I'm more convinced than ever that there's this one habit that can change everything. I mean, it can be transformational in a home. And it's mealtime. Together. Together.
Together. Man, if you will do that, you can't get your teenager to open up. Watch what happens if you really invest overtime with these meals. It's incredible. Welcome to Family Life Today.
Where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
Okay, so we've been talking a lot about food the last couple days. Are you hungry? Yeah, I am getting hungry.
So let's do one more and then let's go eat.
Okay. We got to practice what we preach, and I hope it's a good meal. But So we got Dr. Ryan Rush back with us. You are mealtime Ryan.
I don't know what you call you. Dinner Table Ryan. It's got to be an R. You're a preacher. Dinner Table Ryan sounds better than Mealtime Ryan because here's the great irony of this book: I don't cook.
You don't cook? I cook omelettes at our house. Dave doesn't either. I'm a world-class omelette maker. That's about it.
Really? I've made spaghetti a couple of times.
So your wife cooks? She is great at cooking and losing.
So I'm the dishwasher. But you don't have to be a cook to make mealtime special. There you go. Exactly. You just need a meal in front of you.
And I'm living proof, right? It could be Uber Eats or DoorDash. Just get the meal in front of you. And so if you missed the last couple of days, go back because, I mean, your book and your life is about restoring the table, how God uses the table to really do some incredible transformation. In people's lives.
In every area of their lives. Yeah, even physically and emotionally and spiritually. It's around a table. Yes. Yeah.
So today, we're going to talk about five mealtime don'ts. Don't do these things. And on the flip side, we'll talk about what to do as the opposite, but. There's probably 50 don'ts. Right.
But, you know, you're the pastor. You put them all in nice little, you know, almost alliteration. You probably had five more minutes, you'd have them all starting with S's. I probably would. That's right.
Sometimes I finish my sermons and they all alliterate, and I'll actually change it just because it sounds so cheesy.
So I know a lot of people, you know. Totally, Dave, as well. It's so funny. I think it's a good thing. They'll never go through the mind of a pastor that people don't realize.
I wish we could sit around the table with our listeners to hear their stories of things not to do when they have some good stories. Right. And I guess the most important thing we want to say is: no matter what you do, don't worry about the don'ts as much as get started. Yeah.
But the reason we want to talk about the don'ts is because this can curtail. A great mealtime experience with your family and stop what you've already started.
So, just simple things that can happen that I think the enemy can take and kind of hijack. Are we saying that we have some mealtime failures too? Is that what we're saying? We have a few. Oh, I promise you I do.
And hopefully, this will help you not to have as many in the future. All right, give us the first one. All right, yeah, my girls would call in if they could and let you know some things I did wrong.
So, the first, I think, is probably the most significant way that people mess up the meals. And I call it the overachieving meal, right?
So, you decide, okay, we're going to get started in this new thing, and so we're going all out. Man, we're going to have this homemade, you know, dish and followed by this great dessert. Then, we're going to have, if we're going to have breakfast together, it's going to be the greatest breakfast you've ever seen. And before long, this becomes exhausting and a burden, at least to somebody in the family who's preparing these dishes. And so, all of a sudden, you say, Well, I can't keep it up.
So, don't even start that idea. The best meals with your kids are probably not going to. Involve the fancy stuff anyway. You know, my mom makes this incredible sloppy joe recipe. I talk about it in the book.
I actually give you a recipe. Yeah, I've seen the recipe. Right. One of the great mistakes I made in my life, it's not even one of these, but. Is when we were first married, Lana made some sloppy joes one night and she used a can.
for I think like Manwich or something for it. And I said, you know, Did you take that out of a can? She said, that's the only way to make sloppy joes. And I said, no, no, no. My mom makes a great sloppy joke.
Maybe you should call her. You said that. This is like marriage 101, right? No, are you kidding me? This is probably before I went to the family life.
Yeah, right. We can't remember that. We tend to remember because I didn't mention that. It was life-changing for us. It was earlier than that, and it did not go well.
Why don't you get your mom to make you, you know, some sloppy joes, something like that? But down the road, she actually did one time say, hey, by the way, Ryan says you have a sloppy joe recipe. I tried to tell him there's no such thing. And my mom said, actually. There is.
It's simple. And so Lana made them. And lo and behold, they're tremendous. But don't do it that way, guys. The reason I say that is our kids and, you know, me growing up and then later on, our kids would probably remember a lot of sloppy Joe nights that were pretty simple.
Yeah.
So don't overachieve. Yeah.
You know, by the way, I'm thinking of your dad who, I mean, food for her dad. Again, he was my high school coach.
