Hey, why don't you tell everybody one of your favorite Bible verses?
Okay, I will because it's Psalm 119, 105. And that verse says, Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. I mean, what an awesome. Bible verse that reminds us how scripture lights the way in marriage and parenting and basically everything else. And we're super grateful to the Christian Standard Bible for supporting this podcast.
Yes, and just for their work in helping people read God's Word clearly and faithfully. To learn more, go to csbible.com.
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I would look at myself in the mirror and say. You're a mess. I would just think about What's happened to you? Who are you? I know my heart is as black as coal.
I know it's as hard as a stone, God. I don't even know if you would take me back at this point or if you could even create a clean heart in me. I have no clue. 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. And you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
So, I think every marriage carries quiet. Silent. And disappointment. Yeah. I mean, we don't always talk about them, but I know I was disappointed and I carried around hurt that I never verbalized.
I had no idea. I actually thought you were good because I'm such an amazing husband that you're carrying around for decades. Just wounds from the past, not feeling worthy and not realizing because we get so busy in our marriages and our lives, and many of us are parents, or we have blended families, and we're just trying to get through the day, not realizing some of those disappointments, pain, and hurts. are being Hidden or pushed down, and they're affecting every part of our life. And when they come out, it can go one of two ways.
It can split the marriage up, or it can bring a bond that's deeper than it ever would have gotten to if it was always hidden. But it's hard to get there. Yeah. And today we get to walk through a pretty remarkable story that we got to hear on a dinner table one night in Little Rock with Ron and Nan Deal, who are in the studio with Family Life. It feels weird saying welcome to Family Life today because you're such a part of family life.
But welcome to Family Life Today, guys. Thank you. You guys, we love your honesty. Thank you for sharing this. I think we all need to hear it because we're all living in places that it hasn't been easy.
And in the church, sometimes we don't always say that. Right. Yeah. And in Family Life, I mean, Ron, you're known as the director of Family Life Blended. That means I'm perfect.
That means you're perfect. We all have you on a pedestal. Perfect marriage. In some ways, that's what people think. Even though you never said that, as I pastored, and we, I mean, I would always be amazed.
People come up to me and say, We want your marriage. I'm like, Do you know? Not listen to what we say. Oh, it is telling the problems, but because there's a mic or because you're on stage or you wrote a book, people think, well, your marriage has struggles, but nothing like ours. No, yours was really struggling.
So here we are. I'm guessing. You're married. I don't know how many years. You've got three boys.
You're living sort of separate lives. I mean, Ron's killing it in ministry. Nan, you're at home stuffing away and feeling unseen. And yet you still love one another. We do.
But you are angry, Nan. And I think there were seasons where... Ron would really try. I would go to some conference or I would be in some Bible study. I think I tried to break free at least six times.
Break free of. In a Bible study. Yeah. You know, doing a Bible study called breaking free or finding freedom. Neil Anderson stuff.
You know, just trying so hard and leading in some ministries myself, you know, in children's ministry or VBS or what have you. And I would really think, okay. I want to do better. I want to be better for him. And I'd always get back into that same rut.
Like I said, we had this ugly dance. And likewise, I felt convicted doing the work that I was doing, constantly looking at myself, going, okay, I need to alter this, change this. And I would say, you know, the first 10 years, I was really blind to me. The next five years, I was, oh, wow, I got work to do. I need to start recognizing some things that I come out of my family with.
Why do I think that? Where's that coming from? Like doing a lot of self-analysis. But we never really kind of put all the pieces together and I don't think I ever really owned my pride and just how much I was driven And how that became, you know, the other woman, so to speak, was my work and my drive. We moved to Amarillo and same thing, going and blowing, going and blowing, even harder.
And I, you know, we had financial demand, so I felt like I had to travel, work harder. And the boys are on the cusp of preteen, and I remember going to another one of those conferences, a ladies' conference, and feeling convicted to say something to him again. And maybe he'll hear me this time. Ron, this is too much. This is off the chain.
We're here. And I'd always get that. I'm doing this for God. What do you mean? But this weekend was different.
I had packed a bag. And I waited till the boys were asleep and I said, It's you or me, buddy. It's you or me. I'm not doing this anymore. And he fell to his knees and said, I'll do whatever it takes.
How old were your kids at that point? Eight, ten, and twelve.
