How to Rebuild Your Faith After Divorce (with Sarah Brown)

[Dana] (00:02)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Sarah Brown. Sarah is a Christian author and speaker who helps women navigate seasons of deep hurt by anchoring them in the hope of Christ, empowering them to live with renewed confidence and strength to thrive again. Sarah, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Sarah] (00:34)
Thank you, I’m so glad to be here with you today.

[Dana] (00:37)
This is awesome. Now, you’re also a former elementary teacher and a children’s minister. You’ve received the Women of Influence Award from the Nashville Business Journal. You’ve authored over 20 director resource kits for Christian music publishers. That’s a lot in my mouth. 20 director resource kits for Christian music publishers.

[Sarah] (00:58)
Yeah.

[Dana] (01:03)
You are a contributing author to the book, Hope for the Holidays. You have your own book that’s coming out. Oh my gosh. I mean, this is so much stuff. Where do you want to begin? Where can we start here with you about your journey?

[Sarah] (01:18)
Oh, I’m a busy lady and it’s an interesting journey for sure. Not mentioned in there is that I also have a sophomore in college this year and a three year old. So life has just been full of surprises.

[Dana] (01:33)
Wow, what a span!

[Sarah] (01:35)
Yes, yes. But really just to kind of tell you a little bit more about myself and my journey and what brings me here today is that I believe that we all have ashes that we carry with us. We all have gone through, whether it’s broken relationships, unmet expectations, dreams that didn’t come to fruition. And for me, that looked like going through a period of time that I never anticipated. I got married very young in college and 10 years later ended up going through a divorce and became a single mom. And that was not on my radar or in my plan at all. I didn’t know that was coming. And really that shifted a lot for me just in what life looked like. It felt honestly like the rug had been ripped out.

[Dana] (02:20)
You didn’t know that was coming.

[Sarah] (02:32)
Ripped out from beneath me. And that was where I found myself first in panic mode and shock. And then really that point of what you say is just kind of on fire. Definitely. I was sitting in the burn pile and I had to figure out what to do with that. I didn’t choose the fire and none of us do I believe, but I did have a chance to choose my response to that. And so for me that looked like going to God because faith was the place that I landed first. I will say there was definitely a shift in my faith because I had lived in such a way that I thought, if I do all these things, if I pray, if I go to church, if I’m a submissive wife, all of these different things, that surely God will bless me with the plans I had laid out. And at that point at which things changed and life didn’t look like what I had planned, it brought me to that realization that he had a different plan for me and I had to surrender to that.

[Dana] (03:52)
So Sarah, let me pause for just a moment and ask you a question because as I’m listening to you tell your story, I’m putting myself in your shoes. I’m imagining I have listeners right now that are going through that, have recently gone through it, or maybe they think that might be around the corner for them. I talk to a lot of different people. I’m a Christian as well. And I talk to lots of different people who are on lots of different journeys. And I’m very respectful of everyone’s journey and everyone’s point of view. I think they’re all fabulous. And so my question is something I hear people saying is that when that rug has been jerked out, when someone, for example, when you were doing all the right things and you thought, okay, I’m trying to check all these boxes and I think things are going to go a certain way, everything indicates things are going in one way and then the rug is totally jerked out, you are ass over elbows and face planted on the floor. Some people at that moment, their faith begins to waver. Some people at that moment, understandably, they lose their faith. They become very angry, understandably so, and they start questioning the existence of God. They start just really being very upset,

[Sarah] (05:00)
Sure.

[Dana] (05:16)
thinking that everything that they believed before was just one big fat joke, one big delusion. How, at that moment for you, because I know you can’t speak for anybody else, you’re just talking about your own journey. So at that moment for you, or moments, plural, how were you able to take the path that you did in terms of leaning into your faith rather than cursing God or feeling like there is no God, God’s just

[Sarah] (05:28)
Right. Thank you.

[Dana] (05:45)
some kind of cosmic illusion. How were you able to walk down the path that you did?

[Sarah] (05:52)
Well, I’ll be honest and say it didn’t start with me running towards God. It started with me shaking my fist at Him and just really expressing my anger, asking God, how could you let this happen? I don’t understand. And being angry, it started with me sitting in a puddle of tears in the bathroom floor, just reaching a point of utter brokenness.

[Dana] (06:01)
Okay.

