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Go to familylife.com slash shop and get your discount and get your stuff and get ready. God is going to change lives in your family room as you lead that small group. We believe we can do things by ourselves. And I felt like I could go to D.C., I could conquer that city, I could do it all by myself. And God slowly softened my heart that you need me. You need me.
But not only do you need me, you need a man who submits to me that will lead you. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So I think we have the most beautiful couple in the world sitting with us to interview today. We've had a lot of couples, but I'm telling you, you two are studying.
Honestly, Alan and Jennifer Parra are with us and they're embarrassed now, I'm sure. But I got to ask you this. Have you ever done any modeling?
I definitely have not. No, not at all. And people say you look like Denzel Washington. You do!
You totally do! I'm a little afraid of you right now. You know, an equalizer, you might take me out. Right, right. Jennifer, have you? No professional modeling.
Well, if you're listening on just audio right now, you might want to go to the YouTube channel, Family Life YouTube channel, and take a look. Because I know Ann and I are so good looking, but we're nothing compared to this couple. We concur, we concur.
But you guys, we're really excited for you to be here today. Alan, you didn't get married until... Forty. And did you say it was on his birthday? Yes. Well, tell us your story.
How'd this happen? Yes. I mean, because people know, at least Alan, do they know you as well on YouTube? Yeah, Jennifer, you're on YouTube. We've done some relationship videos, so it's been fun, and I sneak in here and there. What a lot of people don't know is when we started the ministry was the year we got married.
And just two people that have a heart for the Lord. So my background is in communications and journalism. And so I was behind the camera and I was like semi-producing and he was in front of the camera and we were trying to keep our videos to five minutes or less. So I'd be like, wrap it up, babe. Come on, we gotta go.
But he's such a theologian and, you know, you can just preach for hours, right? Yes. So we, I don't think a lot of people know that, but now I'm a mom as well as a wife. And so you've been married how many years? Eight years.
It'll be nine this November. And how many kids? Two kids. And they are how old? Seven and five. Seven-year-old girl, five-year-old boy.
That's really fun. Parenting is real in this season. At one point we had two under two and that was really stressful.
We tell people that the hardest phase of marriage is when you have little kids. Absolutely. Because you're tired. Yes. You have no, you think that they've gotten him to sleep through the night, but then they get sick.
Did you hear the way he said he's tired? Yes. Yes.
Or they're teasing or then you go on vacation or there's a time change and everything changes. Yeah. It's hard.
Because you work all day. And you're not in your 20s having a five-year-old and seven-year-old. You're in your 40s. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
It's a different world. And I don't mind saying my age. I'm in my 30s. Late 30s. You're young. You're young. Late 30s. I turned 40 this year.
Wow. Well, how'd you guys meet? We met on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2014. That's like the most cliche date to me. Valentine's Day.
Seriously. The worst day for singles. If you're a Christian single, right? Because you're trying to do the right thing, but you feel the pressure of just having to be in a relationship. And you feel alone. You're lonely.
You feel alone. So our church had an event. It was a singles event. And I was just serving. I was a greeter at the door. And I was not there looking for a relationship. But then Denzel. I mean, how could he turn down Denzel Washington walking through the church doors and coming through my door, too? But he did?
He did. And I think it's really important to understand that I had been in so many unhealthy relationships, even though Denzel looking like was walking through the door, I was so laser focused. I didn't even see him. I was just there to serve.
Didn't really notice him. But I had a conversation with him. But I love that you didn't, in a way, because you were so focused. You just said, I was so focused on serving, which feels like the opposite sometimes.
We're so focused on finding this perfect person if we're single. Yeah. But I want to know if Alan noticed. Oh, I noticed.
Yeah, I thought so. I don't know what she noticed, but I noticed for sure. And that's what led to us having a conversation. And we talked.
People were dancing and listening to music and eating and things like that. But I was like, really struck because I had dated different girls before I met her and couldn't seem to find the right girl. And there was something about that conversation that we had that first night at this party that was different for some reason.
