16: Committed to Your Wholeness with Marla Taviano

[00:00:00] The E.C.O.N.S.T.R. U.C.T. Got it deconstruct

[00:00:24] Hello, deconstructionists.

[00:00:35] This is Maggie, the host of our podcast, where we'll collectively share our stories and experiences

[00:00:40] of leaving high-control religion, along with what it's been like for us to find new practices

[00:00:44] that help us feel good and confident in ourselves.

[00:00:48] I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid,

[00:00:51] and most of all that you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:54] You are good, you are loved, and you are worthy, just as you are.

[00:00:58] Hello, deconstructionists.

[00:01:03] My guest today is Marla Taviano, who uses she her pronouns.

[00:01:07] Marla is into books, love, anti-racism, blue, gray, rainbows, and poems.

[00:01:12] She reads and writes for a living, wears her heart on her t-shirts,

[00:01:16] and is on a journey to live whole fartedly, which she noted is not a typo.

[00:01:20] She's the author of Unbelieve, Jaded, and Whole, and lives in South Carolina with her four awesome kids and two cats.

[00:01:27] So thank you, Marla, for being here.

[00:01:29] Thank you so much, Maggie.

[00:01:31] And I'm going to need you to give a little more insight into what it means to live whole fartedly.

[00:01:38] Oh gosh, how much time do we have?

[00:01:41] I—okay, so long story short, I'll try to make it short, that at the end of my new book, Whole,

[00:01:47] I Have an Appendix, where I tell the story.

[00:01:50] And we were sitting around a campfire kind of thing with my family years ago, maybe 10 years ago now.

[00:01:57] And my uncle had told us that when we go visit the farm,

[00:02:01] if we can't visit the cows during milking time because they'll poop a lot.

[00:02:06] And so I was like—I just had this light bulb moment, like wait a minute,

[00:02:10] I always have to poop when I go in bookstores.

[00:02:13] And so I was like, that must mean that I'm excited.

[00:02:16] Well, that makes sense because I love books.

[00:02:19] So I'd ask people on my blog, what makes you fart?

[00:02:22] Like, what gets you—like, so excited that you fart?

[00:02:26] And everybody had something.

[00:02:27] When I'm out in nature, when I drink coffee, when I go to the container store,

[00:02:31] when I this, when I that, I'm like, oh, this is how we're going to find our passions.

[00:02:36] And then Whole farted just came up out of that somewhere, just like in my mind.

[00:02:41] I had been a word and I Googled it. It's nowhere.

[00:02:45] I'm like, I did invent a word.

[00:02:47] So it basically means figuring out what makes you fart and then doing that with your whole heart.

[00:02:54] That's Whole farted.

[00:02:55] So there'll be a book about that at some point too.

[00:02:57] I have an ebook out about it but it needs updated.

[00:03:00] So all of that to say that yes, whole farted is my word.

[00:03:05] I should probably get it copyrighted or something.

[00:03:07] I don't know what if somebody comes and steals it.

[00:03:09] This is amazing.

[00:03:11] Can I read right now you're owed to pooping?

[00:03:14] Yeah.

[00:03:15] Okay, one poem in the book Whole is owed to pooping.

[00:03:20] I really love how my body regularly gets rid of things she has no more use for

[00:03:25] to make room for other fun things.

[00:03:27] She inspires me.

[00:03:29] What a beautiful poem!

[00:03:31] Okay, and now listen, I love that we picked up on these two things to tell the listeners

[00:03:37] that the whole book is not like this.

[00:03:39] No, I mean, you know what, let's have fun.

[00:03:45] Let's be for me like being in tune with my body and talking about my body is a newish thing.

[00:03:52] So I'm all I'm off for it.

[00:03:55] Yeah.

[00:03:56] Okay.

[00:03:57] Well yes, this is not what the whole book is about.

[00:03:59] So we'll dive into some more poems in the book.

[00:04:01] But before we do, can you give us a little background about how you grew up

[00:04:05] and what your religious experience was like?

[00:04:08] Yeah, I am the oldest of four kids.

[00:04:11] I was born on Halloween 1975 in Ohio.

[00:04:15] And I'm pretty sure I was in church as soon as my mom felt good enough to take me.

[00:04:21] And we went to church every Sunday morning Sunday school church, come home for lunch

[00:04:27] and rest and go back to church on Sunday night.

[00:04:29] And then we go back to church on Wednesday night every week, my whole life.

[00:04:35] And from there I went to a Christian college about an hour from my house.

[00:04:41] And that was the same thing again, et cetera.

[00:04:44] This Christian college had chapel every day Monday through Friday at 10 a.m.

[00:04:51] So I was like going to double church like more if you can double how much church triple church.

[00:04:57] I don't know.

[00:04:58] And then I went from there to, well, getting married.

[00:05:03] I got, I went to work at a church camp, met my husband there.

[00:05:07] We got married in 1998.

[00:05:09] And then we did the whole thing too.

[00:05:11] Church, church, church, church, church.

[00:05:13] Evangelical Christian is what I would call my faith.

[00:05:17] I didn't really know.

[00:05:18] I just thought I was a Christian like the right kind of Christian, the real Christian.

[00:05:23] Right, a real Christian.

[00:05:25] I wouldn't have added things like white conservative evangelical in front of that.

[00:05:30] I was just Christian.

[00:05:32] Now I know on the other side of that, I can see all those adjectives that, that I needed to put on there to clarify what brand of Christianity I was into.

[00:05:42] But yeah, I really, really, really truly thought that we were the right ones.

[00:05:47] We had all the answers and it was our obligation to tell as many people as we could to save them from hell because even if they were.

[00:05:54] Quote unquote Christian, they might not have been the right kind.

[00:05:57] They might not have actually been saved and actually going to heaven.

[00:06:01] So yeah, I spent a lot of time helping people get there.