[Sarah] (06:20)
And in retrospect, I wasn’t broken, I felt broken. Over time, I began to see that I had lived out what was more of a transactional faith. If I do this, God will do that. And that became kind of how I had approached faith. But in that moment of having life completely take a different look, having the rug ripped out from beneath me, I started to see that that wasn’t God’s plan for how my relationship with Him would go. That was also part of my plan, that my faith began to shift from transactional to relational. And so I began to go from shaking my fist at God, calling out in anger and frustration, to pouring out my soul before Him. And honestly, a lot of times I didn’t have the words to say. I didn’t know what to say. And at that point, that’s when I reached for my Bible and the book of Psalms really became my prayers. There’s so much there. There’s so much richness there. And when I didn’t know what to say, I started the practice of borrowed prayers: reading from the Psalms or reading prayers that others had written that expressed what I felt in my heart but couldn’t put words to myself.

[Dana] (07:29)
Yeah.

[Sarah] (07:49)
And through that, I began to sense that God wasn’t this distant God, that He was there with me on the bathroom floor when I was in tears, that He was there with me as I learned of the betrayal that had occurred in my marriage, that He didn’t cause or create all of that for me, but that there was also a point at which, yes, He had allowed it, but it was with the purpose of allowing me to grow, and with taking my deepest pain and my deepest hurt and using it as the richest place for me to grow.

[Dana] (08:32)
So I have two more questions for you. I’ll just kind of toss both of them out and then you can decide which one you want to start with first. One is a frequent question that people ask is, why are we allowed to suffer? Why does God allow this to happen? If this is a benevolent, all loving God, then why does he allow us to go through these things that hurt so much? We feel like our skeletal structure is cracking open. I don’t want to call it a funny story, but looking back, you know those stories that when you look back, they’re kind of humorous. But I can remember, and I don’t remember what the issue was at the time, but I can remember walking through Walmart and I had my hands on the handle of the buggy. And I just had this feeling in my whole body that as long as I could just hold on to the buggy, that I would stay in one piece. That if I let go of the buggy, my whole body was going to fly apart in a hundred pieces. I think because emotionally that’s how we feel lots of things emotionally that don’t make logical sense, but emotionally, that’s exactly how we feel. And so my first question to you is, you know, people say, well, how come God allowed that?

[Sarah] (09:51)
Right.

[Dana] (09:58)
If he’s in charge of everything, how come he allowed me to go through this horrible experience? That’s a very common question that I would very much like to hear your experience, your answer for that. And the other thing I would really like to hear, here you are a single mom, and what that was like for you and what the practical realities of your life became, because there might be some single moms out there that this has just happened to and they’re kind of freaking out, and I’m wondering about your journey

[Sarah] (10:05)
Mm-hmm.

[Dana] (10:26)
was like as a single mom at that point.

[Sarah] (10:30)
Sure. So I would say first, as a single mom, there was certainly a bit of panic. How am I going to provide for my child? How am I going to parent him by myself? I quickly fell into being both good cop and bad cop in that parental role because my son was with me a majority of the time. And it was scary. And I think that perhaps one of the best things that I did was start therapy. And I’m a big believer that no matter where you are in life, whether you are in that moment where you just don’t know what to do or you’re grieving, or you’re in your happy moments of life where things seem to be going well, that everyone can benefit from therapy. I’m still in it today and my divorce was 15 years ago. So that should be proof that I’m a big believer in it. Because I think there you have someone else with an outside perspective who can help you dig deep to what really is below the surface. And for me, as a single mom, my initial thought was that the hurt that I felt was coming from that broken relationship. And yes, that was a big part of it. But deeper below the surface, there were these feelings of shame and feelings of perfectionism that I hadn’t recognized within myself, but that ultimately were coming into play in all these different scenarios. And now I sat looking at the future thinking, well, how can I live out perfectionism as a mom now that I’m a single mom and I don’t have a partner in this? And I didn’t know what to do at first, but I think my brother-in-law should have been a counselor. He’s not, he’s in finances, but he should have been a counselor. And he stopped me at one point in my moment of panic. And he said, Sarah, you know, you have always been one to think 17 steps ahead.

[Dana] (12:38)
Sees you calling, huh?

