Theology in the Raw - Following God in the Midst of Suffering and Sin: Measha Brueggergosman-Lee

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Measha Brueggergosman-Lee is a professional singer and musician, who in 2024 became the first black recipient and youngest recipient ever of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Classical Music from the Governor General of Canada. She’s also the author of her memoir Something Is Always On Fire and is currently writing a sequel entitled Open-Hearted. She is currently in the third year of a Masters in Practical Theology at Acadia Divinity College.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Round. My guest today is my friend, Misha Brueger-G Ghostman Lee, who is a professional singer and musician who in 2024 became the first black recipient and youngest recipient ever of the lifetime achievement award for classical music from the governor general of Canada. You can look her up on Spotify. She is an incredible opera singer blew me away when I found out she was part of the theology in the raw community. She, you know, yeah, during a zoom chat, you know, we kind of started to get hints to like, yeah, I think, I think Misha is like famous or something. So somebody in our chat kind of looked her up and

sent me a link. She's like, do you know who this is? She's pretty famous. Anyway, she's the author of her memoir. Something is always on fire and is currently writing a sequel entitled Open Hearted. And she is currently in the third year of her master's degree in practical theology at Acadia Divinity College. Yeah, Misha's awesome. She's just been so fun to interact with in the theology of the rock community is so sharp,

has a really interesting story that her journey has not been linear. Okay. And then she talks all about that in the most raw way in this conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Misha Brugger-Gosman Lee. Oh my word, Misha. Yeah. I've been waiting for this conversation for a while. We've, we've hung out a few times. You've been a very valuable and persistent contributor to the theology in the raw community, participating in zoom chats, email threads, messages. So

it's good to have you on the show. Oh my goodness. I can't believe I'm here. I'm so thrilled. You have to have destination, like goals, like you got to have goals. And you know, when I first started listening to Theology in the Raw, my husband said, you're going to be on that podcast someday. And I said, you have a head injury. And I would listen with such awe and reverence and the conversations were and I mean, I'm not saying anything that anybody listening wouldn't already know. But to think that I would then be able to have like a live conversation with you after having had a career where I've done so much press, but none of it means as much as this.

It's my absolute honor. I mean, when I, you sent me a kind of sketch of a book you're working on a sequel to a previous book you wrote. And I, you know, a lot of people send me these kinds of things and I try to at least glance at it, look at it. Sometimes I'm just like, Hey, I just don't have time even to look at the outline. I just, you know, I get a lot of these, but, uh, I was like, I want to let it check out Misha's, you know? And first of all, I was so impressed by your writing quality. Some people like, I want to write a book and I read their writing. It's just like, it's just not written very well. And I, you know, it's no knock.

It's just, you know, writing is a certain gift and talent, but yours is written really well, very well. But then I got into some of the stuff you're discussing in your book and my jaw was on the ground. I'm like, oh my word, you've been through a lot and you have somehow woven intense suffering and trauma into your faith walk. Can you take us back?

I mean, far back as you wanna go, but when did some of those experiences start? What did that look like? And how come you're still a Christian today? Well, praise God. Thank you so much. First of all, I'm Canadian. I know this screen might show you that I'm black,

but I'm Canadian. And I grew up in a small town on the north side of Fredericton, New Brunswick, which is the capital of New Brunswick, which is an Eastern province. Okay, fine. I grew up in a Christian home, beautiful parents, Sterling and Ann Gosman of Nashville,

Texas, and was sharp-turned, molested early, fire lit a little early, which connects to the fact that when I would get to my marriage, I would be Chidi from Cheathousen, loyal, not faithful. And eventually I would have, and I'm not saying that these are connected, but dissected aorta, like my ear would explode before my 30th birthday. On my way to that, yes, I have never not been an opera singer. And that gift was discovered by my elementary school music teacher and my parents who were on the search for their children's gifts and how to go about promoting them and developing them. My brother is a PhD pastor serving internationally.

My sister was a gymnast on the national team and I came up just sort of wanting to keep up. I was given voice lessons in addition to the piano lessons that I wanted because my sister had them. So the voice lessons were sort of an add-on, but the music teacher of my elementary school had told my parents that I had a real affinity for matching pitch and a sort of fearlessness on stage. But I was really mostly in it for the piano. And I started singing. Piano was hard and singing was not as hard.

So of course I focused on piano because I'm highly competitive. And you know, I would advance as a pianist, but be like hired as a singer, which maybe should have been my first indication, but like for all your bar and bat mitzvah wedding funeral needs, like I was the town singer. And I persisted stubbornly with piano and would, you know, I'd be a soloist here and a collaborative pianist there, a chamber musician here, but always with a voice that was in choirs. I was in every choir you could think of, but advancing quite quickly as a soloist, like

music festivals, because they're competitive and I'm super competitive. And so I want to win everything. And I would persist in the kind of competitive route and eventually in a child prodigy kind of way, I was offered early enrollment, which I did not take because I also don't want to be going ahead of God. Like my parents were always talking that language, how your gift is used for service, how hardship is promised, how you should count it all joy when you're persecuted for your faith, and that person should be allowed to do its perfect work.

