, and we’ve laid it out so well for you.  So check out our orgasm course.  The link is in the podcast notes.  And now, without further ado, here is our interview.  Okay, everybody.  It is not very often that I bring on the podcast someone that I know in real life and have known for ages.  And I think, Karen Stiller, you have the honor of being the person, who has known me the longest who has ever been on this podcast other than my own family. 

Karen: I love that.  We have known each other a long time.

Sheila: 22 years.  I figured it out this morning.  

Karen: Oh my goodness. 

Sheila: 22 years.  Yes, indeed.  So Karen is the editor at Faith Today magazine, which is Canada’s evangelical magazine.  She is an author, freelance writer.  She’s won a ton of awards.  You got me started in a lot of ways.  You hired me to write a bunch of stuff for Faith Today over the years.  You were one of the first ones who got me writing about sex.

Karen: Actually, I do have this memory.  And you can—and I don’t want to take too much credit.  But I do have this memory of us being at this writing conference that we both used to go to.  And in my memory, I said, “You should be the Christian sex lady.”    

Sheila: Yeah.  And then you hired me.

Karen: So you’re welcome.  You’re welcome, everybody.

Sheila: Yeah.  And you hired me.  I think it was in 2000—I don't know.  Eight, nine, ten?  To do this cover story on sex for Faith Today.  And yeah.  It got me slotted in that direction, and then I went in that direction. 

Karen: Well, you do a great work.  I’m so proud of what you’ve done and what you’re doing.  And I love telling people, “Oh, Sheila Wray Gregoire.  She’s a friend of mine.”  Yeah.  So I am cheering you on every step of the way.

Sheila: Yeah.  So we roomed together at conferences.  We did a lot.  And you have put out this new book, Holiness Here.  And it’s hard to explain, but this is such a beautiful book.  It’s quiet but profound.  And we need quiet.  We have so much loud in this world, and we need quiet and profound.  This is going to sound odd.  Okay?  But in many ways, this is like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood but not in a saccharine, sweet way but in an okay.  I feel better.  I feel like I can do this.  I feel like there’s people rooting me—it’s lovely.  It’s truly lovely.

Karen:   Thank you.  That may be the best compliment I’ve had about the book.  I think that’s just a beautiful way to receive it, and I’m really grateful that that was your experience reading that because it is a topic that can be fraught and can feel like it has hard edges.  And I want it to—part of my exploring it was discovering some softness I think.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  So let’s talk about those hard edges.  So when we hear the word holiness, we all go ugh.  Just ugh.  

Karen: Yeah.  Absolutely.

Sheila: Why?

Karen: When I was doing my research or in the process of writing the book, people—if I confessed to them what I was doing, I often got that reaction like holiness.  You’re writing about holiness.  And then also implied in that, I think, was a little bit of who are you to write about holiness because I’m just an ordinary Christian.  And the domain of holiness, I think, has been occupied by, as it should be I guess, theologians and older works, I think.  So it’s not a word we even use that much anymore.  But I was in church one Sunday, and one of the pastors, who is a friend of mine—Pastor Michelle—prayed, “Give us grace, God, to lead a holy life.”  And I was just struck in that moment by the question.  What does that mean?  And I’ve always been wanting my faith life to make a difference in my life, to make a difference in me.  And I’ve been engaged actively in my faith for a long time now.  I was also curious—has it made a difference?  To me, that does have to do with how we view ourselves as holy people which God has told us we are and also being a minister’s wife over the years has added to my confusion because I realize that people thought certain things about us because my husband was an Anglican priest.  And I know that we’re messy and real and broken and all those things just like everybody.  And so that gap of perception interested me as well because people do think holiness means a whole bunch of rules and, I think, no fun and people telling you what to do.

Sheila: Yeah.  Absolutely.  I think—yeah.  When I think of holiness or I think probably the common perception of holiness is then we aren’t going to sin and by what we mean by sin—so it’s like holiness is the absence of something.  It’s not the presence of something.  It’s the absence of something, right?  So holiness is the absence of sin.  And, usually, when we mean the absence of sin, we mean the absence of sexual sin because that seems to be the sin that, at least in the evangelical world, we’re so consumed with.  And so we have this really—this view of holiness where it’s kind of like I am better than everybody else because I don’t do all of these things.

Karen: Right.  Right.  

Sheila: And that’s not the picture that you paint at all.  

Karen: Yeah.  I think that’s really exactly it.  I think you’ve nailed the—what I refer to in the book as holiness’s public relations problem.  And it may be—pardon me—part of the faith tradition I’m in which is Anglicanism where every week in the service we confess.  And we confess the things we’ve done and the things we haven’t done that should have done or could have done.  And so I’ve never, for one second in my Christian walk, thought that holiness meant being without sin.  But I think you’re right.  I think that is what people—pardon me—think about it as.  And I think holiness is more beautiful than that and more loving and more relational and warmer.  And no wonder people are turned off by it when we think about it as a list of does and don’ts.  Or mostly don’ts.  As opposed to an invitation, which is how I was trying to frame it.  That holiness is a warm invitation to a new and better way of life.  And it will—I think, inevitably, it will mean that we make—as we live out of our holiness and embrace a holy life—it will mean that we probably do stop doing some things and start doing new things.  But that shouldn’t be a surprise, I would say, in terms of what Jesus has asked us to be.  Salt and light in the world.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  But it’s not only that.  And you describe it as this transformation that happens moment by moment.  Holiness is—yeah.  It’s just living out that transformation.