[00:06:06] And you know the thing I tell people now, I, not that I was perfect, but I was always had love in my mind and in my heart when I was doing this.

[00:06:16] I just thought that I was saving them from hell.

[00:06:19] I really thought that.

[00:06:21] So my motive was love, but that gets tricky when you have to tell people that they're going to hell if they don't change what they believe to fit what you believe.

[00:06:31] Doesn't always feel loving to that person, you know.

[00:06:34] Right, but that's also what we learned as love from God.

[00:06:38] God's love was, I love you and you have to love me back and you have to change these things about yourself to accept this love.

[00:06:46] And so his unconditional love, his unconditional love had all of these conditions.

[00:06:51] Right, exactly.

[00:06:53] So yeah, it's like you feel like you're being loving to other people by doing something similar and like putting these conditions on it.

[00:07:01] But that's what we were taught love was for a long time.

[00:07:04] So it makes sense.

[00:07:06] What are some beliefs, like core beliefs of the church that you grew up in or the kind of Christian branch that you grew up in that you really internalized?

[00:07:16] Well, you had to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and ask forgiveness of sins and have his blood wash you clean.

[00:07:23] So it was pretty much a prayer. You had to say the prayer and you had to mean it.

[00:07:27] If you weren't sure that you meant it, you should probably say it again.

[00:07:29] You should keep saying it like your whole life.

[00:07:32] I had a friend in college. She was still saying the prayer because she's like, what if I didn't mean it?

[00:07:37] I'm like, you've been saying it for like 20 years now. Surely one of them you meant it.

[00:07:43] I think we believed once saved always saved.

[00:07:46] But again, how are you sure that you really got saved?

[00:07:49] Like did you really, really mean it?

[00:07:50] So it's funny now that the people who believe once they've always saved tell me, well, you must not have been saved.

[00:07:55] I'm like, hey, you told me you told me once saved always saved.

[00:08:00] We believed in a real fiery hell, like a pit of fire that you would go to if you didn't accept Jesus being gay was a sin.

[00:08:09] I grew up not. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't cuss. I cussed in secret a little bit, but I didn't have alcohol until I was like 34.

[00:08:19] So that was a little bit different because I did know other Christians. They thought it was okay to drink and it did say in the Bible that Jesus and the disciples drank wine.

[00:08:29] So I was like, okay, well maybe but I don't know.

[00:08:32] So there are a lot of things in the Bible, honestly that I had to try to explain away or figure out or be like, oh, well this must mean this or this.

[00:08:42] And I read a lot of books to help me figure out answers that I was kind of questioning or didn't make a lot of sense.

[00:08:49] When I'm looking back now, there are times when I think I'm a really smart person. How did I believe those things?

[00:08:58] And then I realized that yes, I am intelligent, but the one thing that trumped my intelligence was my desire to be good and to be right.

[00:09:09] So anytime my intelligence started to creep in and I thought that it was bumping up against me being right and good, I had to, I had to squash it a little bit or curb it a little bit.

[00:09:22] So that makes me feel a little bit better. It wasn't just that I was dumb and naive. It was that I was trying so hard to be good and to get things right.

[00:09:31] Yeah, but once you start allowing yourself to ask the questions and you're not afraid of what will happen if one thing you believe isn't true, which leads to another thing you believe isn't true and another thing and another thing and nothing.

[00:09:43] If you're not afraid of that anymore, it's super freeing to just be able to be to honestly look at things as unbiased as possible when you have a lot of indoctrination going on in your head.

[00:09:56] What were some of the questions that you started to let yourself ask?

[00:10:01] I had always told people that my deconstruction started around 2009 when I read a book called The Hole in Our Gospel and it was saying how if our good news is not good news to an AIDS orphan in Uganda, then it's not really good news.

[00:10:19] It's like Jesus died for your sins, but sorry you have AIDS and you're starving and all this. If that's then there's something missing from that.

[00:10:26] So I thought that was kind of the start of the deconstruction, but I was looking back through journals. I have 62 journals from 2000 to 2020.

[00:10:35] And I wish that I had them from when I was a kid, but I don't. I did write a lot, but I don't have them anymore.

[00:10:41] But I was looking back through there and I had started questioning the rapture and the tribulation and all these things in Revelation.

[00:10:50] That was another big thing that we believe. And I started having doubts about that a few years before the loving the poor thing.

[00:11:01] And I don't, I didn't remember that. I'm really glad that I have the journals because I was like, oh, and I was really struggling in my journal.

[00:11:10] It's like, wait a second, but this has to be like this. I thought it was, oh no.

[00:11:16] And it's like each time I read it sometimes. Okay, so my marriage is no longer a thing. I'm not married anymore.

[00:11:23] So sometimes I go back to the journals and try to find clues about my marriage.

[00:11:28] And then other times I go back and try to find the deconstruction clues. Other times I'm looking for something else.

[00:11:33] So it's like this big, huge project.

[00:11:37] Some of it is, it's kind of triggering, but it's been healing too when I can make the time.

[00:11:43] I don't have time to sit around all day and read my journals from 2006.

[00:11:49] But yeah, and maybe I wasn't completely honest. Like if I was having doubts, maybe because I would write to God, so maybe I didn't want God to know.

[00:11:57] Right, right.

[00:11:59] That's how unfiltered were you in your journals?

[00:12:01] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:12:03] Right.

[00:12:04] I guess I figured that God knew anyway, so it was okay.

[00:12:08] Yeah, it's nice to have kind of a record of your thoughts and like your kind of process of thinking through all of these things.

[00:12:17] Because like you said, it's easy to look back at ourselves that were in church and think, God was I stupid?

[00:12:23] Like what was wrong with me that I didn't see it?

[00:12:26] But that's not the case.

[00:12:28] And like, you know, believing those things is what our safety relied on.