This whole vibe was really very much in keeping with my father, who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, was a black man growing up in a certain era, shielding us from the discrimination that he faced daily. But eventually he would retire from the CBC and would take an early retirement package that was given, offered to him by the very company that had discriminated against him for years.

And it was his coworkers that filed the lawsuit. He showed up to him one day, he this wonderful man of God, not perfect, but definitely progressive. And they were like, Sterling, just sign this. And it was the lawsuit because they'd been watching him. And that'll preach. But the fact that he was so faithful,

and I watched him, when you ask me, what is it that allows you to believe that suffering is necessary and it will complete its perfect work. It's that I watched my father in a government job, my mother in a government job, somebody was always home when I got home, and yet they were always working. They remortgaged the house so that I could study at the Boston Conservatory when I was 13, 14. The government paid a certain amount of money for me to be able to go study there because a teacher had heard about me and offered to give me lessons. And so I lived in the Boston Conservatory alone in the dorms when I was 13 and 14 during the summer studying voice piano and theory.

And so it was a life that kind of was training me up to be something that I would later come to realize is extremely rare, not normal and quite risky. But it's been my faith that has, and a functional faith, a touch, taste and feel faith that has allowed me to sort of practically navigate this treacherous waters of classical music and it's, you know, stalwart, unchanging. It's very similar to the church in that way. Slow moving, constant in-fighting, and really just trying to do good at its core. And I would rise in the ranks, full scholarship at the University of Toronto. I did my second degree in Germany. So there's like languages there. And it's a love of travel, not necessarily the act of traveling, but the destinations. And my 20s was just spent traveling around the world. And part of the.

Pitfall of being a soloist and being set apart is that you'll. Start to believe that you have a morality that's set apart for you. Here comes the cheating. So the movable deal of the movable dough of my morality was that what applied to others didn't apply to me. So if I was cheating on my husband, it was because I was away and I really did feel something for this person.

And isn't it great of me to be sharing my awesomeness? You see how, you know, Satan doesn't come at you with, your marriage is going to end in disgrace. He comes at you with, listen, you're so special. I mean, you might as well share the wealth. And then it's born out of an addiction to the male gaze. It's born out of my fire having been lit too early. It's born out of purity culture that gets you to the marriage bed,

technically a virgin, but not really spiritually one. So all of that sort of pulled together in a cesspool of sin that had me on my way to an aortic dissection. And that aortic dissection happened in 2009. And I was up until 2006, morbidly obese. So we're talking 365 pounds at my highest and still killing it. OK, I was never motivated by self-loathing. I again, as you understand, I'm set apart.

Nobody's not hiring me because I'm fat. Nobody's discriminating against me because I'm fat. I'm in a soloistic career recital wise, where I'm not subjected to the discriminatory practices inherent in casting, right? So I'm your person who comes to sing the recital, which is a park and bark with a pianist. And so I sort of made my bones in chamber music.

A park and bark, I've never heard that. You're up one spot, look at the face, she's telling a story and it's all done. You know, and my technique is very, very still and very strong inwardly. Like it's like the duck on the surface of the water who looks pristine on the top, but underneath they're just kicking like mad. That's good technique in my humble opinion. I've since become much more physical in my artistry by

virtue of the fact that I've worked for a Christ-loving-run opera company for whom I serve as artist-in-residence called Opera Atelier. And they're a very physical company. So that would add to what I think is a necessity in being a singer is a certain amount of physicality and any instrumentalist, you know what I mean? You just have to have a connection. Can I go back and ask, I don't know if, if there's something you don't want to talk about, please just say, I don't want to talk about that, but I'm curious how, can you say how old you were when you were molested and are you very conscious of that? What is important about my molestation is that no one ever made it feel like it was my fault. my molestation is that no one ever made it feel like it was my fault. And I knew that it was not right what had happened,

but I knew that I was not to blame. So there was a neighbor and then there was a couple of cousins. Like it was sort of, you know, I write about it in there's something, something is always on fire. That's the name of my first book. Something is always on fire. That's the name of my first book. Something is Always on Fire, My Life So Far. And I was reticent to write about it

because I didn't think it was bad, because it hadn't been presented to me as something that I could have prevented, right? Which is a way of assigning blame. So there was no victim shaming. There was a removal of the situation and it was a dirty old man down on a court that connected to our streets.

And within, in my child's memory, I would say within five minutes, it was probably within 48 hours, that man was no longer there and the house was for sale. And knowing if you knew my dad, you would know that that man was never heard of again. So your parents knew about it. Did you tell your parents right away?