Karen: Right.  Right.  And that we are participants in our own transformation.  That part, I think, is really important.  It was important for me to realize and embrace because I think I had this wrong idea that you just become this new—pardon me—new creation.  And we do.  But it’s also a lifelong process, right?  We are, and we are becoming.  We have been changed, and we are changing.  And we get to change and to view that as an adventure instead of a burden.  It is a mindset change.  It is hard work to think like that, but I think it’s worth it.

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  There’s something that I’ve been talking on—talking about on the Bare Marriage podcast on a number of different podcasts in the last two years.  And that’s exploring how we may have even gotten the whole concept of Christianity wrong.  And I have this theory, so I’m going to throw this to you.  And Billy Graham didn’t start it.  You can trace it back to Dwight L. Moody, even to the Wesleys and their movement.  But that Christianity became all about saying the prayer.  Like these revival ministries where you say the prayer and then you’re in.  And Dwight L. Moody was famous for saying that he would never give a sermon where he didn’t give an invitation, where that wasn’t the call to action was to come to Jesus after the great fire and so many perished.  And so he was going to always invite people to say this prayer, and many, especially in the evangelical tradition, have taken that on.  My problem with this is that if the focus is always on saying the prayer once you’ve said the prayer, what is there?  

Karen: Right.  Exactly.  Yeah.  Yeah.  I absolutely see the problem with that. 

Sheila: And I have been in so many church services where the whole emphasis is on getting people to say the prayer.  97% of people have already said the prayer.  And I know we’re supposed to care about the 3%.  But if we’re giving the impression that once you’ve said the prayer, you’re in, and there’s really no work to do other than to judge everybody else for not being where you are now it’s just really problematic.  Because then what’s the point?  

Karen: Right.  Right.  Exactly.  And further to that, I remember being that—a large—probably the last time I went to a large Christian event.  And I went as kind of a reporter.  And, actually, it was Franklin Graham speaking.  And he also, to add to your problem, kept saying, “Are you sure?  Are you really sure?  Are you sure?  Are you really sure that you have said the big yes?”  And I’ve been a Christian for years and years, at that point.  And I thought, “I think I’m sure.  I feel like I’m sure.  I’ve been baptized.  I was sure.  An hour ago I was sure.”  So yeah.  There is that over—I think overemphasis on this big moment of ticking off some boxes, and then you’re kind of flung into this new life supposedly.  But are you being discipled even by other people?  But are you also taking some—I think control of your spiritual journey and letting yourself be changed by the love of God?  And then really trying to love other people in that way.  Because the thing is I think there is some effort required.  And that can be—you could look at that as work.  But I try and think of it as a response to love.  And us saying yes to this ongoing invitation that is there for our whole lives to trust again, to believe that you believe, to choose to stand in the community of saints, who can support you when everything falls apart, when you have big doubts.  We need to embrace our doubts and our questions and just make room for those things.  So I’ve wandered from your first point, but you’re right.  That over concentration on just ticking off the boxes is not healthy for us.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because life is supposed to be a journey.  It’s supposed to be this journey with God.  And you said this.  You said, “The story of faith is almost always a story of change.”  And that’s what we should be living.  And so the question is what does that look like.  And that’s really the question you’re asking, I think, in this book is what does holiness look like in the here and now because—I mean—and this is partly my personality.  You would know this about me, Karen.  But I tend to think in terms of big things, right?  I’m going to do big things for God.  And then you get upset at yourself if the big thing isn’t happening, or we impress on our kids we need to change the world.  And in so doing, sometimes we forget about the neighbor next door whose husband fell and needed a hip replacement last week.  We just don’t pay attention to the little things.  And it’s often in these little things where God meets us.       

Karen: Yeah.  I really believe that.  And I learned that in church life, as a pastor’s wife, watching people’s lives up close, you get invited into the—usually, the dramatic moments.  The big, bad things that have happened or the big celebrations.  But most of our lives are lived in the ordinary.  And so yeah.  The neighbor, the people right in front of you, the people in your church, yes.  But so importantly, the people who aren’t in your church like who you are in the world.  Loving without the goal of changing people, that’s part of it, I think, very much.  We’re not always loving—actively loving in order to lure them into church.  It’s strings free.  Love and service.  And then what happens when we embrace these invitations is we do start to change.  And one thing I explore in the book probably a lot is that as we try a little bit—so if I see my neighbor is in need and I go out and think, “Yeah.  I’m going to give them an hour of my time or I’m going to—whatever.  Give them this thing.  Do this action,”—then if I’m paying attention to my insides at least, sometimes I’m resentful.  I’m grouchy.  I want to thank you.  I’m disappointed that it’s not a big feel good experience for me.  I may think, “Wow.  You really got yourself into this.  Why am I helping you?”  I may actually think and believe all those things for a moment.  And that gives me an opportunity to say okay.  What’s happening in my heart?  And it’s not about self condemnation.  Again, it’s this invitation to think what does it mean to love.  What do I need to ask forgiveness for?  And how can I grow?  And how can I share this—the fullness of who I am in the reality of my life and not hold myself to this impossible standard of I need to feel like this beautiful, loving feeling when I love my neighbor?  Well, I may not.  And if I wait for that feeling, I may never do the work that is right in front of me to do.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  So it’s like go out and do it.    

