In this episode my special guests Brian & Linda Seitz share their individual journeys to relationship with Jesus and how that impacted their marriage. They share openly about their struggles for 7 years as an unequally yoked couple, and the impact of loving mature believers in their lives. Brian & Linda are counselors and mentors, the creators of the Rebuild Your Marriage class & curriculum and founders of peaksandvalleys.life
Living in an Unequally Yoked Marriage
Gina:
Brian and Linda are dear friends. They have incredible ministry to marriages. They’ve been married 30 years. I believe they were in an unequally yoked marriage for seven of those years. Brian is a retired police captain, Linda is a life coach and together they have done lay counseling.
They have developed and taught a class for marriages in-crisis called Rebuild Your Marriage. They are amazing people who God has used tremendously to save dozens of marriages through their ministry, through who they are, through their classes, through their mentorship. They have a unique perspective on marriage and on relationship.
Brian and Linda, I would love to start with your testimony, your story. How did you come to Jesus?
Linda:
We moved into this brand new neighborhood in south Orange County. Although we were married in the Catholic church fast forward seven years after that, we moved into this new neighborhood and didn’t know anyone in our community. It was a street full of dirt front yards and freshly poured driveways.
This woman and two little girls came walking down the street and they were the same ages as our girls at the time. I thought, “I need to get to know that person,” but I didn’t know why, and what was going to happen. Very shortly after meeting us and doing play dates and sidewalk chalk and popsicles, she started asking me about God, what I thought about God, what I thought about Father God and what I thought about church.
I was raised in a church where it wasn’t so much fun to go. When she started saying that it’s fun to go to church, I thought she’s a little loopy. I didn’t know what she’s talking about, because I have never had that experience before. She said, “Come with me. I want you to come with me. Your girls would have fun. Let’s go.” I started going. At the time Brian was a young police officer, rarely would he have Sundays off. It wasn’t unnatural for me to go to church or anywhere without him and take the kids because that’s what we did. We had our own life going on.
It was three months later, Easter of 93 at Saddleback church, and pastor Rick that day talked about freedom. The most beautiful message on freedom. I hadn’t realized how unfree I felt until I heard that message and I was able to grasp that truth and understand that God was not this big guy upstairs shaking His finger at you. But He had a Son that He gave and that wants to have a friendship and a wholesome life with you. There’s so much more.
I grabbed every verse that was being handed to me and I would go home and I would teach myself how to look it up in the Bible, because I did not know how to read the Bible. I taught myself and then I pushed that new passion into my kids, but Brian wasn’t ready yet.
Brian:
My mind and reality don’t always mesh, but in my mind I grew up going to church. We went as a family to a small church in Los Angeles and I went to their school. Therefore by that existence and that participation I, therefore, was a believer and knew everything there was to know.
I remember when Linda first said she was going to church I was fine with that. That didn’t bother me at all. It’s not that I was a God hater or an atheist or even agnostic. I believed that there was a higher power. I had no problem with the concept and belief in Jesus, but I only had one world view on what that is.
The first time I went to that experience with Linda, I was pretty sure my wife had joined a cult. I thought, “What in the world have I done by not being more of a part of it? What have I allowed Linda and the girls?” It took a while for me to understand, so I started going with her to understand it. Then it became less cultish and I missed their tradition.
I remember going to a Christmas service, and commenting when they finally played the oldest hymn you can think of. They used to have the little words under their pews, circa 1597. Now that’s a Christmas song. The ones written in 1992, those are not a Christmas songs, that’s pop. That was my mindset for a long time until I got to the point where I began to not like it.
I didn’t like it for a number of reasons. I didn’t understand the relational aspect of Christianity in a significant way. I just understood that this is a big book, and that you should try to read it when you can. When there is morality and philosophy cling to that, then you’re good.
I began to resent Linda, a little bit, because I didn’t think there was any reasoning with her and it felt like she was almost cheating on me, not with a person, but with an entity. Our time together was so rare and valuable, especially, prior to that, when we were brand new parents, we were tag team parents, trying to keep the kids going and pay the bills. We never even got to visit with each other. We’d finally got a life where now we had a little time to be together and she was often leaving me to go enjoy this other life that I didn’t want to be a part of.
Gina:
That’s a good point. That’s important for people to hear, especially those that may be in an unequally yoked marriage, whether it’s the husband or the wife. Often in the church, we think of the Christian who’s unequally yoked, and how hard that is for them, but we rarely think of the impact it has on the other side of that. There’s this burden of, we just need to pray for them, but not understanding. That’s significant for you to be able to articulate what that felt like.
