January 2026

Confronting my slothful self. An appeal to complementarians. How I’m reframing marriage with an unbeliever.

Photo by The Now Time on Unsplash

From the garden

The bermuda grass is now knee-high and has invaded every part of my garden. Popping up in weed infested beds, and on the foot-paths between beds, are volunteer lettuce, cilantro, a tomato plant, thai basil, hollyhocks and a few snow peas.

My past efforts at cultivating a garden still show, even amidst the weeds. Plants harvested last year, scattered their seed and without any work from me, other than being faithful to harvest last year, those seeds took root and grew up on their own.

This year I’ve decided to put the gardening tools away. The tyranny of too many choices has made everything urgent.

I urgently need to read all the substacks I subscribe to, listen to the podcasts in my queue, write my newsletter, edit my manuscript for Baker, call my mom, make chicken enchiladas, get more alfalfa pellets, weed my garden, respond to the latest trauma in the headlines my soul can hardly bear to give attention to, pray--Oh Lord have mercy-- schedule a dentist appt, get my dog’s prednisone refilled, text my son to see how his friend in the hospital is doing, plan 2026, read the five books on my nightstand, commit to a local church, eat more protein, find a good moisturizer, and makeup that doesn’t make my face look like a cracked scone.

So many choices. So much to do. So this month (I took the whole month), I set my ears to listening for what the Spirit is saying to me.

What say you Lord?

What do I need to give my attention to?

After weeks of waiting I kept coming back to this: You have given yourself too many choices, Sheila. You need to resist the tyranny of choice with limits.

And (I didn’t see this coming) confront.

Confront, Lord? Confront what? Um, this makes me uncomfortable.

Do you mean comfort, Lord?

No. Limits and confront. Those are the words confronting me this January of 2026.

And so I’m trying to obey.

I’ve taken all the Bible reading options off my phone, except one (I’m doing the One Year Bible with the Welchers if you’re looking for a plan). The only reading I’m doing right now outside the Bible is my manuscript and some portions of the books I’ve used for research as I work to edit this first draft.

I’ve decided to work on rehoming many of my goats, hoping for a season in the future when I can return to that hobby I love.

I’ve decided to turn off the podcasts and audiobooks I usually listen to on my commute to and from work, and sit in silence for a bit, giving myself some margin to breathe out my anxieties to God, and remind myself of his faithfulness.

I’ve stopped church shopping, and with honesty and vulnerability, met with a local pastor to share the fears holding me back from getting into the beautiful mess of serving with a local church.

I guess this is the next step in the weaning process the Spirit started in me in 2025. As I look back over 2025, I see how I turned to all kinds of pacifiers to soothe my anxious soul. Podcasts, audiobooks, substacks, instagram reels, busywork. Maybe the next step of weaning is disciplining myself with limits. Maybe growing up in the Lord this 52nd year of life means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Confrontation is my crytonite. I am a card-carrying passive person. I do not like to confront a man, I do not like it Sam-I-Am.

I’m still wrestling with this word, with open ears, and a heart that knows my good, good Father is leading me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m scared. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a limp by the time I wrestle this “confront” thing out with God.

This I know: To confront anything is repentance for me.

For me to speak up, address a problem in the room, deal with what’s broken, work on a problem that needs to be solved, especially in relationships, is to turn from the sin of sloth--a sin I like to sink my head into like a favorite feather pillow. Sloth lulls me into the frenetic comfort of busyness while my garden fills with weeds, my manuscript is littered with too many words, and my marriage is passed by in the rush of all the to-do’s.

I don’t know all God is calling me to in the word confront, but I do know at least this: I need to confront my distractedness, constant consumption of information, and hectic activity with limits. I need to confront my slothfulness and get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I mean, I’m writing a book about practicing the Christian faith in marriage with an unbeliever. I’m going to need to get comfortable with confronting lots of uncomfortable conversations.

I’m trying to confront my impulse to fill my ears, and eyes with screens and voices. I’m trying to look at the boundaries of my life-- my day, my abilities-- and accept that I can only do so much. I need to do less so I can grow.

And so the garden sits. Right now it might get fifteen or twenty minutes of my time on a weekend when I employ the Pomodoro method of trying to work on my manuscript for Baker. Twenty-five minutes of writing/editing. Five minutes of pulling weeds. Repeat till the chapter is done. Yesterday I got through chapters 7 through 12 with round one of edits, pulled five piles of weeds, and cut a bunch of volunteer cilantro for my homemade chicken enchiladas.

Marriage Thoughts

Confrontation is not a tool the church taught me to use in working towards a healthy marriage.

I’m writing this book for Baker, coming in 2027 (eeek!), trying to reframe the way we think about marriage with an unbeliever. In the book I essentially offer a liturgy for living faithfully as a Christian in the context of a mixed-faith marriage. Writing this book is shining a hot spotlight on the bad teaching, and thinking I applied to my marriage for years.