Karen: Yeah.  Go out and do it.

Sheila: And that’s when—yeah.  Your heart starts to change when God can start nudging you.  And I love that.  There’s so many little stories like your book is just this series of vignettes.  And they’re very beautiful and very moving.  There was one where you starting to think about holiness and what it looks like.  And you share this anecdote about your friends, Rob and Margo.  Margo, who worked at the radio station.  Can you tell us that?  Because I just thought that was really touching.  

Karen: Yeah.  So we were—I was starting to talk about holiness a little bit because part of what I realized was that it just doesn’t get talked about very much.  And so—yeah.  We were having our friends, Rob and Margo, over for dinner.  And Rob was sharing that his wife was known for being a good listener in her very, very secular workplace.  So a setting where she probably, if I’m guessing correctly—probably wouldn’t have shared openly that she was a churchgoer, at least not for a long time.  And so he was saying, “You’re such a good listener, Margo.  People know they can depend on you.”  And I said to her, “Well, that is you being holy, I think.  I think that is a holy thing.”  And she was like, “I’m not holy,”—almost like don’t put that on me.  And it was just really interesting because we don’t—we’re uncomfortable thinking of ourselves like that.  And I think part of it is because then we think people will expect things from us that maybe we can’t live up to or we don’t feel like we can.  So I think when we bring holiness down to earth a little bit, like you said, in our everyday moments it actually becomes who we are and who we get to be.  Who we are and what we do, both.  And it doesn’t have to be a big, scary thing.

Sheila: Yeah.  I love it.  And part of holiness—in several of your chapters, you looked at this from different points of view—but, I think, is giving up our yardsticks about how we measure things whether it’s our bodies, how we pick at our bodies, how we measure our homes, our wealth, and how we judge others.  That can be hard, I think.  You’ve lived as a pastor’s wife.  You lived as a pastor’s wife for many years.  And there’s always people with more money around you.  And you’re always struggling more than a lot of them are.  What’s that like to say, no, I’m not going to use the yardstick?

Karen: Yeah.  I mean that was a long journey for me.  And, again, really confronted with my own self and having to decide, okay.  Am I going to become better or bitter, as they say?  How am I going to be a satisfied 90-year-old woman?  That’s always been—I pick on 90 year olds.

Sheila: I ask myself that question a lot too lately.  

Karen: Do you?

Sheila: Yeah.  Because I am so afraid I’m going to get to be 75 and then I’m just going to—I don't know.  My personality is going to get really intense, and I’ll be terrible to all caregivers.     

Karen: Yeah.  Exactly.  No.  I think it’s actually a helpful little way to think.  That’s actually what made me write this book was that question in a way because I was like, well, when I’m 90 will I regret not trying to write another book.  And I thought yeah.  I would.  I would regret not writing another book.  So that’s when I started to think about what would I like to write about.  So when I picture myself as a 90-year-old woman, I’m hoping that I’ll be one of those delightful characters, who people love to talk to, and I’m a great listener, and I’m content.  I’m content.  And contentment has always been elusive for me, I think.  When I thought about—in pastoral life, okay.  I’ve got to deal with this envy.  I have to deal with this discontentment.  I have to deal with this fear and anxiety around things like money or just major FOMO at every level.  And then also—but that’s also coupled with getting to see behind the scenes in people’s lives a little bit and seeing that nobody has it all together actually.  And the shiniest family in your church—it might all fall apart in a second.  So that was another big lesson for me is that we don’t really know what’s happening in other people’s lives, and we really are in this together.  And so what helps, I think, is being honest.  And I learned that being a pastor’s wife.  The inclination is to cover and hide and pretend, and I completely get that temptation.  But the antidote is honesty.  This is who I am.  I am trying just like you.  I am being loved just like you are.  And we are in this together.  So I think that’s how I got through it.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And these yardsticks.  Part of what they do is they can make us really self conscious, right?  But that self consciousness is actually a barrier to holiness because then we’re thinking about ourselves rather than what others need or what others are going through, right?  

Karen: Yeah.  I think that’s true.  And just staring at our own bellybuttons all the time as my husband would always say.  Pull your head out of your bellybutton.  But there is some wisdom there.  And yeah.  Being so concerned about what other people think of us and trying to impress people.  I feel like this is less of a problem now, but I think North American church went through this period of being—accused of being hypocritical, which may be that that was true.  I feel like people are more comfortable now saying that they are leading a messy life.  You’ve probably been part of that.  You’ve pulled back the curtain on some really important things.  That’s really good.  Honesty leads to growth.  I really believe that. 