I was at home. And I was like, well, this just happened. And I feel it sort of burned a bit. And I was telling my mother about it. And she was, you know, if it if it's me now that I have kids and and they come to me and tell me things and I know not to react in a certain way, because children absorb your reaction and as a way of interpreting a situation. So my my parents protected me

by removing that man from the neighborhood, because if he had done it to me, it meant that he had done it to others. And over at my aunt's house, we never went back. And what I would do differently, praising God that none of this has befallen my children, might be to chat about it. Like I have Christian literature, good pictures, bad pictures for my two sons. I have, you know, this is a Christian identity,

a Christian sex ethic, this is your body, age-appropriate literature that really makes them aware. And some of these Christian literature resources for children and their sexuality will explain things like abuse. And it's very difficult to talk about it. And I understand why Satan wants it kept in the dark, but what is brought into the light

is under the jurisdiction of, you know, our healing Heavenly Father. father. So and nothing is hidden from him. But our awareness of how he has the ability to work allows us to see how sovereign he is in his protection. And it's also that my boys might have friends that would come to them with a situation that they need to then take to an adult. And I want to equip them that way because you know, you have a generation that flows from you with your the situation that they need to then take to an adult. And I want to equip them that way. Because you have a generation that flows from you with your daughters. We, as parents, have a unique positioning

whereby we get to do it better. But we also recognize that there are certain traumas that I'm quite committed to not passing on. So here in my second marriage, it's sort of obscene how transparent we need to be because of my history as a cheater. So because God has redeemed me, brought me from the muck and the mire,

restored the years that the locusts ate, I now have a responsibility to treat truth like the precious commodity and like it's non-negotiable. You mentioned in passing that it seemed like you were making some kind of connection between your prior molestation and then your affairs during your first marriage? Can you unpack that? Is that something you've been able to kind of process? Yeah. Praise God for therapy and praise God for Christian therapy. Because when I went into the therapist's office, the Christian therapist's office the first time, I was suicidal because I thought,

why can't I just calm down? Why can't I just settle in? I've had a wonderful man choose to love me. I met him in high school. He was the hot Swiss exchange student. How do I keep screwing this up so royally? Maybe it would be better for everyone if I was just, and I was like, that is not of God. I'd better get myself to a licensed professional. And it was so comforting to me to realize how much of a big fat cliche I am. Like that you're a product of your experiences,

that your parents parenting and you know, you could blame your parents for everything if you weren't an adult, right? So if you weren't sanctified and if it was just you who needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in order to experience his healing that he had already prescribed for you before he started this construct called time. But I established the connection between my addiction to the male gaze, like constant approval, but the approval came in the form of sexual attraction because of the early fire being lit. Like that fire, right, is meant to be inside the hearth of marriage.

But just like a porn addiction or exposure to bad pictures or somebody touching you inappropriately, you feel these good things. It's just not in the context that God intended for it to be. So the hammering home of a Christian sex ethic to my sons has a lot to do with the why God conceives of sex this way, of attraction this way, of identity this way. And I'm really conscious of answering that question or bringing up the topic with my sons so that they're not in any way confused. I came to my twenties wondering why I couldn't just settle into my marriage. But it was because of unresolved connections that I had to make

between why I was cheating, who I was as a performer and personality and and and Canadian celebrity, for lack of a better word, and how I was able to convince myself that what I was doing wasn't necessarily wrong. It's the classic, but it's not hurting anyone. But I was dying. Like Preston, I was dying. And-

Literally, I mean- I was just like, the pressure on the inside, the body will take on the trauma that the mind refuses to acknowledge. Yeah. It's the body keeps the score. The body keeps the score. And as young as I might look, I am about 78 years old, bodily. And psychologically, I would love to think

that God has made it possible for me to connect these things so that I might help more people, which is why I told so much truth in the book I wrote. And why forecasting forward, there's still so much more to tell because in the journey to a marriage that is healthy, but also with its own set of challenges, I have a sexual health that God redeemed and a vitality that I don't have to be ashamed of and a life and an artistry where truth is a bit my brand, which is a huge release.

Was it through therapy or how did you lose the desire or maybe just discipline the desire to have an affair that's again, connected to stuff in your past. Like is it just going to therapy that in dealing with your past trauma that you sort of let go of that desire to cheat on your husband and everything? Or is this something that you feel like is an ongoing struggle or? Yeah. I love that. I love that question. Why don't you cheat anymore, Amesha? Well, always the straight shooter. Well, because I mean, I've heard similar stories and I, when somebody's sexuality has been awakened at a young age like that, especially as a

victim, whether it's somebody feeding them porn or being abused, molested, in almost every case, not every case, it has lasting effects that can only be undone through like with professional help dealing with your past trauma. So this is not an uncommon, this is a narrative that maybe 10 to 20% of our listeners are kind of resonating with. So- Well, and that's the thing. It's like, when you look at ministries of people who have the courage to be honest and properly speak about it, Lisa Harper, Lisa Bavier, Joyce Myers, you know, you're looking

at these beautiful women of God who have clearly won, like spiritually, sexually, psychologically speaking. They are speaking from a place of honesty that doesn't deny what happened, but is able to place it in a context where God gets glory. And I knew that God would get the glory. So when I went to write the first book, I was reticent to write about the molestation just because he's gotten so much glory from it.