I did. I just felt something different. And my friend who actually happened to be the best man at my wedding, he was with me because he was single too. And I told him after we talked for, I want to say we talked for about 45 minutes or so on and off throughout the night, just kind of, I'd go back and find her and we continue our conversation. And I told him, I said, something is different about her.
So essentially after that, I'd say about maybe a month later, we started going out on what she liked to call appointments because she didn't want to call it a date. I was laser focused. So Jennifer, when you had that conversation, did you kind of feel that same thing?
What was so unique? I do remember our conversation. It's just that I didn't want to engage my heart too much because I had done that in the past too early. So I was just serving and he was another guy that walked through the door that I was saying hello to, but I stopped my heart there. What I do remember though is that he did keep coming back. The intentionality was what I noticed that night that I had not observed before because most guys, you know, you're at a singles event instead of church, you're making your rounds, right? You make rounds, but he kept coming back.
So that was the first sign of intentionality that I think is so important that for a man to have when at least pursuing a woman. You liked that he wasn't afraid to come back. No, he was not. He wasn't passive. No, he was not.
He was confident, it sounds like. And my big afro didn't even scare you because it was a seventies party. So I had a big afro that had sunglasses. Not a real pair.
Not a real pair. She put one on. Yeah. But I was in... She was in costume. Yeah.
And you were dressed in the clothes that we grew up in. Yes. Exactly. See how it's coming back now? I know it is coming back. Now it's in.
Yeah. So what's interesting is that another reason that she didn't mention as far as not engaging her heart is that little did I know that when I met her, she had already been making plans to move to Washington DC to work out there because she had never lived outside of Texas and felt like she wanted to explore and kind of spread out a little bit. We started dating and in my mind, I'm falling in love by the second.
I'm thinking this is the one for me. Two months in, I've already communicated on the third or fourth day. My intentions about, hey, I'm here. I'm serious. You know, I'm not trying to just, you know, find somebody just to hang out with. I'm a minister. I'm looking for a ministry partner. I'm looking for a wife.
I'm serious. And I thought that she was kind of on board. And then like a month later, she hit me with, yeah, I got a job offer in Washington DC and I'm taking it and I'm going to be moving to DC. And in my mind, my whole world was like shook right then and there. I'm like, how could you do that?
And don't you not see we're building something here in Dallas? You're going to complicate our relationship by making it long distance. And so I had a choice. What happened? Yeah, I know.
It's like a drama. I know. Well, you notice how that intentionality came back in, right? I had prayed for a man that had good intentions, godly intentions. And when he said, I'm not looking for a girlfriend, I'm looking for a wife. I was like, are you talking to me?
Like me? Had anyone said that to you? Nobody had ever said that to me. So I prayed for that. And then I got it.
I feel like God gave it to me. And then I became fearful. So you're afraid. So I was like, all these doubts came on. Am I going to make a good wife? Am I ready to be a wife? Is this what I want?
You know, but this is what if he's like the other guys, what if he's like the other guys? So I took that job because I think the enemy had done a great job. I thought you're going to say you didn't go. She left. I took that job and I left. And it wasn't his fault.
But prior to meeting him, I was in a relationship that I had turned down a job to stay for that person. It didn't work. So I was so laser focused.
And then you throw in doubt, you throw in fear, all these things that the enemy can just take and run with. And I said, peace out. Yeah, she got in her car, packed all her stuff, moved to DC. And for the next year, we were long distance dating. We were long distance. So you continued?
Yes. So you continued to pursue her? We continued. And neither of us had had experiences before that were positive with long distance dating. It just complicated things. It made it difficult. But there was once again, there was something in me, there's something special that I said, you know what, I've not found this with anyone else.
What was it? I feel like with every other woman that I had ever dated, I call it the big three, physical emotional, spiritual. And I kid you not, every single woman I had ever dated before her, there was always one of those three that were missing. Either I was physically attracted to them and spiritually they were on point. We could pray together, we could talk about the word, but there wasn't like a friendship connection. It wasn't like a joy to be around each other. We didn't laugh. We didn't have fun together. There wasn't like a sense where we could talk all day and it wasn't these awkward silences and different things like that.
