When Anxiety Hits Your Marriage: Dr. Ed Welch

Sometimes I think that you think that when you're struggling with fear, anxiety, that I'm not a very good husband.

And when my kids struggle with that, I don't think I did a great job. If I'm in like a mood that's not super joyful. Okay, you don't have to be that honest.

I know where you're going to go with this. You're like, what's wrong? Why are you so sad? And I'm not sad, but I'm just quiet. That's because you have positivity as one of your highest strengths. And when you're not positive, I almost crumble.

I'm just being honest. It's like I don't do well when you're struggling and I need to do better. 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 or on the Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. So we've got help in the studio. Ed Welch is back with us. Ed, you're my counselor today.

You were yesterday, too, but welcome back. Thank you. What are you thinking?

I need help? Well, you're saying a couple of things. One is something I can appreciate, that my wife's well-being is my own well-being.

If she's not right, then I can't be right. So that's the baby way to live, of course. The other is Psalm 62, 8. If we're having a harder day, pour out your heart.

The psalmist is the one who exhorts us to do that. The Lord is a refuge. Pour out your heart.

Pour out your heart. That's how we do life in the Kingdom of Heaven. So the alternative for us as husbands is rather than trying to rescue our spouse, and husbands are notorious for trying to fix their spouse when the spouse isn't doing well. Well, sometimes I think you're making an important point. We do it for our well-being. Because if our wives aren't well, somehow the foundation for our own lives is getting a bit more difficult. But in the house of God, as we observe how does the Lord speak, He says, pour out your heart.

Tell me more about your day. There's so much in the Christian life, and even for professional counselors, that there is a simplicity to it. That's what is most helpful. It's not necessarily this profound insight the counselor brings to your life.

It's the simple things that we are brought back to, and they're refreshed to us. And then could you imagine for us as husbands to say, how are you? Pour out your heart.

Tell me more. Could I pray for you? Or even if we don't know how to pray, given what you're saying, how could I pray for you? Could there be anything more simple than that? We as husbands, we're not being real smart. We're not figuring it out. We're saying two or three things.

Could you tell me more? We want our compassion to be aroused. We want our spouses to move us, the challenges of our wife's day. We don't want to give them up until we are moved by, oh, I think I know what you're talking about. That is hard. Now how can we turn to Jesus?

What is it that we want to ask of Him? Any husband could do that. Any wife could do that as well. This is the best marriage advice ever.

I was just going to say, you just captured what a husband, a Christian husband and dad and mom and wife should look like. You've been a counselor four decades. Plus, you've got kids, grandkids.

Eight kids, yep, eight grandkids. Were you that dad? And how did you, were you that husband?

I mean, was that something you were able to do? I think I apologized to my wife regularly for the first 15 years of marriage and if she would bring a concern in my life to me, I would get defensive. When she would do things that were hurtful, it wasn't because necessarily what she said, it was the way I took it.

I would get quiet, which if you looked at us, it wouldn't look that horrible because I wasn't yelling or screaming, but it was worse. I can remember counseling in a situation where the wife said, my image of my marriage is my husband turned the other direction and walking away. And this husband was actually, he would walk away in the midst of it. I wasn't literally walking away, but indeed my wife would experience me.

My back was turned. In contrast to, here's life in God's house. The Lord turns to us face to face and shows us his pleasure and here I am doing the exact opposite of what my father does. Experience I think is useful. It's part of wisdom.

But I am always struck by the simplicity of things that are especially good and a blessing. For example, I'm not a natural leader. And so every once in a while I start thinking, how can I be a better leader for my wife?

This is what I'm supposed to be. And then I'll ask her, do you want me to be a better leader? I expect her to say, you're great the way you are. And she says, yeah, I think that would be great. And then you get defensive. I'm a pretty good leader. I've grown out of that a little bit, but all of a sudden it becomes complex.

Well, what can I do and how should I do it? But typically if we're on that path where we're thinking and thinking and thinking, we don't have the right answers. We're missing a path that is a bit more simple. We maybe put it this way.

Was it Psalm 121? When we grow up, we want to be a child. That's what we aspire to be, where it's not a matter of insight. It's a matter of dependence and also sort of getting the knack of how life works by watching our father in action. And one of the things he says is, tell me more, pour out your heart. You write in here, I love this sort of definition of anxiety. It says, when anxiety happens, it's a signal that something important to you is threatened, your money, your reputation, your relationships, or your health. Help us understand that, because I don't think often we connect that when we feel fear and anxiety, that something is being threatened. We want to pour out our hearts to the Lord in the midst of our anxiety. And there's more that we can do.

We can ask questions of it. There's a threat here. What is the threat? Well, typically, I find that the threat is financial. If this happens, will I be able to care for my wife in retirement, whatever it might be?

I'm sort of getting to those kinds of ages. Will I have enough money to care for her? Oh, yeah, that's a big one. So finances would be certainly a prominent one. Reputation would be another.