And he didn't intend for it, but it's walking that very tender line between, do you believe he's good? Because if what you're in is not yet good, it means he's not yet done. So hold on and keep seeking his face. If you seek first the kingdom of God, all of these things will be added unto you

in the form of wisdom, in the form of perspective, in the form of being able to communicate your trauma in a way where he gets glory. And so I lived long enough and persisted in this living despite the fact that I've not had just one, but fast forward to 2019, almost 10 years later to the day where I would have my second emergency open heart surgery. And now I can't help but be convinced that I've been set apart for true, true like usage by God. And it's virtue of the fact that I can't be silent about how good he's been. Every like it's practically a running joke that every conversation I have turns

to Jesus, you know, and I am now asked by the boards I sit on or the friendships I have, or, you know, the Bible family I lead, the publisher that I'm in talks with, because my mother describes me as the tip of the spear. And you can recognize this, Preston, because you know how difficult it is to be the one person having a hard conversation about stuff that people don't want to talk about, especially in Christian circles. But classical music doesn't happen in Christian circles, per se. So I'm always having to translate for the non-believer this hope that I have. And he keeps subjecting me, God Almighty keeps subjecting me to trauma because he knows I'm going to give him praise.

And in each time that, you know, some new hot dumpster fire of a mess comes my way. I'm I'm to the point now at soon to be 48 on Saturday. Hello. Yes. Happy birthday to me. That I just know that he's going to get the glory from it because it came to me. Oh, oh, you want to look at that bank account and tell me never like and reminisce or go through old programs and be like, well, she wasn't. And will I ever and how I get caught in and ensnared into the sin of comparison is just like scrolling my way to misery, right? We can all do it. And at this point, I just recognize that all of my trauma and

all of the hardship that I'm blessed to experience reveals more aspect of his character, a depth of who he is and an increase in his faithfulness, even though he can't improve on himself, it's just that my faith improves because I'm fallible, because I will, like I'm still prone to unbelief. And so he'll be like, look, you can believe me even in this. Look, you can be like, and I could go on and on and on about the myriad of the ways that he saved me. Just, I told you before, like right before we got on, a police officer came to my door looking for a man at large. And I'm like, holy spirit, I am going to need you

because I got to get on the harmless Preston. And I don't even do looking out my window, wondering if some fugitive's gonna be there. You have some Axe boat around the woods. No one said murderer. And you know, I just think he's protected me coming and going. And every time, like from myself, he's protected me, let alone the instances that I will never know about until I get to glory.

What about, so have you wrestled with the times he didn't protect you? You know what I mean? Like, and it's one thing to experience suffering and trauma that doesn't really have a human agent, cancer, some other ailment or whatever, but you know, you're a victim of sexual abuse. Have you ever, did you ever wrestle? I'm sure you wrestled with it, but I mean, did you ever think, God, where in the world were you? Well, why weren't you the protector in this moment? Cause I know a lot of people, when there's a human agent that is the cause of someone's

suffering, that's just, that's gotta be extra difficult. You know, it's not like I, I lost my husband cause he was out at sea and a hurricane came and it's like, Oh, golly, like that's tragic. But it's like, he can't, there's not a person, you know? Well, preacher much smarter than me, said hurt people, hurt people, but heal people, heal people. So there's a multiplicity of ways that one might react to trauma of that kind, but in the same way that he set me apart to sing classically, why not me to be chosen to be molested early on so that I might have this testimony?

Not that it's something that he would will, never. But in the formation of us spiritually, there's going to have to be bespoke lessons that match your gifting. Like I have a gifting for passion and a lust for life. I have a love for people. My redemption story includes the trauma that I didn't know was playing a part

in the choices I was making. And so when you ask if I ever got mad at God for the molestation, I would get mad at God for like my dating choices, like when I was no longer married and the duds I chose on my way to my Stephen. And then God saying, now I know you're upset at me

because you are right to consider yourself a wife and nobody's girlfriend or side piece, but I did not send you there for that. You're here heartbroken, but I sent you there to encourage that person and you saw babies. I sent you there to get you through COVID by pairing you with somebody who could do all your technical requirements and you immediately went to manipulating them

into dating you. So if you had come to me, I would have given you peace in your spirit that this relationship was never meant to become romantic, but so desperate are you to find your sufficiency in someone else that I'm gonna allow you to keep having your heart broken until your sufficiency is in me. And the minute I was fine, I was like, okay, boys, two legs, two boys, come

on, shepherd, take the right, come on, Sterling, take the left, you, me, mama, we're us against the world. Let's learn how to fish. Let's learn how to chop wood. Let's learn how to keep a house. And in comes Stephen and I hadn't even considered him the first time. And then I saw his grandbaby run to him the second time I met him. And I thought, oh, I might want to give this guy a look. And when we had our first date, he came over and like three hours into the date, I was like, okay, listen, I don't need more friends. What are you doing here? Like I just cut straight to,

