You know, I've realized I'm kind of picky when it comes to Bible translations. Yeah, you are. Because you're the guy that underlines half the page and then argues with the footnotes. And I'm a good arguer. But, you know, I care about two things, faithfulness to the original text and just being able to read it without feeling like I'm reading a dictionary.
Which is why we're grateful for the support of the Christian Standard Bible. The CSB was created to be accurate and readable, helping people engage God's word with confidence and clarity. And it's sponsors like the CSB that help make this podcast possible. To learn more, visit csbible.com. I definitely think that you have to speak up.
You have to speak up. I don't want to sound cliche that a closed mouth doesn't get fed, but it's causing the marriage to implode. It causes your spirit to implode. Nobody has to know anything, but you owe it to yourself. And if any children, if you have any, to your family that's watching you, they need you to stay together.
They need you guys to figure it out, you know?
So I think that it's important to first bring in Christ and pray about it. But then secondly, within your level of comfort, reach out to somebody. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson. And I'm Ann Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. All right, May 17th, 1980, a week before our wedding. No, you know what? It was May 10th, 1980.
Throwback day. May 10th, 1980, two weeks before our wedding. We go to the Family Life Weekend Remember.
Okay. Because we were told you can't get married until you know God's plan for marriage and they're going to teach you that that weekend. And so here I want to ask you, don't look at your notes. I didn't put it in there, but, and we've taught it now for 30 years. But back then we taught God's purpose for marriage is three M's.
Here we go. I'm a guy that loves alliteration. I didn't think it was M. I thought it was R. See, there we go.
To reflect God's image. Oh, no, mirror. Mirror God's image. Mirror God's image. Well, here's the thing.
the three M's are no longer the three M's because now we teach it a little different. Same concepts, but back then we said from God's word, the purpose of marriage is to mirror God's image, to reflect to the world who Jesus is, God is, to mutually complete one another, to sharpen one another, to become like Christ, and then to multiply a godly legacy, which we were saying reproduce. I got two out of three. You did pretty good. You used to give that talk more than I did.
I know. I gave it more than you did, so I should know. But anyway, we've got Howard and Danielle Taylor in the studio. And you guys, you have a whole workbook on the purposes of marriage. That's why I brought it up.
It's called The Fundamentals of Marriage. And I like this. Eight essential practices of successful couples. And you guys, I feel like you have that same passion that we have. Like marriage matters.
Absolutely. We need to know why God instituted marriage. And you have two boys. Mm-hmm. That ministry called Marriage on Deck.
What is that? Marriage on Deck.
So Marriage on Deck is birthed out of our desire to mitigate divorce. Like we started seeing what we call carnage around us. You know, we're going along in our marriage and all of a sudden we see a friend get a divorce, a cousin get a divorce, a family member get a divorce. And we're just like, what is going on?
So opposed to just sitting back on the defensive, we said it's time for us to go on the offensive and not just sit on the sidelines and do something about it. And that looked like maybe sharing our testimony of why we felt very passionately about our own marriage and some of the principles that we're using to sustain what we felt was a healthy marriage. But we thought it was to be assumed until we saw certain things happening. And a lot of that was biblically based.
So it was helping couples get married and stay married using biblical principles. That's the kind of pitch behind.
Now, what's on deck mean? Part of me, you know, went to baseball. We talked about this. I know. How is a basketball game though?
He said being on deck means that you're up to bat. And so we're like, maybe marriage on deck could be for people who are up to getting married or to me taking the baseball out of it. You're just your marriage is up. It's it's on the forefront. It's on top.
You know, it's here and it's in the present.
So if you're already married or if you're going to get married, we want to encourage you and uplift you in your relationship.
Well, share your story a little bit with us, how you guys met, how this came about. Howard and I met in 2001 at Cal State Fullerton. I met him at a Bible study. I came in late with my friend, not because I wanted to be late, but because we were coming all the way from Rialto.
So we came in late. I sat in the back. And as I was sitting in the Bible study, I realized there's this guy in the front answering all the questions. Oh, you didn't think, who's that cute guy? You thought, who's this smart guy?