What's going to happen to me? What are people going to think? The opinions of other people. And the other would be life and death issues.

My own health, the health of those that I love. We usually don't have to go farther than those places, variations of those, to see where our anxieties lie. Now, identifying those things, is that going to help us in itself?

It's going to help us to be more specific, perhaps. Lord, here it is. I see the way Jesus lived. I see the way the disciples lived. I see how he sends people off without anything and relies on the towns they go to.

I see that, but I still feel like I need to have a little bit of a nest egg. Of course. So, Lord, have mercy. So sometimes being able to identify what the problem is, it might not help that much. But I would say, when it comes down to money, Lord, there it is again. There's the fear. This is Dave's language right here. We're talking your anxiety.

Well, thanks for telling the world. It's not so much how far we are down the road. Are we turning to Jesus a little bit more quickly? That's what we're after.

So when we see, yeah, there it is. There are the financial fears again. And by the way, I used to use the financial fears as a way to say, Shari's my wife. Say, Shari, I have these fears because I'm concerned for you.

There you go. And then she would say, well, I don't have those fears. That's what I would say. I said, that's no fair.

So that really is my particular problem. I mean, I want to go, you're just naive. You should really be scared. And the Lord is so gracious to us. He has compassion for us.

Because to live without much in the bank, to live when you watch the silos going down, life is in jeopardy in such a situation. And he's not rolling his eyes, shaking his head, saying, when's this guy ever going to trust me? He says, turn to me. Speak about these things. And perhaps we might say, how can I grow from a person of little faith in this area to a person who has bigger faith, which is a lifetime worth of work. And it's a lifetime worth of work by who is this God that we trust?

That's what we're doing with finances. But another fear that I tend to have is I have fear of death. What do we mean by fear of death? I found in my own life there are two particular fears of death. The first one I noticed was, again, this might sound silly, but I would often talk to my wife about hoping there were visiting privileges in heaven because she was going to live in a completely different area code than I was.

And I was just hoping that I would be able to visit. Because she's more spiritual, she'll have better digs? Absolutely.

And then a heavenly ghetto, I'm sure, is a fine thing. But there are times where I would think about, I would see Jesus face to face, and he would roll his eyes a little bit and say, get in there. He skimmed in.

Right. You said, Jesus is Lord, and you sought to follow me in your own wretched way. Get in there.

I can joke about that, and I would joke with my wife about that occasionally, but obviously there are seeds of truth in it. At some point, as I began to see Scripture, to see Jesus face to face is one of the grandest moments because it also means we're going to be sinless at the same time. Everything is going to change. To see the one we haven't quite seen with our eyes, to see him face to face, and it was realizing that I am not understanding reality correctly. And so it became an opportunity for me to pray, Lord, here's what I want. Some of the great prayers of Scripture in Ephesians that we would know, the expanse of the love of Christ. The Spirit does many things, but one of his prized missions is he desires to give us confidence of the love of God for us. He wants to give us confidence of the love of God poured out for us.

So you see where we're going. It's, okay, I have these fears. Okay, the fears, everybody has fears of death and dying and those kinds of things.

Well, dig in a little bit more. Well, what are those fears? I look at my life, I would be disappointed to see myself because I can see my own faults and failures, and I'm sure Jesus sees them more keenly than I do, obviously, so he's going to be even more disappointed.

Well, I am thinking of Jesus as another human being rather than as the one who delights in forgiving us, rather than the one who loves us first, who has loved us even from the very foundation of the world. So you can see how fear is an occasion to say, Lord, search me, to begin asking questions of our hearts. Where does that fear lie? And there might be other things that the Lord gives us, the Spirit gives us, but here's what we know, whatever the Spirit gives us, it's going to sound beautiful. If it doesn't sound beautiful, we're not on it.

And that's the path that he gave me. I'm just giving you one illustration of fears, the fear of death. Other fears can be how we're going to die.

That's a different question. Yeah, well, when you said that earlier, you know, our fears, something's threatened, money, reputation. I immediately thought of Matthew 6 and I thought, wow, is that why Jesus went right to that, where he says, Matthew 6, 25 says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious, here we are, about what?

Life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on, is not life more than food. So it's a long discourse all the way down to the end. And I know you know this, but it's like he's really going right after everything you just said. Your fears and anxiety are based on these things, and you just said it so well.

He's trying to say, I love you. And I, you seek me first, these things, I got them, right? That particular passage, I've known it for years, and I've wanted it to bust open more and more, and it has been busting open a little bit more. I think even over the past week, I've been thinking about this passage. There are two things in the passage that I found useful.

I mean, there are a bunch of things. One is that Jesus is calling us to seek the kingdom today. To paraphrase his conclusion in Matthew chapter six, seek the kingdom today, and your father will worry about tomorrow. He knows you, and he takes these concerns, even these financial concerns, he takes them seriously.

