Tag: marriage

The Language of the Infidel: Saying “Enemy” & How It Almost Ended My Marriage

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I meet many Christians who claim “persecution” any time someone disagrees with them. The words “enemy” and “worldly” are tossed around with glee. There’s a troubling obsession with The Language of the Infidel: it’s intoxicating to think “God is on my side” and that anyone who disagrees is working for satan. Everyone is a “false teacher” including the church across the street, the pastors in a different denomination, and politicians across the aisle. This sort of self-affirming theology can never admit it’s wrong and is always blaming the devil, demons, and warfare instead of examining itself. It fantasizes a phantom caricature of “haters” so that there never has to be accountability. This sort of thinking can be expanded to Main Character Syndrome, in which I believe I am the hero of my own story and everyone else must be conquered or conform. This mentality almost destroyed my marriage. In my book, I talk about how my marriage was saved when I broke out of the idea that I was the hero. #church #religion #christianity #theology #faith #doctrine #westernchurch #yikes #jesusjuke #pseudosavior #cult #prosperitygospel #marriage #relationships #selfawareness #TheVoicesWeCarry #bookrelease #booklaunch

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I meet many Christians who claim “persecution” any time someone disagrees with them. The words “enemy” and “worldly” are tossed around with glee.

There’s a troubling obsession with The Language of the Infidel: it’s intoxicating to think “God is on my side” and that anyone who disagrees is working for satan. Everyone is a “false teacher” including the church across the street, the pastors in a different denomination, and politicians across the aisle.

This sort of self-affirming theology can never admit it’s wrong and is always blaming the devil, demons, and warfare instead of examining itself. It fantasizes a phantom caricature of “haters” so that there never has to be accountability.

This sort of thinking can be expanded to Main Character Syndrome, in which I believe I am the hero of my own story and everyone else must be conquered or conform. This mentality almost destroyed my marriage. In my book, I talk about how my marriage was saved when I broke out of the idea that I was the hero.


Grab my book here: The Voices We Carry: Finding Your One True Voice in a World of Clamor and Noise

Baby Park


Baby Park, arriving in July. Rosco is about to be a big brother.

We tried for almost ten months. Relatively I know that isn’t long. It felt long. Thank you for your prayers, kind messages, and rooting for us all the while.

In the early days of finding out, we were at an Olive Garden (a fancy night for us) and the hostess asked, “How many?” I accidentally said, “Three.” Hostess looked at my wife. Wife looked at me. I looked at the hostess. She became one of the first to know. Thank you, hostess, for upgrading us to a booth.

— J.S.

Happy Five Years







Five years.
It wasn’t easy. We nearly called it quits our first year. I’m so glad we stayed. I’m so glad it’s you.

— J.S.

If You Say You Love God


It’s super easy to preach “love your neighbor,” but the loving part is crazy hard. I think most people really believe they’re loving and kind when they have to be, but the second someone disagrees or causes inconvenience or looks at you funny, the love thing can go out the window real quick.

What I usually see online or in church or in politics or in marriages is that unless a person fits an exact specification of beliefs and behaviors and likes and dislikes, that person is cast out of the inner-ring. I’ve spent a lot of terrible energy trying to carve others into my own image, overriding their point of view, always waiting for others to “come around.” That‘s no better than hate.

It seems Jesus said that “hate is murder” because when we only accept the people who match our values, we are disappearing them. We’re essentially saying, “Be like me or you don’t exist. I’d rather you be someone you’re not.” This is hate, and it’s crushing somebody out of existence.

This is especially obvious in social media, when one wrong word gets you canceled. But it’s worse when it comes to religion. That’s attributing a supernatural superiority to hatred. It gives an awful permission to say, “God said it, not me.” Which is cowardly. And if your god always agrees with what you believe and only likes the people you like—that god is the one you made up to justify your bitterness and to boost your ego. It’s a push-button keychain god that does your bidding. It isn’t the God who will challenge you, stretch you, surprise you, and who loves the people you can’t stand.

No, we cannot love all the things that people do. Yes, I believe in accountability and justice and boundaries. But over all, I want to love my neighbor for who they are and not for my version of them. I believe not in who someone should be, but could be. It’s the same way that I believe God loves a guy like me.

— J.S.

Five Years in the Making.


I proposed five years ago to the light of my life.

Marriage is hard work, a daily deliberate choice to merge, invest, pour out, and share dreams alongside, even when they collide. It’s not poetic or romantic most of the time, not the way we’ve seen it in soundbites and highlights. Real love meets down in the dirt, the grit, the mess of the other. That’s where the good stuff happens.
— J.S.

I’m Too Old to Find Love: How Do I Start?

Anonymous asked a question:

How do I find Christian love at 27? I find that so old to start afresh…

Hey dear friend, first I’d like to point you here:

– 7 Thoughts on Singleness: Is Something Wrong with Me?