So he calls a friend, Terry, in town, but he's got a two-year waiting list. And I said, I don't care, you or me.
So he calls him in the next day, we're in his office. That is God's grace and mercy. We are evidences of God's grace over and over. And that was one of those moments. Because this is two years before our son passes away.
And so We go in, and that first session I looked at Ron and I looked at Terry and because Ron picked him out and I said, okay, we're going to go in here, but no funny business between the two of you. Layman's terms. Layman's terms. And it was a beautiful thing because Terry nailed Ron's petuti to the wall during that first session. It was so beautiful to watch.
What did he say? What do you mean by that? What happened? May I tell that? Please do.
We walked in the first session and Nan started talking and for 20 minutes talked about how lonely she was. He allowed me to go first, which was so kind. She laid it out. Um I sat and listened and Even then in my head, I was doing that yeah, but the Yaba defensiveness that I'm so good at. Terry just looked at her and did a simple little reflective statement.
Number one, he pinpointed Nan's deepest bruise, abandonment. And number two, he showed me how arrogant I was. He just simply said, So, Nan, what you're telling me is the reason Ron threw you under the bus. Abandonment. It's because God told him to.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. And instantly I was cut to the heart. Because I knew in that moment God would never tell me to do that. But that's what I've been claiming. That's what I've been falling back on.
And I am really wrong. I don't even know, begin to know how. I've gotta wrestle with this whole thing. And that led me down a road of. studying pride and humility, which is something we still talk about every single day of our lives.
And I was deeply convicted. And I don't know. And you cried that session hard. And, you know, I had been so hurt. That you would think that that would have melted my heart.
And I just sat there and in my pride thought. Good.
Now you're getting yours. Finally. Finally. But that was the beginning of Ron's humbling. Did you apologize, Ron?
Oh, yeah, over and over and over again. But but you know, even uh I mean, fast forward another 15, 20 years from that moment. I still apologize. Like I still am. Finding those parts of me that I'm like, oh man, there it is again.
Like, you know. It's not over. This journey's not over. God's still sanctifying us. But I mean, the story isn't okay.
That one session did it.
Well, it was a healing moment, and it began to turn a corner. But we still had trust issues. We still had hurt and anger and resentment. Two years, Terry worked with us, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, Nan, this brokenness, this woundedness, this family of origin, this. these wounds that you have?
'Cause one day I said, You know, I hate that passage in Psalm 139. For I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I said, okay, I got the wrong womb. Mm-hmm.
Why did God choose that one? I've been trying to scrape this whole deal off for my whole life. And Terry said: if you would allow God to heal that, it will be the most beautiful part of you. And I sat there and I said, What are you saying? I don't understand what you're saying.
And then two years later, Our son Connor passes away. The bottom drops out. And I've never felt more abandoned in my life. By God.
So I've got a truckload. I mean, I really feel like it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. And it was a truck load of abandonment on abandonment. On abandonment. And I mean, we did everything right.
This is the son that I am connected to. This is. This is our life here. I'd never known such pain. I'd never known such anguish.
I'd never known. such heartache and I Didn't know. How to do it?
So you went from My family's abandoned me. My husband's abandoned me, but now God has abandoned me. Taken something.
So sacred.
something that I was really good at, and something that brought me so much joy. And I would cry out to him, and I'd hear nothing, I'd feel nothing. There were times when I Wanted to take my life. You know, it's just one of those heartaches like none other. And at the beginning, We grieved.
Together. We were thrust together. And for four years, we were just like. Together. And it was like I felt like I'd, in some ways, gotten my husband back.
Yeah, and I want to add, think about the significance of that again in hindsight. We're reeling from the loss of our 12-year-old son and The gap between us had been closing But now, out of pure survival, it had to close. It had to just completely close. And everything else in the world stopped mattering. You know, we talk about how travel, yeah, how grief recalibrates you.
And it's like, so all the things that we kind of selfishly pursued in the world all of a sudden seemed stupid and dumb at that point in time. And other people were dumb because they're worried about their little flat tire.
Well, that's not a problem. You want to talk about problems. We can talk about problems. And so it sort of like pushed everything in the world away from us and thrust us. together and For four years, we grieved together.
