January 11, 2025 • 49 mins
When Ron and Nan Deal suffered the devastating loss of their child, their marriage was nearly shattered by destructive cycles. On this Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, you’ll hear how a different approach to their conflict patterns helped break those cycles and bring them together. Hear about their “mindful marriage” and how it could help yours on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.
Featured resource: The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:00):
The wheels on their marriage bus nearly came off. How
did they manage to survive? Find out straight ahead.
S2 (00:07):
There's a lot of self-control moments, but when you figure
it out, when you get the pathway. I'm telling you.
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage.
UU (00:20):
More than this.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times bestseller The Five Love Languages Today
Practical Help for Couples who Are Struggling. Rondale will talk
about the mindful marriage and how neuroscience and the Bible
can help you stop the painful patterns in a troubled relationship.
S3 (00:43):
You know Ron, from his writing about the blended family
and answering questions about step parenting, I think this new
resource is going to be a great help to any
couple who wants to build a stronger connection. You can
find our featured resource at the website Building Relationships Us
and Gary, it strikes me this two prong approach of
understanding yourself and how you respond to your spouse goes
(01:07):
right along with the love language concept.
S4 (01:11):
Well, I think it does. I think there are parallels there, certainly.
This book, however, is a really great in-depth study. I
think any couple working through this book, it'd be like
sitting down with a counselor and working through some stuff.
So I'm excited about our discussion today.
S3 (01:27):
Well, let's welcome back the director of Family Life Blended
and president of Smart Stepfamilies, Ron Deal. He's the most
widely read and viewed author on blended families in the country.
He and his wife, Nan, were married in 1986, and
they've written this new book together, The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and Managing Yourself. You can
(01:51):
find out more at Building Relationships us.
S4 (01:54):
Well, Ron, welcome back to Building Relationships.
S2 (01:58):
It's good to be to be with you again, Gary.
You're a good friend, and I always enjoy talking with you.
S4 (02:04):
Well, I feel the same way. Enjoyed writing a book
with you earlier. We can mention that later, perhaps, but
this book I'm really, really excited about. Well, Ron, I
think there are many of our listeners who have never
heard the story of your and Nan's struggle in your marriage,
in which you really got to the place where you
felt like things were falling apart. I've told my story
many times, of course, with Carolyn, but tell us about
(02:27):
that and the road that you've been on since then.
S2 (02:31):
You know, through the years, um, we have told many
people privately that story. And on occasion, when it made sense,
it's entered into my public teaching. Um, but we just
really felt like it was time to go all out. Uh,
not that we were hiding it all along, but that
we just didn't really know how to verbalize the story.
(02:54):
And candidly, we were still working on us in a
way that we wanted to get further in our journey
before we could really share it. And so four years ago,
we went to our therapist, Doctor Terry Hargrave, who in
this book, we tell everybody how he has been developing
(03:15):
a strategy and approach to working with couples for many years.
And it's used around the world at this point. But
mostly the academic community is the only people who know
about it. And we went to him and said, you know,
you changed our life and we're absolutely in love with
everything that you've done. We've been teaching it and counseling
and using it for years and years at this point,
(03:38):
and we just want to share it with the world.
Can can we partner with you and your wife Sharon?
And can the four of us write this book and
make it accessible for the average person? And that's what
the mindful marriage has become. It is our testimony and
testimony of our mess and how the Hargraves changed all
that with their principles that they are now teaching and
(04:03):
have been has been taught academically for years, and we're
just trying to make it accessible to everybody because we
know how powerful it really is.
S4 (04:14):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think when we share our
own journey, it does help people because they realize, oh,
they're not perfect. Oh, they've been there.
S2 (04:25):
That's exactly right, Gary. And people are attracted to that.
S4 (04:28):
Absolutely. And I'm encouraged that you've chosen to do that.
You know, it turns out that your counselor, Doctor Terry Hargrave,
has innovated a model of therapy that you've talked about
that is beginning to gain recognition. Tell us about restoration therapy,
which is the term that's used and how does it
(04:49):
relate to this book, Mindful marriages.
S2 (04:53):
Well, first of all, let me just say it is
deeply Christian. Restoration therapy has its roots in the New
Testament language of old self and new self. We've all
heard a good sermon about how we should take off
our old self and put on our new. That's the
language Paul uses over and over and over again. And
if you're like me, you you go, yeah, that's right.
I need to go do that. And then you go
(05:14):
home and you have another bad moment where you just
do the same thing again and you're like, how do
I take it off and put it on? And that's
the core of what restoration Therapy really does. But it
also integrates the best of what we know of from
neuroscience and how the brain body works. Over the last
20 years, we've learned so much that's integrated what we
(05:35):
know about what we call attachment. That is the emotional,
psychological connection that we all have in important relationships. How
that gets flushed out in a in a marriage context specifically.
So neuroscience, attachment, self-regulation, big term. We can unpack that
a little bit. But the but the biblical word for
(05:55):
that is self-control. That's not a new idea, but it
turns out learning how to do it just takes a
huge discipline. And then there's this issue of pride and
humility and how pride works against our relationships, and humility
works for it. All of those concepts are rolled up
into this what's called restoration therapy, the mindful marriage at
(06:19):
the end of the day. Mindfulness is a word. A
lot of people kind of go, well, what's that? That
sounds a little new agey. No, no, no, no it's not.
It's the Bible is replete with using the term in
the form of what? Romans 12. Be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Like that's what we're helping people
to actually do not just know what they should do,
(06:42):
but actually take off that old self and put on
the new and start doing it. That's what this approach
is really, really great at.
S4 (06:52):
Well, in the book you use the term us ness.
Us ness. What is that and how does emotional dysregulation
affect it?
S2 (07:03):
Well, yeah. Your essence is that thing that you created
on the day you got married. It's it's a living,
breathing organism that exists as a result of marital commitment,
love and trustworthiness to one another. It's what you are
together that is far more than the sum of the
two people. You know, I've often thought we do the
(07:25):
unity candle maybe a little bit backwards. Um, you know,
he takes his candle, she takes hers, and they light
the center candle. And then, you know, traditionally you blow
yourself out at that point and it's like, whoa, wait
a minute, where did you go? You don't actually die.
You don't you don't stop becoming a person or being
a person. As a matter of fact, you should keep
those individual candles lit and then step back from the
(07:48):
unity candle and go, okay, there's you, there's me, and
there's our essence. That's the thing in the middle that
we have created, that we are committed to, to use
the biblical language that we're going to feed and nurture
and care for. It's like a child, Gary. It's it's
the child that you it results because of your love
(08:08):
and dedication to one another. But you do got to
feed that child. You better take care of it. You
better teach it. You better instruct it. You better pour
into it. And then that helps that child grow up.
And your essence is exactly the same when your essence
is at peace. Each partner is being fed by it,
and each partner thrives within it. You feel safe. You
(08:29):
feel whole. You. You naturally give. And here's the thing
you naturally give the best of yourself back to the essence.
So you get fed and you turn around and feed it.
But when your essence is in pain, here's what we
know that one or both partners is sort of neurologically dysregulated,
and we can flesh that out in a minute. And
essentially it means you feel insecure. You're feeling anxious about
(08:52):
your worth, about how much they want you, or how
much you want them. And do you feel safe to
give of yourself in this relationship? That's what the dysregulation
is about the US. It feels like our flame is
about to blow out. It feels like the flame is
getting smaller. And I'm not feeling great about that any moment.
(09:15):
And here's what's crazy about dysregulation. It comes in a heartbeat.
All of us listening right now who have ever been
in any sort of close, intimate relationship, especially a marriage
you've had those days where everything's clicking and you are
just loving one another, and then one of you makes
a remark and in a nanosecond you are against each other. Like,
(09:37):
it's like what just happened in that moment. We loved
each other. I made a comment. You heard something? Or
maybe I meant it. Harsh, but you heard harsh. And
now you got your heels dug in and I'm defensive. Offensive.
Where did our looseness go? In that moment, we can
all relate to this. There's something happening in those moments
(09:59):
that brings out the worst of us when we're at peace.
It brings the best of us when we're at pain
or in pain. It brings out the worst of us.
We all know it. We've all been there. We all
feel it. And it doesn't mean our relationship is horrible.
It just means that moment something's off. Yeah, there is
a beauty in that. And there is a challenge and
(10:23):
an art to learning how to feed and care and
nurture that essence in a way that keeps it at peace.
S5 (10:31):
Yeah.
S4 (10:32):
And it's a journey, right?
S5 (10:34):
Yes. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
S2 (10:37):
And I and here's the thing I've learned about dysregulation.
Everybody on the planet gets dysregulated. Everybody feels a little
anxious and insecure and nervous. And another word is triggered.
Discombobulated where you just don't feel like things are going
well in your relationship. Even if it's just for a
few moments or sometimes it's a season. For us, it
(10:58):
rose to the to the point where Nan's like, I'm done,
I don't want whatever we've got is I don't want
it anymore. I mean, that was our crisis moment in
2007 that led us into Doctor Hargreaves office. And we
tell that whole story in the book. Like that was
a huge dysregulated moment for us. We all do this.
We all know what it feels like. And the question
(11:21):
is why? Then? You know, when that happens, I become
my worst self. How do I stay? How do I
stay in my Christ? Mature new self? In those moments,
that's what we are getting at. And so it really
is core to how we do marriage.
S3 (11:41):
Can I jump in and ask you how bad it got?
I know Nan said, I don't want, but was it,
you know, From your perspective, what were those days like? And,
you know, the darkness that you were in?
S2 (11:58):
Well, it was deeply frightening. Um, at the end of
the day, I can tell you now that she didn't
really want a divorce. She didn't really want to leave.
She was just sick and tired of what we had,
that she didn't know how to live with it. And
by the way, I really think that's a common experience.