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  I think so too.  Honesty with humility.  Because, I think, often when we’re self conscious, we feel like we’re humble because we’re like—yeah.  Humility is a funny thing.  Because when we’re judging ourselves and thinking we don’t measure up, that feels humble, but that’s not actually humility.  

Karen: Right.  Yeah.  That’s a big—can be a big obsession with self.

Sheila: Yeah.  Okay.  There was a part of your book that made me laugh, and I have to go back in time for a minute.  You talked about how the body is holy too.  It’s not just our actions.  Our bodies are holy.  And in our bodies, we can serve God.  And you talked about the worship service and all the things that we do in the worship service.  You kneel.  You stand.  Lift up your hearts to the Lord.  We lift them up.  So you’re describing the Anglican service.  And I wrote an article for Faith Today, and it was probably 15 years ago now.  And you and I got into a discussion about it because my thesis was that we’re doing church all wrong.  And I was writing from an evangelical perspective.  But I said okay.  People’s biggest need today is for community because people are lonely.  People are disconnected.  We don’t have authenticity in our lives.  We don’t have people that we can share with.  We don’t feel connected, and so we need community.  500 years ago people’s biggest need was for knowledge and for teaching because a lot of people were illiterate.  A lot of people didn’t own Bibles.  So when you went to church, you needed someone to teach you what the Bible was saying.  You needed to hear Scripture, et cetera, et cetera.  But today we have podcasts galore.

Karen: Right.  Many.  Many.  

Sheila: Teaching is not at a premium.  Teaching is everywhere.  And what we need is that safe community that can help us with discernment, that can help us—that can be there with us, et cetera, et cetera.  And so my thesis was the modern church service is out of touch with what we need today.  It’s still thinking about what we need 500 years ago when we needed teaching, and we’re missing community.  And I said even the worship songs that we sing—so many of them are—so many worship teams are so highly produced.  And what they’re actually singing is not congregational songs.  They’re singing performance songs that are very difficult to sing along with.  It’s not like the hymns with four verses and the same chorus and everybody knows it, and you can read along or sing from the words.  It’s like this is a song that nobody knows, and the worship team is singing it.  So it’s not participatory.  For most people, church is not participatory.  And you said I don’t really get that because church is really participatory for me.  

Karen: Right.  I can remember that.  

Sheila: And I never thought of that before.  But in the Anglican tradition, it’s not the pastor speaking at the congregation.  It’s going back and forth, and you’re participating in it.  And now that I’m at an Anglican church again it’s like oh wow.  This is really different.    

Karen: Yeah.  That’s great.  I am so glad you brought up that article.  I was thinking, “What if I don’t remember it?”  But I do remember it.  And I remember our conversation because I—and I have experienced that.  Worshipping as observer thing that you’re talking about where I will go visit a different kind of church and think, “Oh, there’s nothing for me to do,” almost.  I’m sitting here.  In my worst moments, I’ll feel like I’m watching a show.  And then it’s also very dependent on my emotions like how the worship experience is for me.  Did I feel chills?  Was I moved?  How am I doing?  Whereas you’re right.  The church is so much bigger than that.  So sometimes when I hear about people deconstructing or leaving—and I follow you.  I read.  The comments are fascinating to me.  I mean you have a lively community interacting with your work.  But sometimes I’ve wanted to say, and I probably have a couple times, there are other kinds of churches.  There are other—it’s—you can leave evangelicalism and not leave the church and not your leave your faith.  It’s a big old world out there.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And I know it’s tough because Anglicanism in Canada is different from Anglicanism in the U.S. and is different even from Anglicanism in Australia in some ways.  Because in Canada, Anglicanism—gosh, we’ve had—I say we, and I’m so new to this.  Anglicanism in Canada has had female pastors for—gosh.  I don't know how long.  80s?  70s?    

Karen: Yeah.  I don’t even know.  But for sure years and years.  Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah.  When we talk to the priest at the church where we go to now, he just couldn’t believe this was an issue.  He was like what.  In the evangelical church still.  But I know in the U.S. there’s still—a lot of the Anglican churches are still heavily complementarian.  In Australia, there’s the Sydney diocese, which is heavily complementarian.  So it’s not always the same worldwide.    

Karen: Right.  Yep.  And church to church can vary too, I guess.  

Sheila: Yes.  But there are definitely different expressions of church.  And I think that is one thing—one of the reasons that we ended up going to an Anglican church was I said to Keith—we had been driving 40 minutes to a church where it was entirely observation.  You didn’t participate.  You just listened to a sermon.  And the sermons were objectively quite good, but I can listen to a sermon at home.  And the music was objectively quite good, but I can listen to music at home.  And there really wasn’t much community.  And I was just going through a really rough time with everything we were doing with writing the books and—yeah.  And I’ve shared so much of this on the podcast.  Just my crisis of faith when people I thought loved Jesus didn’t care that they were hurting people.  That was hard.  And I said I just need to go someplace where I don’t need to be happy on a Sunday morning, and that’s okay.    

Karen: Mm-hmm.  That’s really good.