[00:12:32] So we had to believe those things and it was a survival tactic really to keep believing because that's how we avoided eternity in hell.

[00:12:43] But it's really interesting to look back for myself too, to look back at journals and see like when did my questions start and what were they?

[00:12:50] When did I start to listen to myself and trust it?

[00:12:54] Actually you have a great poem about this.

[00:12:56] I'm going to read it.

[00:12:57] Yay!

[00:12:58] She has so many great poems.

[00:13:00] It's called, oh it's called Still Small Voice.

[00:13:04] Listen to God's Holy Spirit they told me but not your own sinful nature.

[00:13:08] Right? Got it.

[00:13:10] Now remind me again how the hell do you tell them apart?

[00:13:13] I still don't know.

[00:13:16] Well and that was, this has been huge for me to like, to realize that all this time that I've been sitting and journaling and like trying to listen to God's voice.

[00:13:25] I was really just trying to listen to mine but like squash mine and listen to God's.

[00:13:29] But eventually it's like, it's all coming from your own voice and so that's been really helpful for me in my own deconstruction.

[00:13:36] But yeah, interesting to look back at our journals and kind of see how these things poked their way through.

[00:13:42] Yeah, unfortunately slash unfortunately I also have four books that I wrote from 2006 to 2009 with even more things.

[00:13:51] What I believe.

[00:13:53] So the bad news is they're not on my shelf as secret journals that no one can see.

[00:13:57] They're on other people's shelves where they can read them.

[00:14:00] The good news is those are my receipts.

[00:14:03] Like I've just been calling them my receipts lately when people say maybe you weren't really saved.

[00:14:08] I'm like, hmm have you read these books that I wrote because if this girl wasn't saved nobody saved.

[00:14:14] Like she was on fire.

[00:14:17] So I can point to that and then I can also use it as that's where I was and this is where I am now.

[00:14:24] There's really hope for anyone if we're being honest.

[00:14:27] If I could go from being so zealous about what I believe to letting pretty much all of it go.

[00:14:38] When that never did never you could I would never have believed you if you told me 15 years ago that this is where I'd be now.

[00:14:47] No, no, not me other people maybe not me.

[00:14:52] Yeah, you have another great poem to mind if I just keep reading them just read all of them.

[00:14:56] They're fantastic.

[00:14:58] Okay, it's called How Do I Look?

[00:15:00] I used to be a conservative evangelical Christian.

[00:15:03] Now I'm just chilling in the fitting room trying some other identities on for size deciding if I'm ready to commit and keeping the receipt just in case.

[00:15:11] That's so good.

[00:15:13] Thank you.

[00:15:14] Every single one I'm like, oh my God, I feel like I could sit with every poem for like a week and just like think about it, you know, like I'm keeping the receipts I'm trying it on.

[00:15:25] I'm keeping the receipts and I don't know maybe I'll change.

[00:15:29] Yeah.

[00:15:30] Yeah, it's so fun to I mean the poems like writing poems is fun but also just I don't know maybe not we'll see who knows like that freedom personally is something I've never ever had my whole life and but my favorite thing is the freedom to love and accept everyone like there's

[00:15:54] nothing that comes along where I think oh shoot I really love this person, but this doesn't sit with my face like I'm going to have to navigate around this or I have to tell them you can't be this or do this.

[00:16:07] Now I'm not saying I'm not talking about things that they do the harm people and that's what I tell people a lot.

[00:16:13] I don't care what beliefs you have as long as they're not harming people.

[00:16:19] Right.

[00:16:20] I don't have to believe the same thing. I'm friends with a lot of Christians. I'm friends with pastors. I'm not really friends anymore with people who have harmful beliefs we might be casual friends or used to be friends but I don't spend a lot of time with people that I think their beliefs are harming others and a harmful belief is you're

[00:16:39] going to hell because you don't believe something that I believe that's harmful.

[00:16:44] Right.

[00:16:52] Alright I'm going to shift this into your deconstruction a little bit. When did you start to deconstruct and what did that look like?

[00:16:59] So I mentioned it was around 2009 that I read that book. I was sitting at the pool and most people are bringing like romance novels to the pool.

[00:17:08] I was like the whole in our gospel. That's how serious I was about this Christian stuff.

[00:17:15] So that's when I thought wait a minute because what it was is I think it was around 2008 when people that I knew were voting for Barack Obama and I was like well we can do that because he's pro-choice and you know,

[00:17:32] I'm as mainly pro-choice like that was like the last thing that I couldn't wrap my mind around.

[00:17:37] And then when he won and some of my friends were celebrating and I saw how happy he was with his family.

[00:17:43] I just had this twin like oh I kind of wish I would have voted for him.

[00:17:47] So I think that's when I started thinking wait a minute because to me Democrats were people who talked about loving the poor but they didn't talk about the truth.

[00:18:00] Like the truth of the gospel, the truth of Jesus and hell and all that.

[00:18:05] So then when I read this book and I'm like wait this guy is saying that the real gospel has to include feeding the poor and taking care of the poor or it's not really good news which is what the gospel means.

[00:18:21] So that got me started and then we went on a trip to Cambodia in 2010 and then we helped a black pastor friend of ours plant a church.

[00:18:33] It's like a multi-ethnic church and then Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012.

[00:18:39] And for the first time in my life I was going to church with new black friends and one of my friends put on Facebook.

[00:18:46] Why aren't any of my white friends talking about Trayvon Martin?

[00:18:49] I didn't know who Trayvon Martin was.

[00:18:51] I Google it and that just it was a snowball from there like no looking back at the beginning as I would learn things.

[00:19:01] I would just spit them right back out.

[00:19:03] So I'm like telling people we're all racist in this and that like looking back.

[00:19:08] Would I change some of that?

[00:19:10] Yeah maybe not.