We were saying the same things. We were feeling the same things. I mean, I would say something very angry and upset, and he'd go, Yeah, me too. And I'm like, Really? Oh my gosh, I didn't know you could feel that way.
And I just felt like I had a partner in this. But I also Need to say that We had had some very well intentioned friends that had left. alcohol in our home after the funeral and said, hey, if you ever need to just take the edge off. We left you something. Mm-hmm.
Teetotalers, but maybe be an anniversary or a birthday, but you know, one glass, and but it wasn't a regular thing for us, but. what started out as a Okay. I think that might help. I want to try that because the pain was so intense. And prescription medication to help sleep, help the anxiety, help the depression.
Became a full-blown addiction for me and an abuse of all of those substances.
So what started out? Very innocent. Was a 12-year numbing problem for me. Ron, did you have any idea? Yes and no.
Yes, I knew she would have a glass of wine before going to bed at night. No, I didn't know after I went to sleep, she'd get up and have three more. He didn't know the extent of All the medication I was taking on top of that. And we didn't know, neither one of us knew the drug interaction between the alcohol and the prescription meds. And that was a really toxic sort of thing.
Anyone that. has dealt with substance abuse knows once you do a certain amount, you have to up the ante because it once you get to a certain level. Tolerance. The tolerance is there, you know, and unbeknownst to me, I didn't know that alcohol and these prescription drugs and other things that I was trying to take to sleep is causing that vicious cycle of you can't sleep. Your anxiety is worse.
Your depression is worse. And honestly, after four years, our grief journeys took a turn. And Ron went another way, and I was still ruminating and circling in my grief and angry. And there was a day one day when Ron just said, Yeah, babe. I don't know what to do.
Yeah, I don't know what to do with this. You keep going, you've got to not keep doing this. And I heard. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong.
Which is what I said to her for years and years and years early in our, so it sounded very much like the exact same thing. And let me run this by you. And I think how our grief separated was I don't know, this seems a little simplistic, but I was trying to figure out how to move toward God. Yes, you were. After year five or so in the grief and sadness, and you were.
resentful and angry and felt abandoned by him, and so he was unsafe.
So why move toward him? And so that just inherently put us in very different places where we kept trying to close that gap and love on each other and serve each other well. there became antagonisms in the midst of that. And uh challenges and then Well, and to be curious about behavior. Frankie took the job here, which was a huge platform, a big stage.
Everybody loved him. He's the expert. And Mm-hmm. don't wake that dragon. 'Cause, you know, Terry had kind of calmed that down.
And I started to see Ron change. And then he was at my side. At a very Heartbreaking time. And then it's, you're not doing grief right. And I've got a platform, and everybody in this building loves me.
And let me just tell you. It got. Ugly. The drinking gut. worse and the bitterness and the anger and really I had my hand up to God.
I didn't want to hear scripture. I didn't want to hear songs. I didn't I closed myself off to everything that had any light in it. And I believe that's the season when. The enemy took a foothold, not just a foothold, he took up residency.
Because anything Ron said, anything that was done, Inside of me I am just... Angry. Tell me what was going on in your head. Like, what were the thoughts that would come to your head? If only you all knew.
What he had done, what he's capable of, how he's hurt me. And what were the thoughts that you were feeling about yourself. You're a mess. I mean, there are a couple of times that I tried to quit and I had so much withdrawal. I thought, okay, great, Nan.
Your husband's got this huge platform, this big ministry. He's this. I mean, everyone loves him and you're going to have to go to rehab. You'll ruin his career. He'll ruin his name.
And ironically, I just have to add, you know, earlier in our marriage, I would have been So angry and devastated about that because it would have reflected negatively on me, I think. That's the way I graded myself, right? But ironically, at this season of our marriage, I could care less. I wasn't worried about any of that. And yet we couldn't come together around what was needed.
Did you know it didn't matter to him at that point? Or because you kept it quiet. Right. And you know, my boys, I'm empty nests. My you know, I've got one that's moved off and one that's college.
And you know, if he did travel, I'm at home with the dog. And You know, I can drink as much as I want, or I can just numb and totally hiding. Totally hiding. Yeah. Totally hiding.
And I would look at myself in the mirror and say, You're a mess. You either need a mental hospital, you need rehab, I would just think about What's happened to you? Who are you? And it was about 2019 when I was white knuckling it to work and I was just like. I know my heart is as black as coal.