So I've known him a long time. He's great guy. He's with the Lord now. Food for him was a core value. It was a core value of his life.
I mean, food, his life revolved around meals. Oh, yeah. And he would sit down. And again, you know, we talked about it before. I grew up with my mom.
It's just the two of us. You had little TV dinners. And food wasn't that big a deal. You know, usually it was rice. I love rice.
It's because I grew up. That's what we ate. But, you know, I get in the Barron family and meals are a big deal. And Dick would sit down, her dad. And he would rate every meal.
Are you serious? Yeah.
Out loud. I thought he was kidding, but he's serious. Like, yeah, dude, this one is very good. His wife's named Tudor. Are you kidding me?
And you know, this is about three out of 10. I'm like, what are you doing? And she'd be like, okay, I'll do better next time. I'm on my way. Incredible.
No, that wouldn't have gone with me. Don't be a don't. I just, at least I learned earlier. Yeah.
She just. Just made this fantastic food and now you're critiquing it? Right. Things not to do. Yeah.
And what not to do. And so back to this mistake.
So grade your mealtimes based on the fellowship and the community. Don't, don't the community, not the cuisine. There you go. There you go. Oh, it'll work.
There you go. All right, so that's number one.
Okay, I've got number two.
Okay. Don't do the deep dive. In conversations at the dinner table, if you have somebody that you don't know very well, so if you have a neighbor, or even a stranger, or somebody from church, that you just don't know them that well. This is me, you guys. I tend to ask very deep personal questions because I love people and I want to know their story.
I want to know how they're doing. And so, but she does that to her husband, too. Like, don't be so intense, and like, oh, yeah, I hate small talk. She hates small talk. You just want to get to the heart of the issue.
I want to know the person. Who cares who the Lions are playing this week? Let's talk about your spiritual walk. No, no, I didn't go so spiritual, but here's what I did. We had someone over the first time.
They were in their 20s. They'd been married maybe eight months. And this was a Detroit Lions player and his wife, super nice. And we're eating. And I say to him, Hey, let's say his name's John.
It's not John. John, how are you guys doing? How's your marriage going? No, because we really struggled our first year. How, like, is it hard?
Is it easy? How are you doing? This is probably 15 minutes into this year. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Nice to meet you. He looks at me. He stands up and he pushes his Chair back very loudly and awkwardly, and he walks into the living room. Didn't even say a word, just left the table. And I look at his wife like, what happened?
And she rolls her eyes, and I could tell by her face they are not doing well. Yeah.
But then he said something to you, David.
Well, I went into the living room, and he's actually pacing. I'm like, dude, what's going on? He's like. I can't talk about that stuff. That's way too intimate.
I never talk about this. I'm very uncomfortable right now. I'm like, okay, glad we had you over. I mean, yeah, I mean, and did that one other time with another guy, and I'll never forget. He literally looked at her like.
You just violated my life by asking me such a personal question. It adds on the business. I love that that's your gift, though, because you're causing people to think about things they don't. It sounds like he needs to talk about those things, but you start in the shallow end before you go to the deep dive, right? Get in the kiddie pool first.
And I'll tell you what. The best way I've found to do that, and I know you guys have discovered maybe some better ones, is just let them drive the conversation to start. That's good. What do they want to talk about? Tell me your story.
And that allows somebody to begin wherever they want you. Oh, that's good. They can talk about the difficulties of childhood, or they can talk about, you know, what their dad did growing up. Yeah, whatever they want to. By the way, if you want some great questions, great questions for the table.
We got them at familylife.com slash tabletalk. I'm just going to tell you to go there.
Some of you are like, I'm not really good at asking questions. We'll help you. What did you say? How do you? Tell me your story.
That's good, Brian. Yeah.
Tell me your story. And they can choose whatever they want to share. Absolutely. What part you get to choose? Stay as shallow or deep as they want to go.
I will add this. There are some people in some conversations that they want to go deep. Go. Have you had an awesome time? If they're willing to go there, they'll go there when they tell their story, they'll go deeper.
Yeah, so that's not like never go there, but don't overabs. At least at the beginning, once you know someone well and you have a good relationship, you kind of know where you can go and not go.
So that's mine. Let me ask you guys this, though, with your kids. Do you have to keep it shallow? Can you go deeper? What do you think?
Are there times that I think you have the opportunity at times to read the room and know this is a good time? Because most of the time, when we sit down with family members, you You know them well enough to know when something's troubling them. And it actually can be a little tone deaf. You know, dads can be guilty of that sometimes to just say, hey, let's talk about whatever. Or even on some serious issues when we're not addressing the elephant in the room, whatever that is.