[Sarah] (12:52)
And it’s true. I’m a planner. I love my good spreadsheet. I have my color coded planner right here beside me. He’s like, you’re in this moment of crisis and you’re still trying to look to the future and you’re still trying to make a plan for yourself. When what you’ve got to do is pause and look at the day before you, this moment, the next hour, the next 24 hours. In the moment, I didn’t realize just what a powerful piece of advice that would be for me, but I found that to be true even still, and I’m on the other side of my ashes. I’m in the moments of beauty and still there are times I have to pause and remind myself, I don’t have to have it all figured out. In the moment that you are feeling broken, in the moment that you are grieving, you don’t see God’s plan. You don’t necessarily understand why He has allowed it. And yet, in retrospect, I can look back and see the purpose in it. And I’ll say one of the things that I think really helped me, and my therapist was really good in guiding me in this, was journaling in those moments of pain. And now, as I’ve worked on writing a book and sharing a bit more of my story with others, it’s so powerful to look back and to see God’s faithfulness in it all. To see that I am a person now I could not have been had he not taken me through that fire. And I think there’s benefit in that, in looking back. Of not rushing past your grief. Of not faking like you feel fine. Of not faking like, I’ve got this, I’m a single mom now, no problem. But being honest with yourself, being honest with God, and then being honest with someone that you trust, whether it’s a close friend or a therapist or a pastor, a brother-in-law who is rich with wisdom. But to allow yourself that space to not worry about 17 steps ahead, but to be in the moment, but don’t stay stuck there, and allow yourself to begin to move forward, just one step at a time.

[Dana] (15:12)
Yeah.

[Sarah] (15:37)
It’s okay.

[Dana] (16:07)
Okay, so listening to you describe it. So have another question. You said that your relationship with God originally felt more transactional, and I’ve heard this in so many conversations. Like if I

[Sarah] (16:27)
Okay. Right. I’m good.

[Dana] (16:55)
once in a while, it’s just like, okay, I don’t want to learn anymore for a while. I’m good with the lessons for right now. I heard a quote that I never forgot a long time ago and it says, there is no teacher as effective as pain.

[Sarah] (17:00)
Right. I’m good.

[Dana] (17:22)
If I go to church, if I read my Bible, if I’m nice to people, if I don’t cuss, if I fill in the blank, then that means that I’m supposed to, God’s going to bless me with whatever, fill in the blank, a nice life and good health, good relationships. But that’s transactional. And we also, I feel like we do that with people as well. We sometimes will say, because I run into that with boundary issues, people say, well, if I’m nice to this person, if I compliment them, if I am always nice and have a nice tone of voice, if I tell them what I think they want to hear, then they’re going to accept me, they’re going to like me, they’re not going to reject me. And that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with God and it doesn’t work with other people either. Because if you think about it from a boundary standpoint,

[Sarah] (18:11)
Right.

[Dana] (18:16)
you know, we’re responsible for our thoughts, feelings and actions and we get to change those things. What our neighbor’s thinking, feeling and doing, that is on the other side of the property line that belongs to them. And so we can choose what we’re going to do. It’s like somebody that gives you a gift and then expects you to behave some kind of way because they gave you a gift. They can choose to give you a gift, but that’s their choice. And so that so often, I think so many of us

[Sarah] (18:21)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

[Dana] (18:43)
slip into that transactional expectation, not only of God, but of one another. Did you run into that? Did you experience that more? Like if you think about the example that you gave of feeling like it was transactional with God, how did that play out with you as your life unfolded?

[Sarah] (19:01)
Honestly, I would say that was very much how my first marriage was. My perspective, it was a bit more transactional, in the sense that I really thought that if I were more of a servant wife in ways, if I cooked dinner and did the dishes and, in his words, I held him on a pedestal and I didn’t even realize I was doing that. And as a result of that, as all of that kind of came out over time towards the end of our marriage and then certainly in therapy after, I began to see that the transactional relationship doesn’t work. It can’t just be about I’m always bending to or wanting to do what the other person always needs because I’m not responsible for how they feel.

[Sarah] (20:01)
I can be respectful. I can certainly serve and love others, but I cannot hold their joy. I’m not responsible for their happiness. I cannot hold their sorrow or struggles. I can take them before God, but I can’t be responsible for them myself. And I think what I had felt in my marriage was that I knew there was this one thing that he really struggled with. And so my way of addressing that was more, how can I be enough? How can I be better? How can I be the wife that he needs? Which is certainly something that I still ask myself today, remarried. I do ask myself, how can I be the best wife that my husband needs? And that is my prayer to God, that I’ll be the wife he needs. However, it’s not the transactional relationship that I once had.