Brian:
I’ve never been a perfect husband. I’m never going to be that. But I don’t think I was a bad one. When Linda and I counsel people, we get to hear a lot of bad stuff. I felt very worldly in that, I’m a nice person, and since I’m a nice person and I’m not cheating on my wife and I’m pretty respectful of her. I have some downtime when I mess up that, this is what we’re going to do, because we’re a couple. It wasn’t performing to that level, our marriage wasn’t.
Linda:
We started dating when I was 15 and he was 17. We’d known each other for a long time and I am like the classic introvert. I usually am pretty quiet about decisions. I usually had no problem letting him make the final decision on things. When I said, “No, I’m actually a Christian. I’m following Jesus. This Bible thing, it’s real. The Christian music isn’t going to stop in our home. The kids are going to be in the choir.”
I shocked him, because I’d never been quite firm like that on anything. I never needed to be firm on anything, but, there was something about it that I was like, “Nope, I can’t go back.” I do admit that it was such a tough time that for a lot of the time I didn’t want to be at home, because I didn’t want to enter into those conversations.
I didn’t want him to see me reading the Bible because I didn’t want any sarcasm. I joined every Bible study, every group, and went to every kid’s choir practice. I did not make the church look very good to him. But at that time that’s all I knew. It was my coping mechanism.
Representing Christ
Gina:
There’s a couple of things you’re dealing with. You’re starting to develop this hunger for the Word and hunger for this new relationship. And then there’s the tension that you’re trying to avoid. But you’re still present and want to be. You’re wrestling with all those things; how to be the wife, how to be a Christian, how to be a mom. Meanwhile, Brian, you’re over here trying to navigate this.
Brian:
I felt like I was working my tail off and the little bit of time we had together, I valued tremendously and suddenly she’s always gone. That was frustrating for me. I loved that the kids were in the church choir. I loved little lambs. I was proud. They would have this show at Knotts Berry Farm. I can remember filling up with pride, “Those are my baby girls up there singing. Look how cute they are.”
But I didn’t understand this Bible study thing. I didn’t understand. I don’t know that I saw you change for the bad. It wasn’t that. It was something that I didn’t understand. There was nobody there. We weren’t equipped in our marriage, at that time, to sit down and have that intellectual conversation to satisfy me. Doesn’t mean you needed to do that. That means that’s what my mind needed.
There was nobody in my sphere of influence that could help me understand that. I had people at work that were detractors. I had few people at work that started to pop up that also were Christians. I began to talk to them and try to figure that out. For whatever reason, it was easier for me to ask them questions and hear their hard answers than it was to go to my wife. That was my pride. I don’t have an answer for that.
There was a guy, Steve, we would work the graveyard shift together. I was up all night with Steve in my car and then I’d sleep all day and I’d see Linda and the kids for two hours and then I’d go back to work. Steve was a strong Christian. When you’re in a car with somebody for 10-12 hours a night, it’s amazing the things you’ll talk about.
Things that I probably don’t even share with my wife, not because I don’t want to. But when you’re with your wife, there’s a comfortable silence. When you’re with a new guy, there’s no comfortable silence. Somebody’s always filling in the noise. Steve got me thinking.
I remember being frustrated with Steve, but not with you, because Steve one time said, “Brian, you are a nice guy and you do have good Christian morals, but you’re not a Christian. Morals do not make a Christian, although Jesus is certainly glad that you’re using His morals.” Steve probably said it much nicer than that, but I remember we were at the gas pumps and I thought “I’m going to punch you in the nose.”
Linda:
Early on, I thought that it was all on me. That I was responsible for surrounding him with all of this good stuff.
Gina:
You’re feeling, as a new Christian and not even understanding, all this pressure that you need to somehow manipulate the situation to convince Brian that he needs to be a Christian. Meanwhile, God’s already taken care of it. He’s sitting with Steve every night for 12 hours.
That’s a lesson we all have to learn. When can we get to that place of actually trusting that God is God and we are not. With the same intentional, intimate, relentless, pursuit of us, He’s going to do the same thing for those that we love. But somehow it takes a while for us to understand. What changed? When did things shift?
Linda:
I feel like it was during MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) at Saddleback church. We had a beautiful group of a hundred women. They invited in “Titus” women into their group that were obviously women who were much further ahead in parenting and marriage than we were. They would walk around the tables and ask for prayer requests, seek out one woman per week that was having a difficult time.
One of the women helped me through a lot of things, parenting things, medical things that I was questioning. But then finally, when I asked her “How do you run a marriage when one of you is a Christian and one of you isn’t?” And I’ll never forget, she asked me what my schedule looked like. I told her all of the things I was doing: MOPs, Bible studies, babysitting for Bible studies, serving in the nursery on the weekend, going to a service on the weekend.
