The Pastor's Wife Nobody Saw: Jessica's Story [378]
Flying Free
Natalie Hoffman
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my real-life friend Jessica, a pastor's wife whose story intersects with mine: her husband was a pastor at the very church that excommunicated me. What started as a conversation about her story turned into one of the most layered, honest episodes I think we've ever recorded.
Jessica spent decades being told her emotions were idols, her feelings weren't facts, and her needs were sin problems she needed to repent of. In this conversation, she shares what it took to finally see through that, what the long road out of a high-control religious marriage actually looks like, and why freedom sometimes takes many years to arrive even after the divorce papers are signed.
Questions we cover:
- What does it actually take to leave when your abuser is also your pastor husband?
- Why do so many women choose the familiar over the safe?
- Is codependency just a fancy way to blame the victim?
- What does it look like when someone uses scripture as a weapon?
- What does a pastor's wife do when she can't tell anyone the truth?
- What actually happens when you let yourself grieve?
- What does it take to actually push yourself out?
Get Today’s Free Resource:
🧐 Are you wondering what is happening inside your own painful and confusing marriage? I wrote a book just for you called Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage. Get a free chapter by going to isitmebook.com
I will also send you my weekly Hope Letters for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying FreeNow.com, and you're listening to the Flying Free |
| 0:07.8 | podcast, a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden |
| 0:14.2 | emotional and spiritual abuse. Welcome to episode 378 of the Flying Free Podcast. |
| 0:23.3 | Today I have with me a personal in real life friend of mine. |
| 0:28.2 | Her name is Jessica Karras. |
| 0:30.0 | I have watched her walk through many, many years of trying to get away from her abuser. |
| 0:37.3 | And our stories intersect a little bit because her husband was a pastor at the church that excommunicated me. |
| 0:44.7 | And one of the theories that I had at the time back then was that for why these people didn't want to listen to my story or hear me was that maybe the leadership |
| 0:57.2 | themselves, at least some of them, were actually being abusive to their own wives. And so then |
| 1:03.5 | they carried that same, they're projected, that same highest disdain for me that they had for their |
| 1:10.6 | own wives. And I think that this is one of those |
| 1:12.7 | full circle things where you just go, huh, maybe it really wasn't so off in that theory, actually. |
| 1:19.2 | And also, I think that it might be harder for pastors wives more than anybody else to get out of |
| 1:27.3 | and leave their abusive relationships for so many |
| 1:30.5 | reasons. So I'm excited for you to be able to share your long, arduous journey up and out, |
| 1:37.8 | which is really only recently, you've really kind of only been set free recently, even though |
| 1:42.7 | you've been divorced for several years, |
| 1:44.6 | that does not mean that you are free from these people. |
| 1:49.5 | And I can't wait for you to tell your story |
| 1:51.7 | because I think it will encourage people |
| 1:53.9 | who are in your shoes, who it's taking a long time |
| 1:57.9 | and you sometimes wonder, especially as a mother, you sometimes wonder, as a mother you sometimes wonder is this ever |
... |
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