What I've learned is, well, we talk about in the
book the two pillars that every relationship needs to have.
(12:21):
It's got to have love. Love gives you a sense
of identity, a sense of your worth and belonging and
value in the relationship. But you also have to have trust.
And trust gives you safety. It gives you a sense
that I'm safe within your arms, within this relationship. Most people,
when they before long before they get a divorce, they
(12:42):
fall out of safety with one another and then fall
out of love with one another. I would say in 2007,
Nan had fallen out of safety with me. She didn't
believe that I was there for her, that she could
count on me, that our relationship was being fed and nurtured. And,
you know, we were trying and we had plenty of
(13:03):
wonderful moments, but we had more and more and more
dysregulated moments. And that just grew to a place where
she was like, I don't know how to live with this.
So she didn't really want to end our marriage, but
she didn't know how to live with it either. And
so it was that moment of and of course, that
hit me between the eyes like, oh, wow. I knew
we were struggling. Didn't realize it was that bad. On
(13:25):
your side. I don't think it's that bad. You know
which one of us is right now we're arguing about
how bad we are, you know? That's a fun little
place to be. And so it was like, clearly, something's
got to change. Clearly, we need some outside help. And
that's where we saw it. I will say this, um,
I didn't think we were that bad off. Now you
(13:47):
can go. Was that denial? Was that and I've learned
that I'm really good at counter blame. So in my
mind it's not nearly as bad as it is in
her mind. And so I can make her the problem
with that. And and that's what I did initially. And
it was only when I ended up in Terry's office
(14:07):
that I began a journey that he unfortunately and fortunately
forced me into, where I had to look deeply into
the mirror at my own pride and discover that man,
I'm blind to me. And if I don't wake up, uh,
what what Nan and I have is just going to
keep getting worse. And Nan had a whole side on,
(14:30):
you know, she would tell you she had a whole
lot that she had to work on, too. This is
not a one person problem. This was a two person problem.
But I was not willing to look at myself until
that moment.
S5 (14:41):
Yeah.
S4 (14:42):
Because by nature, all of us, when a situation like that,
we're really thinking it's the other problem. It's the other person.
If they would, if they would change. But you're right.
It has to be. It has to be both of us.
Because we're we're the essence is there.
S5 (14:59):
So exactly.
S2 (15:00):
And we're both responsible for our essence and to it.
S5 (15:03):
Yeah.
S4 (15:05):
Now you talk a lot about neurology of interpersonal relationships.
Explain that. And why is it important?
S2 (15:13):
Well, um, you know, I think there's a, the experience of,
you know, having bad moments and just becoming upset or
angry at your partner or critical of them or feeling
their criticism, and you get defensive, like, those are the
words that we all put on it. But in the
last 25 years, we've learned what's going on below the surface.
(15:35):
That is what's embodied in our mind, body and and brain.
And it kind of goes like this as we Experience
moments in our childhood and adulthood where we don't quite
feel loved or don't quite feel safe. Those two pillars
we talked about when one or both of those is off,
(15:56):
either from how we were parented, moments at home, or
an early relationship, or maybe even a first marriage that
our brain writes a little story about what that means
for us. Oh, what this means is the way this
is Ron's story that I've learned about myself. What this
means is the way Ron shows his adequacy is by
(16:17):
excelling at his work, by performing really well, by doing
his best. And so I was driven and I drove
so hard at my work and career and life and
marriage and trying to be a good husband and father
all at the same time. But at the end of
the day, the husband part were really suffered. And that's
what Nan was really reacting to in a, in a
(16:40):
big way at that season of our life. And well,
what's that about for me? Well, for for me, it's about.
I don't want to feel inadequate. I don't want to
feel like I'm not enough. Well, what's that about? Well,
that pain came from the question that I had in
my childhood about how I get my dad's love. And
he had high expectations. And he was an evangelist and
a wonderful man. I had great parents. And at the
(17:03):
same time, I also knew if I didn't live up
to the standards, that I might just lose their affection,
their love. At least I sort of. That's the story
I wrote for myself. I don't think that was actually
true on any level, but I made it true. And
so the story of my pain is if I'm inadequate,
then I may not be loved and may not be safe.
(17:24):
So you just perform really well. All right. Fast forward
a little bit. That's the story my brain knows. So anytime,
anytime in my marriage that I felt like I saw
Nan's disappointment about me, I panicked. I went right into, oh,
I'm not enough. And she's not going to be going
to be satisfied with me, so I better get busy.
(17:45):
And I would get busy in two ways. Um, by
the way, this is a fight or flight reactivity. This
is neurological. We all do. Fight or flight. Fight or
flight takes four forms blame, shame, control or escape. Those
are the four ways it comes out of us. Uh,
I'm a good blamer I can counter blame. I can
figure out what Nancy doesn't have. Right? And I can
(18:08):
take her argument apart and, you know, go turn it
around and make it about her. I'm also a control person,
so I can control by performing, by doing and exceeding.
I can also control by criticizing her at the end
of the day. Blame and control tactics just make things
worse because she doesn't feel heard. She doesn't feel understood.
(18:30):
She just feels attacked. And oh, by the way, she
has her own pain narrative from her childhood where nobody
really listened to her ever. She just felt abandoned and
all alone most of her life as a kid. And
so whenever I would go into the mode of defending
myself and proving her wrong, she basically heard, yep, I
still don't have anybody on my side. And so our
(18:53):
toupee narratives collide in our blame, shame, control and escape strategies.
And it just makes things really ugly. Now here's you know,
what's crazy about this is you can map this. I mean,
once you understand this, and we take people in the
mindful marriage through some exercises where you will map your
(19:14):
pain cycle and you'll map their pain cycle and you'll
see how these two things collide. It is amazing when
you put it on paper and you go, oh my goodness,
when we are great, we are fabulous. We are not
like anything what we're seeing on this paper. But in
our bad moments, this is exactly who we are. And
you now know what your old self is and it's
(19:34):
just as plain as day. Now you have the challenge
of saying, how do I take that off and put
on self-control and become what God has designed me to be.
And we lead people through that process of discovering how
you move toward peace. But it the neurological component here
is important because at the end of the day, here's
(19:55):
what it is that your brain wants to do, what
it knows to do. And you have to overcome that
by renewing your mind. Now notice what I just said.
Romans 12 does not say be transformed by the renewing
of your brain. It says to renew your mind. Your
mind tells your brain and your body what it should do,
(20:17):
not what it knows to do, not what it's got.
A neurological rut that it loves to run down this
rut towards blame and control. But this time, Ron, we
need to move towards compassion and kindness and softness and
gentleness and take off the blame and control. That's my
mind telling my brain how to act. And that's when
(20:39):
we get transformed. Like all of a sudden that old
neurological self is slowly being pushed away. My sinful nature
is being pushed away. That's what is transformative. And we've
just we're just amazed at how far this has brought us,
not just in our marriage, but at the end of
the day, this is helping me walk with Christ.
S4 (21:01):
Yeah, I think many of our listeners, and maybe most
people really don't think about the neurological, the neurological aspect
and the what you're calling the pain narrative. We just
know how we're responding, but we don't know, you know,
the part that the brain is playing in all of that.
So I think that that alone is is very, very
(21:23):
helpful to people.
S2 (21:25):
And I'll just add this, Gary, it is a fascinating endeavor.
The point is, this is a part of me and
it is my job to manage me. Once I identify
that neurological component, if you will, to my old self,
then it's still my job. In humility before God to
(21:46):
start managing that. Most of us spend our entire life,
as you said earlier, very insightfully. By the way, most
of us spend our entire life trying to get our
spouse to love us or do something different in such
a way that the pain I feel goes away. Now
notice that is Matthew seven. That is me focusing on
the little tiny speck in your eye while I've got
(22:07):
this huge log in my eye that I'm totally ignoring.
And so I obsess over the speck in your eye. Well,
that doesn't help either one of us deal with the log.
I can't get Nan to love me in such a
way that I all that I feel adequate. She can't
love that into me. It's not up to her. It's
(22:29):
up to me. And I really think this is so
vital to the Christian walk and how we portray our
lives with one another in marriage. That I'm just telling you,
I don't think we talk this talk very well. We
we inadvertently sort of blame the victim. We say to
the spouse, well, what can you do to help Ron
(22:50):
not feel inadequate and insecure about himself? Well, she can
be kind and nice and do certain things that help me,
but that is neurological. It is in my brain. It's
in my it's embodied in me. She can't love it
out of me. It's inappropriate for us to assume she can.
What needs to happen is Ron needs to take responsibility
(23:11):
for Ron, and that's when I can grow up in Christ.
And so as this message pours out, it's sort of like, wow, okay,
stop blaming the victim, Ron. Start dealing with yourself.
S3 (23:25):
You know, I said at the beginning of the program
that that this reminds me of dovetails with the love
language concept. It also dovetails with what I've heard Gary
say through the years. And that is marriage is a
lot of work. It takes.
S5 (23:40):
Work.
S3 (23:41):
And we often think, well, we love each other. We're compatible.
It ought to be, you know, bonbons and cotton candy
all the time. And it's not. It does take work,
doesn't it?
S2 (23:51):
It does, Chris. And I'm so glad you brought this up, because,
you know, Gary and I wrote a book together, Building
Love Together and Blended Families, where we apply some of
the smart step family principles I have with Gary's love
languages in our book. This actually is a bonus section
that we have some bonus material online that people can
can get for free, and we write about how people
(24:12):
misuse your love language principles with what I'm talking about.
How many times have you heard somebody say, well, my
love language is and you got to get my wife
to love me that way. No, the whole point in
your principles is to for me to be selfless and
start looking at how I can serve my spouse rather
than demand that they serve me. But I know you've
(24:36):
had people misuse that for years and years and years.