Or it was the other two, right? Hey, we could talk all day and I'm physically attracted, but they don't love Jesus. You know? So I met her and I was like, wow, I checked all the boxes.
Everything was there and I felt a peace about that. And so I said, you know what, even though she's making this decision, what I didn't want to do is give her an ultimatum and say, hey, if you really want to be with me, you need to stay here because I knew the spirit of the Lord told me that if I do that and she does stay, she could resent me for a long time, not allowing her to go away. It's so amazing to me how short term, our thinking is so short term. Whenever we think, oh, you know, we're going to be away from each other for a year. Are we going to be able to make it like we've been married eight years now and we hardly even remember that was like, yes, I mean, so we need to be careful not to make long term decisions based on a short term reality. You know, our short term reality is we're dating long distance for a year, but don't say, whoa, I'm just going to give this up because you could be missing out on a lifetime of love. And I'll say the last thing is that talk to them about how that really helped our relationship as well. Oh my goodness, a solid foundational friendship. When you remove the physical aspect of a relationship, you have no choice but to focus on other things. This was the first relationship I had been in where while we were dating, I grew closer to Christ than to him.
Most guys want to pull you in so you can get connected to them. But my relationship with the Lord grew so much. And it was because of our conversation, we had Bible studies over the phone, we talked for how long?
Tell them the record. Seven hours. We had one conversation. We had the screenshot. No, you didn't.
This is like a lifetime movie. We showed him at our wedding the screenshot. When we got off the phone, I screenshotted it. We were on the phone for like over seven hours. Was it late at night? We started a conversation at like eight. Okay. That used to do that.
Get off till three or four in the morning. You know, I'm thinking about it. We did the same thing. We started dating. Dave went to college in Indiana.
I went to college in Kentucky. We had not spent five consecutive days together until we got married. And so we did the same thing.
You're right. We just talked. And I think what you just said about the spiritual component, that you're falling deeper in love with Jesus. I remember one night after dropping in off at her parents' house, I get in my car, I'm driving home.
I'm 21, 22 years old. I had never been in a Christian dating relationship in my life. I was a pretty new Christian about a year now.
And every one of them was without Christ. So now... Well, she said she was. Yeah. Well. They say.
They say. That's how they teach you. You know that story.
I know that story. But honestly, I said I was, but I wasn't. I really wasn't.
You weren't a disciple. But I remember driving away from, literally backed out of the driveway, I'm leaving her house and I scream impromptu at the top of my lungs, I love Jesus. I think that was the best scream. Oh, I remember, I remember it sort of reverberated in my little car and I'm like, what did I just say? And it hit me.
Spending time with this woman is making me fall more in love with Jesus. Right. And I remember comparing it, like when I left my old girlfriend, right. It was never this. And I remember just thinking, this is the way God wants it to be.
You're falling deeper in love because of the person you're spending time with. Because we're going on mission together. So good. And that's so different. Right. We call it purpose partners.
Yeah. We feel like that's what God put us together. We're purpose partners. We want, we are able to fulfill our individual purposes at a better level together than we ever would. Like we, because I remember the first time we talked for a long distance.
It was just one of our first dates. I thought this guy is going to change the world for Christ and I want to do that. Right. And so it said, I don't care if I'm not with him, I'm going to do that anyway. But together, what would that look like? So what happens? You get married the next day? What happened?
Well. I love that you said that because something started to happen in my heart as well. So remember when I left Dallas, I was fearful, right?
I was fearful of being a wife or being pursued by someone who was looking for a wife. But as I was in DC, I was just plugged in and as I'm growing spiritually, I realized like this city is great and I'm doing great things here, but it means nothing if I'm not doing it with a person that God has called me to do it with. And there's a light bulb moment that went off because before I left Texas, I told God, isn't that funny? I told God, I'm not coming back here. And I'm sure God was going to be like, okay, Jennifer, just wait, just wait. Because she loved DC, loved it, especially from Texas.
