Shownotes
Tilly Dillehay, author of the thought-provoking book "My Dear Hemlock," explores the complexities of women's inner lives and the unique challenges they face in today's world.
Dillehay delves into the themes of self-understanding, societal expectations, and the often-overlooked struggles women encounter in their relationships and faith.
The conversation highlights the importance of personal responsibility and the power of gratitude in fostering healthy relationships, making it a compelling listen for anyone interested in the intersection of gender, faith, and culture.
Takeaways:
- 'My Dear Hemlock' cleverly reimagines C.S. Lewis's 'Screwtape Letters' from a woman's perspective, exploring temptations unique to women.
- The book examines the struggle between modern feminism and women’s inherent design, urging readers to embrace their roles.
- Dillehay discusses how societal pressures can lead women to feel superior to their husbands, a damaging mindset that undermines marriage.
- The importance of confession and basic kindness in marriage is emphasized as a path to healing and joy.
- Dillehay's insights reveal how the pursuit of fame and validation can distort women's relationships, urging a return to gratitude and faithfulness.
- The conversation also touches on the balance between abstinence and indulgence in food.
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Transcripts
Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Will Spencer:This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.
Will Spencer:New episodes release every Friday.
Will Spencer:My guest this week is Tilly Dillehay, a wife and mother and author of the excellent new book My Dear Hemlock, out now on Canon Press.
Will Spencer:The premise of the book is simple.
Will Spencer:What if the Screwtape letters were written about two demons tempting a woman?
Will Spencer:How would their correspondence differ from Lewis classic?
Will Spencer:What uncomfortable truths would it reveal about women's hearts?
Will Spencer:And most importantly, how might it bless women to see themselves reflected in ways the culture will do anything to prevent them seeing?
Will Spencer:As you'll hear me say in the interview, I've read many books this year, but My Dear Hemlock might be my favorite of the year.
Will Spencer:But Will, you might ask, you're a man.
Will Spencer:What could you possibly have to take away from a book written about the hearts of women?
Will Spencer:Let me explain.
Will Spencer:Those who have been listening to this podcast for a while will remember the author Alison Armstrong, who wrote the book the Queen's Code and its prequel the Keys to the Kingdom.
Will Spencer: nce I hosted online in summer: Will Spencer:Believe it or not, Allison's books were a huge part of my journey through the conversation about masculinity.
Will Spencer:The Queen's Code especially showed me that a there were women who cared about understanding men and b that women could have a unique appreciation of men as well.
Will Spencer:Because, having been raised in a hyper feminist culture, I'd exclusively met women who felt called to weaken men or castrate them.
Will Spencer:In Alison's words, in the war between the sexes, it had always been weapons free for women, encouraged to use their verbal gifts to punish men for patriarchy, leaving men with little or no ways to retaliate.
Will Spencer: o to read the Queen's code in: Will Spencer:At least somewhere on Earth, the sexes didn't have to be at war.
Will Spencer:And so once I started my podcast and began working on my documentary, I befriended Allison and spoke with her publicly three times and many other times in private.
Will Spencer:But as I continued on my Christian walk, I began to see that the modern and New Age influences of Allison's books were too much for me to ignore there's talk about yoga, pg.
Will Spencer:13, references to sexuality, and two of the characters even sleep together as part of the story, which, to be fair, is framed as the way a virtuous man can help the woman he loves overcome a prior experience of sexual abuse.
Will Spencer:It's not casual sex per se, and yet from a Christian perspective, it is.
Will Spencer:Furthermore, the Queen's Code book may even be channeled material.
Will Spencer:I doubt Allison would use that language, but others have.
Will Spencer:And last but not least, at the end of the Queen's Code story, Allison leaves unanswered the question of what the hardened career feminist will do when she grows in her femininity and falls in love with a successful man.
Will Spencer:Will that character leave her career to become a mom?
Will Spencer:Having known Allison, I doubt she'd land in that choice the way I'd want her to.
Will Spencer:And if the character stays in her career, that wouldn't exactly fit with the character's feminine trajectory.
Will Spencer:So it's convenient that the stickiest question in all of femininity today was left unanswered.
Will Spencer:For all these reasons and more, even though I once found the book to be an invaluable tool to help women deprogram from multigenerational feminism, I can no longer recommend it for Christian audiences.
Will Spencer:So where would I find a book that could serve the same function?
Will Spencer:What tools could I recommend to Christian women who are wanting to learn how to relate to men?
Will Spencer:And that would be as convicting as I've seen the Queen's Code be, holding a lens up to the dark heart of women's modern rebellion from their design.
Will Spencer:There aren't many books like that today, frankly, because that idea is not popular.
Will Spencer:Nothing is more forbidden in our culture than the idea that women do have a design.
Will Spencer:An entire documentary, what Is a Woman?
Will Spencer:Was produced about it specifically because no one wants to answer that simple question.
Will Spencer:The answer that Matt Walsh gives isn't even all that great.
Will Spencer:Plus, the American Evangelical church is far more feminist than it wants to admit.
Will Spencer:Both men and women.
Will Spencer:Submission might be the dirtiest word in the English language, and any book that could replace the Queen's Code would also have to address the negative influences of not just culture, but women's friends, the media, and even the subtle ways the world expertly plays on women's vanity, especially young women.
Will Spencer:This, as you might imagine, is a tall order for the modern Christian publishing industry.
Will Spencer:Except now enter Tilly's My Dear Hemlock on, you guessed it, Cannon Press, which does all of this and more from an explicitly Christian worldview.
Will Spencer:Even better, Tilly is a woman.
Will Spencer:This isn't a pastor or male faith leader lecturing down to women about what they are.
Will Spencer:Nor is it a fearful feminist male looking up to women in a form of culturally acceptable, slightly critical affirmation.
Will Spencer:Instead, it's the wife of a pastor calmly looking women and herself in the eye and telling women what's there.
Will Spencer:In fact, men barely even play a role in the story.
Will Spencer:The demons Madame Hoeksrot and the junior Devil Hemlock make reference to men and to our foibles and temptations, but it isn't about men specifically.
Will Spencer:My Dear Hemlock keeps the focus squarely and uncomfortably locked on a woman throughout all the seasons of her life.
Will Spencer:It's a bracing story that reflects back on men as well, because sin is sin, and though the sins unique to men are quite different than the sins unique to women, they do interlock.
Will Spencer:And so as a man, it also helped me see how I can be a better leader to prevent, as best I can, the sins that may beset my future wife, Lord willing.
Will Spencer:So perhaps now you can see why this book of all I've read this year struck me so sincerely.
Will Spencer:While I'm far less bullish than I once was on the idea of the Great Reconciliation, because that will be a gift of God following our societal repentance and not a work of man, I'm still hopeful that enemy combatants of what I've called the sexual holy war will, one by one be convicted by the Holy Spirit to throw down their arms and walk off the battlefield.
Will Spencer:And my prayer continues to be that when they do, they will walk into God's design for men and for women.
Will Spencer:However unpopular it may be, however much scorn it may draw, however many headwinds we may encounter.
Will Spencer:Because past all the marring of original sin, we're still made in God's image.
Will Spencer:Which means that there's a garden out there waiting for us as children of Adam and Eve.
Will Spencer:May Tillie Dillehay's book My Dear Hemlock help show the way for all of us?
Will Spencer:Friends, we're not just recording conversations on the Will Spencer podcast.
Will Spencer:We're part of a restoration project for Christian civilization in the west, and I need you in this fight with me.
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Will Spencer:A quick note before we begin, I'd like to recommend that all my listeners go check out three new interviews that I've just done, which I think are some of my best to date.
Will Spencer:First, my interview with Stuart Amidon on his Tactics Con podcast.
Will Spencer:In that hour long interview, I discussed some of the challenges reformed men are facing today and the roots of the chaos we're seeing online.
Will Spencer:Second, my interview with Lennox Califungwa for the new St.
Will Spencer:Andrews podcast, Flames and Crowns.
Will Spencer:This high production value podcast focuses on my testimony and story of global travel and has caused quite a bit of stir online when I explained how anger has been used both to motivate and manipulate young men.
Will Spencer:Finally, I strongly recommend my recent appearance on the Watch well podcast with Parker Brown and Nick Sloan.
Will Spencer:On that episode, I discussed why the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is one of the most profound meditations on fatherlessness in modern cinema.
Will Spencer:Yes, really, once you see it, it'll blow your mind.