So we've talked about this before, and you mentioned something great that worked for us. Kind of a high-low moment to say, hey, what's the best thing that happened today? What's the worst thing that happened today or this week? And who wants to share first? Let them go around the table.
Usually you can get to the heart of those things.
So there's times when you know somebody that the Lord will allow you to break through those barriers. But there are also times when you don't want to dive in the deep end at the table or they look at it as a time that, okay, every time we come here, it's therapy. Let's back up a little bit and let's talk about our day. Or let's talk about football. Let's talk about what we're excited about.
And that's going to allow us the on-ramp to go deeper. I'll just share too another tip with this. When you go out on a date with your husband, don't necessarily dive too deep too quick. Have some fun, laugh a little bit before you get into any marital issues that are really heavy on your heart. Not that you don't go there.
Don't go there. It's not that you don't go there. Just be very wise and pray. Like, Lord, is now the time. But also, you know, it could be.
A powerful time if it's the right moment. I know that when our youngest son was the only one in the house, the two older brothers were off to college. We had some of the richest conversations that he prompted. I remember Cody looked at us, and again, it's so different. There's nobody else in the house, just the three of us.
And we're sitting there eating and Cody goes, hey.
So Can I ask you guys, did you guys drink in college? Did you guys have sex in college where like Oh boy, here we go. You know, and he really tell me your testimony. I mean, he'd heard me preach his whole life, but it was pretty intimate, and he wanted to go there.
So it's like, okay, we're going to go there. And there were some pretty powerful moments in his life because of that intimacy that he initiated. I think a lot of it is that see what they're initiating and there might be an opportunity. You're going to end up in the deep end of the pool because of the meal and going back to the same idea. There's something about having that food in front of you that allows the barriers to come down.
So be ready for that. Just don't start with it unless they do. I love that the Lord allows that conversation. And that's something I think that gives a glimpse to families who haven't done this. Say, man, if you will do that, you can't get your teenager to open up.
Watch what happens if you really invest over time with these meals. It's incredible. Yeah.
I love that. All right, what's another don't?
Okay, so here's what maybe I was the most guilty of. If my wife Lana were sitting here, she'd say, This is where, when the girls were younger, I used to get caught up in the sermonette meal, right?
So, kids, this is a chance to dive into these three points. And I have a lesson in mind. And they kind of knew the routine.
So their bologna meters would go off. They knew what was going on. And sometimes I would do it when they were really young because I wanted to get some good material.
So I knew, hey, I could share this on Sunday. I'm going to be preaching on this. I can remember one time, Riley was about seven, Reagan was five. We're sitting at the table on like a Tuesday. And I said, Girls, I'm talking about the breakdown of the family this Sunday.
And it's really heartbreaking what some people go through. I'm so grateful that we don't have to do that.
So, why do you think some families deal with such hard times?
So Reagan puts her fork down, five years old, and she says, Dad, if you don't know what to say, maybe they should just get somebody else to preach. She knew exactly what I was doing, and she was tired of me stealing her material.
So that's an extreme example. But the reality is. From the mouth of babes. Right. I know.
Don't make it where your kids see it coming and they think, okay, this is just a chance for you to teach a class. Or it can become so formal that it's not something they look forward to. You want it to be something that they can't wait to get to. Like, this is that special moment. When they grow up, they look back and they say, there was laughter.
We had a good time together. You know, we talked about silly things sometimes, but this was great. I think about this, it is a really old example, but remember the sound of music? Sure.
So the Von Trapp family early on, what was his name? Mr. Von Trapp. He wouldn't let anybody speak at the table. Yes.
Right. Oh, that's right. That's pretty extreme, but it sounds like you guys had the same thing. We had a good time around the table. We did too.
Sometimes it drove me crazy. Because they'd get going, but we were going to enjoy life with one another around that table, and we still treasure that today. I remember one time, do you remember this? It was lunch. All three boys were there.
Ann was there. I got up, got some iced tea, some ice for myself. sat down at the table and I looked at Ann and I go, You know, This weekend, I'm preaching on sin and self. I'm trying to make the illustration that sin is really selfishness. We're all selfish.
I go, I really need a good illustration of selfishness. Give me one that I've done recently. She goes, Like right now? Like what? She goes.
You literally got up. Went to the refrigerator. Got ice, got a glass, got yourself iced tea. Does anybody else at the table have a drink?