What is that? That is what I've been talking about.
We want the other to love me in such a
way that I don't feel any pain in my heart
and life anymore. That will never, ever work. I'm the
one who has to deal with the log in my eye.
And here's what Doctor Hargrave has taught me. There is
(24:58):
a quick fix about. Oh, if you'll just, you know,
love me in a certain way, then my my, my
log will leave my life. Well, no, that's like cotton candy.
Your spouse can make you feel good for a few minutes.
But what is neurological in your brain? Embodied in your soul?
You are going to hang on to until the day
(25:20):
you reckon with it, until you start taking charge of it.
It's not even up to God. And let me explain that. Uh,
we all know better than we act. Why is that?
Because we understand God's will for our life. But that
doesn't mean we mean we actually do it. Discipleship is
about me aligning my will with God's will. That's when
(25:40):
I get transformed. That's when God's really in charge of
my life. That's when I make him king is when
I align my will with his. And that means I
have to deal with what my body brain, soul wants
to do. So until I take charge of that, I'm
just going to walk around with a log in my eye,
blaming everybody else for all the stuff they do wrong.
(26:02):
That that that makes me what I am. And that
is a losing game for any marriage.
S1 (26:14):
You're listening to the podcast Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman.
Find out more about the program, when Gary might be
coming to your area, and our featured resource at Building
Relationships Us. Our guest today is Ron Deal, co-author with
his wife, Nan, of the new book, The Mindful Marriage.
Just go to go to building. Just go to building relationships.
(26:36):
Us to find out more.
S4 (26:39):
And we talked about the old self and the new self.
You know, the biblical concept. But putting off the old
self and the role that the patterns in our brain,
how they influence us. And unless we're really thinking about it,
we don't we don't see that. How does humility fit
into to this whole thing of understanding the other person,
(27:01):
understanding yourself and and processing all those?
S2 (27:07):
So in the mindful marriage, we're going to walk people
into an understanding of their pain cycle and the story
of pain in their life and what it leads them
to do, how they react and blame, shame, control and escape.
We're then going to lead them to a place where
they understand the peace cycle. That is. What does it
look like to live out of God's truth rather than
out of your pain? And once they've identified that, they
(27:31):
have a very tangible map of how to change your life,
how to be transformed by the renewing of their mind.
And here's what we've learned. People won't do it unless
they put on humility. At the end of the day,
humility is the attitude that says, yeah, it's my job
to deal with me. It is me and God working
(27:51):
on me through the spirit power of the Holy Spirit.
And and unless I, I bow the knee to the
King every single day and say, Lord, help me, I
won't actually change what I do. I'll just stay stuck
in it. I may have the greatest knowledge I got
this map in front of me. I now know me
better than I've ever known me. And I won't change
(28:12):
anything in real life because I still think in pride
that I don't deserve this or I deserve better, or
it's somebody else's fault or, you know, whatever it is
that pushes it away from me. Humility is that posture
that says, I'm getting really serious about who I am,
and I'm bringing that before God and asking for his help.
(28:34):
It's what activates the change in us, and without it,
we're just stuck. And let me just pull back for
a second and say there's an amazing principle taught in
Scripture that, uh, I just continue to ponder and chew
on and we talk about it in The Mindful Marriage,
and it's repeated. I've lost track, I think, more than
35 times throughout the Bible, but it goes like this
(28:55):
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
In a very simple way, here it is. If you
come before God going, hey, I got life figured out.
I don't need you and your rules. That's pride. He's
going to oppose you. He's not going to let you
stand before him with that attitude and get away with it.
He just won't. He'll let you suffer the consequences of
your choices. He'll bring something to your life that challenges
(29:17):
your pride. Something is going to show up in the
form of opposition. And we can just think of a
character in the Bible, and you can probably identify those
who did that and and how God opposed post them,
but the opposite is also true. Stand before him in
humility and say, Lord, I don't got. I don't got anything.
I don't have anything figured out. I am nothing without you.
(29:37):
I need you. And he runs to our side like
the father and the prodigal son, and throws a coat
around and said, you got it all. I'm here for you.
You're my child. Grace abounds. Now, here's what I want
people to hear today. I believe that principle doesn't just
work vertically spiritually with God. It works horizontally with every
(30:01):
relationship in our life, most notably in marriage. But it
also works in parenting and leadership and pastoral care, whatever
it is. I think politicians stand before people in pride
and they will oppose you. Stand before your wife in
pride and she will be sick and tired of you
in a hurry. And next thing you know, she is
pushing back somehow. But stand in humility when you make
(30:26):
a mistake. When you find yourself getting. You know what?
I feel inadequate right now. And it's my job to put, uh,
rails guardrails on that. And I'm not going to take
it out on you when I say that sort of
thing out loud in front of my wife. She breathes
a sigh of relief, and she, more likely than not,
has grace for me. She softens. She has more compassion.
(30:49):
She's more forgiving. She'll go the extra mile. Why? Because
she sees Ron putting on humility and taking charge of himself.
And when Ron does that, he is far more safe
to be around. He's more approachable. But the opposite is
also true. If I put on pride and go, hey, babe,
this is your problem, not mine. All of a sudden
(31:09):
she's in opposition to me and I am undoing myself.
And I am undoing our looseness in pride. At the
end of the day, this is the core thing that
either makes the love languages helpful or not helpful. The
mindful marriage principles helpful or not helpful. Just because you
(31:30):
know it doesn't mean you'll do it. And humility is
the thing that's going to activate your ability to follow through.
S4 (31:37):
I'm thinking about John 15 verse five where Jesus said,
I am the vine, you are the branches. You stay
connected to me. You bear fruit. And then this statement,
without me you can do nothing.
S5 (31:52):
That's right.
S4 (31:53):
And I learned that early in my life. I'm glad
that I did. That's why every day I'm crying out
for wisdom. God, in this situation, this situation, this situation.
I can't I can't do this. You know.
S2 (32:09):
Every single day that has to be our wake up posture.
I often say, I've learned the hard way that we
come to to Christ in humility. Lord, help me, I
need you. Um, we walk with him in humility. You know,
what does the Lord require of you? Act justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with your God. Micah six eight. And
(32:30):
someday when he comes, every knee will bow and every
tongue confess that Christ is. We're going to bow in
humility when he comes. It's the before, it's the during,
and it's the after of discipleship. And if we don't
do that, then we really cannot learn any of the
other virtues, a character, qualities that that we need to
(32:51):
have to become more like Christ.
S4 (32:54):
Ron, in the book you use the term called phubbing.
S5 (32:58):
P.
S4 (32:58):
H e b b I n g. What is?
S5 (33:02):
It's a new word. It's a new word.
S4 (33:04):
And how might it affect all of this?
S2 (33:06):
Yeah. Well, you know, because of our mobile phone world. Um,
psychologists have come up with a new term. This is
partner phone snubbing. Phubbing is when you snub your partner
for your phone. And everybody listening right now knows exactly
what I'm talking about. It's. This has either happened to you.
You've seen it. You've been in a restaurant and you
(33:28):
see two people or a family sitting there, and nobody's
talking to one another because they're all looking at their phone.
Or you've been in bed at night and you're about
to turn to your spouse and have a conversation, but
they're looking at Facebook and you're like, huh? Well, I
guess they're interested in that. Not so interested in me.
And there you go. Phubbing is a micro affair. And
(33:51):
what it says to the partner on the receiving end
of that is you're not as important as this thing is.
And you feel their disaffection. And it will dysregulate in a,
in a micro moment because you're like, wait a minute,
wait a minute. Do I have you or do I
not have you? Am I important or am I not important?
That's a form of dysregulation. And the next thing you know,
(34:13):
you're probably going into blame, shame, control or escape. Escape.
Looks like. Well, fine. I'll just look in my phone
or I'll watch TV, or I'll go in the other
room or I'm not talking to you either. That's the
withdrawal thing. You know the shame factor. We haven't talked
about shame yet. Talking about blaming control a little bit.
Shame is, um. Oh, there must be something wrong with
me that I'm uninteresting or not attractive or. Why would
(34:37):
that draw your attention and I don't. And so it's
this downgrading yourself talk that that's what shame does. So
again everybody's a little different in how they respond in
that moment. But you feel the lack of isness and
it's going to be a real problem. There's already research.
(34:57):
We haven't been doing the phone thing very long in
our society, but there's already research that tells us that
these little moments of disaffection can add up to a
greater sense of insecurity within relationships. And by the way,
this is affecting parenting, too. The parenting version of this
they call techno ference. That's where it's interfering with the
(35:19):
process of of parenting your children. You ask your child,
would you please go clean your dishes and put them
in the dishwasher. And and you turn to your phone
and you stare into that, and 20 minutes later, you
sort of pop out and you go, oh, your dishes
are still there. Did you not finish it? And you've
lost track of your child. You're not doing the behavioral
management of your child because you got lost in your phone,
(35:39):
and therefore you're more angry. You go find your child.
You know, you're a little harsh because you were the
one who got interfered with and didn't follow through. We're
already seeing how this affects mothers and their nursing infant.
And instead of staring into the eyes of the infant
while the baby nurses, a mother is staring at her phone,
(36:01):
looking away from the child they're already seeing the brain
chemistry changes in infants because of techno ference phubbing. My
message to people today is in terms of your sickness,
this is not helpful. We've got to put on self control.
We've got to put on the discipline of saying not now. we,
(36:23):
you know, let's have a conversation about when we're going
to look at our phones and when we're not and
when it's okay and when they need to be off
and no responses and turn off the ring and the
ding because that's just going to interfere with our us.
Like that's a discipline we have to bring or the
phone will get the better of us.