Will Spencer:Please enjoy and you can find links to all three interviews in the show notes.
Will Spencer:And please welcome this week's guest on the Will Spencer Podcast, the author of My Dear Hemlock, out now on Canon Press, Tillie Dillehay.
Will Spencer:Tilly Dillehay.
Podcast Host:Thanks so much for joining me on the Will Spencer Podcast.
Tilly Dillehay:It's so good to be with you.
Podcast Host:So I have your new book here, My Dear Hemlock.
Podcast Host:I've been reading this in preparation for the interview and I have to let you know I've read many books this year.
Podcast Host:This might be my favorite book that I've read this year.
Podcast Host:So thank you so much for writing this book.
Tilly Dillehay:Wow, that's great to hear.
Tilly Dillehay:Thank you.
Podcast Host:Yeah, thank you.
Podcast Host:I think there were sections that I was reading where I was like, I couldn't believe that.
Podcast Host:First, that this book got written and second, that it got published, especially given the era that we're in.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, well, not everybody would have published it.
Tilly Dillehay:I think that's, that's just the truth.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Will Spencer:Correct.
Tilly Dillehay:It's an eccentric project for sure.
Podcast Host:What do you mean by an eccentric project?
Tilly Dillehay:Well, it just, it was, I guess to imitate screw tape is a, is probably a thing that someone shouldn't do, honestly.
Tilly Dillehay:But so just doing an Imitation form for a book, for it to be fiction, but not really fiction that's, you know, unusual.
Tilly Dillehay:And then for it to be hitting a lot of things about.
Tilly Dillehay:About just women's lives that are often, I think, not talked about.
Tilly Dillehay:They're just.
Tilly Dillehay:There were a lot of things about the book that I knew it wouldn't be a fit for just any publishing house.
Tilly Dillehay:So, yeah, I was really grateful that they agreed to kind of run with me on it because I see it as being an eccentric project, for sure.
Podcast Host:Yes.
Podcast Host:I heard your interview with Doug Wilson where you said that you kind of had a feeling that canon would be the right place to go with that versus some other.
Podcast Host:Yeah, yeah.
Podcast Host:What was the inspiration behind the book?
Podcast Host:Like, walk me through the genesis of it.
Podcast Host:And you're like, I think I'll try Screwtape letters, but written from the perspective of a woman.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I was just remembering this for a friend in a conversation with a friend about the book this week, that it started as some blog posts that I did.
Tilly Dillehay: And this was, I think, maybe: Tilly Dillehay:And I believe that it started with a couple of the early letters on one of the letters on marriage, maybe.
Tilly Dillehay:So it was like, I want to write about this thing.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm hearing some things with some, you know, in conversations with friends or younger newly married women.
Tilly Dillehay:I would like to write about this, but writing a straight piece about it just doesn't.
Tilly Dillehay:It doesn't feel like something I can just sit down and write a, you know, three reasons why you shouldn't think that you're better than your husband or whatever.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, it's just something.
Tilly Dillehay:It was.
Tilly Dillehay:I think it was.
Tilly Dillehay:It was the letter where she's talking about, you know, teaching the woman to believe that she's genuinely superior to her husband in some way because of just kind of incidentals in their life.
Tilly Dillehay:And I was.
Tilly Dillehay:I wanted to write about that, and I couldn't see a way to do a straight.
Tilly Dillehay:A straight article.
Tilly Dillehay:So I thought, what if we were to fictionalize this and do an imitation screwtape?
Tilly Dillehay:How would that.
Tilly Dillehay:And then I got really excited about, you know, just the fun of the writing challenge of that device, which.
Tilly Dillehay:And then I wrote probably three or four, maybe five or six more blog posts before I ran out of stuff to write about and set it aside for a while.
Podcast Host:So did you have to get yourself into a specific mindset to inhabit the character of Madame Hoaxrot?
Podcast Host:Am I pronouncing that correctly?
Tilly Dillehay:I think you are.
Tilly Dillehay:I just finished the audio book, so that's how I pronounced it the whole time.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I think it was just, it was just a fun kind of experiment to try to come up with the voice and not to do.
Tilly Dillehay:Because, you know, with screw tape, it's a pretty, it's like a, like an Oxford don voice that he holds the whole time, which is pretty easy for him to hold because that's, that was his actual role in life.
Tilly Dillehay:And it was, for me it was like, okay, how can we make this kind of more a feminine.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, what would it mean for it to be a feminine voice?
Tilly Dillehay:And then kind of, what are you shooting for?
Tilly Dillehay:And I do think there were probably some old, old books that I had read kind of floating around in the background.
Tilly Dillehay:I think in college I really enjoyed Dangerous Liaisons, which is also.
Tilly Dillehay:Which is another letter form book and has a wicked female voice.
Tilly Dillehay:And it's an 18th century French, you know, female villain, basically writing letters.
Tilly Dillehay:So that is probably.
Tilly Dillehay:I haven't thought much about how much that probably influenced the voice of Madame Hoaxrat, that one book.
Tilly Dillehay:And then at least in doing the, doing the audiobook was a challenge for sure because I was like, you know, how Disney villainous.
Tilly Dillehay:Mwahaha.
Tilly Dillehay:Do you get with this?
Tilly Dillehay:You know, how.
Tilly Dillehay:I didn't want it to be difficult to listen to or cartoonish, you know, so it was something to kind of try to strike a balance.
Tilly Dillehay:It might be too cartoony for some people still, but I think listening to a lot of, A lot of Lewis audio of like lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, actresses doing the white witch probably snuck in there some.
Tilly Dillehay:But.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Podcast Host:Well, it's clear that you had some fun with the character.
Podcast Host:In fact, I think in one of, one of the later chapters you actually reference, you actually do reference the French Revolution where the demon got its name from.
Podcast Host:So maybe there was.
Podcast Host:I haven't read Dangerous Liaisons.
Podcast Host:I remember when I was a child, the movie came out, it was very popular.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Podcast Host:Is that, is the French Revolution when that's set?
Tilly Dillehay:I don't remember exactly when that's set, honestly.
Tilly Dillehay:I have a, I have an image of the movie maybe being kind of that era.
Tilly Dillehay:I just.
Tilly Dillehay:And I don't remember exactly when it was written either.
Tilly Dillehay:So that it's not about the revolution at all.
Tilly Dillehay:It's just about these wicked people at court kind of messing with, with other people's lives just for wickedness sake.
Podcast Host:Yes.
Podcast Host:So you've got another meeting in the background.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Do you hear the baby?
Podcast Host:Yes, it's completely fine.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Okay.
Podcast Host:Well no, that, I think that also lends, you know, it lends authenticity to the voice to know that the book is about a demon, a manager demon, essentially writing to a lesser demon about tempting a woman as she moves through her sanctification journey and the challenges she faces as a new believer going all the way up to quite late in her life.
Podcast Host:And so that you've lived these things definitely helps lend it a realm of authenticity, perhaps.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, that's right.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, there is a lot.
Tilly Dillehay:A lot of.
Tilly Dillehay:A lot of the letters are about marriage, about young motherhood, about being a newer believer.
Tilly Dillehay:So she does get up into her middle age by the end of the book.
Tilly Dillehay:But that's.
Tilly Dillehay:That's probably less.
Tilly Dillehay:That's probably just a few letters, maybe five or six of the letters later on in life.
Tilly Dillehay:So, yeah, it's definitely.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, it's about things I've dealt with.
Tilly Dillehay:A lot of it is very thinly veiled nonfiction.
Tilly Dillehay:Me or friends or friends of mine.
Tilly Dillehay:So it's not.
Tilly Dillehay:It's really not.
Tilly Dillehay:It's not fiction.
Podcast Host:Well, that's the thing that I felt was so striking about the book, was that it was very revealing, in a way, of the inner lives of women in a way that I think a lot of modern writing culture and Christianity doesn't really go to, because we exist in this realm of women don't sin, and of course, we know that isn't true, but because women are so different from men, who is going to talk about that in an authentic way?
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, that's right.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, you have to.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess it has to be a woman who's willing to just dive right in there and do it.
Tilly Dillehay:And I did want, you know, I think that's what, again, that's what drew me to this kind of device, was being able to fictionalize some of those temptations that were either directly, firsthand, or at the very most, secondhand experiences of me or people that I know very well.
Tilly Dillehay:And fictionalizing them allowed me to, I think, to do maybe a deeper dive on them than I would have been able to do in a straight prose book.