Who's the Bible? Who's the guy that knows the word of God? We were like 18 and 19, but I was so impressed. I was newly saved, like two years. I was teaching Sunday school at church.
And so I was like, wow, this guy has a good command of the word. And then our teacher was telling us, oh, turn here. He's like, knew exactly where the book was at. We were watching this. We were watching this.
It was impressive to me. I was just like, okay, I need to see what he looks like.
So then I got a chance to see what he looked like. And I said, oh, he looks good. I need to, you know, get closer to him. This is all in Bible study. All in Bible study.
And you didn't know any of this was happening. You're just up there.
So true story. When she came in late, I noticed her hair.
So it's so funny that you start off air. You're talking about her hair. And I was like, wow, that's a pretty girl. And I noticed her hair. And I have a fraternal twin who had introduced me to her in what we would call the quad section of our college campus.
And as twin boys, if your brother introduced you to a young lady, you paid zero attention.
So I didn't realize I met her before. But I noticed her come in late and I said, this is a pretty young lady. And so she came in with her friend And in that session Danielle noticing me And I noticed her after the fact I had told myself I going to speak to that young lady after the Bible study And so like a church kid would, unlike Danielle, I was raised in a church. And so I had my highlighter and my little nose. And I approached her and I asked her, we sparked a conversation.
And I basically said, you know, if you want to call me sometime, I took out my church lighter and I wrote. Wait a minute. Oh, yeah. If you want to call me sometime. It's good.
This was providential, though.
So I write my cell phone number on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. Really big. A huge paper. With a yellow highlighter. And Danielle took it politely.
And once we sprung up conversation, it was on her birthday. And we sprung up conversation. She eventually called me. And when she called me, she eventually told me. We had one of those moments where we talked for like four hours.
That night.
So that happened to us. And she told me that she had been talking to a young man who was a police officer at the time. And a lot of guys have been approaching her. And she said, the next guy who asked me for my number, I'm going to tell him basically where to shut it. And so it was providential that I didn't.
She thought that was kind of uncanny that I didn't ask for her number. I wouldn't typically give a girl, but I felt like with her, I should just give her my number. Really? The spirit led you to do that. That was a God thing.
It was providential. It was a God thing. It just went right, went well with me because she was the greatest gift. I was 18. Danielle was 19.
I was an incoming freshman. To make it sure, Danielle was an outgoing senior at 19 years old. She was going to get her degree. You're done with college at 19? 19.
She graduated high school at 16. This girl is beautiful and tall. She got her master's at 22. Really? Thank you, my lady.
I mean, I met somebody who was truly incredible. And she would go on to be my first professional mentor. Like me, my buddies, I have a fraternal twin, my college roommates. Danielle would come to our apartment, help us with our schoolwork. She was in her career.
It was just, she was incredibly kind and just amazing. And for me, I was raised by a single mother who was from Illinois and a very intelligent woman herself.
So I just thought Danielle was incredible. I was attracted to how incredibly kind and intelligent and driven she was as an 18-year-old man. The rest was history. I mean, were you married before you graduated or how long did you date? My senior year.
Oh, I was a double major.
So it took me six years to graduate.
So I graduated in six years. My sixth year, we got married, 2005.
So met in 2001 and dated a quarter for four years. Got married July of 30, 2005. And we moved into our house in Victorville, California, and away we went.
So Danielle was out of school. I was finishing school. And had you had much marriage, mentoring, training? No. You had nothing.
We're from broken families. I had marriage mentoring on what not to do. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. From your family? From my parents, yes.
My parents were married. They got divorced when I was in ninth grade, like about 13. That was my dad's second marriage. That was my mom's second marriage. And then she got married again after that.
But they're still together. They got married the same year as us. Thank you, Jesus. They're still together, yes.
So no, we didn't have good marriage examples or role models. I didn't want to get married. You didn't because of what you've seen. Right. It just didn't look fun.
It didn't look edifying. It didn't look productive. It just didn't seem like fun at all. Like, why? You know?
So how did it go when you got married?
Well, I think we had a very great start. And I would say we still love our marriage. And we have peaks and valleys of our marriage. But it was incredible. And the reason why it was an incredible start for us, we had no trepidation to get married.