I was like, I need to know. I'm a bit of a control freak. If God has set you into my life for me to encourage you, I'll put my encouraging hat on. If it's to like steer you from some trauma you have yet to like reveal to me, so be it. Tell me about it now. Like if you have a broken relationship, a way of perceiving women, like something, like I was like trying to figure out why he was here. So I just asked him and I'm nobody's girlfriend.

Well, I could marry you. And I was like, well, let me just fast on that real quick. And so I fasted for two weeks. And I was like, God, I do not, why would you send somebody this great only to have him not be, please mend my heart so that I don't go before you? So you were at a place though, where you were maybe, like what I term, self-sufficient, or you got to a place where you were like, I do not need to be running around with these guys,

like to be happy, to be fulfilled. And you came to a place where I'm good. I want to find my sufficiency in Christ, raise my two boys. Is that right? When he calls us his bride, like when you're reading through the Song of Songs, like that's not like it's allegorical to a certain extent. Like it's yes, but it's wisdom literature for a reason, because you can be that loved and not married. And I was like, praise God, I've got a ministry to singles. Here we go. You know, and I was just like living pure for Jesus, loving my situation. Like I have no real problems, Preston.

Like Jesus is my sufficiency and now in marriage, figuring out how to not make Stephen my God, figuring out how to maintain my knowledge of chosenness without needing approval, but also knowing that my first calling after seeking first the kingdom of God is to my husband in covenant, because I promised God I'd die married to this man.

And I'm not sure if I'm gonna like die happy or not, because the jury's out, because marriage is hard. So it's a whole like, was it Stephen Furtick who said like, new level, same devil? Like, I'm here at another level, but I'm still in the equation. Like it's still me married, but still me. Like, can I get an amen? They are just your pensions and the things that ensnare you particularly in the sin that you're particularly prone to are just exacerbated when you're with the same person all the time. So it's an incredible way to get to know God deeper when you're sharpened against having to submit to a whole other person. And I'm loving it, but it's really brutal. Like, it's a crucible. And I

feel so privileged to be in the thick of it with the tools he gave me for it leading up to this, because I couldn't have gotten married to this man, this incredible man. I wouldn't have been able to recognize his integrity, his simplicity, his gifting, and his devotion to me, like that I would get somebody who is so into me when I was pulled up in the fetal position, just crying from the shame of what I have put people through. And you don't fast forward through that, right?

The testimony is told in an hour or less, but the trauma is worked out over years and years. I'm curious. You're so your first husband, my husband. Yeah. What was that? Has he, have you guys debriefed on how did that, like, I, um, cause like you said, you, you, you now deal with the guilt and shame of having hurt somebody over and over. Has he healed from that? Were there conversations between you two that helped him heal from that? My sweet, wonderful husband, we prayed throughout the entire divorce process and we may have

pulled the trigger early on our marriage only because we didn't want our children to have any memories of us together. I'm not saying that that is the decision that everyone should make and that there couldn't have been a testimony of our children seeing us working this through, seeing mama as having had an issue with lust that was connected to her early molestation and her job as a soloist and daddy, maybe not having been a mighty man of God who was able to hold his woman down in the way that God intended him to. There was a maturation that had to occur on both sides and had he held out, I would have eventually come right. And when I see him in his marriage now,

I know the work that God has done in him. And so we prayed together to get through this divorce in a holy way, because it was that I had hoped he would leave early enough that he would still have belief in love. Because to be someone who is faithful but weak, loyal but non-communicative, and traditional but guileless is all things that God will work out in his grace at giving you another kick at the can, which my husband and I and my baby daddy and I both now have. And he even

has another baby, which is amazing. And I wanted more kids. But now that I see him with a newborn, I can see God in his sovereign wisdom keeping me from the newborn, life-sucking, selfish infant that children are. Never want to mince words, Misha. Did you, did you, how? Yeah, who God sent to him? A children's pastor? Like you think God's hand wasn't on it? So when I send my kids there and I'm choking on the guilt of having to send my own children somewhere else, I know that I'm sending them to spiritual formation that I can trust. And as I wonder if I ruined