[00:19:11] I don't know.

[00:19:12] My sister, one of my sisters disowned me over that big whole thing and all my beliefs and everything in 2017 but from there it was.

[00:19:22] It was the slippery slope that they warned you about and they call it that because they don't want you to even investigate the smallest thing.

[00:19:31] And that's in the past what had kept me away from the edge was the slope will be slippery.

[00:19:38] I will not be able to stop.

[00:19:40] I can't change one belief.

[00:19:41] It'll all go.

[00:19:42] They all have nothing.

[00:19:43] And I think it just got braver and braver and braver and so first it was kind of waking up to the poor and then racism and then it took me a long time for me to let go of my beliefs that it was a sin to be gay or to be racist.

[00:20:01] I had to have gay sex.

[00:20:03] I credit a man named BT Harman who I actually he let me quote him.

[00:20:07] He let me put a whole entire thing in the back of my first book that he wrote it was like 19 reasons why Christians are moving toward affirming gay marriage.

[00:20:18] And it's so good and he let me just post the whole thing in my book for free.

[00:20:23] And he made sense and he had this blog and I started reading it and he would talk about how he prayed every single day for 30 years that God would take away the gay and God did not take away the gay and then I would hear more and more and more stories of this

[00:20:40] and where I would say that it clicked but it was more I just made a decision.

[00:20:45] I can't do this anymore where I think this is a sin if someone's praying for 30 years because they love God so much and they don't want to be gay and God will not answer and will not change them.

[00:21:00] That can't that no that doesn't compute and I can't I'm done.

[00:21:05] I had already had so many gay friends and then obviously once I became affirming and a safe person that other people could come out to me because no one's going to come out to me when they know Marla's great and all but she thinks I'm going to hell.

[00:21:18] So like there's apology letter to my queer siblings in my first book I believe because holy crap like the grace that they've given me.

[00:21:27] I mean I have had so many different people Muslim friends black friends queer friends give me grace and I hate the word grace.

[00:21:36] I have a poem in whole that grace or like all that word.

[00:21:39] I don't know what other word to use though where they've just giving me the benefit of the doubt we know you meant well or we know you thought this and you didn't know any better and that's a really generous thing to do when someone has beliefs that harm you and then you tell them it's okay you didn't know better.

[00:21:58] Why didn't you know better.

[00:22:00] You hurt me and anyway so and I don't expect that from anyone like I don't expect anybody to offer me that but I've gotten it so much.

[00:22:10] So I'm really grateful.

[00:22:12] So yeah, from there it just went the very very last piece I would say is the pro choice piece where I was just like, but I don't want any little babies to die.

[00:22:23] I think it was it was just still and then I'm like, okay for one.

[00:22:28] It's ridiculous these people that are anti abortion and yet do nothing to help anyone after they had the baby so in unbelieve I did not touch abortion at that point I was like someone reads that they're going to throw this book they're not going to listen to anything I say so I purposely didn't do it even though I was pro choice at that point.

[00:22:50] And then my second book jaded there's a whole section about it where I'm like, don't tell me.

[00:22:56] Don't tell me you care about unborn babies when you won't help anyone who's pregnant you won't help anybody with kids you won't give like any kind of support. No, there's no.

[00:23:08] I love that baby I can't see but I'm not going to love anybody that I can see so and finding out that the whole pro life movement started out because racism wasn't cool anymore so they had to find a new way.

[00:23:21] Like all these things that I'm uncovering and people that my parents thought were amazing like Jerry fall well and James Dobson and Ronald Reagan and you know people like that.

[00:23:34] I actually collect James Dobson books now I have 60 like 68 of them on my shelf I get them from first source for a dollar. I make protests protest art out of it and I call him Jim Dobbs that's another name I don't know if anyone ever came up with that but Jim Dobbs is what I.

[00:23:50] So I make bookmarks we use his face like from the back of his thing and then I use the covers of his books and I say things like you caused untold harm Jim Dobb and then makes them art people get mad they're like.

[00:24:03] So mean it's so rude like you don't miss me as 90 whatever years old and has he is the reason that queer teens have died by suicide he is like it is just there is so much harm.

[00:24:18] It's almost going to keep talking about it. Yeah I love that okay I I've thought about doing like superlatives on my podcast you would win for a number of journals number of James Dobson.

[00:24:30] I was hoping that I would win superlatives awards. Yeah. Yeah I also collect toxic marriage books to of which I wrote myself.

[00:24:49] Those are on the shelf to which is funny because I got I used to own so many of these and then I got rid of them and then we moved back from Cambodia in 2020 and I started buying them again which is funny funny not funny.

[00:25:03] I also collect whitewashed history books with a lot of those here in South Carolina. Oh yeah so I collect those I'm going to be making some art and stuff I have I'm ambitious I have a lot of ideas and not enough time but I'm getting there we'll see I do what I can.

[00:25:19] I love it. I found a couple books at a thrift store captivating and when God writes your love story and I want to go back and look at them and I was like you know what even if I open them up and I'm like nope don't want to look at this like don't want to read it even for like the humor I can just like turn them into some art or something like that.

[00:25:38] Yes I have both of those two. I also collect Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper because it's easy to just cut that out and it's don't waste your life listening to John Piper.

[00:25:49] Yes we did the Desiring God and Don't Waste Your Life series when I was in high school and those were really influential for me in a terrible way and yeah John Piper is pretty he caused a lot of harm.

[00:26:07] Yeah and they're still causing harm like that still I looked online because I wanted to see since I have my own books and checking my Amazon ranking to see if anybody's buying these books and I checked some of James Dobson.

[00:26:20] I was like what in the heck these books are 30 years old and they are selling and I know that they're selling a lot of copies to keep these Amazon rankings that they have.