Well, she goes, There's your there's but you just did that for the sake of the sermon, right? I literally was like, I am the most selfish little jerk on the planet. I've never forgotten that. I'm like, Well, at least I got an illustration. And here's the beauty of it: when pastors do something dumb, like we can always just use it later on.
Like, God redeems every dumb thing we do so it works out great. We can't lose. Here's another one that I don't know what we'll call it. Yeah, media rich, media obsessed, right? Media bound.
It's the distraction of TV, phone. Yes. You name it. I've literally done this at the table. The phone's down here.
I don't have it on the table because I'm not looking at it, but I've got a thought for a sermon. Yeah.
And I pull it out and I'm putting it in my notes. Or checking out scores, or I'm looking at the TV that's on in the family room.
Well, guys, you got to be careful. Here's what's hard because we've had three sons, and a game would be on. You could see the TV from the kitchen into the other room, and they're all sitting so they can see it. Sure.
So, and there are times I don't care about that, but there are other times: what should a mom or wife do when she does want to have the TV off? Is that bad to turn the TV off during a game?
Well, what I would challenge, if it's going to be a regular occurrence and it's something that brings the family together, now, granted, this is my biased showing. I like watching sports as well. I'd say, just don't make that one of your meaningful meal times because you don't want to create this scenario where, man, every time we get together, we don't get to enjoy that.
So, just find another time, say, hey, let's go watch the game and then we're going to do this, or let's press pause and watch this and just everybody put your phones away, let's enjoy the time, and then we'll go watch. That's a good thing. I might call this a sports analogy, but the media timeout meal. You know, you say, We're going to have a meal, we're going to make it special. But by the way, we're just going to glance over there every now and then.
It never works. And we've all been, you know, to the Chili's or the whatever where the TV's on the screen and you're just like trying to. Do both things and watch the game, and it just doesn't work hand in hand.
So, what I'm saying to my wife or my kids, if I have the game on over her shoulder and she's sharing something, and I'm nodding and looking there as I'm saying, I care about you, but not enough to focus my attention solely on you. I'd like to care about you and what's happening on this television right now. And we don't want to send those messages to our kids. Yeah.
You know, what about the kids that have their phones and they just go crazy? Like, this is ridiculous. I should be able to have my phone. Is this one of those times we just stand firm? You have to.
And this is science, folks. I mean, we're learning more and more all the time about how distracting and even debilitating this is to relationships.
So, you're doing your kids a great service to set the phone down for a significant amount of time every day anyway, because it's moved from, man, this is really a distraction. Our kids like their phones to realizing what it's doing to their attention spans, their physical human relationships, and it's messing us up.
So we really have to have the discipline more times than this. And that would be another conversation for another day, but I really encourage families, put the phones in a base in one place in the kitchen. Phones aren't in the bedrooms going to bed. Not even for the horrible stuff that we hear, the nightmare stuff. I'm just talking about the distraction from the things that matter and having focus on real life.
So the phones, absolutely. And you're right. They can show up under the table and we can all make excuses.
Well, we have this important assignment. Oh, I'm a pastor. I mean, what if somebody texts me about something important? Just this one time. I'm going to, that's why I'd call it a media timeout.
I'm going to have this issue over there. At the table. I looked up. I don't know if you're familiar with Simon Sinek. Yeah.
I mean, he's. Yes. Very intelligent about these things. He has, I was just looking it up. Which is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.
But he is saying, you know, we think That when we're at a meal with somebody, if we put the phone away, like put on the table or even turn it upside down, that we're, he says, that is saying to the person, you don't matter. He says, you have the phone in your hand, and you're thinking, it's not buzzing, I'm not looking at it just in my hand. He goes, You are saying to that person or those people, You're not that important. Anything I happen on here is more important. He says, literally, at a dinner table or at a mealtime, don't even put the phone on the table upside down.
Yes. Get it out of your hand, get it away. That says to everybody there: there's nothing more important than you. Radio. My one friend, when we would walk in her house, these are just friends.
We walk in the house, and she's standing at the door with a basket for all of us to put our phones in the basket. Yes. Yes. Why not? Why?
Because she's like, you really matter to me and I want to spend time with you. Back in the day when uh we first started pastoring, we had phones on the wall with the cord, you know, or no cell phones. Yes. And we had a mealtime rule. Yeah.
That phone is never answered during dinner. Because then, you know, it would ring. We just never answered it. I remember other pastors saying, You have to take calls. It could be somebody in distress in your church.
I'm like, They'll call back. Absolutely. You know, next 30 minutes, 40 minutes are going to be sacred because this is a mealtime. We didn't even know all the research you've come up with since then, but it was important. It said to your family, you matter.