everything, now they're in Switzerland, able to experience that. Your sons? Yeah, my sons are there with their grandparents. And so, these children are given a life surrounded by adults who are not only in love with Jesus, but are very in love with these boys and have nothing but their best interest at heart. We wouldn't have doubled the population of their parenting had it not been for this thing that God didn't intend, but that He redeemed. You are a very theological person. You are an avid reader. I'm always impressed with the stuff you're reading. Did you wrestle, I mean, if I can ask, did you wrestle with

like just the theological questions around getting the divorce and then remarrying and I know that's, people will debate that to no end, like what is some biblical justifications and so on. Like, was that a... Yeah. ...fuss with that? I mean, how... You know, I, you know, Holy Spirit help me, but there is a story in every Christian's life, Christian, and here I'm talking to Christ followers, middle Christ, where you're going to have a particular bespoke sin for which God is going

to give you a particular bespoke testimony so as to encourage and edify the body of Christ. God hates divorce, but he loves divorced people. Therein lies the distinction that I like to make. Now, as for remarrying, re-entering into covenant, I fasted and prayed for two weeks as to whether or not this was my husband. prayed for two weeks as to whether or not this was my husband. And God said yes. And I am a list maker, so I had a pro and a con list. And on that con was legalism and what the church I grew up in might say, but in order for them to have something to say,

they would have had a ministry around divorce and they didn't. And it's only now that we're understanding that the church is entering into these sticky conversations that culture has spoken super loud about for as long as I've known them, as long as I've been in this culture. And so I think it's the love of God that leads people to repentance. And repent I did. And in this new ministry of reconciliation that I have in my marriage, I recognize that it would not have been easier to stay single in the same way that it's not easy to stay married because in this world we're promised trouble but take heart, Jesus says, I have overcome the world. So I think how God deals with me I think how God deals with me at the greatest depth is in my most intimate relationship, which is my marriage.

And so I can see the work that he does in me as having to be within the context of marriage so as to make it as voracious as possible. Because if I was outside of covenant, just raising my kids all on my own, I wouldn't have this parental iron against which to be sharpened. And I would live inside my own echo chamber of morality, convincing myself that I was making progress when I wasn't. And every time I am offended by my husband, convincing myself that I was making progress when I wasn't.

And every time I am offended by my husband, every time I wanna clap back with something inappropriate because I'm just so intelligent and I've got the perfect, and God makes me shut my mouth, that work wouldn't get done if I wasn't married. So it doesn't answer your question about theology, but it does give you an insight into how God speaks to me. Yeah. Well, and I wasn't just, I mean, you've probably heard me say, this is one area I've not looked into theologically, like I have other controversial issues. I, you know, I

don't know how many more I could take on finishing another one at the moment. So yeah, I wasn't asking as if I have the right answer. Are you going to answer? But truly, how did you wrestle with that? Well, the thing that I love about these crazy areas that you're just willing to swim in, like, does sharks be darned? I don't mind. You're just in like, gender, let me talk to you about sexual identity and please let me do an just in like gender. Let me talk to you about like sexual identity and the, and please let me do an easy one, like politics. Please throw me the softball of I'm a pacifist.

And I'm like, what is going, who is this guy? And your latest with egalitarianism, complimentarian, like I'm like, Oh, pick another easy one. Now what's interesting about this book that you're, well, there's a lot of things that are interesting about the book that you're about to release or may have already released by the time this airs, but is that it never occurred to me that it was a debate because I'm not replaced by a man no way, not ever. So when I went into seminary, it hadn't entered into the realm of my sort of exploration into theological studies that there would be some

like gender war where women couldn't do what men were. I was like, be still my beating heart. Y'all are still talking about this. It just seems like a conversation for people who have not been brought up to speed. Well, well, to be fair, there's a lot of exegetical complexity surrounding it. Okay. It's some people simply absorb their traditional upbringing, whether it's super conservative and commentarian or super egalitarian. So there definitely are those people that just absorb their surroundings. But there's also another group of fair minded people on all sides of the issue that are genuinely wrestling with complexities. Let me say this more fair way. My anecdotal experience would have never led me to believe that there was anything less than me being able to answer the call to my gifting. Okay.

Because original gifting that I had was so weird already that when it came to answering the call to sort of theological studies, it didn't occur to me that I was a female doing it. In the same way that I wouldn't expect to look to my right in a cast that has soprano casting and, you know, countertenor is not withstanding, I don't expect that that soprano is going to get cast as a man. Now, I wouldn't turn to my left and see the tenor and expect that to be cast as a woman. Right? So, yeah, yeah, it's just my framework is such that I am positioned to encourage females for whom it has been difficult because of the

trajectory of my own story. Most complementarian scholars that I've read, I'm scanning my brain right now, I'm sure there's some exceptions, but most of them, at least the more recent ones, more modern ones, I'm not talking like seven, you know, 200 years ago. But most of them would say that male only leadership is not because of some comprehensive, absolute intellectual, spiritual inferiority among the female kind. It is simply a God-ordained order of creation that they might say reflects the son's submission to the father. There might be some Trinitarian stuff there. There's some Adam created first stuff going on. I think some of them might even admit like the, the, the rationale isn't really that clear. Even the whole, like, you know, Eve was deceived,