S4 (36:40):
I can hear a lot of our listeners thinking, maybe
saying out loud, 000 yeah, 0000, this May.
S5 (36:47):
Yes, please call my husband, call my husband and tell him.
S4 (36:54):
Oh well, no, I think you're exactly right. And I'm
glad to hear that there's research being done in that
area to demonstrate it, because we see it all the
time and feel it.
S5 (37:04):
You know, we do.
S3 (37:06):
Ron, is there a way to know what my dysregulation
or my style of reacting or interacting with my spouse is?
S2 (37:17):
Yes, absolutely. Um, the book The Mindful Marriage is going
to walk you through a through a process. It's a
little bit of a workbook. There's some working exercises in
it and it's very revealing. And I guarantee you you're
going to learn a lot about yourself. So that's one way.
Just get the book and start in. But if you
want to just do a quick assessment, we've pulled the
(37:37):
assessment out and we've put it online. People can go
to worthy assessment. That's worthy pub as in worthy publishers
who's doing our book assessment. And you're going to be
able to figure out your reactive coping style. Every person
on the planet does this. And we've talked about blame, shame,
control and escape. You're going to sort of discover which
(37:59):
you're prone to. And I'll just tell you, some people
just do one for the most part. Some people are awful.
Nan would tell you she's all for and that she
does them all really, really well. I have a couple
of them that I'm exceedingly good at. Um, you'll discover
who you are. And here's the interesting thing about it.
And the important thing about this is, like, once you
(38:21):
identify that, you could start seeing it show up when
you're driving down the highway and somebody cuts you off
and you do the quick there's your one of your
four is going to show up right there. In that
moment when a child disobeys or disrespects, you're going to
feel that dysregulation. When you feel like you've lost connection
with your spouse or a family member or your mother
(38:43):
offered another criticism, you're going to feel it and you're
going to notice this thing showing up in you. That's
the beginning of the journey to saying, that's my old self, Lord,
how do I find my new self and put it
on in this moment and take charge of this pain?
Because that's where the discipline comes in and where we
get transformed. And so the work starts just by doing
(39:06):
that little assessment.
S4 (39:08):
I think that'll be helpful to a lot of people.
Let's just reiterate those four main ways. You mentioned them
a couple of times, but let's make sure our listeners
hear the four main ways that we respond.
S2 (39:20):
Yeah. So in context, a lot of people have heard
about fight or flight reactivity in the brain. And yes,
fight and flight takes on four reactive expressions. All right.
That's what these coping styles are. And they're blame. That
is there's something about you that's making me feel what
I'm feeling. Shame. There must be something about me that
(39:40):
makes me unacceptable or unlovable. Control. Well, I'm just going
to take charge of this situation and make it happen
on my way. My timetable. Criticism. Um. Performance. That's the
thing I'm really good at. That's all sort of forms
of control. And then the last one is escape. And Gary,
that one has multiple forms. I mean, you can escape
(40:02):
into your phone and FB your partner like we were
just talking about, but you can escape into porn, alcohol, drugs, gambling,
excessive work. You can escape into, um, appearance, shopping, spending money.
Those are all forms of I run to something to
try to rescue me from the pain that I'm feeling
(40:24):
in our essence. Again, blame, shame, control, escape. Seem to be,
you know, on one level they seem to be helpful,
but all they do is mask the pain and actually
just create more difficulty. Because now we're bringing something negative
back into the isness. And it's not just what triggered us,
(40:44):
but it's now what we're contributing and it just escalates
in all the wrong directions.
S4 (40:51):
Well, one of the most powerful aspects I think of
the book is how you're so vulnerable, you and man,
and dealing with your own pain cycles. Uh, we talked
about this a little to begin with, but why are
you so honest?
S5 (41:05):
Yeah, well, you know.
S2 (41:07):
It's a good question, Gary. And honestly, I think our
profession has not done a good job of this. I,
I see pastors and marriage and family teachers and Bible
teachers who maintain a really good image. And I get it.
I did that for a long time. I kind of
think we think we're going to lose our ministry or something,
(41:29):
but at the end of the day, um, what's attractive
about humbling down is that other people go, oh, it's
not just me. If that's Ron and he's that guy
doing that thing right in those books, doing that, speaking that, whatever,
then it's not just me and I'm not so horrible.
And we're all on this journey together, and I just
(41:52):
think the church needs this desperately. How is it that
we've had so many high profile church leaders fall in
the last ten years? Pride, and we sort of let
them get away with it. And nobody's saying we got
to be humble. Every single one of us has got
to fall on our knees before the Lord every single
day of our life. So Nana and I, through our journey,
(42:14):
we've just decided we're going to be real. We're doing
a mindful marriage conference for churches. And in that conference,
often we are working through on stage something that happened
while we traveled to that event, because travel happens to
be one of my triggers. And so I kind of
get dysregulated and then we have to deal with it.
(42:35):
And we've decided we're not going to be phony. We're
going to be as real as we can be and
show people how we're making use of this in real
time so that they, too, can find hope in that
and find the ability to to emulate it. And so
I just think it's time we lead out. And here's
the thing I've learned, and I know you know this, Gary,
I'm preaching to the choir right now. But when somebody
(42:58):
is vulnerable and honest and humble, first in a small group,
in a Bible study, in a church, when somebody goes first,
other people will immediately follow. Yeah, but if nobody goes first,
everybody pretends. And everybody keeps the face and the appearance
and and the and we lose the deep intimacy and
(43:19):
connection that God wants us to have as his children.
And so somebody's got to go first.
S4 (43:26):
I fully agree with that. Now, we talked a bit
earlier about how people can misuse the five love languages. Uh,
do couples, uh, make couples also misuse the insights of
the of the pain cycle?
S5 (43:41):
Yes.
S2 (43:41):
Uh, we actually have a little section in the book. Uh,
once we've walked them through and they've discovered their pain
and peace cycle, what to do about it? We then
we give them the cautions. All right, hold on, because
here's a here's one of the major ones. Oh, I
now know more about your pain than I've ever known
in the past. And I can use it against you.
S5 (44:00):
Mm.
S2 (44:00):
That's dirty play and not fair. And you want to
talk about breaking safety? That will do it really, really fast.
Somebody finally gets vulnerable about what's deep in them, and
then you use it against them. And the other thing
that we sometimes do, and I'm guilty of guilty of
this one. I gotta, I gotta manage me is, um,
I sense her dysregulation and and I'm like, I want
(44:22):
to point that out to her, you know? I want
to help her with her. What is that? That's control.
That's my control thing kicking in again. Yeah. No, it
is not my that's not my. My job is to
be compassionate about her pain and curious about her pain,
but to not take charge of that pain. So there's
a lot of self control moments. But when you figure
(44:44):
it out, when you get the pathway, I'm telling you,
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage. More
than this.
S4 (44:57):
As we come near the end of our time together,
let's talk a little bit more about how we can
help the church be more open to the kind of
things we're talking about here and understanding, you know, the
brain and all of these things and how they affect us,
even though we're not even thinking about it so much
of the time.
S5 (45:17):
Yeah.
S2 (45:18):
Well, we know from Communio that 80% of churches don't
spend a dime on marriage, education, or ministry in a
given calendar year, and 75% of churches do don't do
more than three activities in a given year. Even if
a church doesn't spend any money, they do a small group.
They have a retreat. They do three or less. That's 75%.
(45:43):
Only 25% of churches will do more than that. In
other words, we really don't seem to be that invested
in helping couples thrive, let alone stay married. And I
don't get that. Uh, you and I both know that
the context in which we live our most intimate relationships
is where God is also growing us up into the
(46:05):
image of Christ. You want to talk about discipleship? Everything
we've been talking about today isn't is discipleship. It is
growing me. It is maturing me to be more like Jesus.
And marriage is the avenue through which God does that. Yes,
we got to study the Bible. Yes, we need to
teach it. And yes, we need to figure out how
to do relationships. And the church really needs to get
(46:27):
more active in that way. And not just fun, you know,
sermons that make people laugh or date nights. I'm all
for date nights and good entertainment and a good laugh.
And let's go out and have a good time, honey.
But if that's all we ever get to in our
marriage ministry, then I'm not really being challenged. I'm not
(46:49):
really growing. I'm just allowed to laugh and stay as
I am. Yeah, no, we can mature. We can do
more than that. Um, I want to invite church leaders
and couples, because often the couples listening to us right
now are the ones that are going to go to
their pastor and say, hey, we got an idea. Let's
do more. Let's dive in. Let's get into the into
(47:11):
the deep end with people's lives and relationships, in particular
marriage and parenting and family, because so much good happens
when we help people do that. And the next generation
comes to know the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.
S5 (47:29):
Yeah.
S4 (47:30):
Well, I think this book is going to help that process.
And I just want to encourage our listeners, if you're
a lay leader in a church and you lead small groups,
this is a book you want to get yourself. You
want to process it yourself, work through it in your
own marriage. And I think you'll want to be using
it in small groups in your church. So, Ron, thanks
for being with us today and thanks to you and
(47:51):
Ann for putting this together and sharing your own, your
own journey in such a practical way. Thanks again for
all that you have done and are doing.
S2 (48:01):
Well, you endorse this book and we are very grateful. And, uh,
we just pray the Lord will use it.
S3 (48:08):
Well, Ron mentioned that assessment a few minutes ago. And
to discover your reactive coping style, go to Worthy Pub Assessment.
Again worthy pub. Assessment and the book is at our website.
Building relationships. Us the Mindful Marriage. Create your best relationship
(48:30):
through understanding and managing yourself. Again, go to building relationships us.
S4 (48:36):
And next week. What does it mean to be pro
abundant life?
S1 (48:41):
The president and CEO of Care Net, Rolland Warren will
join us. A big thank you to our production team today.