[00:26:33] I mean like these are people who parents now who are buying these books spanking their kids teaching them toxic masculinity making sure they aren't gay like all this stuff still today.

[00:26:48] Wow and it's like we have so many more much better resources out there that parents could use from like actual psychologists, actual doctors.

[00:26:59] Yeah he's a fraud he tried to pretend he's not an actual anything.

[00:27:05] Oh my god. Anyway okay I'll shift us back to your deconstruction but this is fascinating.

[00:27:13] Okay so can you give us like what did your deconstruction feel like for you do you feel like you did it by yourself is this when your marriage ended like what did it look like and feel like for you.

[00:27:24] At the beginning it felt scary I wasn't sure if anybody else was doing it and then when we helped plant that church the multi ethnic church that was my introduction to some people who hadn't grown up like me and so I'm learning about white supremacy and racism and all of that so that I felt like I had people around me

[00:27:42] who were like supporting me in that and then we moved to Cambodia in January 2015.

[00:27:51] And so there I want to say I mean I was on my own, as far as like physically in a place my husband at the time.

[00:28:01] I would say we were kind of deconstructing together and people have asked me is that why you got divorced and like well we got divorced because he started cheating on me in 2017 and I didn't find out about it till after he left in 2020 I didn't find out about

[00:28:14] to four months after he left. So that wasn't it and he seemed to be changing his mind along with me in a lot, a lot of respects the one thing that he always kind of bulked at and didn't like was when I talked about anything that had to do with feminism, which is funny because obviously he's

[00:28:36] just stood to lose quite a bit if I decided that oh I don't need to do every single thing for you and you never lift a finger and I take care of everything.

[00:28:45] Right, right.

[00:28:46] And what I also tell people is my sister defoned me from the US when I was in Cambodia all that she based it on was what I had written on Facebook basically.

[00:28:58] So you have that so in one respect like if people are just reading what I wrote online and I'm not in actual face to face community with them. You kind of have to interpret what I'm saying and you might take it the wrong way whereas if we're sitting next to each other, you might remember

[00:29:15] that I'm actually like me that I'm nice and so there was that but the good thing was, I wasn't leaving a toxic church I wasn't seeing all my conservative Christian friends in Target I wasn't.

[00:29:30] I didn't want to do this and not feel all of that when we move back in 2020 women to South Carolina I'm from Ohio so I left like all of this now all the toxic people are 10 hours away from me.

[00:29:43] And so again, I said I don't go to church here so I don't have to see anyone face to face if I don't want to people who disagree with me or don't like me or whatever so when people ask me what do I do how do I leave.

[00:29:59] I can't answer that I didn't have that experience. I didn't have my kids in church and then it was toxic and we left that's not how it happened. We had some toxic situations in Cambodia but that's a different story.

[00:30:11] So, when I got back in 2020 I had no idea that my husband is going to leave we got back in March like last plane out of CMR Cambodia in the middle of the pandemic, my daughter and her Cambodian fiance were stuck in Cambodia because the embassy closed down.

[00:30:26] In June they finally got here and on Labor Day my husband left. And so I didn't, I didn't have any, I mean, we're all quarantined were isolated my, my sister actually backyard neighbors they're moving in a week but for four years now we've lived with our backyards backing up to each other

[00:30:46] and that's the sister who didn't assume me but they have been like really our closest real life friends I've met some people here so my kids have met different people, but yeah not a whole, a whole lot of in person community.

[00:31:03] I also, I feel, I mean lucky I might be the word but the fact that people started waking up to things like when people started waking up to Donald Trump and that's that's what woke up a lot of people.

[00:31:17] I had already woken up in 2020 when George Floyd was murdered and people started reading books by black authors I started a Instagram account called white girl learning in 2017 and I've been reading almost all black authors like that whole time.

[00:31:31] So I was ahead, so to speak where I, I didn't feel the need to catch up as much and the reason I say lucky is because I got to go slow. And I tell people that it's a luxury to go slow.

[00:31:46] I really didn't even have the, I had the luxury. The people who were being harmed that wasn't a luxury for them or let's wait like 10 years for Marla to wake up to the fact that racism is a thing.

[00:31:57] Martin Luther King Jr. was saying this in the Birmingham jail like 60 years ago when are the white moderate Christians going to wake up and he's like they're taking their time they're going really slow.

[00:32:11] What would he think like 60 years later when here they are like well we're going to go slow on that like we're going to take our time with that we're not quite ready for that.

[00:32:20] Same with becoming queer affirming where it took me a long time. Well, you can't take five years from now. We need you to do it now because the laws are being passed now.

[00:32:33] And so there's no more time to take it slow. Sorry about your luck and that's what that's what's hard for people because it's a cognitive dissonance like it's so indoctrinated in you and it takes a while.

[00:32:48] You got to speed it up but you got to find a way. And that's kind of what I hope my books do because my books are a lot of years went into that and then I just put them in these short poems.

[00:32:59] I can't know how it's going to land with someone like like you're telling me that my third book in the trilogy really resonated with you and all that. Well, I don't know how it would land with someone who's not as far along as you.

[00:33:12] I picture throwing that they throwing the books or something Rob Bell's book Love wins. Yeah, I tried to read it like I did the home and one of my books about it.

[00:33:23] I'm sorry that I threw his book in the trash and seven years later I got it out because I was like, I cannot believe this like what do you mean there's no hell.

[00:33:35] And Rachel held Evan to I dedicated my first book to she was the one that really got like I owe her everything because we were the same exact person we were on fire zealous in our public high school telling people about Jesus all this.

[00:33:50] And when she starts having these questions and she starts raising these doubts and I'm like wait, how can she go from that to that.

[00:33:59] And I had a couple options either push her away and not think about her or well let me just see and if she's wrong well then I can show everybody that she's wrong right and she was wrong.