Podcast Host:So did you have to go within and explore some of these things within yourself?
Podcast Host:Like, what was I really thinking?
Podcast Host:What was I really going through in that moment?
Podcast Host:Or was it like.
Podcast Host:No, I remember that pretty clearly.
Podcast Host:Clearly that wasn't fun.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, I don't know.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess it depends on the letter.
Podcast Host:Yes.
Tilly Dillehay:And how it was structured or whatever.
Tilly Dillehay:But, yeah, I think a lot of the letters really did start with, here's something I really want to write about.
Tilly Dillehay:And here's a way to do that.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I thought it was very brave.
Podcast Host:That was really the thing that struck me, particularly the section about marrying down about women believing that they could.
Podcast Host:Maybe I'll let you unpack that idea.
Podcast Host:Because I started encountering that chapter, and I got into that.
Podcast Host:And I said, I got into the chapter, and I was like, you know what?
Podcast Host:Like, that makes so much sense.
Podcast Host:I've seen that so many times.
Podcast Host:I've seen it.
Podcast Host:Well, exactly.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Will Spencer:So take.
Podcast Host:Take that apart for people.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, it's.
Tilly Dillehay:It's almost like.
Tilly Dillehay:It's almost like a trope, you know, in some ways, the kind of slumpy husband with the.
Tilly Dillehay:The awesome wife and like, you know, 90s sitcoms.
Tilly Dillehay:But I was really thinking more true.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, real experience with young wives that are coming to me.
Tilly Dillehay:And, you know, we're having tea or whatever, and I'm.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm just picking up this vibe, and then I'm noticing it in my own heart, you know, early on in marriage.
Tilly Dillehay:And I'm seeing it, and I just see.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I've seen it a lot.
Tilly Dillehay:And I do think there's just.
Tilly Dillehay:There's this weird kind of trick that Satan.
Tilly Dillehay:That Satan gets a handle on women where they really believe being married to an average, hardworking guy in the church, you know, like, these are Christian men who go to work and bring home a paycheck and support your entire life.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, this is.
Tilly Dillehay:Our entire lives are made possible by these men.
Tilly Dillehay:And we somehow get this message that we either invent for ourselves or we pick up somewhere that there is something about us that is so special that we deserve better than this.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, we deserve better than an average, normal life with an average, normal guy.
Tilly Dillehay:And I don't know.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't know if there are some women just more foolish that are kind of more prone to it or if there are certain factors.
Tilly Dillehay:I talk about fame in that chapter because at least at the time I was writing the chapter, I was connecting those things, that there are some women who, for whatever reason, just.
Tilly Dillehay:They have this idea that they could have been famous.
Tilly Dillehay:It's sort of that I could have been a contender thing in another life.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, I could have been a model or an actress.
Tilly Dillehay:I could have been a whatever, and somehow that gets planted.
Tilly Dillehay:And there's a book that I read in high school, I think.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, of Mice and Men has this exact character.
Tilly Dillehay:There is a wife in that book who comes sidling around among these farmhands, and all she talks about is how there was this one movie producer guy who told her one time.
Tilly Dillehay:I could have been in the pictures.
Tilly Dillehay: So this is like: Tilly Dillehay:I could have been in the pictures.
Tilly Dillehay:I could have been.
Tilly Dillehay:I could have been famous.
Tilly Dillehay:Basically.
Tilly Dillehay:I was.
Tilly Dillehay:Some one person told her this and now she can never un.
Tilly Dillehay:She can never stop thinking about it.
Tilly Dillehay:Basically, she's just.
Tilly Dillehay:She's living her whole life in this sort of fantasy of what she could have been.
Tilly Dillehay:So I don't know if I've ever seen someone's life just totally get wrecked, but I've seen women leave men before that were perfectly good men.
Tilly Dillehay:And I have to wonder how much of that is this sort of fantasy idea that there is a.
Tilly Dillehay:There's some better life out there and how much of that is even connected to the sort of the fame dream.
Tilly Dillehay:But the funny thing about living in an era of social media is that that illusion of potential fame is closer.
Tilly Dillehay:It's more sustainable than it's ever been.
Tilly Dillehay:I think.
Tilly Dillehay:Madame Hoekstraut says it's sustainable energy for the demons that like the illusion that you could go and make yourself famous.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, I mean, potentially you could, I guess, if you knew how to work, you know, with these apps or whatever, and you really wanted to pursue that, a lot of people probably could make a career or whatever out of that.
Tilly Dillehay:I just think what it means is that the average woman who doesn't, who isn't pursuing that, still has her fingers just so close to this sort of illusion that she could be famous.
Tilly Dillehay:I just think it's more sustainable.
Tilly Dillehay:So I don't know.
Tilly Dillehay:Just what I've.
Tilly Dillehay:What I've seen, at least among women, is that there is a weird idea that you're.
Tilly Dillehay:You're too special for normal life.
Podcast Host:So I appreciate.
Podcast Host:And you called it right away, like, I have seen this and I think part of the reason why I enjoy this book so much is of course I know many single men who are courting, dating and they're trying to figure out, well, what's going on with women today and they observe these behaviors, really, they.
Podcast Host:Oh, oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Podcast Host:That's.
Podcast Host:That's why I've recommended to men to read it because when they try to like, what is going on.
Podcast Host:And social media, of course, is a big.
Podcast Host:Is a big part of that, like get women getting a lot of attention through social media, whether they actively court or not.
Tilly Dillehay:Pretty illusion.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, pretty illusionary.
Tilly Dillehay:Is that a word?
Tilly Dillehay:The attention you receive online, I think, messes with your perception of whether people are actually looking at you and caring about you.
Tilly Dillehay:So it sets you up to not be able to live in reality very well.
Tilly Dillehay:Yep.
Podcast Host:I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday who had been having a long conversation with a man and it didn't work out.
Podcast Host:It's like, well, social media, online attention is a simulacra for an actual emotionally validating relationship with a real world in person.
Podcast Host:Person.
Podcast Host:But it can be very easy for both men and women.
Podcast Host:But I think in particular the temptations of attention, women are more susceptible to them and so with social media profiles.
Podcast Host:But I never would have connected that to a life vision.
Podcast Host:Like, oh, maybe I can be famous.
Podcast Host:Like, certainly there are female content creators who do leverage their image into a certain sort of fame or success, but I never would have connected that to the everyday, average woman that she would also struggle with that temptation.
Podcast Host:I mean, like, if it's in Steinbeck, it's not a new phenomenon, right?
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, that was what.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, that was.
Tilly Dillehay: e in the film industry in the: Tilly Dillehay:That wasn't.
Tilly Dillehay:It wasn't that realistic of a thing to pursue.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't know.
Tilly Dillehay:But maybe.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, but it's not realistic now either, right?
Will Spencer:Correct.
Podcast Host:But it may appear to be more so realistic because so many people seem to be at least their Instagram polished life makes them appear as if that they're perhaps famous when behind the scenes it's probably a little less polished.
Tilly Dillehay:Right?
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:And the demon actually says this in the letter.
Tilly Dillehay:She says, if your patient is pretty, then that is one factor at least that's going to prepare her for this, this particular temptation.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, you'll have a better end for this.
Tilly Dillehay:If she has been told at some point in her life, you know, that she's attractive, like, it's just going to set her up for this illusion.
Tilly Dillehay:So, yeah, I don't know.
Podcast Host:No, I appreciate you writing these things because it's important for women to know themselves in this way because I don't know that there are a lot of pastors or fathers or mothers that are going to tell women this.
Podcast Host:But if it's a common thing.
Podcast Host:And plus, I mean, we're just talking about one letter out of the entire book.
Podcast Host:If these are common temptations that women are susceptible to, they need to know this.
Podcast Host:Particularly I like what you said about they will pursue fame because an average life isn't good enough.
Podcast Host:And I've met so many men with good, stable jobs and careers are like, I can't find anyone because Maybe I'm not six feet tall or.
Tilly Dillehay:Please tell me where they are because I've got all the single women are in my church waiting for those guys.
Tilly Dillehay:Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Tilly Dillehay:That's why I was actually surprised when you were saying this is a, you know, I'm seeing an inside of marriages.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't know if I'm seeing it so much in the single, you know, in the single world because my, you know, my particular, whatever church context, I see all these ready to go women and we just don't have a lot of single men out here.