Steve Wick and Janice backing building relationships with Doctor Gary
Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in
association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Thanks for listening.
The wheels on their marriage bus nearly came off. How
did they manage to survive? Find out straight ahead.
S2 (00:07):
There's a lot of self-control moments, but when you figure
it out, when you get the pathway. I'm telling you.
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage.
UU (00:20):
More than this.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times bestseller The Five Love Languages Today
Practical Help for Couples who Are Struggling. Rondale will talk
about the mindful marriage and how neuroscience and the Bible
can help you stop the painful patterns in a troubled relationship.
S3 (00:43):
You know Ron, from his writing about the blended family
and answering questions about step parenting, I think this new
resource is going to be a great help to any
couple who wants to build a stronger connection. You can
find our featured resource at the website Building Relationships Us
and Gary, it strikes me this two prong approach of
understanding yourself and how you respond to your spouse goes
(01:07):
right along with the love language concept.
S4 (01:11):
Well, I think it does. I think there are parallels there, certainly.
This book, however, is a really great in-depth study. I
think any couple working through this book, it'd be like
sitting down with a counselor and working through some stuff.
So I'm excited about our discussion today.
S3 (01:27):
Well, let's welcome back the director of Family Life Blended
and president of Smart Stepfamilies, Ron Deal. He's the most
widely read and viewed author on blended families in the country.
He and his wife, Nan, were married in 1986, and
they've written this new book together, The Mindful Marriage. Create
your best relationship through understanding and Managing Yourself. You can
(01:51):
find out more at Building Relationships us.
S4 (01:54):
Well, Ron, welcome back to Building Relationships.
S2 (01:58):
It's good to be to be with you again, Gary.
You're a good friend, and I always enjoy talking with you.
S4 (02:04):
Well, I feel the same way. Enjoyed writing a book
with you earlier. We can mention that later, perhaps, but
this book I'm really, really excited about. Well, Ron, I
think there are many of our listeners who have never
heard the story of your and Nan's struggle in your marriage,
in which you really got to the place where you
felt like things were falling apart. I've told my story
many times, of course, with Carolyn, but tell us about
(02:27):
that and the road that you've been on since then.
S2 (02:31):
You know, through the years, um, we have told many
people privately that story. And on occasion, when it made sense,
it's entered into my public teaching. Um, but we just
really felt like it was time to go all out. Uh,
not that we were hiding it all along, but that
we just didn't really know how to verbalize the story.
(02:54):
And candidly, we were still working on us in a
way that we wanted to get further in our journey
before we could really share it. And so four years ago,
we went to our therapist, Doctor Terry Hargrave, who in
this book, we tell everybody how he has been developing
(03:15):
a strategy and approach to working with couples for many years.
And it's used around the world at this point. But
mostly the academic community is the only people who know
about it. And we went to him and said, you know,
you changed our life and we're absolutely in love with
everything that you've done. We've been teaching it and counseling
and using it for years and years at this point,
(03:38):
and we just want to share it with the world.
Can can we partner with you and your wife Sharon?
And can the four of us write this book and
make it accessible for the average person? And that's what
the mindful marriage has become. It is our testimony and
testimony of our mess and how the Hargraves changed all
that with their principles that they are now teaching and
(04:03):
have been has been taught academically for years, and we're
just trying to make it accessible to everybody because we
know how powerful it really is.
S4 (04:14):
Yeah. Well, you know, I think when we share our
own journey, it does help people because they realize, oh,
they're not perfect. Oh, they've been there.
S2 (04:25):
That's exactly right, Gary. And people are attracted to that.
S4 (04:28):
Absolutely. And I'm encouraged that you've chosen to do that.
You know, it turns out that your counselor, Doctor Terry Hargrave,
has innovated a model of therapy that you've talked about
that is beginning to gain recognition. Tell us about restoration therapy,
which is the term that's used and how does it
(04:49):
relate to this book, Mindful marriages.
S2 (04:53):
Well, first of all, let me just say it is
deeply Christian. Restoration therapy has its roots in the New
Testament language of old self and new self. We've all
heard a good sermon about how we should take off
our old self and put on our new. That's the
language Paul uses over and over and over again. And
if you're like me, you you go, yeah, that's right.
I need to go do that. And then you go
(05:14):
home and you have another bad moment where you just
do the same thing again and you're like, how do
I take it off and put it on? And that's
the core of what restoration Therapy really does. But it
also integrates the best of what we know of from
neuroscience and how the brain body works. Over the last
20 years, we've learned so much that's integrated what we
(05:35):
know about what we call attachment. That is the emotional,
psychological connection that we all have in important relationships. How
that gets flushed out in a in a marriage context specifically.
So neuroscience, attachment, self-regulation, big term. We can unpack that
a little bit. But the but the biblical word for
(05:55):
that is self-control. That's not a new idea, but it
turns out learning how to do it just takes a
huge discipline. And then there's this issue of pride and
humility and how pride works against our relationships, and humility
works for it. All of those concepts are rolled up
into this what's called restoration therapy, the mindful marriage at
(06:19):
the end of the day. Mindfulness is a word. A
lot of people kind of go, well, what's that? That
sounds a little new agey. No, no, no, no it's not.
It's the Bible is replete with using the term in
the form of what? Romans 12. Be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Like that's what we're helping people
to actually do not just know what they should do,
(06:42):
but actually take off that old self and put on
the new and start doing it. That's what this approach
is really, really great at.
S4 (06:52):
Well, in the book you use the term us ness.
Us ness. What is that and how does emotional dysregulation
affect it?
S2 (07:03):
Well, yeah. Your essence is that thing that you created
on the day you got married. It's it's a living,
breathing organism that exists as a result of marital commitment,
love and trustworthiness to one another. It's what you are
together that is far more than the sum of the
two people. You know, I've often thought we do the
(07:25):
unity candle maybe a little bit backwards. Um, you know,
he takes his candle, she takes hers, and they light
the center candle. And then, you know, traditionally you blow
yourself out at that point and it's like, whoa, wait
a minute, where did you go? You don't actually die.
You don't you don't stop becoming a person or being
a person. As a matter of fact, you should keep
those individual candles lit and then step back from the
(07:48):
unity candle and go, okay, there's you, there's me, and
there's our essence. That's the thing in the middle that
we have created, that we are committed to, to use
the biblical language that we're going to feed and nurture
and care for. It's like a child, Gary. It's it's
the child that you it results because of your love
(08:08):
and dedication to one another. But you do got to
feed that child. You better take care of it. You
better teach it. You better instruct it. You better pour
into it. And then that helps that child grow up.
And your essence is exactly the same when your essence
is at peace. Each partner is being fed by it,
and each partner thrives within it. You feel safe. You
(08:29):
feel whole. You. You naturally give. And here's the thing
you naturally give the best of yourself back to the essence.
So you get fed and you turn around and feed it.
But when your essence is in pain, here's what we
know that one or both partners is sort of neurologically dysregulated,
and we can flesh that out in a minute. And
essentially it means you feel insecure. You're feeling anxious about
(08:52):
your worth, about how much they want you, or how
much you want them. And do you feel safe to
give of yourself in this relationship? That's what the dysregulation
is about the US. It feels like our flame is
about to blow out. It feels like the flame is
getting smaller. And I'm not feeling great about that any moment.
(09:15):
And here's what's crazy about dysregulation. It comes in a heartbeat.
All of us listening right now who have ever been
in any sort of close, intimate relationship, especially a marriage
you've had those days where everything's clicking and you are
just loving one another, and then one of you makes
a remark and in a nanosecond you are against each other. Like,
(09:37):
it's like what just happened in that moment. We loved
each other. I made a comment. You heard something? Or
maybe I meant it. Harsh, but you heard harsh. And
now you got your heels dug in and I'm defensive. Offensive.
Where did our looseness go? In that moment, we can
all relate to this. There's something happening in those moments
(09:59):
that brings out the worst of us when we're at peace.
It brings the best of us when we're at pain
or in pain. It brings out the worst of us.
We all know it. We've all been there. We all
feel it. And it doesn't mean our relationship is horrible.
It just means that moment something's off. Yeah, there is
a beauty in that. And there is a challenge and
(10:23):
an art to learning how to feed and care and
nurture that essence in a way that keeps it at peace.
S5 (10:31):
Yeah.
S4 (10:32):
And it's a journey, right?
S5 (10:34):
Yes. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
S2 (10:37):
And I and here's the thing I've learned about dysregulation.
Everybody on the planet gets dysregulated. Everybody feels a little
anxious and insecure and nervous. And another word is triggered.
Discombobulated where you just don't feel like things are going
well in your relationship. Even if it's just for a
few moments or sometimes it's a season. For us, it
(10:58):
rose to the to the point where Nan's like, I'm done,
I don't want whatever we've got is I don't want
it anymore. I mean, that was our crisis moment in
2007 that led us into Doctor Hargreaves office. And we
tell that whole story in the book. Like that was
a huge dysregulated moment for us. We all do this.
We all know what it feels like. And the question
(11:21):
is why? Then? You know, when that happens, I become
my worst self. How do I stay? How do I
stay in my Christ? Mature new self? In those moments,
that's what we are getting at. And so it really
is core to how we do marriage.
S3 (11:41):
Can I jump in and ask you how bad it got?
I know Nan said, I don't want, but was it,
you know, From your perspective, what were those days like? And,
you know, the darkness that you were in?
S2 (11:58):
Well, it was deeply frightening. Um, at the end of
the day, I can tell you now that she didn't
really want a divorce. She didn't really want to leave.
She was just sick and tired of what we had,
that she didn't know how to live with it. And
by the way, I really think that's a common experience.
What I've learned is, well, we talk about in the
book the two pillars that every relationship needs to have.
