Know what it is like to live with a smile masking pain and hurt so deep there aren’t enough drugs to cover it up? Today, Death, Drugs, AND Church with Jeff & Shannon Bryant.
It is hard to imagine this today, but there was a time when the selection of a marriage partner began with the assumption you would choose someone from your family's own ethnic identity and religious affiliation. This wasn't a problem for those whose lives were completely surrounded by only such people anyway. So Dutch married Dutch. Scots married Scots. Mexicans married Mexicans. Chinese married Chinese.
Notice I started with national identities because you know it gets messier when we add religion into it. Surely the nice Scottish Lass raised in the Church of Scotland wouldn't want to marry a Roman Catholic Scot, of all things, would she? If this were a discussion group, all of you would be ready with stories of your own. You know someone whose parents were horrified when he married a Russian girl and at the wedding… dot dot dot. These are stories that include way too much relational pain, generational conflict, historical changes, and cultural metamorphosis. They are hard to understand, more challenging to live, and often produce irreconcilable damage to children who find it all just stupid.
So let's cut beneath all of those external cultural, national and religious labels and dive right into the home. Here we have a happily married couple with three children. Issues arise as they always do in life, some more significant than others. How does the couple navigate these challenges as they turn to their important fundamental values? She thinks Church would help if they could go together as a family. He's not surprised because she's always been a bit more spiritual than he was. "Go ahead, Honey, take the kids."
"But I'd like you to come with us." she implores. To say the least, he isn't tempted. 
Years go by with the script remaining the same. He misses that the issue isn't about Church at all, really. His wife longs for faith to play a part in their marriage, their family, their decisions. The bickering between the two of them becomes more commonplace. The once passionate love affair turns into an endurance race, finding ways to avoid the growing gap between them. Now what?
Let’s find out. Welcome, Orange County Entrepreneur Jeff Bryants to Church Hurts And.  
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