We didn't have great examples like Daniel's from a broken home as well. But when we started dating, we both had a very strong spiritual base.
So what was unique about our connection is it was very much so based off of our spiritual relationship with Christ. And so we made this commitment that we would read the word and pray daily during the four years that we dated. We were both virgins. And so we had this like-mindedness about just saving ourselves for marriage. At least I did.
Danielle was not really planning to get married, but she was saving herself nonetheless. I was just going to save and hold on. Until the time was right, I guess, for Danielle. You wanted to be single? I was more like career driven.
So maybe single, maybe date. But I knew I wanted to be married since I was 12 because my mom and dad never married. My father was out of the home at five. And so I felt like all the perils that I faced in my life were because of the absence of a father and the absence of having a stable family environment. And so to me, I was like, I need that in sports.
I always saw a father show up at the gym with their dads and it assisted them with the coaching relationship. All these little nuances I was watching. Plus my mom, the greatest gift she gave me, my brother, my sister, she did get us in a good church. And the pastor really affectionately loved his wife and his brother-in-law loved his wife.
So I would watch these guys just love on their wives and raise their family. And I knew that's how it should be. You had a vision. I had a vision of what life should be, even though I did not see it in the home. And so when I met whoever I was going to meet, I knew I wanted to marry him.
You're listening to Family Life Today. I'm Dave Wilson. And before we continue our conversation, let me just say this. Our financial partners are the heartbeat of this ministry. And when you join this monthly giving community, you're not just donating, you're building something eternal.
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So as you start you know moving on in your marriage and obviously having kids how did you start to develop these fundamentals that you call the fundamentals of marriage We started to develop the fundamentals from day one We established And dating And dating right We had our 10 commandments of dating type things Wait what That you made your own 10 commandments? We made our own 10 commandments. Do you remember one of them? Yes, you know, a lot of them. One was no makeups to breakups.
No makeups to breakups. That was our first one. If you get comfortable breaking up and we get married, you'll be comfortable getting a divorce, thinking that it's okay because you're used to breaking up all the time. Yep, yep. If we got into an argument, which we have plenty of.
You cannot bring up the past. We both can be the victim at the same time.
So if I'm telling you about a problem I have, you can't turn around and say, well, you're saying this, but my problem is, it's like, no, I'm the victim right now.
So you need to listen to what, we need to address the current problem. For sure. Not like whatever you have going on because you missed your opportunity to say whatever you had to say. Then we had like the dial shot, not kill one. But for us, it was like, you can't tell me to shut up.
It was very practical.
So we can never tell each other to shut up. We can never hang up on the phone. And those things were birthed out of Danielle and I probably should have broke up in our first three months. Our communication was terrible. We were both young.
We were immature. We argue. We call them darts now, but there were jabs and punches then.
So you used your words as weapons. Oh, for sure. We weaponized our words. For sure. Because that was our example.
You used nothing else. When my mom and dad did talk, they argued. Yes, same here.
So when we met each other, we loved each other and liked each other, but we were going to have a good brouhaha with our words. And so we came to this kind of defining moment right around the time Daniel was going to graduate where it was like, hey, if we are going to be together, we need boundaries. And so we sat and we talked about it and we put in biblical principles, soft answer turns away raft and all these little things. And we create our little boundary sheet and we stuck to it.
So it made us very disciplined. Like, I want to hang up on you right now, but I'm just going to breathe into this phone until we mutually get off the phone. That was huge for our discipline. Yeah. Because as fiery as we were, we taught each other that we were worth it.
We knew that we were worth it because we just wouldn't cross that boundary. And if ever, because nobody's perfect, we did flirt with it or cross it. it was like, you have to come off your high horse and apologize, right? You just broke it. It seems, I would say, elementary in some respects and fundamental in some respects, but it's huge in our marriage right now.
Right. We made a foundation. That's what I was going to say. Following those throughout our relationship, a lot of people, even though we're really young, a lot of young and young in marriage, a lot of people will come to us asking for advice and you guys look so happy and you look like you guys really like each other and that you respect each other. Although we may have been married five or 10 years.