I know it's as hard as a stone, God. I don't even know if you would take me back at this point or if you could even create a clean heart in me. I have no clue. I was spiraling in 2019. It got ugly.
And, you know, it's just. The amount that I was drinking and taking Was awful, and I wasn't eating a whole lot, and I know I just wasn't. I just felt. like I was just a toxic mess. And no, there were times when I wanted to say something to Ron, but I just didn't even know.
I felt so ashamed. I hated myself. I hated myself for thinking those things, saying those things in my head, ruminating over those things. And it's like I couldn't unhook. From the pain, and I felt it 24/7 of the grief and the loss, the abandonment.
I mean, I felt like I had made a mess of my life. And I didn't know how to stop. And I tried a couple of times and I didn't know how to stop. And I didn't know who to turn to for help. On my side, I was.
wrestling constantly with Yeah. How do I love her? How do I serve her? What can I do? And I don't want to be near this person.
I don't like her at all. I could feel that. I loved her. I've told her I never stopped loving her, even in the worst of those moments. But I didn't like her, and I didn't know what to do.
You didn't know there was an addiction. No, I didn't know there was that that drug interaction thing that was going on that was I just knew she wasn't sleeping well and memory loss. Like there were there were things she was doing that she didn't have conscious awareness of because of the drug interaction. And so neither one of us were really keen to all that was going on below the surface in this. period of time.
Um And along that, something great happened. COVID.
Okay. COVID Ron goes on a five-day trip. He prefaced, which I took it wrong, of course. He prefaced, Hey, I'm going on this five-day trip. I've got this, this, and this.
I'm not going to be very much available to you. And that was me trying to serve her and let her know what was coming. And all I hear is, so, hey, I'm not going to be available because I got to serve all these other people.
So, and do my wonderful stuff. Yeah, and you're not as important. And that day he leaves, I get sent home. From school, and I'm good at what I do, and I love teaching, and I'm really good at what I do. I get sent home.
And when Ron travels, I get all of my dinners set up and I get all of my people lined up so that I'm not alone because Nan can't be alone with herself because she can't trust herself. And everybody's canceling on me because of this COVID thing. Oh, I can't come to dinner. No, I can't come this weekend. My sister can't come.
A friend can't come. And I am left alone. And he's unavailable and I go on the biggest bender. I am bottoming out. He calls me at one point on one night and we get about five minutes.
Well, I'm in between things, so and I put a hole in the wall that night. And, like he alluded to earlier, there were things that I was taking and amounts that I was drinking that would cause me to not remember certain things that I would do.
So, I'm calling him multiple times, leaving messages, calling him over and over and over as he's trying, like 51 times at one point. I'm calling my boys. I'm threatening to hurt myself. I'm getting a call from one of our sons saying, Mom, scaring me to death. My daughter-in-law is saying, You need to go up there and take care of your mom.
I'm totally unaware of all of it. And then I wake up that Sunday morning, and the boys are calling me. I'm. totally have tortured my family all weekend long. And Ron comes home from that trip.
And the look he gave me was I don't know who you are. And I thought it was over.
Okay. And I knew with myself it was over. I just didn't know what to do. I just at bottom. Oh, it's the bottom.
You're listening to Family Life Today, and I know that we just ended on a cliffhanger, and you want to know what happened. It's a powerful story, and their book is called The Mindful Marriage that really kind of walks through their whole journey. And the subtitles create your best relationship through understanding and managing yourself. And I would encourage you to really just go right now and go to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes and pick up their book. Yeah.
But also, something that Ron and Nan lead is our blended ministry here at Family Life. And every year they do a blended and blessed conference that you can live stream from your home for free. Yeah, it's free. You can watch it and experience that conference. You can actually go to it if you want.
You can register at Family Life. LifeToday.com and click on the link in the show notes there. But I mean, what an amazing thing to be able to sit in your own family room with your spouse and be a part of a conference that is the world we live in. That God can impact your marriage right there in your home. And I don't know if you have checked out the blended ministry that we have here at Family Life.
If you're in a blended family, we have so many tools for you that can help you with parenting, with your marriage, with so many things.
So again, you can get the link for the book in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link and also check out the conference there as well. And we'll be back and finish Ron and Nan's story tomorrow. See you then. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
Yeah.