I know that being single when you don’t want to be is painful. There’s no way around it. I also believe that singleness is a perfectly legitimate life-choice, and that it can be a gift in itself.

Continue reading “I’m Too Old to Find Love: How Do I Start?” →

My Top 12 Posts of 2018


Here are my Top Twelve Posts of 2018, including topics like the benefit of grief, dealing with depression in marriage, misogyny in the Bible, people-pleasing, and my brush with suicide this year.

For all my typewriter posts, click here or my Instagram here.

My top two selling books this year were the one on fighting depression and the one on King David.


12) Grief Over the Death of a Loved One: To Move On or Hold On?

11) I Called the Suicide Lifeline

10) An Interview About Mental Health, Minority Stigma, and the Church Vs. Depression

9) Angry About Anger

8) I Want My Life to End—What Do I Do?

7) I Have Doubts: Am I Allowed to Say That?

6) How Do You Know You’re Persecuted or Just a Terrible Person?

5) Working Through Depression As a Team: What to Do and Not to Do with Your Friend’s Mental Health

4) I Think I Hurt Someone: How Do I Clear the Air?

3) I Care Too Much What Other People Think About Me

2) What’s Up with the Bible Saying “Wives Submit to Husbands”?

1) “Suicide Is a Ticket to Hell” (and Other Bad Theology)

A Relationship Is Not a Wishlist


Look, a romantic wishlist is a nice thought, but it’s also creepy and unfair. It’s setting up an impossible monstrosity of expectations and you’ll be disappointed for no other reason than you played yourself.

I don’t mean lowering your standards. I mean setting real ones, for actual people who exist. For people who are just people and not a customized Frankenstein creature.

The person you’ll end up with is going to be their own personwith their own hopes, dreams, goals, anxieties, and weird little habits. They’re not a checklist trophy that will meet your every size or quota.

They’re going to be way different and in fact way more interesting than the stitched up hologram made from half-baked movie cliches and choir-preaching memes.

Relationships are about compromise. Not compromising yourself, no. But about two weird people making it work. It’s a wild mix of chemistry, compatibility, non-negotiables, history and trauma, highs and lows, disagreements and pushback and feedback, augmenting goals, and lifelong change.

“Get you a guy/girl who” only works if you see yourself as a main character-savior-hero and you see others as a secondary prop to fulfill your romantic comedy narrative. In that case, you have other issues and you can wait.

And waiting in the meantime is a really good time for growth, for self-discovery, and for becoming the kind of person you never knew you were looking for. Singleness, really, isn’t waiting. It’s being.

— J.S.


Photo from Unsplash

The Truths and Myths of Christian Dating and Relationships

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Hello wonderful friends! Here’s a seminar that I gave in San Jose, CA about the truths and myths of dating & relationships within both the church-culture & pop-culture. Stream below or download directly here.

Some things I talk about are: “The time I overheard a couple have their final knock-down drag-out fight, my absolutely favorite type of scene in the movies, what everyone really wants in the hospital, dating theology from Taylor Swift, when God looks at you through the ceiling, and Christianity according to a cologne sample.”


I also did a follow-up Q&A which you can stream below or download here.


Be immensely blessed! — J.S.


Photo from my engagement shoot, by Angel He Photography

Real Joy Actually Hurts



It can be easy to romanticize a passion or a social cause or a marriage or raising kids with tons of posed pictures and flowery words—but all such things are gritty, raw, rough, and painstakingly sculpted from our fully invested hearts. There is a lot of standing around and sweating through our shirts and seasons of self-doubt and all the frustrated parts that no one else can see. We fall in love with highlights but these were formed in the valley. Please don’t be seduced by soundbites and filtered photos and bowtie daydreams. Real joy actually hurts, but that’s why it’s real. It was carved from the best of us.
— J.S.


[Photo by The Ganeys Photography.]

Road Trips


We drove up for a wedding over the weekend. You learn a lot about another person on long road trips, and a lot about yourself. I learned that I’m not as laid back as I like to think I am, that I’m an upside-down turtle at multi-tasking, that my bladder has shrunk to hobbit-like levels, and that when both the GPS and my wife tell me to take a left turn in five-hundred feet, the surface of my brain instantly breaks out into hives. I also learned my wife is infinitely patient, knows when I need a hit of coffee, graciously endures all my u-turns, sings and dances in an untinted car with zero shame, and will listen to me talk about one single subject for hours. She can also sleep immediately in the car on command, in the middle of a sentence. Here’s to my wife and road trip partner: to many more u-turns together, both figurative and literal, and to dancing among strangers.
— J.S.

My Hero.