[00:34:13] She was not wrong. So I can't say how long it'll take I just know we can't keep taking forever.

[00:34:22] And it feels like in many ways we're going backwards in this country with the Supreme Court and the laws and the book bands, just all this stuff that's like hey we just made all this progress.

[00:34:33] And now you can't say the word gay in Florida or whatever.

[00:34:37] I know it's very scary. I feel like you should be very proud that you wrote a book that would probably be banned, you know.

[00:34:44] Yeah, yeah, it says the word gay in it.

[00:34:48] It says the word gay.

[00:34:50] Multiple times.

[00:34:51] There are two poems I want to read that are kind of touching on God being a bit of an asshole.

[00:35:09] One is called full of himself and it talks about suffering.

[00:35:14] It says, why does suffering exist?

[00:35:16] I want to know so God gets more glory. They tell me well, I think that causing someone trauma so you can have more glory is very self centered and also bullshit.

[00:35:27] And then the other one I wanted to read is merit based miracles.

[00:35:31] My ex husband had a massive heart attack and was saved by a quick response team and emergency surgery but we gave all the credit to God.

[00:35:39] It's so weird how God looks down at all the people in the world and saves his miraculous intervention for the ones with access to health care.

[00:35:47] I think both of those are so powerful because they just shine a light on the cognitive dissonance of God, like what we know about God to be true.

[00:36:00] He's letting the suffering happen and they being the church talks about how it's to give glory to God.

[00:36:09] And it's like I call bullshit on that.

[00:36:12] And then on the flip side, God saves his miracles for a certain group of people which is people who can afford help.

[00:36:20] And then we give him the credit and what do we think is happening to the people who can't afford it?

[00:36:26] Like why do we think that God isn't saving them?

[00:36:29] Is it like he's causing them suffering so that he gets the glory somehow?

[00:36:33] Anyway, I think both of those are super powerful and yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about your view of God in this way.

[00:36:42] Yeah, I do not know.

[00:36:45] That's what I tell people when they ask me what do you think about God?

[00:36:50] I don't know because the problems that you read, yes, I have another problem about the hurricane is coming.

[00:36:57] And it's like thank you, dear God for moving the hurricane out of the path of my home and into the path of someone else's home.

[00:37:05] So anything that happens, I have poems about you can tell me that God did this and God did this and God did this.

[00:37:14] But if you want to tell me that there's a reason that my friend's 19 month old daughter died and that's in all things work together for good and for God's glory, hell no.

[00:37:28] Like I will not.

[00:37:30] I will not.

[00:37:32] And it's a kind of pick my battle thing.

[00:37:35] I'm not going to, I don't go up to every single person that gives God credit for things and give them this soapbox speech.

[00:37:43] But something like that, like I won't stand for that. That's not you don't take someone's deepest pain and say that God had some kind of sick twisted plan for that.

[00:37:58] I have another poem about a friend who had this digestive disease problem for 10 years and finally found something that helped it was like praise God, praise God, praise God.

[00:38:08] Like, where was God 10 years ago? Like what, what does God have to do to not get the credit. There's nothing. There's nothing.

[00:38:17] It is anything that good that happens in my life is God gets the praise anything bad is either my fault or God's going to use it or whatever.

[00:38:27] And so in jaded my second book, the title kind of that's how I was feeling is a lot of bitter and great not all of them are bitter and angry and jaded but a lot of them are.

[00:38:37] And I just say, I'm done. I'm done giving God glory and credit and not blame. Like you tell me which one do you want this God gets the blame and the credit or do you not get the blame or the credit because there's no credit if you're not going to give God the blame.

[00:38:58] That's just it doesn't make sense in any situation. And we're talking earlier about like how we believe things for so long. Well, there are verses that people would pull out God's ways are higher than our ways.

[00:39:08] So anything you didn't understand is like, what does it really make sense but God's ways are higher. Well, how do you know that this belief that makes no sense. It doesn't make sense because God's ways are higher.

[00:39:23] I mean, it's just, oh, it's exhausting. So what do I believe? I don't know. I have this launch team for my new book and we're in a Facebook group together and someone asked the question, What do you miss most about church and some people still go to church.

[00:39:38] There are pastors in this group, but everybody was saying the things that they missed. And I said, I really miss church. I thought it was boring.

[00:39:47] I miss church a lot of the time. To be honest, I do miss the build in friendships for my kids like they move here as teenagers during a pandemic new state and it's hard when you don't just like go to church and there's some friends that then go get a job or join it something.

[00:40:02] And I said, and I do miss the feeling of being able to go to God whenever I needed something and just feeling convinced that that God was going to take care of it is going to be okay.

[00:40:14] Yeah.

[00:40:15] And I said when I'm desperate, I still do. I'll say, Mama God or I'll say something and I kind of frame it with if you're there, or if there's any chance that something's out there, like I'm just going to tell you this thing that's really scary me right now.

[00:40:28] I said to my friends, the ironic thing was, I thought that was bringing me comfort. I thought the God would make everything okay. My life was not okay. I had so many hellish things happening.

[00:40:40] And what did I guess I just thought, well, God will work them out or God will turn them into something good or this suffering of mine will bring God glory. I don't know.

[00:40:51] I tried to remind myself of that because I think, what if I stop believing in God and stop praying and then all these bad things happen. I'm like, you know, the funny thing is way less bad things have happened since I stopped crying.

[00:41:06] So I don't know how you want to figure that one out. But I mean, my husband cheated on me while I was still praying.

[00:41:14] It's almost like when you took your life into your own hands, you had a little more control.

[00:41:21] Like I knew what kind of good decisions to make instead of just listening and submitting to my husband and his terrible decisions. That's funny. That's cute.

[00:41:33] You kind of talked about where you are a little bit, but I often say that deconstruction is never over. It's this journey that goes on forever. It's a lifelong process, I think.