Just for a lot of reasons. But one, just seasonally, I'd never experienced cherry blossoms, I didn't know what a cherry blossom was. I got there and I was like, wow, there's a whole festival around this, but you know, you can have all that, but it means nothing if you're not really able to really live out what you feel God has called you to do and to do that with someone who's on the same mission. So I just remember having this light bulb moment and he had been the one the whole time.
I just needed to see that and trust what God had put on his heart too, to lead me as well. So during that eight months, we developed a solid friendship. And this is one thing I would say is so important is just to have friendship because now looking back, we're in the thick of it.
Like you said, parenting and this season of marriage can be a little hard with little kids. Sometimes we may not love each other, but we like each other because we're friends. I'm like, I miss my friends.
So I'm just being honest. That dating allowed us to develop a very solid friendship. Tell me what you did with your fear because you were so afraid to step into it. I trusted God and I know that sounds so cliche, but we believe we can do things by ourselves and I felt like I could go to DC, I could conquer that city, I could do it all by myself. And God slowly softened my heart that you need me.
You need me, but not only do you need me, you need a man who submits to me that will lead you. And so that's another thing that I would say is that prior to Alan, I would always focus on chemistry. Oh, me and this guy don't connect or we have great chemistry, but he may be toxic, but we have great chemistry. I know we're going to talk about red flags, right?
I missed all those red flags focusing on chemistry. And this was the first relationship where his character trumped our chemistry. He had such a, and he still has solid character. And so I think God was trying to show me that focus on this.
He has great character. That's not going to change. Focus on me. And the fear slowly started to melt away. Chemistry can change sometimes over the course of a relationship, course of a marriage. You know, you have, you know, moments where you feel things strong at other times you don't and you know, it can kind of, but character you're right. Also chemistry will change. Yeah. Yeah. Chemistry will change.
Because I mean, different seasons, right? I mean, you know, when you're seven months pregnant and hormones are raging and you know, it's like, okay, well, chemistry looks a little different in those times, you know, I still love you. I still love you. I still love you in all seasons, but I was going to say also something else to help you with your fears. You had some godly women in your life that helped you, really encouraged you about, you know, what's more important to have this career and be this career woman, you know, in DC crushing it and slaying all your career goals or is this where you want to be or do you want to have a family one day? Do you want to settle down? I think you had some really good women that helped.
Oh, it's so important. I think that if you're younger or just as, you know, the younger generation, there's no reason to be scared of older people. Like they're all because they're wise, lean into that. I had some women who spoke life into me and just said, Jennifer, this is great, but I just want to give you a perspective of what is important long term, right? And don't be fearful of this.
Focus on that. And so that really helped because fear is natural. It's a real emotion and it's okay to have. But I love too, you meet each other at a church at a singles event. You've got godly women pouring into you that are giving you feedback. And I think sometimes as singles, we're out places trying to meet a possible mate, a future husband or wife.
And I love that you're at a great church and I think that would be a great step for a single person too. Absolutely. Yeah. I've seen the Lord do an amazing transformation in my wife because when we did meet, her career was very, very important and I was doing communications, journalism, all that. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, she was wanting to move up and then she even actually ended up getting the dream job and she was working for Toyota.
I mean just a great company. She loved the company. She I'd say about four years ago, maybe three years ago, we made the decision to bring her home so she could focus more on family and ministry and different things like that. And that was a huge sacrifice and that really was more, God put that on her heart. It wasn't me pressuring her saying, I need you more here.
The more she was trying to juggle, and I know many of our listeners will understand, appreciate this, she was trying so hard to juggle being a mom, being a wife and working full time at a very demanding company, demanding job. And you loved it. And I loved it. It wasn't that you didn't like it. You loved what you were doing. It just created a lot of difficult tensions in our marriage dynamic.
Yeah. I mean, picking up the kids from daycare and sometimes being the last one, then I'm up there trying to do videos and I'm like, well, I can't pick them up because I'm in the middle of doing this. And it was just so, and you could have pressured her into feeling all of that or making her feel guilty or manipulate the situation. But you let God, the Lord did a transformation. And she came to me one day and was like, I just feel like as much as I love my job, I feel like the Lord is calling me to give this up and be more available for my family.