Sheila: And going to a place where truth is spoken over me and where I speak truth even if I don’t feel it, but the truth is still spoken is really powerful.  Because there’s no expectation that you have to feel this, but we are all just declaring it to be true.  And people are declaring it over me.  And I really appreciate that.  And that’s not for everybody.    

Karen: That’s beautiful.   

Sheila: I know that’s not for everybody.  And that’s the thing.  There are so many different—but—and maybe that’s what I want people to take away from this is that if you’re in a faith tradition that is stifling you or you don’t feel alive or you—just know that this is not the only way to find Jesus or to experience Jesus.  That there are many, many denominations and try outside of your denomination.  Whatever that may be.  

Karen: Yeah.  I like that.  And your description—and, again, we’re not trying to sell Anglicanism here, but your description of your journey toward that tradition reminds me very much of how Beth Moore has described it.  I don't know if you read her—yeah. 

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Yes.  Yeah.

Karen: And so there is something there about not having to work so hard that is quite lovely.  And I mean I’ve seen that over the years.  We always had the, what I called, weary evangelical cohort in our churches.  People who found relief even just for a time.  Maybe just a time.  So I think that’s lovely.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And I do love all the Scriptures.  I’m reading Scripture in service now.  It’s fun.  I’m one of the Scripture readers.

Karen: Oh, beautiful.  

Sheila: Yeah.  So is Keith.

Karen: I love that.  The word of the Lord.

Sheila: Thanks be to God.  Yeah.  Yeah.  No.  So it is lovely to have so much Scripture passages.  There’s more Scripture read in the church than in the evangelical churches that I ever went to every week.  And the sermon is always focused on, usually, the Gospel reading and sometimes some of the other readings too which I really appreciate because it’s not just whatever the priest wants to talk about.  It really is focused on Jesus’ words and Jesus’ life.  

Karen: And, Sheila, what I’m thinking right now too—this has reminded me of one of the other problems within evangelicalism is this—it’s not just judging people.  It’s judging entire denominations, right?  My husband grew up in an evangelical home, was part of those traditions.  We moved into Anglicanism probably half way during his seminary time at Regent College.  And I work in an evangelical subculture setting.  To this day, I feel like—I mean less so now.  But there is a period of convincing people we’re still Christians.  He’s actually not an Anglican because he’s on mission within the denomination which is what his granny thought.  So that kind of we have the right way.  We have all the answers thing really is pervasive in other ways, or it used to be.  I hope it’s changed a bit.

Sheila: Yeah.  And Rebecca, who lives around the corner from me, has ended up at a different church, so we’re not—I’m not trying to say that this is the way at all.

Karen: Of course.  Yeah.    

Sheila: And her church is really, really good too.  But just that there—if you’re feeling dead, there are options.  

Karen: Yeah.  Exactly.  

Sheila: And please, please don’t stay dead because it’s hard.  It’s really hard if every Sunday morning you have to get yourself out of bed and you have to fight because you don’t want to go to church.  And you know you’re going to feel worse afterwards, but you feel like, well, this is just something that I have to do.  And that’s just—ugh.  Yeah.  So we don’t want that.

Karen: Double ugh.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Really.  And so yeah.  I think what I have really appreciated and what I saw so many of the snippets in your book is just—almost like what you were describing is what I experienced reading—how do you say her name?  Was it Jan Karon?  Is it just Jan Karon?  

Karen: Yeah.  That’s how I’ve always said it.  Yeah.

Sheila: Okay.  I’m always scared that I’m saying it wrong.  But her lovely Mitford series with—if you haven’t read the Mitford series, people, you need to read the Mitford series.  They’re quiet books.  They’re just—a dog gets lost.  There’s not this huge thing that happens.  They’re really stories of everyday holiness, and they’re quiet.  But it’s this desire to love those who are around you no matter where they’re at and not because you want to convert them, not because you want to get them into your church but just because they matter.  

Karen: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  And that is the—for most of us, that is the most obvious path of holiness in fact.  It is a relationship with other people.  I mean that’s where the rubber hits the road.  And so it is an invitation that is there all the time.  And in one discussion about the book, an interview asked me—and I thought this was such an interesting question.  What about the big saints?  The people—the martyrs of the faith.  Were they more holy?   That is a great question, and I thought about that when I was preparing to write.  And I think what I think is that we actually don’t know what we would do in those situations.  It’s easy for us to think, well, I could never do that.  Well, actually, you might in fact.  You might be able to say yes to the Mount Everest challenge actually.  And you know what?  You probably would.  And so we can learn from these amazing examples, and we should.  And they’re inspiring. But it’s no less amazing actually.  Well, maybe it is.  I don't know.  But to help your neighbor.  And as we grow, I think we see more opportunities to be more daring and more adventurous.

Sheila: But don’t you think actually helping a neighbor is the way to change the world?  

Karen: I do.