[00:41:43] But I do think we find ourselves in these landing points along the way. And could you speak to what landing point you find yourself in right now?

[00:41:53] And the poem that's inspiring me, I'm going to read like all your poems before we're done.

[00:41:58] It's called Sorry You Asked. How's your walk with the Lord? Honestly, he's having trouble keeping up. And I love that.

[00:42:06] So I'm wondering if you could talk about your landing point, which is maybe moving, which is incredible, but kind of where you are now and what that looks like and how the Lord is having trouble keeping up with you.

[00:42:16] Yeah, there's someone in my life I won't mention who it is, but this person is always very concerned of people's walk with the Lord.

[00:42:23] We all have those, yeah. I'm just like, oh, you know, I'm going to write a little poem about that and how I feel about this walk. I don't know where he's at.

[00:42:33] I'm just going to keep going. Let me read you a poem. Actually, I'm going to read your poem. Okay.

[00:42:39] One of mine. This is from Unbelieve and it's one of the last ones. So Unbelieve is the first in the trilogy. And it's called Where Have I Landed?

[00:42:46] That's the thing. I can fly now and damn what a glorious view. You can see so much from up here. Wow. And dang, there are other birds too.

[00:42:55] I might descend a light from time to time. But why would I land in any one place for very long at all when I have wings? I've always, always had wings.

[00:43:06] So that's what I'll tell people sometimes in the like, where have you landed? I'm like, landed. I'm flying.

[00:43:14] I have landed on love. And I always shot out my friend, Trey Ferguson, who is a pastor, and he says that love is the commitment to wholeness.

[00:43:27] And when someone that I love very much told me that sometimes love feels like hate Marla as in like if someone is gay and you tell them they're going to hell, that might feel like hate to them, but really it's loving because then you can whatever.

[00:43:41] And I am not interested in any kind of love that feels like hate. I am interested in love as a commitment to wholeness. So if you tell me that you are queer, whatever form that takes, whatever you want to say and I tell you I am committed to you being whole, whatever that takes,

[00:44:00] not having to hide any part of you, not having to diminish any part of you, not having to fit in a box or become like me or do this or do that or whatever.

[00:44:09] I want you to be whole your whole self. And that's now what I believe if there is a God, I don't want to follow a God that isn't into that like that because people will say, aren't you afraid like what if there is a God and he's going to like,

[00:44:26] might you down? I'm like, then let him do it because I'm not following him. Like I am rebelling against that God and he's out there and he has that power. Go ahead. Strike me down. I will not follow you because I'm not that's not I will go out here and love people until you take me down.

[00:44:47] I'm like, I don't. That's what I'll do. So that's where I've landed. And like I said, it's so freeing to not have to worry if someone going to come along and challenge my belief is it going to be wrong? Is it this like I had someone just on Facebook yesterday and today, I posted a quote that said something about evangelical Christians.

[00:45:09] It wasn't even my word. And this person I don't even know just launching them to the big long thing people don't do that as much with me anymore because I they either unfriended me or they're gone.

[00:45:19] But just going on and on and on about how I have no grace for evangelical Christians and I'm so this and so that if I would just like learn to be friends with people who are different than me and believe different things.

[00:45:30] And I just did this calm way. I'm like, just the same. It's just the same stuff all the time and it just doesn't.

[00:45:38] It doesn't move me in any way and I told her the final thing that I said because she said she's open to being friends with me even though we're different. I don't know who she is.

[00:45:47] And I said, listen, I have a lot of friends and I have friends who mostly agree with me and I have friends who disagree with some things. And if I am in a relationship, if I'm in relationship with someone, I will take the time to work through things we disagree about if that's what they want if that's what I wanted that's necessary.

[00:46:05] We'll do that.

[00:46:07] I am not. I do not need right now I'm not looking for any new quote unquote friends who disagree with me. I'm not out there collecting friends who want to fight about things like right.

[00:46:20] I have so many friends, even if I didn't I don't know friends I don't need friends like that whole idea of you should be friends of people who disagree with you know you just want to fight you want to whatever.

[00:46:34] I don't that's not my thing anymore. Like, sometimes I ignore people sometimes I calmly respond sometimes whatever but that's not my thing like my energy and my time is spent on people who are open to learning people who want to love people who also believe that love is the commitment to wholeness and people who are marginalized people who have

[00:46:56] been allowed to be their whole selves. Those are the people I want to surround myself with and lift them up and celebrate them and learn their story share their story. That's the kind of thing I want to do so I'm still very much.

[00:47:13] I don't know if you call it a spiritual person. I don't really know, but I, I will always have all of that Christian stuff in me like I have read the Bible cover to cover many, many, many times.

[00:47:28] I've written Christian books like I it's all there in me so that's also hard for people to fight me. You don't want to listen to evangelical Christians I'm like, I was one for 40 years.

[00:47:43] My books are on my shelf. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's always going to be in there and I know that stuff, but I want to leverage that and use it in a really cool way like a redemptive way where I can point to things I used to believe and here's why I don't I can help kind of bridge that gap between people who are still stuck in one place and might need to be woken up to some other things.

[00:48:07] But also what I'm very careful not to do and I haven't always done this right is not become dogmatic about the things that I feel and believe now I am dogmatic about love as a commitment to wholeness like I'm really adamant about that and that's the thing you can be adamant about that and it doesn't have rules.

[00:48:30] It means what is this person need to feel loved, what does this person need to feel hold and that's it. Example, if they want you to call them this name instead of this name and they want you to use this pronoun instead this pronoun, that's a commitment to their wholeness your refusal to do that for them just says to me that you aren't committed to their wholeness you're not committed to actually loving them in a way they feel

[00:49:00] so I am honestly like the happiest that I have ever been when people ask me it's so your life is perfect now I'm like, no, I mean they still have to figure out how to pay my bills and single bomb I've got four young adult kids.