We're coming to talk to you guys. You only been married one year and we just couldn't understand why are you asking us? You know, what do we know? We don't know anything. But as time went on and more and more people came to us and we saw like Howard was mentioning our family, our cousins and their relationship and family members relationship falling apart.
In the midst of all of this in our careers, we had started a couple of businesses on the side and things weren't, things were going great like financially. but spiritually with our family, things just was not good.
So fast forward to 2016, usually at the end of every year, we go on a fast and ask God, like, what do you want us to do for the following year? But we have been so like on fire with like growing our careers and advancing and making money and buying houses and just doing all this stuff. That seems like that's what you do when you have a degree and you get a good job. Right. So we went on this fast, like we're going to wake up every morning at 3am for a week and pray and seek God's face to find out what does God want us to do for 2017.
I underline this in your workbook. You both woke up every morning at 3 a.m. Why not 6 a.m.? Because we want to have a sacrifice for God. Like I have this underline, like, wait, what?
You got up at 3 a.m.? I was going to ask the same question of like, why 3 a.m.? We just wanted to feel like a sacrifice. Like you're exhausted. You're tired.
Like we just set the alarm. We set the alarm. Got up. And you're not eating food? We were eating, I think.
It wasn't a solemn fast. Yeah. So one of the things that we did, when we would fast, it wouldn't always be a solemn food fast. It would be, what do we feel like we need to starve our flesh in most at that moment?
So sometimes our fasts, they were really tailored to Danielle and I. Yeah. And so what we felt in that season, we were giving everything else that Danielle mentioned our first. Like business are first, everything in life, our relationship, our careers are first, but we weren't inconveniencing ourselves and stopping our schedule abruptly for Christ. Would you say those things were an idol?
Yes. I would say so. You would. Yeah. And yet they're good things.
They're good things, but we were just like, oh man, we were running towards success. Yeah. For sure. Like a sprint. Which of you said like, hey, how about if we do this fast and get up at 3 a.m.?
So we fast every year, but I think the 3 a.m. God dropped in my spirit that we needed to make this extra push and sacrifice. And so we knew we were going to do the fast, but the 3 a.m. is like, let's challenge ourselves to wake up at 3 a.m. and see if God's talking and just give him this intentional time.
And so we did it. And so we always at the top of our fast, we say, OK, we have a little list of like what we would like God to talk to us about. or get answers on in some way. And then just God have your way, just what are we missing? What are our blind spots?
What do you want to say? And so at the end of this fast, we really wanted to know what was our life's mission spiritually. We had not found our spiritual purpose as a couple.
So we knew all these head things that we wanted to do, but we hadn't found our spiritual purpose.
So that was our ask. It's like, well, what are we going to do? And I remember creeping up on the final day of the fast and not feeling like we got the answer. How many days was this? Seven.
Seven days. This happens to us all the time. God does not speak until the last day for us. It's like he tests us to see if we're going to push through.
So on the seventh day he told us at work separate days Danielle at a separate time from me we had our son God told her that we need to go on social media and just start talking about our marriage And God told me I was a hotel general manager in my career, a hotel executive.
So I was sitting in my hotel office and God told me like, you guys are going to have to talk about your marriage. You're not doing on Facebook Live. And so if you were the new Danielle at that time, we're not like showy or social media type people whatsoever. Matter of fact, we feel like it's cringeworthy. And so at that time, we felt like it was cringeworthy.
So we didn't want to do anything like that. And we came home today and Daniel said, God, I think I got the answer. I said, God told you we need to go on social media and talk about marriage. Facebook Live. And she's like, that is exactly what God told me.
Wow. You said that to her? Yeah. I just knew. You said he told you this.
It was so clear. It wasn't audible, but it felt like it was audible. And we have a very strong spiritual connection from when we dated. We laid a strong foundation. And so when I said it, she was like, that's what he said.
That's what he said. And so we started practicing that night on our phone. We couldn't even say our name. It's like, damn. All right, go.
And she was like. He's like, what's your name? I'm like. And they got it. We got it together and launched marriage on deck.