Sheila: My son-in-law and I were talking about this.  We were on the beach a couple days ago.  And his daughter, my granddaughter, wouldn’t actually go in the water.  She just wanted to stand by the edge of the water and throw rocks, so we couldn’t really do much.  So we were just standing there with her.  And we had this great conversation.  And he said one of the issues he thinks today is that things have gotten so big, and we’re all concerned with these huge issues, right?  Whether it’s the American election or the war in Ukraine or the war in Israel or all of these things that we can’t actually do anything about.  Especially you and I as Canadians, we cannot do anything about much of that.  And we have our own issues in Canada too, but we’re focused on all of these really, really big things that we can’t change.  And the world—I think people’s mental health is focused on these really big things that, as individuals, we can’t effect.  And what would happen if we put our emotional energy into the things that we can change?  

Karen: Yeah.  Yeah.  That’s really good.  I think that’s right.  And if I pull that out and apply it again to the conversation of holiness, I think, again, we’re not these passive recipients of our identity.  We get to be actively engaged in our life of—where God is present in every moment we believe.  And so what does that look like?  Again, viewed as an invitation to engage as we grow.  It’s so much more powerful actually.  

Sheila: Yeah.  I did find your book convicting especially in the story of—when you were flying down to Florida to be with your mother-in-law when she had a health scare.  I mean the lines in airports are one of the worst places for me.  I have led revolts in three airports now.  I stood on the chair at the Nairobi airport at one point and demanded that they get us all water and bathroom breaks because we were stuck in this room when our plane was delayed.  I mean I’ve done things at the Pearson airport too that when—anyway—in Toronto.

Karen: Oh Sheila.  

Sheila: Oh my goodness.  I’m not a holy person when I am in airports.  It brings out the worst in me.  I usually get things done, but it brings out the worst in me.

Karen: Well, I would say that’s not not being holy.      

Sheila: Well, I don't know.      

Karen: Sounds kind of righteous.  Demanding water.

Sheila: Perhaps my—the effects of it were good, but my heart was not.    

Karen: Got it.  Got it.  And then that’s the invitation to say, dear heart, what’s happening in there.  

Sheila: Yes.  Exactly.  And that’s what you showed.  So you told the story of being in an airport line and just judging everybody in this line.  

Karen: Yeah.  Yeah.  Yes.  It was a judgeathon.  It really was.   

Sheila: And you’re not actively being mean to anyone.  It’s just like ugh.  Yeah.  Everybody is bothering you.  And how even that can be an invitation to holiness.

Karen: Yeah.  To notice.  To pay attention.  There’s so much about being curious that helps us in every aspect of our life.  But just being curious about your own self and your neighbor and your feelings.  And why am I feeling this?  It’s not relentless introspection as we’ve already said but being gently curious is very helpful.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  And that invitation to something better and more peaceful and more in line with when I’m 90 I’m not going to be beating up the care workers.  And they’re not going to be drawing lots to see who is the one who has to go in to Sheila today.

Karen: Yes.  That’s right.  Exactly.  

Sheila: And then you gave this funny example too you could tell people about maybe.  Of you had this great plan to do all of this work.  You were going to get up early.  8:00 in the morning.  Do all this work.  And then your neighbors decided just to be so loud.  

Karen: Right.  Right.  Yes.  And that kept me up.  So I was going to write all on a Saturday.  I had my big plans, and then they were so loud.  And I woke up with little sleep feeling really angry.  And I thought, “Well, they’re asleep now,” so I went and—we have a duplex—pardon me—with sort of thin walls.  So I jumped up and down right on the other side of the wall to try to wake them.  And then I slammed doors for good measure.  I was so angry and tired and just incredibly grouchy.  And then later I thought, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t acted like that,” even though I gave myself grace.  I was really tired, and you kept me up all night.  And so I baked them cookies.  And my husband and I get in this little conversation about is this passive aggressive.  What is the point of the cookies?  But in the end decided the cookies were good—a good thing to do.  And, of course, my neighbor read the book, so I had to own that.  Yeah.  When I realized what was happening, I—we were out for dinner together.  And I said, “I need to tell you.  You’re in the book,” and I told her this thing.  She was funny.  She was great.  She was great.  She has a sense of humor.

Sheila: Right.  Now you were writing this book.  And you started it, but then, I guess—was it part way through?  Or maybe after you finished it?  Your husband—

Karen: Part way through. 

Sheila: Yeah.  Your husband passed away.  

Karen: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sheila: And it was sudden even though he had been ill for a long time.  But you had thought that things were good.

Karen: Yeah.  He had lived with kidney disease, which is actually quite livable for a long, long time.  And then he reached the point where he needed a kidney transplant.  And so he received that, and he was fine for a year.  And then it all fell apart, and he was hit with a very rare side effect.  Post transplant lymphoma.  And he died within five weeks.   

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And that was just over a year ago now.  And you’d been married to Brent for how long?

