Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now.com, and you're listening to the

Flying Free Podcast, a support resource for Women of faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden

emotional and spiritual abuse.

Welcome to episode 43 of the Flying Free Podcast. Today it's just me, Natalie Hoffman.

We had originally planned a podcast recording for this morning with some other advocates on the subject of

reconciliation and through a variety of different circumstances it ended up

falling through. So I decided to record the podcast anyway and I would just

dialogue with you about it. This particular podcast is in response to some of

the blog articles that I've written recently,

and I'll give you a little bit of background information.

A couple of years ago, I listened to a sermon in a local church that I'd been attending

for a couple of years and that sermon was when

if you it wasn't a bad sermon but if you listen to it through the lens of an abuse

survivor it was somewhat shaming and it would be the kind of sermon that

would cause someone living in an abusive environment to feel like they needed to stay there.

And there was no other options for them and that if they

tried to get out that they would be not being obedient to God or would be a bad

Christian or whatever. So it's basically the kind of sermons that I grew up hearing and that I heard a lot in my adult life.

That kept me stuck in my own abusive relationship. And so I thought, you know, I am going to, I started taking copious notes as I

listened to the sermon because I realized I really felt like the Holy Spirit was saying,

Natalie, this is so important, you need to be writing

this stuff down.

...