What I learned in complementarian churches

I grew up in a fundamentalist church, where women were not permitted to participate in any part of the service that would have them on stage, leading, or teaching in any way. The interpretation of, “Women must be silent in church,” was women don’t get the microphone. They did get the kitchen though, and I had many delicious pot roast and homemade potato salad thanks to the church ladies who gave me sticks of gum and served every church fellowship luncheon I attended.

Most of my adult life, I’ve attended complementarian churches (although I didn’t learn the word complementarian until the early 2000’s). I still attend a church which holds to what I see as a loose complementarian view of women’s roles in the home, and church. This is an issue I’ve wrestled with in trying to find a home church. I’ve come to believe the complementarian/egalitarian labels are unhelpful, and believe women are desperately needed in leadership in church. I believe a more scriptural, and Christlike approach to how women and men should engage their callings in marriage would be to aim towards unity, not gender-roles. I’ve come to believe filtering the Christian married life through gender-roles is unhelpful at best, and toxic at worst.

In my church tradition we talk a lot about wives submitting to their husbands, and husbands being servant-leaders of their wives and children. Hence, most of what I learned in church, or at women’s conferences about how I should live in my marriage could be summed up in one word: submit.

In the complementarian churches I’ve served we don’t talk about wives confronting, or engaging their husbands in actively building a healthy relationship.

Although the Bible addresses the topic of submission in marriage in a few passages, in many, many passages it teaches the Christian so much more. It teaches us how to love one another.

None of those passages were ever applied to how a wife should engage in the work of loving confrontation, or any other aspect of cultivating peace and health in marriage. For that matter I never heard a sermon teaching husbands Christlike ways to work towards a healthy relationship with their wives. I heard husbands should be the spiritual leaders of their wives, and wives should submit to their husbands. That’s it.

There’s a lack of teaching in my tradition about applying Christlike love, and principals for a healthy marriage such as being other-focused, honoring the other, serving the other, confronting what’s causing offense/harm, seeking to understand the other, giving the other agency, seeking the flourishing of the other, learning to unite in leading their children or others, etc. This lack of teaching has left many wives believing the only tool they have to be Christlike in their marriages is submission. And it’s left many husbands thinking their spiritual man-card is void if they aren’t “in charge” in the marriage.

When all we teach husbands and wives is leadership and submission filtered through gender we don’t equip Christian husbands and wives to apply all of scripture to their marriage.

By being silent in teaching Christian wives to engage in building healthy relationships, and only teaching submission, we leave many wives, like me, thinking the only thing we can do to help our marriages is be quiet, let our spouses make all the decisions, do whatever doesn’t make them feel their position as leader is being challenged, i.e. don’t make them uncomfortable.

This kind of thinking led to all kinds of toxic practices in my marriage.

What Christian women (and men) need to hear

I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach Christlike submission to wives. We should, We should also teach that Christlike mindset to husbands.

I can almost hear all the honorable complementarian men in my life say, “Ok, but we don’t believe husbands are called to submission. Yes, they are called to servant-leadership, and laying down their lives for their wives, but not to submission. Someone has to be in charge.”

To those men, who I love, and honor, I say-- but you are submitting to your wife. Teach what you’re doing. When she asks you to do the things she normally does because she’s tired, you submit to her request gladly. You serve her. You buy her tickets to go spend a weekend with friends. You submit to her needs all the time. And if the question you’re trying to answer in your marriage is, “Who’s in charge?” I believe you’re asking the wrong question.

I know there are many complementarian men and women who honor each other and don’t practice unhealthy habits in their marriage in the name of headship and submission. But I believe the complementarian tradition in the church needs to do a better job of equipping wives, and husbands to apply all of scripture to their relationship. Not just a few passages.

When sermons are preached about marriage, we need more than Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3.

Christian women married to unbelieving men need to hear that loving their closest neighbor as themselves, their husbands, involves more than deferring decisions to their husband.

They need to hear that confronting their spouses in love, seeking wholeness and health for their relationship, is just as much a Christ-honoring action as willingly submitting themselves to their spouses.

A Christian man married to unbelieving woman needs to hear that he isn’t solely responsible for getting his wife to church, teaching her the Bible, or leading her to Christ. He too needs to willingly submit to his wife, serving and honoring her as more important than himself, seeking the health of their marriage.

Sigh…

There’s so much here. I may need to work on a well thought-out essay on this subject after my book is finished.

For now I just know trying to reframe marriage between a believer and an unbeliever without turning my book into an argument against complementarianism has been a challenge.

I truly believe God-fearing, gospel-loving men and women can read the same Bible and come to different conclusions about gender roles in the church and marriage. But whether one holds to a complementarian or egalitarian view, or like me thinks they’re both unhelpful, I hope to cast a more scripturally comprehensive Christian vision for seeing marriage between a believer and an unbeliever— a vision that seeks a robust faith, the peace of the spouse, and the health of the marriage, for each person’s good and the glory of Christ.