[00:49:16] And that's probably my I would say my hardest thing not that they are hard they're beautiful and wonderful and they got me through this divorce and all of that.

[00:49:25] It's just, I want them to be as happy and fulfilled and know what they want out of life as I do I've got a big head start and I wasn't a teenager in the middle of pandemic moving to a new country and all of that so that would probably be the the hardest thing in my life is how can I

[00:49:45] I mean, as far as me personally like, I mean every night I climb into bed with a snack and my laptop to watch this show and I'm just like, I love this.

[00:49:58] I love everything that I get up in the morning and I get a right and read and it's like, so yeah, I'm good.

[00:50:08] That is amazing.

[00:50:10] That is flying.

[00:50:11] Yeah, yeah.

[00:50:13] Last question. Do you have any encouragement that you might want to offer people who are deconstructing themselves and I'll leave it at that.

[00:50:23] Yeah, and it's kind of like what I just said that if anyone knew me when I was first going through this and when it was really hard for me and my sister and other people didn't like me.

[00:50:34] And there were a lot of tears and a lot of heartache.

[00:50:38] And now to see where I am, I kind of look at my life as an example of hey you can get through this same with my divorce and my ex husband infidelity like three and a half years later that I healed so much and I'm doing so well that's like an example to people so funny.

[00:50:59] It could kind of be looked at as oh see God did work all these things together for good.

[00:51:06] Okay fine if you want to believe that fine.

[00:51:08] I'm just saying you can go through hell and it can be okay.

[00:51:15] I've always told people too that someone dying especially a child dying like that is the one, I guess my biggest fear in the whole entire world.

[00:51:22] And that's one of the things I don't I don't know how that ever gets better or you get through that or you get past that but a divorce.

[00:51:31] Yes cheating.

[00:51:33] Yes deconstruction.

[00:51:34] Yes like those are things that on the other side of it there can be just a really, really good things and so the trilogy is not a tied up with a bow at the end.

[00:51:47] But it really is the beginning story is here I go with all these doubts and all these questions and all of this the middle one is like.

[00:51:57] And the ending is like hey this is really cool.

[00:52:03] So yeah, it's that's kind of funny to me that that actually did work out that way now I did write.

[00:52:09] I wrote the first one when I was largely through that whole big first section I wrote the second one like I'm writing them after so it's not like, oh I hope I'm feeling better by the time I start number three.

[00:52:22] I was already feeling better so yeah but I would just encourage people that you you can get through it and it's not the end of the world and you get to love people and there's a lot of harm.

[00:52:35] I had a lot of harm done to me and I had a lot of harm that I did other people because of what I believe.

[00:52:42] And that's not a part of my life anymore and I will always be trying to make it right and not in a way I don't feel this big weight of guilt.

[00:52:52] I don't even feel white guilt like when it comes to fighting white supremacy and racism and stuff.

[00:52:58] It's not about that it's about just wanting to see people restored wanting to have reparations made wanting all of that and just doing whatever I can to be a part of that and bring other people along with me on the journey.

[00:53:15] And that's been fun.

[00:53:17] It's been a lot of fun.

[00:53:19] Yeah, wanting to be committed to people's wholeness.

[00:53:22] Yeah, yeah.

[00:53:23] If listeners want to connect with you want to find your first two books want to preorder your third book where can they reach out to you and find all your good stuff.

[00:53:33] I spend the most time on Instagram it's Marla Taviano on Instagram and I also have white girl learning if you are interested in reading books by black authors indigenous authors other authors of color.

[00:53:44] And threads is a new one for me I kind of moved from Twitter over to threads or I'm also at Marla Taviano and I have a website Marla Taviano.com but it's in desperate need of some updating so there's not going to be a lot of stuff there and my books are available wherever books are sold.

[00:54:03] Some people don't like Amazon so you don't have to buy them there.

[00:54:07] The new one I think it should be available for preorder anywhere it comes out March 26th.

[00:54:12] So it's in the preorder stage right now.

[00:54:15] Yeah, and that's been a lot of fun to have like the third book and people being excited about it because they read the other two and I'm also hoping that people that start with this one will then want to go back and read those two.

[00:54:26] Yeah, and I'm really proud of them and I wrote them during a hard time in my life it's kind of like my comeback I wrote those books about marriage and sex and motherhood from a very conservative Christian perspective in 2006, seven, eight and nine.

[00:54:41] And I self published a bunch of ebooks for a while.

[00:54:44] And now this is like my new era so people ask me how many books have you published, like three just three.

[00:54:53] Don't go looking don't go searching.

[00:54:56] Do not google my name.

[00:54:59] Whatever you do.

[00:55:01] Well, I will link the I'll link all those you know Instagram threads website stuff and also these books so people can can find them and I won't link any others.

[00:55:14] Those are funny too as long as people read them knowing what well what I can't stop them so whatever but yeah.

[00:55:21] Amazing.

[00:55:23] Well, thank you so much for being here Marla this was great.

[00:55:26] Thank you Maggie this is so much fun.

[00:55:28] Thanks for listening to another episode of Hello! Deconstructionists.

[00:55:32] If you enjoyed this episode or any others please like follow or subscribe to the podcast and if you feel like it leave us a review so other people know what this show is all about.

[00:55:41] If you have any questions comments or parts of your own experience you'd like to share on the podcast you can email me at hello.dkons at gmail.com and as always you can find me over on Instagram at hello underscore deconstructionists where together we are building community post evangelicalism.

[00:55:58] Huge thank you to Amy Azera for writing the theme song for this podcast and when the sweet little bop inevitably gets stuck in your head I hope it reminds you of this wonderful community that's here with you.

[00:56:08] Thanks to all our guests for sharing these parts of their stories with us and of course to you for listening. See you next time.