She said, “You’re making church look bad to your husband. God would never tell you not to grow in Him, but He might tell you to not get so far ahead that if your husband did come to Christ, that he would feel like he couldn’t catch up.”
I am a visual learner. When I had that picture in my head of me being so far ahead, which I wasn’t, but I was going in that direction, I was ready to leave him behind for the pursuit of Christ. Because, you’re passionate and you want to move forward like that.
God places wise people in your life at the perfect time. She stopped me in my tracks and that’s good. Then I started recognizing where I needed to pull back and that I could study the Bible. anytime I wanted to, but I didn’t always have to be gone. One weekend you asked me not to go to church.
Brian:
I was frustrated. I wanted to have a family day and you kept taking, what I perceived to be the family, away. I said, “I need you to make a choice and I need you to choose me today.” You said, “Okay.” I was surprised. I was thankful. Somewhere in there, there was another person talking to me.
This isn’t to say that Steve was doing this, that he was talking to talk. But I began to feel like a project. Then somebody else came into my life, Mitch. And I wasn’t a project to Mitch. I was a friend. He would answer my questions intellectually in a way that complimented Steve’s.
I want to make it clear that I’m not down on Steve in any way. Steve was fantastic. But Mitch would satiate another thirst that I had and that began to make it okay for me to pursue this. Then we had that little weekend where you were going to leave me yet again. I said, “No, don’t. I need you here.” You did that. I felt honored, especially as I look back on it. Then I began to have my own curiosities in trying to figure out how to deal with those. The first Bible study that you brought me to was an absolute disaster but then probably six months to a year after that, we went to another one and that was of my choosing. That feels a little arrogant to say it like that, but it was something that gave me comfort rather than having me feel ambushed.
I didn’t mind discussing who I thought Jesus was and learning from other people and having them point me in certain directions. I minded not being a part of the conversation. As a husband whose wife was doing all those activities, I felt like I wasn’t part of the conversation. Suddenly we found a small group of friends that we began to meet with and they let me be a jerk.
I hope I wasn’t a jerk, but they let me ask jerkish questions and answer them kindly, in love, with pointed references. Sometimes they said, “Brian, is that a question that has an answer?” It was people that were ahead of me in a lot of areas and wisdom was certainly a part of that and their knowledge of all things, Bible and Jesus were significant.
Gina:
Isn’t that what we should be, someone who would accept you and love you exactly where you’re at. Marriage was God’s idea, Adam and Eve, it’s not good that man should be alone. A man would leave his mother and father and cling to his wife. It’s this picture of partnership and this joining. You were equally yoked outside of the Lord until you became a Christian and suddenly there’s this tension and this thing you’re having to fight against.
There’s something powerful about the wisdom of your friend to see that. I’ve been walking with Jesus for a long time. I’ve had a lot of friends, I’ve been in a lot of Bible studies. I’ve been in a lot of women’s ministries and seeing a lot of unequally yoked marriages and seeing the toll that that takes.
It’s easy, as believers, to put all of this, “Poor Christian wife or husband and your spouse doesn’t know Jesus, and that must be so hard for you.” But rarely do we attend to, or willing to pay attention to what is it like for the spouse and what does it look like to love them well, where they’re at.
I love the fact that God was taking care of your husband. That wasn’t your job. He was doing that by sending wisdom and people in your life to speak truth in love and wisdom. He was doing that by sending men in your life, Brian, to speak truth and love and to love you where you were at.
There’s something beautiful and profound about the significance of marriage in that partnership, the significance of what that looks like when it’s out of whack spiritually. If we can have the patience and the love and the long suffering to stand and wait and trust what God can do in that.
Brian:
When the analogy of the equally yoked process is given, as painful as it is in our perspective whether it’s the man or woman, that yolk that the oxen wear, it pinches both directions. That’s a counseling point that we talk about, it’s a little uncomfortable, but sometimes we ask people, “Do you think it’s possible to volunteer at church too much?”
Oftentimes the answer they’ll give us is no. We have to say, “Well, it is. Let us help explain to you how that can be. We’re not trying to disrespect God. We’re not trying to tell you that God’s not important. we’re trying to tell you that this yolk is pinching you, but it’s pinching him or her as well.” Because that yolk is a solid piece of wood in the analogy.
Check out Peaks and Valleys
Check out the rest of this conversation Being Christ in an Unequally Yoked Marriage
Check out the Dwell Meditations
