About Becoming Echad

I started the original private Facebook group Becoming Echad when I was still married to my ex husband.  I was Torah Observant and egalitarian, and I could only find a handful of people who believed these things together, and I wanted community. (Echad means unity or one in Hebrew).

I had been in discussions with Christians about marriage for years at that point, and the conversation always led back to ONE thing- who makes the decisions?  I read the stories of Christian women whose husbands hit them, raped them, controlled the finances, wouldn't let them attend church, forced them to attend church, were drunks or drug addicts....and my own father was a bipolar alcoholic who would scream and yell at my mom for hours… and the conversation always seemed to make it's way back to whether or not the wife was submitting.  

It was easy for me to think I had a good marriage compared to that, because my ex husband and I made decisions well together.  He didn't hit me or rape me.  I managed the budget.  He gave lip service to respecting women.  Back then, no one was talking about porn addiction as adultery or sexual abuse, nor talking about lying and manipulation as emotional abuse, at least not in my circles.  The best marriages I knew where ones where the couple made decisions well together, and they weren’t spilling what else made it work.

So I thought echad/unity/oneness in marriage was "making decisions together."  I had a hunch it was more than that, but I didn't understand what.  However I did name the group Becoming Echad, not We've Achieved Echad, and I didn't know how apropo that would eventually be. 

See, my ex husband and I had just *one* aspect of echad- making decisions well together.  Even that was similar to how you'd work things out with a co-worker- not an in depth understanding of each other's needs, hopes, dreams, desires, and fears, but the ability to sit down and suss out the pros and cons of several options and choosing one without a lot of conflict.  

The standard in Christian marriages is so incredibly low that I thought we were doing well!  The standard in Christian marriages is simply to have the appearance of getting along as evidenced by the wife giving in, and the husband taking an active role that looks sufficiently like checking the boxes of holding a job, prayer, Bible reading and church attendance.  As long as you can keep up appearances and keep some semblance of peace, little care is giving to what damage is being done to the soul or psyche of either the wife or husband.  

I thought I had found a beautiful raised bar- mutual decision making!  I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, and I did share it at every turn:  women, you don't have to be a doormat!  You can be a full adult human being who sets boundaries, thinks your own thoughts, has your own hopes, goals and dreams.  Men, you don’t have to do this all alone- you have a partner!  If the two of you can just learn to talk things out and make decisions about how to meet everyone's needs together, you'll have found echad/unity/oneness.    

That's one vital brick in the foundation, but you know that saying "The more you learn, the more you discover you have to learn?"  I had a lot to learn, and now I know, I still do!  The house of a healthy marriage has a lot of bricks in the foundation.  

Now I'm married again, and my husband, Daniel, and I are trying to lay ALL the bricks of a healthy foundation, including spiritual, emotional and physical intimacy.  We started out with laying all our baggage on the table and sorting through it together before we started courting.  We knew we were coming in to this marriage scarred and even still wounded, but we trusted that we could help each other heal throughout our marriage, because we started to heal while courting.  The very fact that I’m writing this is evidence of the feeling of safety and vulnerability I never imagined having before. 

Daniel and I have experienced incredible growth together!  We read marriage books together, and try our best to implement the tools.  We read the Bible and pray together, not to check a box, but in communion with our Creator. We're aligned on the issues most important to us, and open to exploring other ideas. We have daily connecting rituals.  We seek advice from other couples, and have friends who have signed our ketubah and who help us when we need it.  We have built tools for conflict like reflective listening, nervous system co-regulation techniques, and a practice of identifying functional and dysfunctional patterns we see ourselves engaging in. We have a paper we refer to during arguments that has guidelines we established, we pass a stuffed animal back and forth so we don't interrupt, and we always make sure the other feels heard and validated in the end... no matter how long it takes to get there. 

And sometimes it does take a while to get there, because we also have major triggers that we're recognizing as areas where we still need healing.  Nervous system healing from childhood and past relationship trauma, spiritual healing, and areas where we just plain get mean and God continues to work on the fruits of the spirit in us.    

So about the name of the group: Becoming Echad.  It’s called “becoming” for a reason.  We aren’t there yet.  It’s not called We’ve Achieved Echad.  It’s a work and a process of sanctification.  The work can only be done together if you’re both doing it separately.     

I never want this website or my group to be a place where I pretend to have it all figured out.  Marriage is my ministry, but I don't always know why, because I sure as heck don’t have an amazing track record!  I only know that God has laid it on my heart over and over again.  I can't stop caring about people's marriages.  I can't stop wanting women to be safe.  I can't stop wanting men to know it's ok to feel emotions and be vulnerable.  I can’t stop desiring echad with my husband, basking in the beauty when we find it, and wanting everyone else to experience that too. This website and the public and private Becoming Echad groups are about us all sharing things as we learn them, and being iron sharpening iron to one another.  I'm as certain as one can be about Torah observance and egalitarianism, but the tools to be in a healthy relationship.... I'm learning right along with you. 

So don’t ever put me or my marriage on a pedestal, but I can promise you this: I’ll be transparent about what works and what doesn’t.  I’ll share my mistakes so you can learn from them.  I won’t settle for the very lowest bar the church has offered, nor will I settle for the slightly higher bar of just making decisions well together.  Daniel and I are doing the work to build a marital foundation of spiritual, emotional, and physical intimacy, and we hope you’ll take this journey along side us.