Tilly Dillehay:But.
Podcast Host:But yeah, I know so many ready to go men that can't find.
Podcast Host:I don't know.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm telling you, it's time to start.
Tilly Dillehay:It's time to start a website or something for these people.
Podcast Host:It is.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm ready for matchmaking to come back.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm serious.
Podcast Host:I actually do believe that's the future because I don't think churches know how to handle it.
Podcast Host:I don't think apps are going to handle it.
Podcast Host:I think some brave people will step forward and try to begin doing something like that, to begin putting these pieces together.
Tilly Dillehay:But again, it's going to require men and women both who are willing to just marry.
Tilly Dillehay:Whoever you get matched with, just go for it, just line up and get married.
Tilly Dillehay:Just.
Podcast Host:Just dive right in.
Podcast Host:Well, there is something to that.
Podcast Host:Like, I've joked often that, you know, during our grandparents era, like, they would be walking down the street one day and like, they'd sneeze and they'd see each other like, oh, that's the person I'm going to marry.
Podcast Host:And they'd be married two weeks later.
Podcast Host:Right.
Podcast Host:And now it's, it's, it's far more complicated.
Podcast Host:But I think that, I don't know, is it that there are more temptations, do you think?
Podcast Host:Or is it just we're less aware of the existing temptations or maybe fewer societal controls?
Will Spencer:Perhaps?
Tilly Dillehay:The temptations are you talking about within which temptations are you talking about the temptations to.
Podcast Host:Well, in the case of your book, the temptations to women specifically, men will always have their own set of temptations.
Podcast Host:But we'll keep it with women specifically.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I think the options, it's just there's.
Tilly Dillehay:This is across the board, men and women with, with getting married.
Tilly Dillehay:It's just you think that you have options out coming out of your ears and you don't.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, you just don't.
Tilly Dillehay:Or if you do, maybe you do, but eventually you're gonna have to pick somebody and just move forward, you know, and I think it is just, you know, it's a.
Tilly Dillehay:It's a demonstrable societal problem that we have with options.
Tilly Dillehay:So I think that's what we're experiencing.
Podcast Host:So in other sections of the book, you also deal with the woman's relationship to her husband.
Podcast Host:So she has decided that she's not marrying down or she remains married to him.
Podcast Host:But then there are the temptations that exist through marriage itself.
Podcast Host:Maybe we can talk about some of those.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, so there's.
Tilly Dillehay:There is a chapter.
Tilly Dillehay:There's an early chapter about them right after they get married.
Tilly Dillehay:And just some of the basics of like, marriage just being.
Tilly Dillehay:Being kind to each other, being courteous.
Tilly Dillehay:So the idea that so much of your joy and your enjoyment of a marriage comes down to just common courtesy, like speaking kindly to each other, listening to each other, greeting each other when you enter a room, you know, and the.
Tilly Dillehay:The idea that when people.
Tilly Dillehay:Or confessing sin to each other, there's.
Tilly Dillehay:There's several chapters about confession of sin and how that works inside of a marriage and outside.
Tilly Dillehay:But some of the.
Tilly Dillehay:Just the basics.
Tilly Dillehay:I think we tend to think that our problems are more complicated than they really are.
Tilly Dillehay:And I think there's a.
Tilly Dillehay:There's a.
Tilly Dillehay:Some kind of a part in there where she says the human beings are all Naamans.
Tilly Dillehay:They.
Tilly Dillehay:They think that once their marriage is in a bad place or it's not a, you know, a delightful place to be in, they search around for more clinical answers than just the basics of confess sin and speak kindly to each other because they think, you know, a simple wash in the Jordan is.
Tilly Dillehay:Is not enough for my problem.
Tilly Dillehay:My problem is too big for that and too complicated for that.
Tilly Dillehay:And often they're not.
Tilly Dillehay:It's not, you know, sometimes it's just go back to the basics of attentiveness and keeping the.
Tilly Dillehay:As Doug Wilson has said about keeping the floor picked up.
Tilly Dillehay:That's an illustration that we have returned to many times in our marriage.
Tilly Dillehay:Just making sure that the things you drop on the floor when you sin against each other in your marriage, that you continue to pick those things up and you're never gonna have to.
Tilly Dillehay:You're never going to stop doing that.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, I don't care how many years you've been married, the basics are still going to serve you.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, and then there's later in the.
Tilly Dillehay:Later in the book, there's a whole chapter where she's being tempted.
Tilly Dillehay:The patient's being tempted to have an emotional affair or she's kind of Tiptoeing in to, you know, being involved in an emotional affair with a guy that she works with, I think.
Tilly Dillehay:And the.
Tilly Dillehay:Just some of the differences between the way a male brain works and the way a female brain works.
Tilly Dillehay:Obviously I don't have a male brain.
Tilly Dillehay:I've been told, you know, how things work over there.
Tilly Dillehay:But I know that with us, it's not.
Tilly Dillehay:Lust is not going to look the same way.
Tilly Dillehay:So we're going to be more interested in a man being totally enamored of us, being totally in love all the way down, whatever that means, you know, and that those are the things she is basically preoccupying herself with in her sort of fantasy time is thinking about this man and what does he think of me and is he really that attracted to me?
Tilly Dillehay:So I just.
Tilly Dillehay:I think that just started with me being me.
Tilly Dillehay:Seeing marriages actually in.
Tilly Dillehay:Fall apart over these kind of little.
Tilly Dillehay:A workplace thing or a friendship that kind of just went bad, basically went too far and just wondering, like, how does that happen?
Tilly Dillehay:Like, how do you trick yourself into thinking that you're on safe ground until you're not anymore?
Tilly Dillehay:And how does that work on the ground in real life?
Tilly Dillehay:So kind of a thought experiment about that.
Tilly Dillehay:And then, yeah, more marriage chapters.
Tilly Dillehay:I think eventually in the book, she gets to this point where gratitude takes over and she realizes her just how absolutely blessed she is in her marriage and in her life and recognizes that applying gratitude to all of life is the path to happiness.
Tilly Dillehay:Basically, it's the way to be happy.
Tilly Dillehay:So, yeah, I agree.
Podcast Host:So I have a ton of questions for you.
Podcast Host:So the first one that I have is for married couples, maybe newly married couples, or maybe they've been married for a long time that haven't picked up the floor, so to speak.
Podcast Host:But they understand that there's a need to.
Podcast Host:They've suddenly become aware that, okay, this might be a good way to start to fix things.
Podcast Host:What advice would you give to couples in that position?
Podcast Host:How do you start that process of picking up the floor when maybe you've left the floor unpicked up for longer than you should have, let's say.
Tilly Dillehay:Right.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I think.
Tilly Dillehay:And this.
Tilly Dillehay:I know that.
Tilly Dillehay:I know that men are prone to this too, but I know that women tend to think if he's not doing this, if he's not going to take over and fix this situation, there's nothing I can do about it.
Tilly Dillehay:And obviously it would be great if the man always understood what to do and did it in a marriage situation.
Tilly Dillehay:But sometimes the clarity comes to you first of, like, here's what we need to do.
Tilly Dillehay:And it really does only take one person to start picking up the floor because something on the floor was something you dropped, even if most of it is something he dropped.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, there's something on the floor that was you.
Tilly Dillehay:And you can begin this minute, you can begin today, tonight to repent and then to start just practicing the process of repentance.
Tilly Dillehay:In that chapter about confessing sin, the demon talks about different categories of sin.
Tilly Dillehay:Like the big bad life altering sins like drunkenness or something big.
Tilly Dillehay:And then that being kind of different from the everyday, the kind of constant day in and day out sins against the other person and how we kid ourselves.
Tilly Dillehay:I think that some sins we avoid confessing because they seem too great and some we avoid confessing because they seem too small.
Tilly Dillehay:And so those, because they seem too small sins are the day in and day out.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, you're probably going to need to confess something or other multiple times a day for a while, especially if you're new to it.
Tilly Dillehay:Just recognize like this is routine.
Tilly Dillehay:It's like getting your teeth cleaned.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, it's like getting, it's like unloading the dishwasher.
Tilly Dillehay:Like this is part of everyday life, living in a home with another person.
Tilly Dillehay:But also like, don't underestimate the power of these things because when you, when you don't do them, this is where hatred begins.
Tilly Dillehay:Like these, those old couples that we all know who hate like can't stand the side of each other, who just a steady stream of nitpicking and, and obnoxious, you know, just rudeness to each other.