[Sarah] (21:01)
It’s more that we are two people who both bring different experiences and feelings and emotions and values to the table, honoring and respecting those of one another. And for me, you mentioned boundaries, that was one of the first books I was told to read as I was going through my divorce. Clearly yes, and I have it here in my office.

[Dana] (21:23)
Oh really?

[Sarah] (21:28)
Clearly it was easy to recognize that I had not set boundaries in my life, not only with my husband, but with others as well. And I will say I struggle sometimes still today with the balance between setting boundaries and being transparent and how much of myself am I extending to others in places that I might need to have a set boundary. You don’t have to let everybody into everything.

[Dana] (21:57)
Mm-hmm.

[Sarah] (21:59)
In fact, that can bring about trouble in relationships. Even for my husband and myself now, we talk about how it’s important for us to talk with one another about what we’re experiencing in our marriage. And when you begin to let too many voices in, when you don’t keep those boundaries up, it creates more problem than it does help. And so kind of stepping back just a minute to what I said earlier about finding that person that you trust,

[Dana] (22:21)
Mm-hmm.

[Sarah] (22:30)
when you’re going through it, whatever it is, whether it’s divorce or other hurt or pain, it doesn’t have to be a story that you share with everyone all at once. It’s okay to find the one person. It’s okay to find the one therapist. And then as you go through your healing, maybe you open up a bit more, but I don’t think that has to be everyone knowing every detail of your story. I’m at a different place now and I’m writing about my journey. I’m writing about my process of healing and restoration, but I’m writing from a healed place. And I think that’s important as we share our stories with one another too.

[Dana] (23:15)
It’s a very different place. As I’m listening to you say this, I’m thinking a couple of things. One is we have to vet people before we share with them what I call our “tender bits,” the tender bits that we have inside of us that we have the right to share if we want to. But we truly need to vet other people because not everyone, people need to earn the right

[Sarah] (23:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure.

[Dana] (23:45)
to hear our tender bits. And not everyone is prepared to hear that. They’re not prepared to hold that information. They certainly don’t know how to respond. And that’s okay. But it’s our job to vet people to figure out if this is a safe place for me to share these tender bits.

[Sarah] (23:53)
Mm-hmm. Right.

[Dana] (24:09)
And if it’s not a safe place, that doesn’t mean that the relationship has to go away. Maybe it just means it’s a different type of relationship: someone you just like hang out with or have fun with, but you don’t necessarily share your tender bits. And another thing that I was thinking about as you were talking was that sometimes our motivation for why we want to share is interesting. I’ve run into some people that, especially when they’re

[Sarah] (24:09)
Right. Mm-hmm.

[Dana] (24:38)
they’ve gone through something and they’re dating new, they’ll like barf out all the stuff right on date one. And it’s almost a defense mechanism because they’re like, let me just tell you all this stuff about me. So if you’re going to reject me, just get it over with. Can we be honest? That’s what some of us do. Just let’s just get it all out there.

[Sarah] (24:52)
Right.

[Dana] (25:07)
So sometimes it’s interesting to kind of create some space and ask ourselves, if I feel this compulsion to tell this person some of my tender bits, why? Why do I want to tell this person this information? And the answer is really interesting, I think.

[Sarah] (25:31)
Sometimes it’s purely seeking sympathy or empathy, wanting somebody else to be able to be with you in it. I love what you said about you have to kind of vet those others. There certainly were people that I began to share my story with and I had to put the brakes on as I saw their response. The world we live in really celebrates the highlight reel, all the good things, and doesn’t hold the space as much for those hard parts and for the hurt and the pain. And so as you are opening yourself up to share that with others, they may or may not hold it with the same kind of respect that you would like for them to. And I did see that, unfortunately, in some relationships where I wasn’t wise about who I shared certain things with, and it came back to hurt me even more.

[Dana] (26:02)
Yes.

[Sarah] (26:29)
But I will also say that in the same way that your whole story doesn’t have to be shared with everyone, there can be a boundary there as well, that our healing also doesn’t happen in that spotlight, and that it’s not the same for everyone. Everyone we see around us is going through something, whether they share it or not. But that’s most likely not what they’re sharing with you. But I think it’s important to keep that in mind as we interact with one another, that we all carry with us those ashes, like I mentioned at the beginning. We all still carry that with us, but it’s also important to help encourage one another to look for where beauty is already coming from that, and to acknowledge that what that looks like for you may be different than it is for me. I had someone, very first, I think it was the day I actually found out that my husband had had an affair, say to me, “well, at least it’s not cancer.” And immediately I put the brakes on because that to me was a sure sign: okay, this is not a safe person for me to talk to about this. I’m in my most raw moment emotionally and spiritually and

[Dana] (27:35)
Oh my gosh. No.