(12:21):
It's got to have love. Love gives you a sense
of identity, a sense of your worth and belonging and
value in the relationship. But you also have to have trust.
And trust gives you safety. It gives you a sense
that I'm safe within your arms, within this relationship. Most people,
when they before long before they get a divorce, they
(12:42):
fall out of safety with one another and then fall
out of love with one another. I would say in 2007,
Nan had fallen out of safety with me. She didn't
believe that I was there for her, that she could
count on me, that our relationship was being fed and nurtured. And,
you know, we were trying and we had plenty of
(13:03):
wonderful moments, but we had more and more and more
dysregulated moments. And that just grew to a place where
she was like, I don't know how to live with this.
So she didn't really want to end our marriage, but
she didn't know how to live with it either. And
so it was that moment of and of course, that
hit me between the eyes like, oh, wow. I knew
we were struggling. Didn't realize it was that bad. On
(13:25):
your side. I don't think it's that bad. You know
which one of us is right now we're arguing about
how bad we are, you know? That's a fun little
place to be. And so it was like, clearly, something's
got to change. Clearly, we need some outside help. And
that's where we saw it. I will say this, um,
I didn't think we were that bad off. Now you
(13:47):
can go. Was that denial? Was that and I've learned
that I'm really good at counter blame. So in my
mind it's not nearly as bad as it is in
her mind. And so I can make her the problem
with that. And and that's what I did initially. And
it was only when I ended up in Terry's office
(14:07):
that I began a journey that he unfortunately and fortunately
forced me into, where I had to look deeply into
the mirror at my own pride and discover that man,
I'm blind to me. And if I don't wake up, uh,
what what Nan and I have is just going to
keep getting worse. And Nan had a whole side on,
(14:30):
you know, she would tell you she had a whole
lot that she had to work on, too. This is
not a one person problem. This was a two person problem.
But I was not willing to look at myself until
that moment.
S5 (14:41):
Yeah.
S4 (14:42):
Because by nature, all of us, when a situation like that,
we're really thinking it's the other problem. It's the other person.
If they would, if they would change. But you're right.
It has to be. It has to be both of us.
Because we're we're the essence is there.
S5 (14:59):
So exactly.
S2 (15:00):
And we're both responsible for our essence and to it.
S5 (15:03):
Yeah.
S4 (15:05):
Now you talk a lot about neurology of interpersonal relationships.
Explain that. And why is it important?
S2 (15:13):
Well, um, you know, I think there's a, the experience of,
you know, having bad moments and just becoming upset or
angry at your partner or critical of them or feeling
their criticism, and you get defensive, like, those are the
words that we all put on it. But in the
last 25 years, we've learned what's going on below the surface.
(15:35):
That is what's embodied in our mind, body and and brain.
And it kind of goes like this as we Experience
moments in our childhood and adulthood where we don't quite
feel loved or don't quite feel safe. Those two pillars
we talked about when one or both of those is off,
(15:56):
either from how we were parented, moments at home, or
an early relationship, or maybe even a first marriage that
our brain writes a little story about what that means
for us. Oh, what this means is the way this
is Ron's story that I've learned about myself. What this
means is the way Ron shows his adequacy is by
(16:17):
excelling at his work, by performing really well, by doing
his best. And so I was driven and I drove
so hard at my work and career and life and
marriage and trying to be a good husband and father
all at the same time. But at the end of
the day, the husband part were really suffered. And that's
what Nan was really reacting to in a, in a
(16:40):
big way at that season of our life. And well,
what's that about for me? Well, for for me, it's about.
I don't want to feel inadequate. I don't want to
feel like I'm not enough. Well, what's that about? Well,
that pain came from the question that I had in
my childhood about how I get my dad's love. And
he had high expectations. And he was an evangelist and
a wonderful man. I had great parents. And at the
(17:03):
same time, I also knew if I didn't live up
to the standards, that I might just lose their affection,
their love. At least I sort of. That's the story
I wrote for myself. I don't think that was actually
true on any level, but I made it true. And
so the story of my pain is if I'm inadequate,
then I may not be loved and may not be safe.
(17:24):
So you just perform really well. All right. Fast forward
a little bit. That's the story my brain knows. So anytime,
anytime in my marriage that I felt like I saw
Nan's disappointment about me, I panicked. I went right into, oh,
I'm not enough. And she's not going to be going
to be satisfied with me, so I better get busy.
(17:45):
And I would get busy in two ways. Um, by
the way, this is a fight or flight reactivity. This
is neurological. We all do. Fight or flight. Fight or
flight takes four forms blame, shame, control or escape. Those
are the four ways it comes out of us. Uh,
I'm a good blamer I can counter blame. I can
figure out what Nancy doesn't have. Right? And I can
(18:08):
take her argument apart and, you know, go turn it
around and make it about her. I'm also a control person,
so I can control by performing, by doing and exceeding.
I can also control by criticizing her at the end
of the day. Blame and control tactics just make things
worse because she doesn't feel heard. She doesn't feel understood.
(18:30):
She just feels attacked. And oh, by the way, she
has her own pain narrative from her childhood where nobody
really listened to her ever. She just felt abandoned and
all alone most of her life as a kid. And
so whenever I would go into the mode of defending
myself and proving her wrong, she basically heard, yep, I
still don't have anybody on my side. And so our
(18:53):
toupee narratives collide in our blame, shame, control and escape strategies.
And it just makes things really ugly. Now here's you know,
what's crazy about this is you can map this. I mean,
once you understand this, and we take people in the
mindful marriage through some exercises where you will map your
(19:14):
pain cycle and you'll map their pain cycle and you'll
see how these two things collide. It is amazing when
you put it on paper and you go, oh my goodness,
when we are great, we are fabulous. We are not
like anything what we're seeing on this paper. But in
our bad moments, this is exactly who we are. And
you now know what your old self is and it's
(19:34):
just as plain as day. Now you have the challenge
of saying, how do I take that off and put
on self-control and become what God has designed me to be.
And we lead people through that process of discovering how
you move toward peace. But it the neurological component here
is important because at the end of the day, here's
(19:55):
what it is that your brain wants to do, what
it knows to do. And you have to overcome that
by renewing your mind. Now notice what I just said.
Romans 12 does not say be transformed by the renewing
of your brain. It says to renew your mind. Your
mind tells your brain and your body what it should do,
(20:17):
not what it knows to do, not what it's got.
A neurological rut that it loves to run down this
rut towards blame and control. But this time, Ron, we
need to move towards compassion and kindness and softness and
gentleness and take off the blame and control. That's my
mind telling my brain how to act. And that's when
(20:39):
we get transformed. Like all of a sudden that old
neurological self is slowly being pushed away. My sinful nature
is being pushed away. That's what is transformative. And we've
just we're just amazed at how far this has brought us,
not just in our marriage, but at the end of
the day, this is helping me walk with Christ.
S4 (21:01):
Yeah, I think many of our listeners, and maybe most
people really don't think about the neurological, the neurological aspect
and the what you're calling the pain narrative. We just
know how we're responding, but we don't know, you know,
the part that the brain is playing in all of that.
So I think that that alone is is very, very
(21:23):
helpful to people.
S2 (21:25):
And I'll just add this, Gary, it is a fascinating endeavor.
The point is, this is a part of me and
it is my job to manage me. Once I identify
that neurological component, if you will, to my old self,
then it's still my job. In humility before God to
(21:46):
start managing that. Most of us spend our entire life,
as you said earlier, very insightfully. By the way, most
of us spend our entire life trying to get our
spouse to love us or do something different in such
a way that the pain I feel goes away. Now
notice that is Matthew seven. That is me focusing on
the little tiny speck in your eye while I've got
(22:07):
this huge log in my eye that I'm totally ignoring.
And so I obsess over the speck in your eye. Well,
that doesn't help either one of us deal with the log.
I can't get Nan to love me in such a
way that I all that I feel adequate. She can't
love that into me. It's not up to her. It's
(22:29):
up to me. And I really think this is so
vital to the Christian walk and how we portray our
lives with one another in marriage. That I'm just telling you,
I don't think we talk this talk very well. We
we inadvertently sort of blame the victim. We say to
the spouse, well, what can you do to help Ron
(22:50):
not feel inadequate and insecure about himself? Well, she can
be kind and nice and do certain things that help me,
but that is neurological. It is in my brain. It's
in my it's embodied in me. She can't love it
out of me. It's inappropriate for us to assume she can.
What needs to happen is Ron needs to take responsibility
(23:11):
for Ron, and that's when I can grow up in Christ.
And so as this message pours out, it's sort of like, wow, okay,
stop blaming the victim, Ron. Start dealing with yourself.
S3 (23:25):
You know, I said at the beginning of the program
that that this reminds me of dovetails with the love
language concept. It also dovetails with what I've heard Gary
say through the years. And that is marriage is a
lot of work. It takes.
S5 (23:40):
Work.
S3 (23:41):
And we often think, well, we love each other. We're compatible.
It ought to be, you know, bonbons and cotton candy
all the time. And it's not. It does take work,
doesn't it?
S2 (23:51):
It does, Chris. And I'm so glad you brought this up, because,
you know, Gary and I wrote a book together, Building
Love Together and Blended Families, where we apply some of
the smart step family principles I have with Gary's love
languages in our book. This actually is a bonus section
that we have some bonus material online that people can
can get for free, and we write about how people
(24:12):
misuse your love language principles with what I'm talking about.
How many times have you heard somebody say, well, my
love language is and you got to get my wife
to love me that way. No, the whole point in
your principles is to for me to be selfless and
start looking at how I can serve my spouse rather
than demand that they serve me. But I know you've
(24:36):
had people misuse that for years and years and years.
What is that? That is what I've been talking about.