Tilly Dillehay:They started by not picking up the floor.
Tilly Dillehay:Like that is how those things start.
Tilly Dillehay:And it is like it's true hatred that can grow out of those little stupid things that got dropped on the floor.
Podcast Host:So yeah, you have to nip that in the bud.
Podcast Host:So another, another question I had for you is, oh, by the way, I did want to say I appreciate you saying that the woman can actually lead in that because there's a debate that happens amongst men that has, well, the man should lead in that.
Podcast Host:And I usually say, well and I agree with you that if you as a woman listening, feel called to repent for something, you don't actually have to wait for your husband to lead in that.
Podcast Host:If you have that moment of clarity, you can actually lead in that.
Tilly Dillehay:It is okay, yeah, that is something to, that is something to be clear on for a woman.
Tilly Dillehay:Like she needs to know where she stands in that because you know, I think It's a very important conversation for men to be having about leadership in the home and, you know, all of those things, obviously.
Tilly Dillehay:But a woman is a Christian, you know, a woman is a Christian person who stands before God and it answers alone.
Tilly Dillehay:On the final day of judgment, she will stand there before the Lord and answer for her sin, and he's not going to be able to do that for her.
Tilly Dillehay:So there are some women out there who don't need to be told that.
Tilly Dillehay:I think a lot of women do need to be told that.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, you're grown up, you're a grown girl.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, you can.
Tilly Dillehay:You can.
Tilly Dillehay:You can.
Tilly Dillehay:You can make some amazing things happen in your home by doing.
Tilly Dillehay:By doing what's right, by being obedient and just behaving Christianly towards your husband.
Podcast Host:There's also a debate that happens online that some men seem to believe the idea that if men were better leaders, women wouldn't sin.
Podcast Host:And that idea seems to be.
Podcast Host:And I think there's nothing that could be more sexist than that idea.
Podcast Host:But I fight with men over this.
Podcast Host:That's why I like this book so much, because there's nothing in this book.
Podcast Host:This book is written by a woman.
Podcast Host:There's nothing in this book, or almost nothing really, about the way the husband is going wrong.
Podcast Host:There's nothing that he's doing this wrong.
Podcast Host:There's maybe a little bit of suggestion here and there, but in general, it's all her own inner and outer life with her relationships, the temptations and the sins that a woman is prone to as a woman that have nothing to do with her husband.
Podcast Host:And I found that to be such a beautiful, I guess, teaching tool.
Podcast Host:Completely independent of what her husband is doing.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, I don't have to go far out of my own door to know that a man can be doing everything right.
Tilly Dillehay:And a woman can still sin, you know, can still even choose to be unhappy, because I'm married to actually a very godly man.
Tilly Dillehay:And that does not guarantee, you know, my deciding, I'm going to have a great day today.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, it just doesn't.
Tilly Dillehay:So it's still.
Tilly Dillehay:It's still my responsibility.
Tilly Dillehay:Yes, definitely.
Tilly Dillehay:Women should know that.
Tilly Dillehay:But also, I think it's very.
Tilly Dillehay:And this is a weird word to use in our circles, but I think it's very empowering to women in the right way to recognize that your husband's sin does not tie your hands behind your back in life.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, it can definitely affect your life so much.
Tilly Dillehay:And I understand that.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, I'VE known women who were married to very difficult men, but that does not.
Tilly Dillehay:That does not have to stop you in your tracks, and it does not have to take away your witness, and it does not have to take away your joy.
Tilly Dillehay:Some of the women who have been the most encouraging to me in the Lord were some of these women who were.
Tilly Dillehay:And this is actually mentioned in the book, like, make sure the patient doesn't spend any time with that Mary, who's over on the.
Tilly Dillehay:Sits on the left side of the church and her husband's kind of obnoxious and she lives in an apartment, and yet she's just glad to be alive and she's faithful where she is.
Tilly Dillehay:And she is saying so much about the gospel because you can't look at her life and say, well, of course she's.
Tilly Dillehay:There's no incidental things about her life that make you look at her and say, oh, well, obviously she's happy.
Tilly Dillehay:Look how rich her husband is, you know, or look how.
Tilly Dillehay:Look how great her life is.
Tilly Dillehay:Obviously she's got joy.
Tilly Dillehay:So there is something.
Tilly Dillehay:There is something huge in that woman who's faithful and who's still taking responsibility for her spiritual.
Tilly Dillehay:Her spiritual life, even in a difficult situation.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Podcast Host:And that's one of the things I remember you got into in the middle of the book about faithfulness isn't dependent on circumstance.
Podcast Host:Like, oh, of course they have good family worship.
Podcast Host:They have this lovely living room.
Podcast Host:Or of course they host.
Podcast Host:They have a giant.
Podcast Host:Giant house.
Podcast Host:Right.
Podcast Host:Stuff like that.
Podcast Host:And to not tie.
Podcast Host:To not tie your faithfulness to your set of circumstances.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I think that chapter opens with just the idea of, like, women are such that we're very physical creatures.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess we're all about the spaces that we're in.
Tilly Dillehay:Obviously our bodies are these sort of environments of growth and stewardship.
Tilly Dillehay:And then our homes are the same way where we.
Tilly Dillehay:We grow and birth and produce in these spaces.
Tilly Dillehay:And so we react to, like, Instagram photos of a beautiful home almost with like, a kind of lust, you know, like just the.
Tilly Dillehay:Or at least just our brains are wired to really just respond to images of, like, perfectly appointed spaces or bodies.
Tilly Dillehay:Fashion, you know, so we care about the environment.
Tilly Dillehay:And so.
Tilly Dillehay:And that's good.
Tilly Dillehay:There are many good things about that because it's.
Tilly Dillehay:It's, in many ways that's, you know, our calling has to do with these spaces and these, these things, these dishes, these, you know, the food that we're making, all these physical things.
Tilly Dillehay:But I think that means that we can be especially prone to Confusing obedience and productivity with the beauty of the space or the stuff that you could own or have to say that, like, I can't really be faithful if I'm not in a space that's like that, you know, so just that these.
Tilly Dillehay:These things can kind of trip us up.
Tilly Dillehay:We can confuse the two things.
Podcast Host:As you were sitting down with friends, perhaps to.
Podcast Host:To talk about some of the issues in the book or talk about some of the ideas, what was that like?
Podcast Host:I imagine that it could be very challenging, perhaps very rewarding, perhaps very sanctifying, because these sounds like topics that women would need to talk about amongst themselves, but might be kind of difficult to bring up.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I don't remember any really difficult.
Tilly Dillehay:I think a lot of it was kind of osmosis.
Tilly Dillehay:Some of the things, like, I don't remember sitting down talking with anyone specifically about any of the chapters, except for the sex chapter.
Tilly Dillehay:That was actually the one chapter that I was like, let me interview somebody about this.
Tilly Dillehay:But I think other than that, it was just kind of the organic conversations that you have over years and hearing how people process things.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I can hear all of my listeners right now wondering, what did you talk about with that person in the sex chapter?
Tilly Dillehay:In the sex chapter, I just wanted.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I wanted to.
Tilly Dillehay:I wanted to know, like, does this.
Tilly Dillehay:Is this encouraging or is this discouraging to you?
Tilly Dillehay:Like this the whole point of writing, because I think I had mentioned.
Tilly Dillehay:Or in an early chapter, I had mentioned when they were newlyweds, like the demon.
Tilly Dillehay:I wanted to.
Tilly Dillehay:I wanted to establish early in the book that the demons hate physicality of all kinds.
Tilly Dillehay:So that she hates.
Tilly Dillehay:She hates that the patient is gardening.
Tilly Dillehay:She hates that the pregnant.
Tilly Dillehay:When the patient gets pregnant.
Tilly Dillehay:She hates the fact that the patient is pregnant, making more of these vermin, you know, and she hates the sexual act between the husband and the wife.
Tilly Dillehay:It was obviously very important to me to make it clear, like, the demons don't like this.
Tilly Dillehay:This is not.
Tilly Dillehay:This is not a point on their team, you know, for a husband and wife to be sexually active together.
Tilly Dillehay:So I do think that's a message I wanted to get across to women.
Tilly Dillehay:But I.
Tilly Dillehay:I didn't have a whole chapter about it until later on.
Tilly Dillehay:I think the editors pointed out that I had sort of planted a little teaser for a chapter and then never wrote that chapter.
