Marian grew up the daughter of a research chemist and a stay-at-home mom in 1950s Michigan, sharp, driven, and set on a path in math and physics. She married a football coach, had five kids, and said yes to Christ young; but life didn't unfold the way she expected.

Her husband's zeal curdled into deception, a self-declared prophet, a cult of three families, a farm in the Ozarks, complete with hiding places for an end that never came. Twenty-two years of marriage, isolation, and spiritual abuse followed, along with a night in the woods when she nearly ended it all.

She's still working out why Christ never let her go, through a decades-long separation, the loss of her daughter and grandson, and a faith walk she describes not as one dramatic rescue but as daily, sometimes hourly, surrender.

This episode goes to places most conversi ...