Karen: It would have been 34 years this June.  So yeah.  We were almost 33 years when he died.  Yeah.  Yeah.  So it was very unexpected.  Cataclysmic as these things are.  And yeah.  I was eight chapters into the book, so I—when he went into the hospital, I, obviously, set it aside.  And then eventually, I picked it back up again and thought, “Well, can I finish it?  And do I want to?”  And part of that work was me going back through and saying, “Can I still say this?  Do I still believe this,” because it has been a foundation shifting experience for me and my family.  The loss of Brent.  And a revealing of perhaps things that I did think that were wrong even theologically.  Like Brent was always—he would call himself a realist.  And he had suffered loss in his life through the death of his sister years ago.  And so he did not have any kind of idea of if you follow God, if you love God, things are going to work out.  He never would have thought that.  And I didn’t think I thought that either.  But now I think I may have thought that a little bit because I was just so deeply surprised.  And I still am so surprised that this has happened.  And so disappointed.  And so I’ve been—I had to take a good, long, hard look at my book.  And then I had to write a chapter I hadn’t intended which is called Sorrow where I tried to look at what we were experiencing through the lens of holiness.  And I was very, very careful because I didn’t want to say something that I would find not to be true in a couple of years.  So yeah.  It was, obviously in terms of the book, extremely challenging.  But I also though this is helping me.  It gave me purpose.  Work is good.  Good work is better.  And, for me, it was good work.  

Sheila: Yeah.  I remember reading C. S. Lewis many years ago right after my son passed away and reading that he thought that grief was very holy, and that’s really what you said too.  How?  How is grief related to holiness?

Karen: I think part of what I was trying to do in that sorrow chapter also was—and where I kind of landed at was that God had given Brent grace to lead a holy life.  The fact that he was—his holy life was evidenced to me by how many people came to us and just said he made space.  He made space for us.  He was a priest that you could relate to, a priest you could go have a beer with, a priest who never made you feel like you weren’t good enough, or that you weren’t holy.  He helped people see that they were holy.  So there was that.  And I think that I’m still really learning how grief can be an invitation to holiness.  For me, it’s been a stripping down of a lot of things in my life and a clarifying experience of how we use our time and how we are accompanied by God during the worst times of our lives.  And sometimes that hasn’t been a feeling experience for me.  I don't know if you had this.  But people will say in so many sympathy cards, “May you experience the comfort of the Holy Spirit.”  And sometimes I would think, “I haven’t.  I haven’t felt that.”  And I have—I’m pretty honest about that in the chapter.  I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Yeah.  That’s true.  That was true for me too.”  So that was helpful.  But there is an invitation in this journey we’re on to grapple with what we believe and what it means to trust, what it means to trust God in the dark times.  To what end?  What are we trusting Him for?  And that is a big question.  I don’t actually have an answer right now, but that is probably my current question.

Sheila: Yeah.  I often walk through that too.  What does it mean that God will comfort us?  What does it mean that we can trust God?  If God comforts us, do we now hurt as much?  Do we feel better?  How is it that Jesus is actually able to comfort us?  And the only thing I can come up with is that the God who made us understands.  That’s the only thing that I’ve ever been able to come up with.  

Karen: Yeah.  And you know what?  I think that’s exactly the thing that is comforting is that—yeah.  Jesus suffered.  And He cared, and He cares.  And to believe that is a decision still though.  Sometimes I’m believing in my belief, and I’m trying to have faith in my faith.  But I think you’re right.  And that has to be enough actually.  And I think it can be enough to believe that God cares about your broken heart and that God loves you in that dark place.  That’s actually quite a bit.  That’s a lot.      

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And giving yourself grace that it doesn’t need to be more than that, I think.  

Karen: Yeah.  Yeah.  There’s a lot of mystery.  Mystery upon mystery.  And when people—I’ve sometimes sensed this little thread in what some people have said to me that I think is faulty theology, which, I mean, I don't know.  Where it’s like there’s—they’re trying to force meaning on.  Well, God must be really working in your heart.  Because my husband died and then my father died and then my father-in-law died.  That’s all happened in the last 18 months.  And so as these deaths have kind of piled up—and nothing matches the devastation of my husband’s death.  But as these have sort of piled up, I’ve gotten this vibe from people like, wow, it’s going to be really interesting to see what God does in you.  Blah, blah, blah.  And the implication is almost that this is part of the plan.  That God is giving you these trials so that you can grow instead of—which I think is more biblical.  That God is present in these trials and so we can grow.  God is comforting me, and I will participate in believing that He is present with me.  And so yeah.  I do think we can grow to be more beautiful in our souls because we now understand the saddest of the saddest.  But that’s not why it happened.  But that’s what can come of it.  And that should be enough too.  We’re so uncomfortable with not knowing things and mystery.  And that makes people rush in with a bunch of explanations that—just be present.  Just be present. 

Sheila: And I think, too, the quest for holiness doesn’t mean—holiness is about change.  And, yes, holiness is about growth.  But it doesn’t mean that there can’t be moments where—had this not happened to me my life would be better, right?  People who have gone through horrible accidents and are paralyzed—you don’t need to say I’m a better person for it.  You’re a different person for it.  And there’s probably been a lot of good that has come out of it.  But there would have been good that would have come out if you hadn’t have been in the accident as well, right?  

Karen: Right.  Right.

Sheila: And I think this need to make sense of things, to say that my life—I am a better person because of this—no.  You grew.  You did grow.  And you will continue to grow.  But you would have grown in the other case too.  And I think when people have gone through trauma there’s always going to be that bit of you that isn’t healed this side of heaven.  And that’s okay.     

