AIRED: July 8, 2019
SPECIAL GUEST: Jason Micheli
“There’s a lot about love going around that is so insipid it’s disheartening. “Love is love,” I’m told, at which point I usually think, “No, no it isn’t; It’s about a whole lot more than you can imagine.” Jason Micheli, whose continual dance with death leaves him little room for sentiment, knows that love means vulnerability, risk, courage, and vomit stains on silk sheets. He also understands that God is somewhere in the preposterous action of humans saying, “I do, I’m in it for the long haul.”
Facing death, the challenges and blessings of marriage come into focus. Pastor Jason Micheli had performed dozens of weddings when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Suddenly, his own marriage—and his struggles to live up to its potential—came into sharp relief.
Following up on his acclaimed and hilarious memoir, Cancer Is Funny, Micheli chronicles his deep love for his wife, Ali, in Living in Sin: Making Marriage Work between I Do and Death. He doesn’t deserve her, he knows, but he also knows this: no one deserves the grace that comes in a loving marriage. And that grace is infused into marriage by God alone.
Micheli shares how his marriage was tested by cancer, even pushed to the brink. But with faith and biblical insight, he describes how his illness puts a laser focus on what really matters in marriage: forgiveness, laughter, and more forgiveness. Living in Sin will be an inspiration and challenge to any married couple.
ABOUT JASON MICHLI
Since 2002, Jason Micheli has served as a pastor of churches in New Jersey and Virginia, as well as a prison and hospital chaplain. Jason Micheli has earned degrees from the University of Virginia and Princeton Theological Seminary. Pastor Micheli is the Executive Pastor at Aldersgate UMC in Alexandria, VA for almost 13 years.
Pastor Micheli started a blog, “The Tamed Cynic” in June 2012. Since then, he has added a podcast “Crackers and Grape Juice” as well as solo and collaborative writing projects with different publishers; including author of “Cancer is Funny: Keeping Faith in Stage Serious Chemo”.
Jason Micheli’s wife, Ali, is his high school sweetheart. They first met on the swim team. “One look at me in my Speedo and she was a goner. She’s shy and easily embarrassed so suffice it to say that she’s my better 3/4 in every way but cooking.”
Jason further describes his family: “My youngest son, Gabriel, is a budding standup. He loves swimming and the White Stripes. My oldest son, Alexander, is a hardcore swimmer and gifted in everything but common sense. I enjoy cooking, traveling, writing and running. I’m also learning (slowly, very slowly) to play the banjo, but I’m better at growing a beard. My man-o-pause is such that I now cry at movies like the Blindside, and as strongly as I believe in anything, I think baseball is the Platonic ideal.”