Tilly Dillehay:So it was.
Tilly Dillehay:The last chapter that I wrote was.
Tilly Dillehay:That was adding in the.
Tilly Dillehay:That chapter.
Tilly Dillehay:But the whole point of it, I think, is just.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess just to let.
Tilly Dillehay:To let women know, like, this is a Big deal.
Tilly Dillehay:And this is something that you.
Tilly Dillehay:You can be faithful in, and it's something that you can be.
Tilly Dillehay:That you can kind of underemphasize as a duty and a joy and one of the ways that you bless your husband.
Tilly Dillehay:So that's something I think women should be encouraging each other in person about.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, this is something we.
Tilly Dillehay:This is part of.
Tilly Dillehay:This is a big part of life.
Podcast Host:So that was a.
Podcast Host:That theme running through the book is one that.
Podcast Host:I thought you understood men pretty well, actually.
Podcast Host:In the.
Podcast Host:In the chapter about the affair, you said any man who would say something like, oh, we shouldn't, you know, that is.
Podcast Host:That is the.
Podcast Host:That's the.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, right.
Podcast Host:That's right.
Podcast Host:That's right.
Podcast Host:That's not.
Podcast Host:That's not the right kind of guy.
Podcast Host:But then you talked.
Podcast Host:You talked about how men need physical touch.
Podcast Host:And you can't just look at men as some sort of sex fiend.
Podcast Host:That in some.
Podcast Host:There.
Podcast Host:There is in a way that every man has that need.
Podcast Host:And that is.
Podcast Host:That is very true.
Podcast Host:And then the communication of giving, like the mutual exchange between.
Podcast Host:Between the couple, like all of these things I felt were very accurate portrayals of the.
Podcast Host:Of the male side without him, without the name of the husband even being a presence so much in the narrative.
Podcast Host:Like, he very much was there, and it was very authentic.
Podcast Host:Like, I could read it and say, yes, I can see myself reflected in that.
Tilly Dillehay:Great.
Tilly Dillehay:That's great.
Tilly Dillehay:Great to hear.
Podcast Host:So as you were.
Podcast Host:As you were writing the book, as you were getting further.
Podcast Host:So obviously there are sections of it that represent parts of life that you've lived.
Podcast Host:So as you get further into the book, you're sort of maybe looking a little bit down the road.
Podcast Host:How did you explore some of those topics?
Podcast Host:I don't want to spoil the book.
Tilly Dillehay:I know I've already been really bad to do that.
Podcast Host:I have.
Tilly Dillehay:But I did.
Tilly Dillehay:I just remember that is another interview that I did was actually about those final two chapters to do with a dear family friend.
Tilly Dillehay:And they're just family scenes toward the end of her life.
Tilly Dillehay:So I was.
Tilly Dillehay:I was interviewed to get some of that.
Tilly Dillehay:Just the detail, I guess.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I did have to kind of guess about some things, but towards the end, I think it's like talking about aging.
Tilly Dillehay:One of those chapters, I didn't have to guess about that because I'm.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm feeling that I'm in my mid-30s or whatever, but I'm just.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm starting to feel the.
Tilly Dillehay:The march of time and realizing what it's.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm Getting the first feelings of like, okay, this is what it feels like when you.
Tilly Dillehay:You realize your role in life is going to change.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, you, you've identified yourself as maybe this young mom or this young professional before you were a young mom.
Tilly Dillehay:And then it's going to change again.
Tilly Dillehay:But also as you age and you start to realize people see you now as just a mom or they see you as just a grandmother.
Tilly Dillehay:And that's something that kind of happens to women.
Tilly Dillehay:And what are you going to do with that?
Tilly Dillehay:Like, are you going to fight that tooth and nail and say, no, I'm not a grandmother?
Tilly Dillehay:What do you mean?
Tilly Dillehay:You know, I'm not a grandmother.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm a young, beautiful woman still, you know, and just how hard are you going to clamp down on what you used to be or who you used to be?
Tilly Dillehay:What are you willing to do, the things that some women are willing to do, to try to turn back the clock and then just how lovely and how victorious it can be to instead embrace the aging that is reminding you that you're dying.
Tilly Dillehay:The thing that it's doing is letting you know that your time is short and that death is real and that what you're living in is an adventure that is going to end.
Tilly Dillehay:And so what are you going to do with that time?
Tilly Dillehay:So just to me, like, aging is a way of making it super real to you that your body's dying and that you need the new heavens and the new earth to be real because it's the only hope that you have.
Tilly Dillehay:And so, you know, that's what we're doing.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess, as women, if we're going to age gracefully, what we're doing is our fingers are being kind of loosened off of life itself.
Podcast Host:I know that the second there's a sequel to the Pilgrim's Progress that's about Christian's wife.
Podcast Host:And I haven't read it, but from having read My Dear Hemlock, it felt very much like, sort of like that.
Podcast Host:That in its own way, like, here's a woman walking the road of life, and here are all these detours that she can end up taking into things that are unrighteous or unwise.
Podcast Host:And here's what the path of faithfulness looks like that continues to ask of her.
Podcast Host:Expansion is like sacrificing herself, expanding her self concept to include things that she never would have otherwise considered right up and right up until the later chapters.
Podcast Host:And I just thought that was such a beautiful, a beautiful way of portraying the faithful life of a woman that I can't think of a similar book that communicates a message like that.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I mean, I do think it's part of writing something like this is just hanging onto the hope that eventually you're going to grow into those seasons yourself.
Tilly Dillehay:That you may have started as a very.
Tilly Dillehay:In this character.
Tilly Dillehay:This character begins as a.
Tilly Dillehay:A pretty immature, petty, shallow person.
Tilly Dillehay:And you just.
Tilly Dillehay:You get to see the fact that the Lord really does change those things about a person when they.
Tilly Dillehay:When they enter into his flock.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, they're actually going to be a different person by the time they die.
Tilly Dillehay:And I, you know, I cling to that hope because there, you know, there are a lot of things that.
Tilly Dillehay:About this character that are me as a young person.
Tilly Dillehay:So the idea that you might eventually reach mature middle age and old age and, you know, be wise is something to really.
Tilly Dillehay:It's very encouraging to me.
Tilly Dillehay:And hope, you know, fills me with hope.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Podcast Host:So it had a transform writing, you writing.
Podcast Host:It had a transformative impact on you a little bit as well.
Tilly Dillehay:I think it did.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:I think it did.
Tilly Dillehay:Because it does.
Tilly Dillehay:It.
Tilly Dillehay:It sets.
Tilly Dillehay:You set your sights for, like, what is my goal here?
Tilly Dillehay:What's best case scenario in my life?
Podcast Host:You know, have you heard the same from other women who have read it or maybe during the editing process or maybe now that it's been released?
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I guess I've heard.
Tilly Dillehay:Just.
Tilly Dillehay:I've had a lot of friends who read it really, really quickly, for one thing, which was surprising to me, and just.
Tilly Dillehay:Who just talk about the conviction.
Tilly Dillehay:I think mostly just being convicted and then being emotional at the end.
Tilly Dillehay:So that's sweet, too.
Podcast Host:I imagine everyone gets convicted about a different.
Podcast Host:I was convicted of many things.
Podcast Host:Even though it's, you know, it's.
Podcast Host:I think it's a.
Podcast Host:It's a mutually convicting experience because there are men's versions of these same.
Podcast Host:Of these same temptations.
Tilly Dillehay:Right?
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Some people have said.
Tilly Dillehay:I've definitely heard some people online saying, like, why.
Tilly Dillehay:What do you mean?
Tilly Dillehay:Why do we need a woman's.
Tilly Dillehay:We don't need a woman screw tape.
Tilly Dillehay:And obviously we don't need a woman's screw tape.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I know, but it's just the idea of like, I'm a woman.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm a woman, and I love the screw tape letters.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't need a she.
Tilly Dillehay:A she screw tape, you know, which I totally get.
Tilly Dillehay:But obviously I wouldn't have written this book if I didn't love the screw tape letters and gleaned and gleaned so much from the screw tape letters for so Many years.
Tilly Dillehay:And I think it was just.
Tilly Dillehay:This was a great device that I was happy to.
Tilly Dillehay:To borrow from Lewis for a little while to write about things that I really thought were relevant to us today.
Podcast Host:Have you gotten any negative pushback on the book?
Podcast Host:Has anyone been outraged by it, perhaps?