Karen: Beautifully put.  I couldn’t agree with you more, Sheila.  And one thing, a question I ask in the book, is is the holy thing always the hard thing.  And is the hard thing always the holy thing?  Because I refuse to believe that we cannot grow through love and through beauty and through health and an intact family and the joy of a flower or whatever.  Yes.  When hard things happen, we have the opportunity to grow, grow, grow.  But you are right.  We grow also through love and a beautiful life.  I think that’s so important to say.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I think in the quest for holiness it’s just recognizing that no matter where you God is there.  God is doing something in your heart.  We can participate in that. We can participate in bringing God here.  Again, I just really want to reiterate how much I loved your vignettes.  They were just so practical and so moving and so—a lot of them were small.  Not all of them were small.  But a lot of them were just are we looking.  Are our eyes open?  Or are we so focused on the news and on everything else out there that we’re missing here?  So I love that.  But yeah.

Karen: Thank you.

Sheila: It’s okay to say this is hard.  

Karen: Yeah.  And I wish that hadn’t happened.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And there’s probably someone who needs to hear that. So yeah.  That’s okay to say.    

Karen: Yeah.  Absolutely.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And sometimes when we try to make sense of things, it doesn’t work.  I’ve talked to my daughter, Katie, about this a lot.  But she wouldn’t be here if Christopher—if my son had not died.  But that doesn’t—she says she sort of sees it like two parallel lives.  It could have gone in either direction.  And she doesn’t see it as she’s replacing him but as just this is the way that life went.  And it’s like I don’t have to say, “Well, I’m glad he’s dead because I have Katie.”  Life isn’t a zero sum game like that.  You don’t need to be grateful for the bad things because you got good things out of them.  The bad things can still be really bad.    

Karen: Yeah.  Exactly.  

Sheila: But we can see God working anyway.  And I think that’s—and I think when we try to put meaning on things especially afterwards we actually do a disservice to everything.     

Karen: Yeah.  I believe that too.  We don’t have to solve—we don’t have to figure it all out.  Part of the work of, I think, healthy grief processing I’ve come to understand is accepting that my life with Brent is over in that away, and everything that would have grown in that direction can no longer be.  And so now very much like your son daughter talk, now this is life.  What will this life be?  What will happen now?  What can happen now?  What can I do now?  What can my children do now?  It will be different.  We have changed story lines.  And the work of living and, I guess, the work of holiness maybe now is to—yeah.  Be open and curious about that.  And please, God, let us become more loving people.  Let us be content again someday.  And let us experience joy again which I know we will.  And we have already.  Had those beautiful moments of laughing ourselves silly and seeing this is beautiful.  This is a beautiful moment that we are in right now.  And it just is.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.  I love that.  So the book is Holiness Here, and the author is Karen Stiller.  And I will put the links to those in the podcast notes.  It really is a lovely book.  Like I said, if you—yeah.  If you’ve loved the Mitford series but you want to make it practical, get Holiness Here.  Or if you just want something that it’s like, okay, faith doesn’t need to feel so heavy.  This is something which—where I can just recognize the beauty in life as I pursue God.  And yeah.  It was a very helpful, hopeful book.  So yes.  That’s in the podcast notes.  You also wrote something a couple of months ago that was just so raw and real.  And I’m going to put that in the podcast notes too because it was just—it really hit me.  About grief when you were going through something.  Just having a particularly difficult time.  And it was so good.  So I’m going to put that—I know that’s going to minister to some people, so I’ll put that in the podcast notes as well.  So do check those things out.  If I can find a link to that article I wrote for Faith Today all those years ago—I’ll see if I can.  I don't know.      

Karen: I could probably dig that up, Sheila.  I’ll find that.  That will be my little job.  

Sheila: It’s online in there.    

Karen: It probably is.  Yeah.  Well, Sheila, you are such a delight.  And I love talking to you.  And it’s just a gift to me to spend this time with you.  And yeah.  I just love what you do, and I think it’s great to do a podcast.  And I love this format of just having a good conversation and inviting other people in to it, and it’s like sitting around the dining room table.  So thank you.

Sheila: Yes.  And as someone who has been around your dining room table, thank you.  And I, hopefully, will—yes.  See you next month.  We’ll come, and we’ll do lunch together.  So wouldn’t that be great?  Okay.

Karen: I love that.  Thank you, friend.  

Sheila: Yeah.  I’m so grateful to my friend, Karen, for joining us today.  I really enjoyed that conversation.  It made me feel better all day after I spoke to her.  And I hope it made you feel better too.  So thank you for joining us on Bare Marriage.  I am really privileged that you show up every Thursday and listen to my guests and the things that I have to say.  Really appreciate you.  And if I can ask you to do one more thing for me, would you—wherever you listen to this podcast—if it’s on Apple Podcasts or whatever, would you rate it five stars and leave a review?  Just helps other people find it so that you can be part of our bigger picture as we change the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage.  Thanks so much, and we’ll see you next week.  Bye-bye.