not Adam. I was just reading Wayne Grudem is a very strong, complimentary and very conservative. And even he would say like, he did say in his, in his book, you know, this doesn't mean every single woman is, you know, more easily deceived. It's just kind of a general disposition. He said, then I'm like, what about the, okay. You think like most women are more easily deceived than most men, but what are they accepts? Even if you go with that, what about the 20, 30% that are, you know, like, Speaker 0 4 1 2 2 nobody in that context ever says yes, but wasn't it Barack who went to Deborah? Right. I mean, convenient. And I believe if we're responsible

in our biblical scholarship, there are just so many examples of leadership. I thought, and it's naive of me, but I thought it was like a foregone conclusion that if Paul sends Phoebe and she's there answering all their questions in Paul's absence, that with authority, then we go and do likewise. But again, I don't want to be insensitive to people who think about things differently,

nor am I close to any of those arguments. I just will go back to Esther. I will go back to, I just feel like there are so many citations of old and new instances where even sinning, it's not exclusive. Our gifting as females allows us to sin in a particular way Our gifting as females allows us to evangelize in a particular way Jael You know, I'm not saying I'm looking for some tent pegs here, but I'm saying that I Would probably get him into the tent the same way

into the tent the same way. I bet you would. I'm going to keep you away from tent pegs. Well, you might have an axe murderer wandering around your house right now. So maybe you do need to go look for some. I also have a husband who will not let nothing step to him. I'm curious. What is that? Because I think of Stephen as my protector. Like Stephen was the one who said, go to seminary. How are you not in seminary? You talk about the Bible all the time. And I'm like, because it's filled with Christians and people who are pretending, that's why I'm not in seminary. So I had a chip on my shoulder about who studies the Bible. And so I was like, I'm good here

in my office, just, you know, and he's, God's like, no, that is no, you cannot be your only, you know, like you have to get into the free, you have to start reading people who have written about you start, you have to get into the community of scholarship, you have to understand the fascinating, it'll only expand your appreciation of me. Are you enjoying it? Is it, was Stephen right? Yeah. Oh, I opened my first textbook three years ago

and I just started crying. I mean, I couldn't believe, I can still go, I couldn't believe he would be so good that he would just let me study him all the time. Just all the time, like whether it's, you know, God bless him in his just reward Brueggemann, who in a paper I'd cited in my bibliography, auto corrected it to Bruegge-Gosman and I didn't see it.

And I had cited myself. And my prof was like, we'll let this one pass. I've never had this problem before where it was Brueger Cosman, not Brueggemann. And I was like, I wish I could, but then I couldn't have come into this earlier. I couldn't have come into this before, Dr. Marion Taylor and Dr. Lynn Kohick and the like.

I would have needed to be encouraged by other female scholars like Sarah Jaffeth, you know, I needed to know that there were other men, women doing this. And, and so that I might seek them out. Right? Because I feel totally confident reaching out to other women and saying, like, could you tell me more about what you're learning? What's happening? Like my couple of birthdays ago, I just had a bunch of female theologians come and speak, whatever you want, just talk. And I, I, it was my, one of my favorite birthdays. And I'm going to do it again. So how'd you get a bunch

of female deluges to come? What do you mean came speak? Like, like I asked them to come to my party and made it possible for them to come. And I had dr. Marion Taylor. I had dr. Anna Robbins speak and recommend and, you know, encourage. And then I had a Jewish docent named Annie Slavik come and speak. And it was very interesting to hear the biblical veracity of both of these women where one's faith had yet to be completed. And the other one is an Old Testament scholar who wrote the textbook on female biblical writers, Dr. Marion Taylor. And just to kind of sit in the humility of someone who had written the handbook of women biblical interpreters, who was willing to sit at the foot of someone who had yet to put their faith in Jesus Christ,

and to watch that humble exchange. It wasn't necessarily true that the humility was returned, but to watch this woman of God, and with such a history of robust scholarship, be so open. And I was like, God, thanks for giving this to me so early in my theological career. May it always be that I'm like that. What do you, what do you hope to do with your degree after you've done a seminary? Are you just going just to learn and who knows what God will do with it? Or do you have a end goal? Get out of my fever dreams. Cause I don't know. And the control freakery is sometimes at fever pitch, where I have a skill set that has never

been better. Like I've never sung better. I've never been quicker at learning things. I've never been more like flexible in my ability to let performances go and just be there having a good time present. Look at how good she is. Meanwhile, I'm not really doing that that much. And so like a race horse held at the stables, I throw all of that into my studies.