Yes. Just talking to everyday couples about everyday marriage issues. because a lot of people suffer in secret in their marriage because they don't want to shame their spouse. And so by us just talking on social media, because we're transparent, we were talking about, we were letting that thing hang out about our own lives because we knew it would help and it was worth it to be honest about how we were working with our marriage. What would you say to a couple listening right now that's suffering in silence?
What should they do? I definitely think that you have to speak up. You have to speak up. I don't want to sound cliche that a closed mouth doesn't get fed, but it doesn't do any disservice by keeping it a secret. It's only, it's like imploding.
Imploding on the inside for sure. It's causing the marriage to implode. It causes your spirit to implode. I think that, you know, there's things, people could go to counselors that won't tell your business. Your family and friends don't have to know that you need counseling.
Like nobody has to know anything, but you owe it to yourself. And if any children, if you have any, to your family that's watching you. because there are people in our family watching our marriages that will never say anything, never applaud you. Absolutely. They need you to stay together.
They need you guys to figure it out, you know?
So I think that it's important to first bring in Christ and pray about it. But then secondly, within your level of comfort, reach out to somebody that you trust. And just share what's going on with your heart. Yeah, just share.
Well, the symptoms aren't going to go away. Right. You know, a lot of things that we face in marriage, we liken it to like cancer or sicknesses. Like you could avoid not talking about it, but you're showing symptoms. They're showing signs.
Most of what we do a lot of marriage coaching and most of what people talk about and complain about are symptoms of a larger issue that they're not addressing. And then eventually they get to the doctor's office because they can't walk or they can't talk or it's the end of the line. And they say we're divorcing for irreconcilable differences. when if you would have addressed it early on, like they always encourage you to do physically, hey, get to the doctor early so that it's not something that's fatal. Likewise in marriage, we feel shamed and fearful to address things that are causing us to have symptoms that we're blaming our wives for and our husbands for.
When really, if you go get help, to what Daniel's speaking to, a trained professional, whether it's a Christian counselor or a Christian coach, and we always will say, pray about it and read your word and get deeper to your word. But we would say bring a partner alongside of that, an accountability partner, whether it's your pastor at a church. Because oftentimes when you hold things in, you think that just you're going through it or just your husband does it or just your wife has this issue. The reality is when you talk about marriage to somebody, nine times out of 10, they've either gone through it or somebody that they know has gone through it. And that makes you feel like you're part of a fraternity in some respects.
It takes some of that, what we feel is a tactic of the enemy, it takes some of that secret shame off the issue. And you could begin to deal with the actual root issue of the problem. And then you see the symptoms begin to dissipate, but you can't hold it in because in that your symptoms are going to get worse and you're going to begin to target each other and blame each other. And ultimately the marriage does, to Daniel's point, implode.
So you got to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, I always say that if you are struggling with something in the dark, whether it's personal sin or like a marriage secret suffering, the dark wins. The second you bring it out of the dark into the light, now healing can begin. But if you never tell anybody.
Right. You know, and Family Life has so many resources that put people in small groups with other couples. Like when you were saying that, Howard, I was like, yeah, when you sit in a group and you go through something like The Art of Marriage or Vertical Marriage. Yeah. or the fundamentals of marriage.
Yeah, or this. And people start sharing their stories. That's probably the biggest thing that happens in that group. You go, we're not the only ones. Right.
And then you talk to them afterwards as you're grabbing a cookie, and the next thing you know, you've got a friend that you can be honest with and you can make this journey together.
So good. I'm so inspired by you guys, too. Oh, thank you. Even your fasting and your praying, your getting up. If we put that effort into our marriage, God always hears.
He hears. Always hears those prayers. Absolutely. We've been talking with Howard and Danielle Taylor, and their book is called The Fundamentals of Marriage, Eight Essential Practices of Successful Couples. And who doesn't want to be successful?
Yeah, we all do. And you can get the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. If you need help in your marriage, and we all need help, we have put together some of our best material just for you. It's at familylife.com slash marriage help. And it's free.
We just want to help you. It's there for you. Go there now and get help. Family Life Today is a donor supported ministry, a family life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