All right, let's do another one. There's only one more, we've got four done. Do we have four? Already? We got four.
Okay, boom. Let's call it the courtroom meal. Here's what I mean. If we seal this off as a family tradition, let's say that our listeners love it and they make it a part of their lives. You might have this as the only time of the day where you get together and you have a little bit of a vendetta.
You know, nobody can hurt us like family, right? Nobody can make us more angry.
So we come together and say, this is an opportunity. I'm going to teach these kids a lesson. I'm going to have this lecture now. You know, it can happen a date night as well. Can it not?
Right. Yeah.
Where I finally got you alone. We're going to address this need right now. And so you start firing lasers of bitterness and anger across the table. And all of a sudden, it turns. Doesn't mean you can't have serious conversations, but don't hijack the mealtime to make it the hall of justice, right?
Oh, that's good. So protect meal time to be more. Not that. You're going to do that somewhere else. Don't do it at the meal.
So let's talk real life. There's somebody with a teenager, and that teenager has just done something crazy dumb. You know, I know that never happens, but theoretically, right? Never. And you're just put out with them.
You've already had the lecture, and now you're sitting down. If you're not careful, the natural. A response is going to be: let's unpack this again. I'm so disappointed. I'm so frustrated.
But what if, again, you're not ignoring the issue, but now you have a chance to. Address grace and say, I just want to remind you how much I love you. You know, hey, let's talk about something else. I want you to know this is a chance to say, even without saying it. that you're my son, you're my daughter, and so we're still in this.
So, it can be a healing process rather than the healing table. I have a chapter called the healing table for just that reason. That's really good. We learned on our date nights to stop doing that on our date nights because a lot of times our date night would start with Ann saying, Hey, on a scale of one to 10. Radar Marriage, I'm Maya Kona.
That means my number is going to be nine and yours is going to be two. And that means we're going to talk all night about how we can get our number higher. And we realize that's not the time to do it because we started. We need to do it. But not on that meal time or that date time.
Well, I'm going to bring up another one when 26.
Now I'm doing five. When food becomes the battle. This is 5B. That's right.
5B. When you have toddlers and they're not eating anything. Oh. It becomes a battleground. The table becomes a battleground instead of the healing ground.
It kind of goes into the courtroom, too. Yeah.
How do we do that where we're just like, you need to take one more bite? I'm so glad you brought that up, Ann. And that's a perfect way to end because there's a lot of parents of preschoolers or young kids or, you know, let's face it, sometimes it sounds like high school boys can be the same, right?
So you feel like I had a mom say the other day, she said, I feel like I live in a frat house. You know, she's just raising boys. And she said, this isn't what I imagine. There's food flying everywhere. First of all, never underestimate what your kids are grasping by sitting around that table, even if it seems like it's a war zone.
They are feeling the love that you have for them. God is moving in their hearts just by sharing the meal. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's okay if you're having to do the train to get them to eat or whatever. You have to.
Remember the choo-choo train? They still do that? Or the airplane? But you're going to have little pockets, little moments of peace of love, of connection. That God's going to move.
So don't underestimate those. We're working on a new book right now with a friend of mine for disabled parents. And we decided to call that book Grace and the Chaos. I don't know what they're ever going to be done, but that's such a picture, right, of how God works. It's not going to be perfect.
It's kind of crazy at most houses with parents of special needs as well, sometimes for life. But God brings these moments of grace in the midst of the chaos that will bless you if you'll let him. Yeah.
That's so good. And I'll close with this. We're old enough to know. Those meal times, you're going to blink and they're gone. Your kids are going to be gone.
I mean, I know when we were there, and older parents would tell us, you know, seize the day, enjoy the moment. We're like, We're exhausted. We're exhausted. There's food everywhere. It's on the walls.
I don't know if it was on the walls.
Sometimes it's on the walls.
Well, that's where the pee was on the walls. But no, I'm just thinking, you know, it flew by. And now there's two people sitting at the table, Ann and I, and it's quiet. Wow. It's awesome.
Yes. But I wish for some of that chaos that I hated at the time that I sort of miss now.
So seize the day when you can. And by the way, Here it is, Restore the Table. That's the book we've been talking about the last three days: Discovering the Powerful Connections of Meaningful Mealtimes. I'll tell you what, I didn't know anybody else was written on this. Thank you so much.
It's a powerful truth. You can get it. Just go to familylifetoday.com, send a gift of any amount to Family Life. We'll send you this book. Or you can call us at 1-800-358-6329.
That's F is in family, L is in lasagna. and the word today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry. helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