We want the other to love me in such a
way that I don't feel any pain in my heart
and life anymore. That will never, ever work. I'm the
one who has to deal with the log in my eye.
And here's what Doctor Hargrave has taught me. There is
(24:58):
a quick fix about. Oh, if you'll just, you know,
love me in a certain way, then my my, my
log will leave my life. Well, no, that's like cotton candy.
Your spouse can make you feel good for a few minutes.
But what is neurological in your brain? Embodied in your soul?
You are going to hang on to until the day
(25:20):
you reckon with it, until you start taking charge of it.
It's not even up to God. And let me explain that. Uh,
we all know better than we act. Why is that?
Because we understand God's will for our life. But that
doesn't mean we mean we actually do it. Discipleship is
about me aligning my will with God's will. That's when
(25:40):
I get transformed. That's when God's really in charge of
my life. That's when I make him king is when
I align my will with his. And that means I
have to deal with what my body brain, soul wants
to do. So until I take charge of that, I'm
just going to walk around with a log in my eye,
blaming everybody else for all the stuff they do wrong.
(26:02):
That that that makes me what I am. And that
is a losing game for any marriage.
S1 (26:14):
You're listening to the podcast Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman.
Find out more about the program, when Gary might be
coming to your area, and our featured resource at Building
Relationships Us. Our guest today is Ron Deal, co-author with
his wife, Nan, of the new book, The Mindful Marriage.
Just go to go to building. Just go to building relationships.
(26:36):
Us to find out more.
S4 (26:39):
And we talked about the old self and the new self.
You know, the biblical concept. But putting off the old
self and the role that the patterns in our brain,
how they influence us. And unless we're really thinking about it,
we don't we don't see that. How does humility fit
into to this whole thing of understanding the other person,
(27:01):
understanding yourself and and processing all those?
S2 (27:07):
So in the mindful marriage, we're going to walk people
into an understanding of their pain cycle and the story
of pain in their life and what it leads them
to do, how they react and blame, shame, control and escape.
We're then going to lead them to a place where
they understand the peace cycle. That is. What does it
look like to live out of God's truth rather than
out of your pain? And once they've identified that, they
(27:31):
have a very tangible map of how to change your life,
how to be transformed by the renewing of their mind.
And here's what we've learned. People won't do it unless
they put on humility. At the end of the day,
humility is the attitude that says, yeah, it's my job
to deal with me. It is me and God working
(27:51):
on me through the spirit power of the Holy Spirit.
And and unless I, I bow the knee to the
King every single day and say, Lord, help me, I
won't actually change what I do. I'll just stay stuck
in it. I may have the greatest knowledge I got
this map in front of me. I now know me
better than I've ever known me. And I won't change
(28:12):
anything in real life because I still think in pride
that I don't deserve this or I deserve better, or
it's somebody else's fault or, you know, whatever it is
that pushes it away from me. Humility is that posture
that says, I'm getting really serious about who I am,
and I'm bringing that before God and asking for his help.
(28:34):
It's what activates the change in us, and without it,
we're just stuck. And let me just pull back for
a second and say there's an amazing principle taught in
Scripture that, uh, I just continue to ponder and chew
on and we talk about it in The Mindful Marriage,
and it's repeated. I've lost track, I think, more than
35 times throughout the Bible, but it goes like this
(28:55):
God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
In a very simple way, here it is. If you
come before God going, hey, I got life figured out.
I don't need you and your rules. That's pride. He's
going to oppose you. He's not going to let you
stand before him with that attitude and get away with it.
He just won't. He'll let you suffer the consequences of
your choices. He'll bring something to your life that challenges
(29:17):
your pride. Something is going to show up in the
form of opposition. And we can just think of a
character in the Bible, and you can probably identify those
who did that and and how God opposed post them,
but the opposite is also true. Stand before him in
humility and say, Lord, I don't got. I don't got anything.
I don't have anything figured out. I am nothing without you.
(29:37):
I need you. And he runs to our side like
the father and the prodigal son, and throws a coat
around and said, you got it all. I'm here for you.
You're my child. Grace abounds. Now, here's what I want
people to hear today. I believe that principle doesn't just
work vertically spiritually with God. It works horizontally with every
(30:01):
relationship in our life, most notably in marriage. But it
also works in parenting and leadership and pastoral care, whatever
it is. I think politicians stand before people in pride
and they will oppose you. Stand before your wife in
pride and she will be sick and tired of you
in a hurry. And next thing you know, she is
pushing back somehow. But stand in humility when you make
(30:26):
a mistake. When you find yourself getting. You know what?
I feel inadequate right now. And it's my job to put, uh,
rails guardrails on that. And I'm not going to take
it out on you when I say that sort of
thing out loud in front of my wife. She breathes
a sigh of relief, and she, more likely than not,
has grace for me. She softens. She has more compassion.
(30:49):
She's more forgiving. She'll go the extra mile. Why? Because
she sees Ron putting on humility and taking charge of himself.
And when Ron does that, he is far more safe
to be around. He's more approachable. But the opposite is
also true. If I put on pride and go, hey, babe,
this is your problem, not mine. All of a sudden
(31:09):
she's in opposition to me and I am undoing myself.
And I am undoing our looseness in pride. At the
end of the day, this is the core thing that
either makes the love languages helpful or not helpful. The
mindful marriage principles helpful or not helpful. Just because you
(31:30):
know it doesn't mean you'll do it. And humility is
the thing that's going to activate your ability to follow through.
S4 (31:37):
I'm thinking about John 15 verse five where Jesus said,
I am the vine, you are the branches. You stay
connected to me. You bear fruit. And then this statement,
without me you can do nothing.
S5 (31:52):
That's right.
S4 (31:53):
And I learned that early in my life. I'm glad
that I did. That's why every day I'm crying out
for wisdom. God, in this situation, this situation, this situation.
I can't I can't do this. You know.
S2 (32:09):
Every single day that has to be our wake up posture.
I often say, I've learned the hard way that we
come to to Christ in humility. Lord, help me, I
need you. Um, we walk with him in humility. You know,
what does the Lord require of you? Act justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with your God. Micah six eight. And
(32:30):
someday when he comes, every knee will bow and every
tongue confess that Christ is. We're going to bow in
humility when he comes. It's the before, it's the during,
and it's the after of discipleship. And if we don't
do that, then we really cannot learn any of the
other virtues, a character, qualities that that we need to
(32:51):
have to become more like Christ.
S4 (32:54):
Ron, in the book you use the term called phubbing.
S5 (32:58):
P.
S4 (32:58):
H e b b I n g. What is?
S5 (33:02):
It's a new word. It's a new word.
S4 (33:04):
And how might it affect all of this?
S2 (33:06):
Yeah. Well, you know, because of our mobile phone world. Um,
psychologists have come up with a new term. This is
partner phone snubbing. Phubbing is when you snub your partner
for your phone. And everybody listening right now knows exactly
what I'm talking about. It's. This has either happened to you.
You've seen it. You've been in a restaurant and you
(33:28):
see two people or a family sitting there, and nobody's
talking to one another because they're all looking at their phone.
Or you've been in bed at night and you're about
to turn to your spouse and have a conversation, but
they're looking at Facebook and you're like, huh? Well, I
guess they're interested in that. Not so interested in me.
And there you go. Phubbing is a micro affair. And
(33:51):
what it says to the partner on the receiving end
of that is you're not as important as this thing is.
And you feel their disaffection. And it will dysregulate in a,
in a micro moment because you're like, wait a minute,
wait a minute. Do I have you or do I
not have you? Am I important or am I not important?
That's a form of dysregulation. And the next thing you know,
(34:13):
you're probably going into blame, shame, control or escape. Escape.
Looks like. Well, fine. I'll just look in my phone
or I'll watch TV, or I'll go in the other
room or I'm not talking to you either. That's the
withdrawal thing. You know the shame factor. We haven't talked
about shame yet. Talking about blaming control a little bit.
Shame is, um. Oh, there must be something wrong with
me that I'm uninteresting or not attractive or. Why would
(34:37):
that draw your attention and I don't. And so it's
this downgrading yourself talk that that's what shame does. So
again everybody's a little different in how they respond in
that moment. But you feel the lack of isness and
it's going to be a real problem. There's already research.
(34:57):
We haven't been doing the phone thing very long in
our society, but there's already research that tells us that
these little moments of disaffection can add up to a
greater sense of insecurity within relationships. And by the way,
this is affecting parenting, too. The parenting version of this
they call techno ference. That's where it's interfering with the
(35:19):
process of of parenting your children. You ask your child,
would you please go clean your dishes and put them
in the dishwasher. And and you turn to your phone
and you stare into that, and 20 minutes later, you
sort of pop out and you go, oh, your dishes
are still there. Did you not finish it? And you've
lost track of your child. You're not doing the behavioral
management of your child because you got lost in your phone,
(35:39):
and therefore you're more angry. You go find your child.
You know, you're a little harsh because you were the
one who got interfered with and didn't follow through. We're
already seeing how this affects mothers and their nursing infant.
And instead of staring into the eyes of the infant
while the baby nurses, a mother is staring at her phone,
(36:01):
looking away from the child they're already seeing the brain
chemistry changes in infants because of techno ference phubbing. My
message to people today is in terms of your sickness,
this is not helpful. We've got to put on self control.
We've got to put on the discipline of saying not now. we,
(36:23):
you know, let's have a conversation about when we're going
to look at our phones and when we're not and
when it's okay and when they need to be off
and no responses and turn off the ring and the
ding because that's just going to interfere with our us.
Like that's a discipline we have to bring or the
phone will get the better of us.
S4 (36:40):
I can hear a lot of our listeners thinking, maybe
saying out loud, 000 yeah, 0000, this May.
S5 (36:47):
Yes, please call my husband, call my husband and tell him.