[Sarah] (27:54)
part of me was like, well, I kind of wish it was because then I would know we could have a plan. I could go to a doctor and we could get a treatment plan, where I was sitting in this moment just going, what? I don’t know what to do with this.

[Dana] (28:09)
Well, and Sarah, I want to interject here and say you get points for not throat punching her.

[Sarah] (28:16)
Thank you. Yeah.

[Dana] (28:17)
I mean, throat punch, right? Now, let me ask you a question. What would you say to someone who feels like everything familiar has been just stripped away and they don’t even recognize their life right now? They don’t even know what they feel like, they’re almost a different person. They don’t recognize the terrain. They don’t recognize what’s going on internally. They just feel like reality has been turned upside down. What would you say to someone who is in that moment today? Maybe right now, maybe they’re in their car listening to this podcast. Maybe they’re out mowing the yard and got their headphones on and they’re listening to this podcast and they’re feeling that exact same way right now, what would you say to them?

[Sarah] (29:10)
You know, I would say your story doesn’t end here. It’s interesting, thinking about it, I’ve mentioned ashes a few times. As I started reflecting on my own story, it was around the same time I was outlining my book, it was around the same time as all the wildfires out in California, where there was just pure and total devastation. And in my mind, I thought, gosh, that really is a picture of what I felt like in those first moments where I felt like my entire life had changed. Nothing looks the same. Nothing will ever be the same. And I started to do a bit of research on what happens after the wildfire. What happens to the earth? And I stumbled upon something that became a point of hope for me. And it was that there are these wildflowers that they call fire followers and their seeds are underground sometimes for years, like seven, eight, nine years before they will bloom. And they will only bloom after the wildfire has scorched the earth. And so for me, this became a visual, physical reminder that my story didn’t end there in the destruction. And for the person listening, neither does yours. There may be burn scars, just like on the earth there are burn scars after a wildfire, but that place could be where something new and even better is about to emerge. And so for me in retrospect, looking back, I’m a different woman today than I was when I walked through my divorce. And I’m grateful for that. But I truly believe it was that God had those seeds

[Sarah] (31:01)
planted within me before my divorce, but that would only begin to emerge like the fire followers once I had been through the fire, once I had walked through what felt like utter destruction. And so I hope that your listeners can walk away with a bit of hope from that. And I would encourage them to be looking for the places that the beauty is already beginning to bloom. For me, in some cases that became, as I sought out others who had walked through the same thing I had, new friendships grew out of shared experiences: other women who had also walked through betrayal, divorce, single motherhood. And so I would just say, begin to look for those bits of beauty in your own life and know that your story doesn’t end there in the ashes. There is more to come.

[Dana] (31:41)
That’s fabulous. Thank you, Sarah. That was awesome. Now, I want my listeners to be able to reach you because I know they’re going to want to get access to your book. It’s coming up, Even the Ashes Bloom. So I’m sure they’re going to want to get access to that and access to more of you and what you have to share and what you have to offer. So what I have is sarahsbrown.com. Is this correct?

[Sarah] (32:28)
Yes, that’s correct.

[Dana] (32:30)
Okay, and we’ll get all this in the show notes. Sarah, thank you so much. For listeners, believe it or not, this was Sarah’s first debut on a podcast. And I know if we could hear you now, we’d hear you clapping for her that she did such a fabulous job and offered such amazing, practical, wise advice

[Sarah] (32:47)
Hit one!

[Dana] (33:00)
for us who are all on this journey together. Sarah, thank you for spending your time and your energy to be with us today on Phoenix in Flame.

[Sarah] (33:10)
Thank you so much for having me, allowing me to share my story. And thank you to those who have listened this far, sticking with me.

[Dana] (33:17)
Awesome. That’s it. Now guys, I know you have heard so much today. You’re thinking, I have a best friend, I have a coworker, I have a family member that needs to hear exactly what Sarah has to say. Take this podcast episode, copy and paste the link in text, copy and paste it in email, put it on your favorite social media sites so we can grow the Phoenix in Flame community and reach out and let people know you are not alone. We’re in this together. I hope the rest of your day is fantastic. I’m Dana on Phoenix in Flame.