Tilly Dillehay:Not yet.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, not yet.
Podcast Host:Not yet.
Podcast Host:It hasn't been out for very long.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, right.
Podcast Host:So another book of yours that I wanted to ask you about.
Podcast Host:I wanted to ask you about Breaking Bread, because I discovered that book after, and it seems to be with.
Podcast Host:Especially with RFK Jr being nominated to head up the FDA, that there's going to be a really big conversation coming about food in America in general.
Podcast Host:So I wonder.
Podcast Host:I haven't had a chance to read the book, so I don't know a whole ton about it, but it's such a touchy topic, 360 degrees.
Podcast Host:So I wonder if we can get into that book just a little bit.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, sure.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:It's been a little while.
Tilly Dillehay: But that book came out in: Tilly Dillehay:No one was thinking about dying of COVID But the book was.
Tilly Dillehay:I think it was a response to something I was just seeing in the church and just a preoccupation with food and diet culture.
Tilly Dillehay:And I was seeing a lot of people who were suddenly allergic to.
Tilly Dillehay:There was a lot of gluten allergy that would kind of come and someone would be allergic to gluten, and then they would be not allergic to gluten after a while.
Tilly Dillehay:And I just.
Tilly Dillehay:I felt like everybody was kind of just looking for.
Tilly Dillehay:Looking for something.
Tilly Dillehay:And it felt like.
Tilly Dillehay:It felt like we were just.
Tilly Dillehay:The church was kind of acting like the world but on a short delay, which is what we do a lot of the time.
Tilly Dillehay:But I was just thinking, I feel like this has too much power in the church.
Tilly Dillehay:It's strange to me that there would be a lot of Christians who are not eating whole food groups for long periods of time to the degree that you have someone over and they can't eat what you're serving them.
Tilly Dillehay:It felt like it was weighing too much, I guess, in the church.
Tilly Dillehay:So I think that's why I started thinking about the topic and writing about the topic.
Tilly Dillehay:But basically the structure of the book is like four food polls or like four extremes.
Tilly Dillehay:So asceticism, like fear of.
Tilly Dillehay:Fear of pleasure in food, the idea that, like, the Seventh Day Adventist maybe position of, like, there are so many things that are bad for you, really.
Tilly Dillehay:If it tastes good, it's probably dangerous for you to be eating.
Tilly Dillehay:And then the, so just kind of a love of rules as a way of kind of controlling your life, I guess.
Tilly Dillehay:And, and then on the other side from that, just gluttony like which almost like law gospel kind of swinging from you go on a diet when, which I dieted when I was like 13 or 14 years old for the first time.
Tilly Dillehay:So I was a real young dieter.
Tilly Dillehay:Led, which led later on into a major just binging food problem and a, and an eating disorder.
Tilly Dillehay:So yeah, so I, I, I know very well that sort of dance back and forth between try to, try to come up with more rules that are going to get my flesh under control and then the swing out of that into just total, you know, debauchery basically that often happens when you try to use the law to get your flesh under control.
Tilly Dillehay:So, and then the other two polls were snobbery and apathy.
Tilly Dillehay:So these are more like cult like using food as culture markers.
Tilly Dillehay:Like I found this ingredient that no one else knows about and I'm going to make you feel foolish that you haven't heard about this yet or I only eat expensive food or whatever.
Tilly Dillehay:And then on the other, the pendulum swing away from that.
Tilly Dillehay:Like, okay, I'm not going to be snobby about food, so I'm going to pretend that all food is basically created equal.
Tilly Dillehay:Like eating at McDonald's every day of the week is no better than making delicious food at home.
Tilly Dillehay:So yeah, so those were sort of the four poles that I was dealing with early on in the book.
Tilly Dillehay: differently now than I did in: Tilly Dillehay:I do think that part of what I was kind of assuming in writing the book was that if someone is thinking about their health all the time, it's because they're, they just love thinking about their health and they have a, they have like an imbalance and a problem thinking about it and talking about it all the time.
Tilly Dillehay:And I think having some personal health issues since then has, has helped me at least understand that sometimes people talk about it because there's a problem that they're trying to solve and it's a burden to them because there's an actual issue that they're trying to deal with, you know, and they can still, I think it can still become an idol, it can still become an obsession to talk about these things, but I think I just have a Bigger probably space in my mind now for why you might want to talk about these things.
Podcast Host:So it was sort of at the time you wrote the book, it was responding to what you saw as some unhealthy trends in the Christian community and all these four different ways, which I absolutely agree with.
Podcast Host:I did look at the table of contents on Amazon and that was when I oh, this is for real.
Podcast Host:This is not a, you know, this is not trying to dive into one book.
Will Spencer:No.
Podcast Host:And nor was it, but.
Podcast Host:Well, even in the secular world.
Podcast Host:The secular world deals with these issues as well.
Podcast Host:Like you can go to any major city and you sit down with, you know, make a liberal friend and sit down to dinner with them and say, oh, I need that to be gluten free, free range, bespoke, you know, sustainable.
Podcast Host:Right.
Podcast Host:Where you deal with that, but then you also deal with people who don't care at all.
Podcast Host:I looked at the table of contents again.
Podcast Host:It's not usual for me to have not read a book.
Podcast Host:I'm someone, I'm asking someone about.
Podcast Host:But it seemed to me to be a very balanced perspective to give tools to think about it, rather than just advocating for a hard position like there are ditches on all four sides of the road.
Tilly Dillehay:I suppose that's right.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:And then I think a lot of the rest of the book was just developing sort of what had been so helpful to me because obviously I've been in every one of the ditches.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, I've spent time in all.
Tilly Dillehay:In all four of those stitches.
Tilly Dillehay:And in the end, I mean, after having this eating disorder that just chewed me up and spit me out metaphorically, I.
Tilly Dillehay:The thing that was helpful to me was the thing that was, was actually healing, was cooking, was learning to cook for my family.
Tilly Dillehay:So learning to cook first for my husband and then.
Tilly Dillehay:And then for kids and just learning kind of the delights, the delight that food can be and that it can be a tool to serve.
Tilly Dillehay:And it's a tool to unite people in the church.
Tilly Dillehay:And the only time, the only thing I feel really strongly about is people using it to divide in the church instead of using it as a tool for free unity, which is exactly what the epistles.
Tilly Dillehay:That seems to be Paul's burden too, is just, I don't really care whether you eat the food that came from the marketplace or I don't really care about, I care how are you treating your brothers and sisters.
Tilly Dillehay:And the same thing with like, I think there's a chapter about alcohol in there, you know, is this going to Be a thing that you use to love your brothers and sisters or is it going to be something you use to be obnoxious?
Tilly Dillehay:You know, so I think that was, that was the main thrust of that book.
Podcast Host:And I remember you also plugged those themes into My Dear Hemlock where you had, you talked about, was it abstention?
Podcast Host:And you talked about, maybe we can, we can go back to My Dear Hemlock and talk about those unique challenges I think the woman faces.
Podcast Host:Like abstention is one of them.
Podcast Host:And then wine with her friends, perhaps maybe we could talk a little bit about those.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, that's right.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:So there's a chapter that talks about something that I have thought about before called I call it the abstention bias.
Tilly Dillehay:But the idea that I think women tend to assume that the burden of proof is on permissiveness.
Tilly Dillehay:So like if you have a friend, if you're in a conversation with a friend and they don't say, own a television or they don't celebrate Christmas or whatever it is, like if they, if there's something that you do that they don't do on, even on legitimate conviction, I think that women just tend to have a knee jerk reaction of.
Tilly Dillehay:I think maybe it's more righteous to not do the thing than to do it.
Tilly Dillehay:I think maybe it's more righteous to abstain from something than to partake in it.
Tilly Dillehay:It feels more righteous.
Tilly Dillehay:It sounds more righteous, you know, And I just think, I don't know, I don't know why that is.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm not sure where that comes from.
Tilly Dillehay:There's a sort of guess in the book that maybe it's because Eve's sin was a sin of commission instead of, you know, because she partook.
Tilly Dillehay:But I just think that for whatever reason, when we hear that someone's not doing something, we immediately start checking ourselves like, oh my goodness, so I am doing, I am doing this thing.
Tilly Dillehay:So I think with food that's just.
Tilly Dillehay:Food is just one of the many ways that this shows up.
Tilly Dillehay:But you find out that someone is not eating a food group, it definitely causes you to wonder, do I need, should I be looking into this too?