And I took last semester off to write the follow-up book because I came around to August as I was contemplating picking my courses and I wasn't really feeling the fire that I had. And then I came across Havilla Cunnington's ministry and she had an author school. And I was like, ding, ding, ding. I don't want to belabor this second book even though I didn't think I was gonna write a second book because I pridefully boasted one and done perfect book so happy about it and then God's like you're gonna write another book and I was like I lost my weight in tears in that first book how dare you put me through the process again he was, but there's no ministry without the book.

I was like, you're flying, perfect logic because he appeals to me on the level of logic. I had a fire in my belly for writing that second book, and I literally rearranged my life so that I could really set my hand to the plow and come up with the first draft inside of the time that the course had promised. So you're done with the first draft. You're in the finishing processes of the book? Okay.

Yeah. You're in the finishing processes of the book. Okay. Yeah. And you, if I might say, introduce me to your publisher, who is ghosting me, but that's okay. And there is, and this is what you'll pray for, a market in Canada. What we do not have in this country is what you all, I don't wanna say take for granted, but there is a market for Christian books. Yeah.

It is really hearty and just mind boggling how much Christian literature there is in the American market. And you have a system set up where people can promote it and book sales can be generated by going to this church and speaking at that place and being on this podcast. And it's like an entire system. Canada has none of that. We do love But we are as, let's say, populist as the United States would be conservative. So what we don't want is to, and this is a great overgeneralization of Canada versus the United States, Canada in the company of the United States, Canada in the company of the United States. But it is sort of our identity to

not be American as opposed to being Canadian, whatever that means. Okay. So we have no fame system. It takes literally like the most famous person in Canada is in my phone. That's not a comment on my fame so much as it is how desperate we are to be democratic in our ability to elevate people beyond. Like we're classic tall poppy syndrome. You get too high in your britches and then we move on to somebody who who maybe sort of awshucks their way into this talk show. But we do love it when we succeed elsewhere so that we can be like reclaiming the person who went away, became successful and then came back and decided to pay their taxes here.

So it's a dichotomy. So while we have a rich culture that really loves art, really loves literature, I sit on the board of our national prize for fiction called the Giller Prize. The Giller Prize is awarded and it's like $100,000 and it's a prize for fiction like i said and every. Publisher and literary agent and you know author and canadian personality you know whatever it is usually in that room so when i finished my first draft god. Sort of dropped it in my spirit whispered in my ear print out a sample of your writing put it in envelopes and hand it to who I tell you to. And I was like, you're crazy, I'm not doing that, that's crazy.

Obviously I submitted to the will of my father and did that. And seven months later, somebody who got that envelope wrote to me. And when I met with the people in the publishing house, and this is like an international publishing house, and they publish Margaret Atwood, and I knew that who they had assigned me to, because I did a Google search and linked in, you know, super stock them on LinkedIn, I was like, these people seem to be, you know,

how your spidey senses are tweaked by people who might be Christians. I was like, this feels like I'm about to have a meeting with a bunch of Christ lovers. And sure enough, they said, we came to the board and said, we've seen an uptick in Canadian sales of a real interest in Christian literature. And then the president who was an incoming president who had been handed my envelope from the outgoing president, and you know that there's no guarantees when leadership changes. But God, in his Cyrus way, will make it possible for the lineage,

it has to be authored by him or it's not a miracle. The fact that she would then say, oh, have I got an envelope to you, to the two people who had come into the board meeting announcing that they'd seen an uptick. And this Canadian personality named Misha Bruegger-Gosman Lee wants to write a book about Jesus. And I never minced words.

I know how secular Canada is. I know how lost it is with its love of maid and with its, you know, lackadaisical approach to human life. Like it is so sad where this country is, and it is directly correlated to people's hunger for Christian literature. And so why not me? And that was the thread I was attempting to weave through my story. Why not me to become an opera singer? Why not me to be molested? Why not me to be the tip of the spear into the Canadian Christian literature market? Because I do have that bridge-like quality of making Christianity real for people. Because life is hard and Jesus is the only way.

Misha, I cannot wait for your book to come out. And so good to talk to you on theology in the raw. Very long overdue. Thanks so much for joining me, for being honest in you and raw. Can I thank you in return? Can I thank you for putting into perspective what power there is in my story? Because I live with it. And so sometimes, and I pray that this blesses someone because you might not think that what you have to say is particularly original and it takes ministries like yours and generosity such as you possess to remind me that God never stops working. He never stops speaking on our behalf. He never stops bringing us up in rooms where we'll never be in, where people we'll never

meet. Like, never did I ever think that we would be having a conversation on the record like this. I was perfectly happy to have you tell me that it was not any good and maybe you should go back to the singing thing. And I would have accepted that because I so value what you're doing here. But it wasn't what you said. So I am greatly encouraged. So thank you. My pleasure, Misha.

Thanks for being a guest. And I'm sure we'll be chatting in the near future on Patreon. Bye. Hey. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.