Hailey Bieber: Faith Is 'Critical' to Keeping Marriage With Justin Bieber Strong During 'Tough' First Year
Supermodel Hailey Bieber has had a busy year. She’s graced the cover of Vogue multiple times, married the love of her life, Justin Bieber, and is now the cover of the Elle March edition.
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In her interview with Elle, the twenty-three-year-old opened up about her relationship with the pop superstar and the glue that keeps them together: their mutual faith in God.
Hailey, daughter of Stephen Baldwin and niece of Alec Baldwin, grew up in a Christian home. Both of her parents are Christians and raised their kids in the faith, but it wasn’t always something Hailey was into.
“As I got older, it got harder to follow church and the Bible because it felt very adult,” she shared with Elle. “I don’t want to sound wrong, but it was boring.”
She explained that she stepped away from church for much of her teenage years until she found Hillsong Church NYC.
“I didn’t care about it anymore until I found a church I felt was geared toward young people,” she explained. “And for me, that was the Hillsong Church in New York City.”
At 16, the young model and at that time, dancer, started to seek a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
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“It started to feel like my own little community of people who were also young and following God and just immersed in a church community,” Hailey said. “Then I developed my own relationship to church and my own relationship with God, separate from being raised that way by my parents.”
“That’s been a cool journey for me,” she added.
In 2018, the model married Justin Bieber in a New York City courthouse. The two, who had dated for a short period of time when Hailey was nineteen, then had a formal wedding ceremony on September 30, 2019, in South Carolina.
“Being able to share that with each other—to have that bond of faith and spirituality—is so [critical] for us,” she shared with Elle. “It’s the most important part of our relationship, following Jesus together, being a part of the church community together. It’s everything.”
The first year of marriage wasn’t easy for the young couple. Justin, 25, was diagnosed with Lyme disease, keeping it private until recently.
“When we first got married, we were just figuring out our life together,” Hailey explained why they didn’t have a wedding ceremony right away. “I felt like putting a wedding in the middle of all of that would be really hectic and stressful.”
“He was really sick,” she explained. “He has Lyme disease, and he was dealing with a bunch of medical stuff. We didn’t have a diagnosis and it was hard because everybody from the outside was being super mean and judgmental, saying he looked like he was on drugs, saying how unhealthy he looked, when in truth, he was not healthy and we didn’t know why.”
The two learned the “in sickness and in health” part of wedding vows very quickly with Justin’s diagnosis impacting them both.
“It was months of me being a new wife trying to help him figure out what was wrong and what was going on. Now he’s perfectly healthy. But going through that and then trying to be like, ‘So where does our wedding fit into this?’ didn’t feel like the vibe at all.”
“We went straight into figuring out the hard stuff,” she added. “Because you never know what can happen with someone’s health. When you don’t know what’s happening, it’s really scary. And then you have the opinions of everybody from the outside, and it just sucks.”
“He’s an incredible, amazing man and such a good partner to go through life with,” Hailey added. “There is no one else I would have ever wanted to spend my life with except him. So, I’m lucky.”
In a recent post to Instagram, the model echoed these thoughts, sharing her gratitude for her husband.
“Grateful to let people in on our journey of the last year and a half,” she wrote. “It was a tough road but we are stronger because of it.. and to @justinbieber you my love, are incredible. I love growing together! Thank you for sharing your story with the world. I am so grateful to walk through this life with you.”
