Rachel Hollis carries that mysterious polarizing power. People tend to either love her or…not love her.
Let’s pretend you don’t know who she is, m’kay? Hollis’ resume boasts what most of ours never will. She’s a #1 New York Times Bestselling author whose nonfiction (Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing) has sold over 3 million copies. Once crowned among Inc. magazine’s “Top 30 Entrepreneurs under 30,” she owns The Hollis Group, which encourages people toward “positive and lasting change.”
More relevantly (as of late), Rachel Hollis and husband Dave hosted their own Rise Together marriage podcast, frequently administered marriage advice via YouTube and social media, and held a marriage weekend for couples in their hometown of Austin in 2018 for a top-shelf price tag.
Last week in separate Instagram posts, the couple announced the end of their 16-year marriage (creating enough of a ripple to be covered by NBC).
Read: We’re taking in the marital demise of one of the most globally influential self-help couples.
And this is why I bring this to the table, and stewed over to even write on this. Personally, I prefer to avoid even supermarket tabloid headlines (why hello, invasive gossip that’s none of my beeswax).
Because if you’re reading this, perhaps Rachel Hollis has affected you.
If Rachel Hollis couldn’t do it, can I do it?
“Yes, I do feel duped–in that if I have had all this transparency, how come along the way you haven’t said, ‘This has been really hard’?” asks a commentator in The Growth Marriage YouTube channel. Their episode explains followers are asking, in essence,
Well, if [the Hollises] couldn’t do it, can I do it?
If these amazing people…who are successful and have the money, and they have access to…the best therapists and the best coaches…and they can’t make it, what is the likelihood I can make it?
Tens of thousands of social media reactions to Rachel Hollis’ divorce range from the broken, to the enraged, to the curious, to the downright hopeless.
Wherever you fall in that spectrum–how do we respond?
1. Thou shalt not be a hater when someone is down, Rachel Hollis included.
Rachel Hollis may carry that persona of that girl or celebrity people love to watch fall–perhaps in light of her sheer, enviable (or questionable) confidence.
The fragility of ego in all of us, tended to like a newly-hatched chick, knows too well a sense of worth grounded in something other than what God says we are. Than what Christ has done for us. It’s that same impulse that births lovely statements like “told you so” or “knew it all along.” The hater within rises for the sake of ego-inflation.
Alternatively, maybe you’re feeling sold a bill of goods, footing the bill for someone’s ambition or personal empire.
“If it were me”
This remains a time to hold fiercely to that gilded principle of loving one’s neighbor. It’s loving the person in proximity, even through the click of a mouse–the way you’d want to be loved.
How you’d want your kids to be loved if your divorce and personal failure were splashed to two million.
Or you’d hope someone would tweet if they knew your heart was flattened.
How you’d want people to respond to your mistakes, flea-sized or more like the pachyderm in the room.
First Peter 3:9 speaks of returning a blessing for an insult–a reiteration of the life of Jesus. Maybe you feel like this is a special case, considering the lofty, self-made position from which Rachel Hollis broadcast marriage advice.
But let’s let the one of us without weakness, sin, or nary a dysfunctional relationship or false statement lob the first stone.
In the Instagram post announcing the end of her marriage, Hollis requests a reprieve from the “open book” of her social media life. She writes, “We hope that you can allow us a human moment.”
She is saving her strength, boldness, and optimism, she explains, for their four children. (Let’s hurt for them together, shall we?)
2. Thou shalt recall the difference between thine own Insta feed and real life.
Much of reader backlash is that realization of false sense of vulnerability–a “curated imperfection”, one blogger called it long before this moment.
In Dave Hollis’ recently published book, Get Out of Your Own Way: A Skeptic’s Guide to Growth and Fulfillment, he observes about those who’ve advised his marriage in the past,
If those voices come from people who are killing it in their own relationship, their thoughts are welcome….If the feedback you’re getting is coming from someone who can’t keep a steady relationship, you best filter out their feedback as it does not come from a credible source.
Hmm.
Yes, many followers feel the gravity of that sense of defrauding, even betrayal.
It’s a cautionary tale to any of us vaulting forward on advice like the Hollises’, constructing a personal platform nail by nail–whether cinching that next promotion, as a mom-blogger, or looking toward church leadership.
Fake it till you make it?
Paul defines his ministry this way: “We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one” (2 Corinthians 7:2).
And David says of God, “you delight in truth in the inward being” (Psalm 51:6). This is a decidedly different model than “fake it till you make it.”
Further, God sets the bar high in our work for others: “Let love be genuine” (Romans 12:9). Paul elaborates in Philippians, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (2:3-4).
No, we might not be portrayed as marriage gurus. But which of us can say we’re 100% who we purport to be? That, like God, there is total unity, no divided desires or interest, throughout us?
In truth, the line between truth and falsehood falls like a ribbon down the middle of each human heart. May this tragedy shove each of us closer to an authenticity denuded of social-media sparkle and personal ambition. May we ask instead, “What does it look like to love and serve those in front of me? What am I taking from them for my own gain?”
3. Thou shalt remember the fissures caused by personal ambition in any relationship.
Based on the Hollises’ own messages, self-reliance, ambition, and wealth stand as key values for both of them. It stands to reason this might also articulate their marriage partnership and culture.
“You are the hero of your own story….You should be the very first of your priorities,” reads the first chapter of Girl, Wash Your Face.
To put it baldly, these run contrary to a marriage defined by the culture of the Kingdom of God.
Do they sprout in every marriage to some extent? Ain’t no doubt.
Now, there is One who knows the story behind the Hollis calamity. Hint: It’s none of us.
But wherever we find these values in our relationships, they run contrary to marriage’s structure as per its Designer. And to the extent they exist in your marriage, their force corrupts.
This is what love is
Diametrically opposed is the biblical definition: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives” (1 John 3:16).
It’s the kind of love manifested by the kind of Jesus “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6).
By no means does this mean a marriage unfueled by desire, by a passion to create change and achieve. Rather, God washes our ambition for purposes and Kingdom ever-larger than Self. It’s a culture of each for the other, and Christ as hero.
Made for more
A Christian man once rather boldly commented to me that Rachel Hollis exists because godly Christian husbands who advocate for their wives don’t.
Like a beast with four stomachs, I’ve chewed on this. I’ve written about the allure of Rachel Hollis, the God-hewn need in Christian women for more purpose than can be found in a crockpot and a Swiffer under each arm, or even in our kids.
So many women long to hear someone say, Crush it. Kill your lies and get out there.
And yes. Yes. God made you for more: As a person. As a team.
And to be clear, contrary to the Instagram announcement of Dave Hollis, it’s not a setup where marriage “run[s] its course”. Because love doesn’t really do that, with a few key exceptions (check out Mark 10:7-9, and maybe this one about when the Bible allows for divorce).
Self will assassinate your relationship, whether anyone recognizes your name or not.
The kind of life and marriage worth living, the kind of purpose worth real sacrifice, are so much more vast than a Louis Vuitton bag and a posse of people who think you’re all that and a bag of Doritos.
Respond to Rachel Hollis’ divorce with compassion, increased personal authenticity, and ruthlessness not in your careerism, but in extracting the selfish ambition from your relationship, for a Kingdom greater than your own. That’s a hope-filled relationship.
God made you, and your marriage, for more.
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2 Comments
Tenneil Register - 4 years ago
I’m late to the Hollis news and having a day full of stinky thoughts that I know are not consistent with Gods Word. But – this has been so good for me. Thanks for writing!
Janel Breitenstein - 4 years ago
Love your authenticity. I, too, was tempted by stinky thoughts on this one…! Thanks for the warm words!