Tilly Dillehay:You know, and maybe you should, but I'm just, I just, I want, I want to be aware of the fact that you shouldn't be assuming necessarily that abstention is holier than, than the opposite.
Podcast Host:So.
Tilly Dillehay:And then with the wine night.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, go ahead.
Podcast Host:Oh, please.
Tilly Dillehay:So the wine night was just the, the whole chapter was mostly a social thing.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, there was some commentary I guess on, on drinking behaviors.
Tilly Dillehay:But mostly it was just about spending time with these worldly women.
Tilly Dillehay:And this was actually an almost direct copy of one letter out of the Screwtape letters that I just loved and wanted to use again.
Tilly Dillehay:But where he has friends who are worldly and then friends in this sort of church, in the.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, these Christian friends and these worldly friends.
Tilly Dillehay:And he bounces back and forth between the two groups.
Tilly Dillehay:And both of the groups make him feel better about himself because he keeps a foot in both camps when he's with the worldly people.
Tilly Dillehay:They make him feel like I'm holier than they are, so he can kind of hold that little part of himself.
Tilly Dillehay:And then when he's with the Christian groups, he thinks how much more, you know, cultured he is because he also has this other worldly group of people.
Tilly Dillehay:So he just.
Tilly Dillehay:It's a way.
Tilly Dillehay:It's a pride.
Tilly Dillehay:It's a pride thing.
Tilly Dillehay:So that's what the mom.
Tilly Dillehay:In this letter, the mom is spending time with her old college friends who are worldly, and they make her feel like she's better than they are because she doesn't do.
Tilly Dillehay:She wouldn't go as far as they would in certain ways.
Tilly Dillehay:She wouldn't say that about her husband or she.
Tilly Dillehay:She doesn't have that extra glass of wine or whatever, but she's being influenced by them, even.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Podcast Host:So as you think back on the book and the writing process and now that it's been published, do you think that.
Podcast Host:Do you think you lived up to the standard you set for yourself to do honor to CS Lewis Legacy?
Tilly Dillehay:It's a terrible question to ask anybody.
Podcast Host:Oh, probably you don't have to answer it then.
Podcast Host:Just cut it out.
Tilly Dillehay:I just mean, like, there have been times when I was rereading.
Tilly Dillehay:When I was rereading the first draft, which was incredibly rough.
Tilly Dillehay:It was a super rough draft.
Tilly Dillehay:This is my third book.
Tilly Dillehay:The first book went to.
Tilly Dillehay:Went to press basically in the state that I handed it to the publisher because I had had five years to work on it and, you know, edit it basically over time myself.
Tilly Dillehay:The second book was a little rougher.
Tilly Dillehay:This was by far the roughest manuscript I've ever turned in.
Tilly Dillehay:And I just had.
Tilly Dillehay:Because I just couldn't look at it anymore.
Tilly Dillehay:And it just was such.
Tilly Dillehay:It was all over the place.
Tilly Dillehay:There's so many different topics.
Tilly Dillehay:You know, it was just a.
Tilly Dillehay:It was a weird book to write.
Tilly Dillehay:And the editors, the Canon guy who they gave, he was awesome.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, he was.
Tilly Dillehay:He was so helpful just in forcing me to get more logical throughout the book.
Tilly Dillehay:But I say all that to say, like, there have been many times when I picked up this manuscript and I thought, this is the worst.
Tilly Dillehay:This is so bad, and no one should ever do this.
Tilly Dillehay:And why did I decide that this would be a good idea?
Tilly Dillehay:So I don't know if I feel that way now, but I have to say it has.
Tilly Dillehay:It's just don't do this sort of thing.
Tilly Dillehay:Don't invite people to compare you to CS Lewis.
Tilly Dillehay:It's just a bad idea.
Tilly Dillehay:It's a recipe for disaster.
Podcast Host:I don't know that.
Podcast Host:I don't know that that's.
Podcast Host:It says apples and oranges.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, right.
Tilly Dillehay:That's right.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Podcast Host:But I'll tell you, I think it's a worthy compliment.
Podcast Host:I think it's a worthy compliment to CS Lewis work.
Podcast Host:I think it fills in an enormous cultural and perhaps even, I don't want to say theological, I don't want to make it sound grander than it is, but almost like there's a blind spot that it's being filled in, especially because we live in a post feminine mystique era, right.
Podcast Host:And the feminine mystique is this kind of cultural value that's not really spoken.
Podcast Host:It's like, oh, women can't be understood, perhaps not even by themselves.
Podcast Host:And I don't happen to believe that.
Podcast Host:And I think it's a very dangerous idea to suggest to women that they can't be understood, nor can they understand themselves, because the Christian life demands that, demands that they understand themselves, particularly so they know they're sinning or not.
Podcast Host:So I think it was.
Podcast Host:It's a worthy compliment to C.S.
Podcast Host:lewis's work.
Tilly Dillehay:That's a very good point about the just women being told that they can't even understand themselves.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't know if I've ever heard that put in just that way.
Tilly Dillehay:But, yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
Tilly Dillehay:And as far as it being.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean, obviously to.
Tilly Dillehay:Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Tilly Dillehay:I love, love, love Lewis.
Tilly Dillehay:And probably, I mean, every book, everything I've ever written has been influenced in some way or other by Lewis.
Podcast Host:So this is just more of that can relate.
Podcast Host:So just if you don't mind, just one more quick question, if that's okay.
Podcast Host:Okay, so you're a wife and a mother of multiple children.
Podcast Host:How and where do you find the time, the focus, the energy to set aside time to write in a focused way?
Podcast Host:I'm sure that there are lots of men and women who would be wondering about that.
Tilly Dillehay:In particular Yeah, I take walks with a baby in a stroller or whatever.
Tilly Dillehay:But we live in the country.
Tilly Dillehay:I take walks and that's how I plan a piece of writing.
Tilly Dillehay:That's how I get ideas is walks.
Tilly Dillehay:And then I, and then I'll.
Tilly Dillehay:I'll get up early mornings and, and work on something if I'm in the middle of something, you know.
Tilly Dillehay:And my husband actually has given me writing days too, here and there, you know, on a.
Tilly Dillehay:He's a pastor, so he gets Mondays off.
Tilly Dillehay:That's usually our family, you know, knock around, go and hike kind of day.
Tilly Dillehay:But if I'm on deadline for something, he'll.
Tilly Dillehay:Something, he'll give me some time then.
Tilly Dillehay:So.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah, I mean, it's just different ways.
Tilly Dillehay:You just steal.
Tilly Dillehay:You steal the time here and there.
Tilly Dillehay:You find the time here and there.
Tilly Dillehay:But I don't know, there's seasons in life when it's just not time to write and I might be in one of those right now.
Tilly Dillehay:I mean We've got an 18 month old and, and my other three kids are 9, 7 and 5 and they're.
Tilly Dillehay:We're homeschooling.
Tilly Dillehay:So you know, it's.
Tilly Dillehay:It's just, it's a, It's a time when my mind is full of just what I'm doing with them and it's plenty enough to keep, you know, to keep my mind satisfied.
Tilly Dillehay:So I don't know, it may.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't know if it's going to be a long time before something else comes up as another project.
Podcast Host:Screw Tape Letters for kids.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Oh yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:A co write with a 975 year old.
Podcast Host:I'm sure now that will be a project.
Tilly Dillehay:Yeah.
Tilly Dillehay:Sounds fun actually.
Podcast Host:Yeah.
Podcast Host:Well, Tilly, thank you so much for the generosity of your time.
Podcast Host:I know you have a lot going on and thank you for your work and thank you for this book.
Podcast Host:I really was very blessed by it and I hope my listeners will be too.
Tilly Dillehay:Great.
Tilly Dillehay:Thank you.
Podcast Host:Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do?
Tilly Dillehay:Oh goodness.
Tilly Dillehay:I.
Tilly Dillehay:I guess Facebook or the Canon.
Tilly Dillehay:Canon is put this book out.
Tilly Dillehay:You could go to the Canon page.
Tilly Dillehay:I don't, I don't.
Tilly Dillehay:I'm not on Instagram anymore and I don't have a website anymore.
Tilly Dillehay:So I just, I just got rid of both those things.
Tilly Dillehay:So I guess Facebook.
Podcast Host:Great.
Podcast Host:I'll send them to Facebook into Canon Sa.