Here’s my hero.
#womensday #internationalwomensday #nurse #marriedlife #wife

Six Truths to Get Through a Break-Up

gahbeedee asked a question:

hey there, thank you for your blog. i have been going through a breakup the past month (we are both christians) and wondering if you’ve made any posts on this topic.

Hey there dear friend, I’m sorry for all that’s happening, and here are a few things that I hope may be helpful for you.

1) Break-ups are, almost step by step, the same process as grief. It seems silly, but breaking up with someone also means saying goodbye to everything that person was. Their presence, their texts, their smells and laughter and even the annoying way they shake their leg when watching a movie: you’ll be constantly reminded of all these little quirks, and each day, will have to remember and embrace that they’re now gone.

2) Break-ups are pretty hard. In the grand scheme of things, a break-up is a rather normal part of life (I’ll get to that in a second), but I think most grown people are pretty quick to dismiss how hard it really is. You shouldn’t feel silly about how emotional and up-and-down this process is. Some days you’ll be fine, and some days you’ll be crying your eyes out or cussing out the sky.

3) A break-up isn’t the end of the world. There may have been many promises made and a lot of sweeping romantic plans for the future together, but no, a break-up isn’t a world-ending event. They happen. Two people may be perfectly wonderful people, but the timing wasn’t right or they discovered they weren’t compatible, and that’s okay. It’s hard, but you won’t always feel the same splinter of grief like you do now. Break-ups are built into the eventualities of life.

Continue reading “Six Truths to Get Through a Break-Up” →

Two Years.



Our two year anniversary. Adventure, challenge, and lots and lots of laughter.
— J.S.

5 Kinds of Romanticized Crushes That Will Mess You Up

I think “crushing” on someone is a natural thing, and in the right place and the right time, it can lead to something great. Most of the time it’ll pass, as it’s meant to, and we can look back and laugh at the ridiculous amount of time spent mentally replaying the one failed conversation that we still twitch about in the shower. Crushes happen, and they almost never equate to a magical romance materializing out of thin air.

But the darker problem with “crushing” is that it occasionally turns a real live person into a trophy, a sort of non-independent rubber statue imprisoned on a pedestal, and if you ever finally reached it, you’d either squeeze it too hard or please it too much. In both cases, both people lose.

Relationships are hard work, and absolutely require more than the initial illusion of fleeting chemicals in our easily tricked brains. That rush of first feelings is overwhelming, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grander scheme: and we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if we took up Taylor Swift to “count to ten, take it in, this is life before you know who you’re gonna be.“

Here are five types of romanticized crushes that require a heavy dose of self-awareness. I apologize in advance for the snark: I’m only so impassioned here because I’ve seen how badly it can get out of control.

1) Hate Crush (aka Freudian Defense Mechanism)

What it looks like: You like someone, but you hate that you like them, so there’s a lot of passive-aggressive, mean-spirited, hyper-critical gas-lighting aimed their way. This looks cute in movies, but is often awful and humiliating to an actual human being with, you know, their own thoughts and dreams.

Problems: This can be irreversibly destructive if you drag someone long enough through your daily catharsis. I understand the psychology behind this—we resent what we can’t have or we just hate it when we feel so vulnerable with someone—but displacing anger out of confusion when you can’t “have someone” is a really dark, desperate issue that might require real help, immediately.

Continue reading “5 Kinds of Romanticized Crushes That Will Mess You Up” →

Costa Rica, Pura Vida

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Zip lining over two-hundred feet high, horseback riding through waterfalls, monkey-watching, and standing in front of a live volcano in Costa Rica, for our belated honeymoon.
— J.S.

A Video of My Wedding.


A short video of our wedding at the Rusty Pelican in Tampa, FL. Wedding photos here and engagement photos here. We just had our one year anniversary. I also proposed two years ago on Valentine’s Day. Quite an adventure, it’s been.
— J.S.


I Love You Just Because

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I love you just because I love you. It isn’t for anything else but you. Not for cash or status or my ego or an accessory, not because I’m afraid of loneliness, and it’s beyond the first bursts of chemistry. Love is hard work and it requires all of me, everything, with no guarantees, except the love in itself that’s promised and true. That’s just-because love. I love you for you.
— J.S.


Happy One Year.

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Marriage is hard. Pretty pictures and bite-sized highlights might give you a false impression that it only takes sparks and looks: but the gritty reality is work, tears, and sacrifice. It’s a dance, everyday, to compromise and serve. In the depth of this tough humility, there can be great beauty. Real joy requires a fight from our very best.
— J.S.

Marriage at Your Worst.


Sharing love for a lifetime is going to be difficult: it’s full of a million misunderstandings, shrill melt-downs, crazy eyeballs, and totally ugly cry-face. But that’s the point. It’s only a matter of who you choose to share the worst of you with. I’ve chosen. I’ll keep choosing. So has she.
— J.S.