S4 (36:54):
Oh well, no, I think you're exactly right. And I'm
glad to hear that there's research being done in that
area to demonstrate it, because we see it all the
time and feel it.
S5 (37:04):
You know, we do.
S3 (37:06):
Ron, is there a way to know what my dysregulation
or my style of reacting or interacting with my spouse is?
S2 (37:17):
Yes, absolutely. Um, the book The Mindful Marriage is going
to walk you through a through a process. It's a
little bit of a workbook. There's some working exercises in
it and it's very revealing. And I guarantee you you're
going to learn a lot about yourself. So that's one way.
Just get the book and start in. But if you
want to just do a quick assessment, we've pulled the
(37:37):
assessment out and we've put it online. People can go
to worthy assessment. That's worthy pub as in worthy publishers
who's doing our book assessment. And you're going to be
able to figure out your reactive coping style. Every person
on the planet does this. And we've talked about blame, shame,
control and escape. You're going to sort of discover which
(37:59):
you're prone to. And I'll just tell you, some people
just do one for the most part. Some people are awful.
Nan would tell you she's all for and that she
does them all really, really well. I have a couple
of them that I'm exceedingly good at. Um, you'll discover
who you are. And here's the interesting thing about it.
And the important thing about this is, like, once you
(38:21):
identify that, you could start seeing it show up when
you're driving down the highway and somebody cuts you off
and you do the quick there's your one of your
four is going to show up right there. In that
moment when a child disobeys or disrespects, you're going to
feel that dysregulation. When you feel like you've lost connection
with your spouse or a family member or your mother
(38:43):
offered another criticism, you're going to feel it and you're
going to notice this thing showing up in you. That's
the beginning of the journey to saying, that's my old self, Lord,
how do I find my new self and put it
on in this moment and take charge of this pain?
Because that's where the discipline comes in and where we
get transformed. And so the work starts just by doing
(39:06):
that little assessment.
S4 (39:08):
I think that'll be helpful to a lot of people.
Let's just reiterate those four main ways. You mentioned them
a couple of times, but let's make sure our listeners
hear the four main ways that we respond.
S2 (39:20):
Yeah. So in context, a lot of people have heard
about fight or flight reactivity in the brain. And yes,
fight and flight takes on four reactive expressions. All right.
That's what these coping styles are. And they're blame. That
is there's something about you that's making me feel what
I'm feeling. Shame. There must be something about me that
(39:40):
makes me unacceptable or unlovable. Control. Well, I'm just going
to take charge of this situation and make it happen
on my way. My timetable. Criticism. Um. Performance. That's the
thing I'm really good at. That's all sort of forms
of control. And then the last one is escape. And Gary,
that one has multiple forms. I mean, you can escape
(40:02):
into your phone and FB your partner like we were
just talking about, but you can escape into porn, alcohol, drugs, gambling,
excessive work. You can escape into, um, appearance, shopping, spending money.
Those are all forms of I run to something to
try to rescue me from the pain that I'm feeling
(40:24):
in our essence. Again, blame, shame, control, escape. Seem to be,
you know, on one level they seem to be helpful,
but all they do is mask the pain and actually
just create more difficulty. Because now we're bringing something negative
back into the isness. And it's not just what triggered us,
(40:44):
but it's now what we're contributing and it just escalates
in all the wrong directions.
S4 (40:51):
Well, one of the most powerful aspects I think of
the book is how you're so vulnerable, you and man,
and dealing with your own pain cycles. Uh, we talked
about this a little to begin with, but why are
you so honest?
S5 (41:05):
Yeah, well, you know.
S2 (41:07):
It's a good question, Gary. And honestly, I think our
profession has not done a good job of this. I,
I see pastors and marriage and family teachers and Bible
teachers who maintain a really good image. And I get it.
I did that for a long time. I kind of
think we think we're going to lose our ministry or something,
(41:29):
but at the end of the day, um, what's attractive
about humbling down is that other people go, oh, it's
not just me. If that's Ron and he's that guy
doing that thing right in those books, doing that, speaking that, whatever,
then it's not just me and I'm not so horrible.
And we're all on this journey together, and I just
(41:52):
think the church needs this desperately. How is it that
we've had so many high profile church leaders fall in
the last ten years? Pride, and we sort of let
them get away with it. And nobody's saying we got
to be humble. Every single one of us has got
to fall on our knees before the Lord every single
day of our life. So Nana and I, through our journey,
(42:14):
we've just decided we're going to be real. We're doing
a mindful marriage conference for churches. And in that conference,
often we are working through on stage something that happened
while we traveled to that event, because travel happens to
be one of my triggers. And so I kind of
get dysregulated and then we have to deal with it.
(42:35):
And we've decided we're not going to be phony. We're
going to be as real as we can be and
show people how we're making use of this in real
time so that they, too, can find hope in that
and find the ability to to emulate it. And so
I just think it's time we lead out. And here's
the thing I've learned, and I know you know this, Gary,
I'm preaching to the choir right now. But when somebody
(42:58):
is vulnerable and honest and humble, first in a small group,
in a Bible study, in a church, when somebody goes first,
other people will immediately follow. Yeah, but if nobody goes first,
everybody pretends. And everybody keeps the face and the appearance
and and the and we lose the deep intimacy and
(43:19):
connection that God wants us to have as his children.
And so somebody's got to go first.
S4 (43:26):
I fully agree with that. Now, we talked a bit
earlier about how people can misuse the five love languages. Uh,
do couples, uh, make couples also misuse the insights of
the of the pain cycle?
S5 (43:41):
Yes.
S2 (43:41):
Uh, we actually have a little section in the book. Uh,
once we've walked them through and they've discovered their pain
and peace cycle, what to do about it? We then
we give them the cautions. All right, hold on, because
here's a here's one of the major ones. Oh, I
now know more about your pain than I've ever known
in the past. And I can use it against you.
S5 (44:00):
Mm.
S2 (44:00):
That's dirty play and not fair. And you want to
talk about breaking safety? That will do it really, really fast.
Somebody finally gets vulnerable about what's deep in them, and
then you use it against them. And the other thing
that we sometimes do, and I'm guilty of guilty of
this one. I gotta, I gotta manage me is, um,
I sense her dysregulation and and I'm like, I want
(44:22):
to point that out to her, you know? I want
to help her with her. What is that? That's control.
That's my control thing kicking in again. Yeah. No, it
is not my that's not my. My job is to
be compassionate about her pain and curious about her pain,
but to not take charge of that pain. So there's
a lot of self control moments. But when you figure
(44:44):
it out, when you get the pathway, I'm telling you,
35 years I've been in marriage and family ministry. Nothing
has impacted my walk with Christ or my marriage. More
than this.
S4 (44:57):
As we come near the end of our time together,
let's talk a little bit more about how we can
help the church be more open to the kind of
things we're talking about here and understanding, you know, the
brain and all of these things and how they affect us,
even though we're not even thinking about it so much
of the time.
S5 (45:17):
Yeah.
S2 (45:18):
Well, we know from Communio that 80% of churches don't
spend a dime on marriage, education, or ministry in a
given calendar year, and 75% of churches do don't do
more than three activities in a given year. Even if
a church doesn't spend any money, they do a small group.
They have a retreat. They do three or less. That's 75%.
(45:43):
Only 25% of churches will do more than that. In
other words, we really don't seem to be that invested
in helping couples thrive, let alone stay married. And I
don't get that. Uh, you and I both know that
the context in which we live our most intimate relationships
is where God is also growing us up into the
(46:05):
image of Christ. You want to talk about discipleship? Everything
we've been talking about today isn't is discipleship. It is
growing me. It is maturing me to be more like Jesus.
And marriage is the avenue through which God does that. Yes,
we got to study the Bible. Yes, we need to
teach it. And yes, we need to figure out how
to do relationships. And the church really needs to get
(46:27):
more active in that way. And not just fun, you know,
sermons that make people laugh or date nights. I'm all
for date nights and good entertainment and a good laugh.
And let's go out and have a good time, honey.
But if that's all we ever get to in our
marriage ministry, then I'm not really being challenged. I'm not
(46:49):
really growing. I'm just allowed to laugh and stay as
I am. Yeah, no, we can mature. We can do
more than that. Um, I want to invite church leaders
and couples, because often the couples listening to us right
now are the ones that are going to go to
their pastor and say, hey, we got an idea. Let's
do more. Let's dive in. Let's get into the into
(47:11):
the deep end with people's lives and relationships, in particular
marriage and parenting and family, because so much good happens
when we help people do that. And the next generation
comes to know the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.
S5 (47:29):
Yeah.
S4 (47:30):
Well, I think this book is going to help that process.
And I just want to encourage our listeners, if you're
a lay leader in a church and you lead small groups,
this is a book you want to get yourself. You
want to process it yourself, work through it in your
own marriage. And I think you'll want to be using
it in small groups in your church. So, Ron, thanks
for being with us today and thanks to you and
(47:51):
Ann for putting this together and sharing your own, your
own journey in such a practical way. Thanks again for
all that you have done and are doing.
S2 (48:01):
Well, you endorse this book and we are very grateful. And, uh,
we just pray the Lord will use it.
S3 (48:08):
Well, Ron mentioned that assessment a few minutes ago. And
to discover your reactive coping style, go to Worthy Pub Assessment.
Again worthy pub. Assessment and the book is at our website.
Building relationships. Us the Mindful Marriage. Create your best relationship
(48:30):
through understanding and managing yourself. Again, go to building relationships us.
S4 (48:36):
And next week. What does it mean to be pro
abundant life?
S1 (48:41):
The president and CEO of Care Net, Rolland Warren will
join us. A big thank you to our production team today.
Steve Wick and Janice backing building relationships with Doctor Gary
Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in
association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Thanks for listening.
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