WoF: Hundreds of questions were submitted to Women of Faith for this book. How did you choose which ones to answer?

MM: First, the WoF staff sorted the questions into categories for me. Then, I went through each category to find a question or two that could represent the others.

WoF: Why are relationships so hard?

MM: We human beings are fragmented, fractured, and hurting creatures. When you take one fractured, fragmented, hurting person and try to put them together with another – in a marriage, a friendship, or any kind of relationship – it’s hard to get the fractured pieces to fit together.

We can’t completely smooth our edges, but we can make those pieces not so sharp. We were definitely made for relationships – God made us relational beings. Relationships are the source of our greatest joys and our greatest pain in life.

WoF: Do you think sexual immorality has become commonplace in Christian circles?

MM: I don’t think it is more commonplace in terms of instinct – but it seems that we have relaxed our self-control and the consequences are not as severe as they once were. When there were tremendous legal and social consequences for sexual immorality, we were better at keeping our instincts under control. Parents today tell their children, “Oh now, now… don’t feel bad about yourself; we don’t want you to feel any guilt.” Our inner judgment has relaxed.

It’s been a problem since the early days of humankind. Our instinct is to disobey God and satisfy our human flesh. What we don’t catch on to is that our flesh is never satisfied. It always wants more – it may want ‘different’, but it always wants more.

WoF: One thing we’ve noticed about you, Marilyn, is that you don’t hesitate to speak frankly about even the most delicate subjects – the kind many people only discuss in whispers. How did you get to be so bold?

MM: I’ve probably always been bold. I don’t want to shock or offend anyone, but when I was in practice as a counselor I got a lot of questions from the Christian community about topics like oral sex. Last year when Kathy Troccoli and I were doing the Q&A at the Pre-conference, we got a number of questions on the same subjects.

Why can’t we talk about the intimate issues of our lives without shame? To live our lives in shadows and whispers is unfortunate; we all deserve to be heard.

Of course, if my mother was still living and she read that chapter in particular, it would probably end her life right then and there.

WoF: Why is it so important to manage our expectations? Does lowering our expectations mean we lack faith?

MM: Lowering our expectations often means coming to a place of reality. Life is unfair.
It is often fantastic and beautiful, but it is unrealistic to expect that it will always be fantastic and beautiful. A pessimist would say that life is never fantastic or beautiful. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Managing expectations is a reality-based approach to life.

WoF: What should we expect from you at the National Conference this year?

MM: This year we were each assigned a word to talk about; mine is ‘hope’. I loved working with that word as it relates to everyday things in life. God is our hope and we become each others’ hope when we are working in community. God is our one and only divine hope, but he has created each of us to reach out and give hope when someone needs a human presence.

WoF: In the Introduction we read that Since You Asked is the first in a series. Does that mean we can expect more “Ask Marilyn” type books in the future?

MM: That idea is on the drawing board, but it won’t be the next book I do. Actually, Luci and I are going to collaborate on a book for next year. We’ve wanted to do that for 30 years and we’re finally going to!