And she's done that. And I can say that I personally think that that was one of the best decisions that we could have ever made for our family. Have you ever regretted that, Jennifer? Absolutely not.
Wow. I grieved it. Change is a good thing.
It's not bad. And I grieved it for about six months because that's all I had known, but I realized I was grieving something that I had put so much into. It became my identity. And I think God was stopping my heart to say, I didn't give this to you or this opportunity to you to replace me or just replace your identity. And it did that if I'm being honest. So I grieved that. I had to unlearn a lot of things to now learn, okay, this is a blessing.
This is a gift. It's been amazing. I'm trying not to get emotional when I think about it, but it really has been. And once again, we talk about character, that character came in where he never pressured me.
You know, it just was, okay, babe, you're ready. All right. I support you in this. And he supported me when I was in it, but that was what that wise woman was showing me that character is way more important than all these other things you're looking at in a godly partner. And I'll add one thing too, is that I think my wife is from West Africa. She's from Nigeria. She comes from a line of very strong women who have careers. Some of them were kind of the primary breadwinners financially in her family. And that was one thing that she had to deal with is, well, how am I going to contribute to our family? How am I going to help? That's where some of that identity. Yeah. How am I going to help them?
Because all I know and all I've seen is strong women who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, CPAs, different things. And they're doing these things. And she had to deal with, well, what am I going to... What's my contribution? What's my contribution now going to be to the family?
And that's why I say I see a transformation there because she didn't realize at the time that just being a present mother and a loving, supportive wife is a greater contribution than you could ever imagine for your kids, for your husband. And I'm so thankful. Well, it's interesting. We were going to talk about 15 or 10 or five red flags.
We're out of time. But I want to highlight something that you said that this whole story has said about a red flag. Character trumps chemistry. Absolutely. Just the way you said that, I'm like, that's a book title. That's a chapter title. Yeah.
Elaborate just a second on that. Why is character so important? Because we live in a culture that says chemistry is what it's all about. Absolutely.
If you don't have that, forget it. But again, we're not saying it isn't important compared to character, right? I think we make a lot of decisions based on our feelings and chemistry is feeling based. It's how we feel about that person or how does that person make me feel? And that's important.
Right? It is important. But I don't think Jesus teaches us to operate on just feeling and character doesn't change. Your character is heart rooted with the Holy Spirit.
It's grounded and that typically doesn't change. If someone were to come to me and say, oh, we heard Alan Part robbed the bank. I got to be like, not my Alan Part because his character, you know, we kind of drift a little bit, but we always come back to who we are. And that's that foundational piece I think is way more important than the emotional based. And so that's why I look back and the decisions we've made together, his character creeps in.
Yeah, that's, of course, he didn't pressure me because that's who he is. And I think if you're single, it's okay if you've made some poor decisions based on your emotions, especially as women, right? But God gave us emotions for a reason, especially women.
It's not a bad thing. I just think it's important to, as we grow, to focus on what is more, what doesn't change and that's God. Even the characteristics of God we see, yeah, they don't change, right? I mean, in some ways, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is character and our walk with God. That's where our character comes from. Character is king.
It's true. So walking with God is really the way to develop character and watch your life change for God's glory and for our good because who doesn't love someone who has deep, rich character? I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Alan and Jennifer Parr on Family Life Today. If you want to learn more about Alan Parr's ministry and see that he has over a million subscribers on YouTube, we're going to put a link to his YouTube channel called The Beat in our show notes. And you know, it's approaching the end of August and as you're getting ready for small groups coming up in the fall, we wanted to let you know that all Family Life workbooks are now 25% off for the rest of this month. So you can go to the show notes at familylifetoday.com, look around and pick out something that will work best for you as you start a small group this upcoming fall. Again, you can head over to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes. Now tomorrow, the Wilsons are joined once again by Alan and Jennifer Parr to unpack a few more red flags in unhealthy relationships. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