And he will be the one who will worry himself. There've been times at work where I've had something on my mind that I thought was important. I would tell somebody else about it, and I knew they weren't going to do anything with it. So I would keep it in mind.

That person's not going to do anything. I think this is important. Then I would tell it to another person, and they say, I got it. I know what you're saying. I'm going to do something with it. Now I can release it.

I don't have to carry this particular worry anymore because I know somebody else is now worried about it. The principle there is really this picture of manna. That's what Jesus is identifying. And manna was such a perfect treatment for the anxious heart, where for what?

For decades, Jesus will take care of... He was the manna. He gives the manna.

He was the manna. But every day he will give you what you need for that day. But the brilliance of it is, except for the Sabbath, he doesn't give you enough for tomorrow.

Because if he did, then you don't come to him. You're no longer dependent on him. As long as the manna's going to last, you're living on your own. You're living this independent life, which is the worst thing that could happen to us. How do we live dependently today? That's the beauty of the Christian life.

How do you do that day by day? What's that look like? I speak to him. I say, Lord, here it is again. I know that you have it.

What do I need to do now? What's the grace? What's the manna that you have given me for today? Lord, give me that tunnel vision in a sense. Give me those blinkers where I'm looking ahead and perhaps loving the person who's in front of me, where he will give me the grace for whenever the hard things of tomorrow happen. And there will be hard things.

So that would be one. The second thing that I found to be helpful is, let me bridge this to the passage in Matthew 8, a couple of chapters later after Matthew chapter 6. This is when Jesus is in the boat with the disciples.

He sleeps in the boat. And I believe there's something Psalmic in that. And Psalm chapter 4 talks about how we can sleep because God is awake, because he is the one who cares for us.

And Jesus was this living illustration of that in the boat. What happened is they didn't take their cue from him. They never said, well, he's back there sleeping, so he's okay with us.

So I guess everything's okay. I can think of a bunch of illustrations for this, but for example, if we have a possibly bad diagnosis and we're going to a physician, if the physician seems to be fairly casual in his or her response, the physician's not too concerned about it, so I guess I don't have to be concerned about it as well. I think that's part of that story in Matthew chapter 8, that the disciples weren't taking their cues from Jesus. In Matthew chapter 6, it's very similar where the picture is, it's like this wonderful walk where we're on the walk, we're looking at the lilies of the field, we're looking at the birds, and he's the one who knows us. He knows the difficulties we're facing and the hard things tomorrow. But when we look at him, he's not worried. He's okay with us. And you can almost inhabit the life of a child in this, where here you're walking with your father, and all right, I don't know where this is going, and I'm a little bit concerned myself, but he's not concerned at all, so I'm just going to enjoy the walk. I'm just trying to glean a few extra things out of that. No, that's great. Here's another thought.

Tell me this, Ed. A thing that really helps me in anxiety or when I'm feeling fearful, and it often will be money or the future, is a simple word. And I think it's Deuteronomy 8. Got me in the edge of my seat.

Yeah, here it is. You'll remember this passage, where the Lord says to the nation of Israel as they go into the Promised Land, remember when you have the nice houses and you have the food, remember the Lord your God. That often, when I'm laying in bed and I can't sleep because of fear, that's what will calm me as I pour out, God, I'm scared about this.

I'm not sure about this. It's like this, just remember, have I taken care of you? Go ahead, just filter back through the last 50 years of your life. Other times when you were scared to death, think back what I did. Every time, is it not true? He was reminding the nation of Israel, when you have all these nice things, you're going to forget that these are blessings from me. Don't you ever forget. I think for me, that has helped me as well. Pour out your heart, but also remind yourself, He's come through in the past. I know He'll come through again.

I don't know what it's going to look like, but I can trust Him. That's inspiring. And this seems to be what you find in the Psalms more often than not, where they remember the past, they remember God's faithfulness. So far, that hasn't been helpful for me.

Really? I know it, I remember it, but it doesn't change the pitch of my anxieties in any way at all at that particular moment. So I think for me, it's, well, here's my own maturity. It began with, oh, you hear these anxieties, I have to do something about it. And then a day later, I say, oh, I didn't pray. So I'm finding myself calling out more quickly. It's becoming instinctive now. In some ways, that's enough.

That's gross. I feel like I've grown up enough, and that's plenty. But here's the next step for me.

I go to a church and part of a small group, and I am the leader of the small group, which means I can do whatever I want. So when we pray, I want to hear what's on everybody's heart. And then when it gets to me, there's no time left. And it's not because I'm necessarily trying to hide.

It's just I'm interested in what's on their heart. But I can remember this one, this is just a few weeks ago. There were reasons for anxieties in my life, and I almost could not get it out of my mouth. The simple request, could you pray for me for this? I find myself anxious for this and for this.

Could you pray that I would continue to fix my eyes on Jesus? And maybe, maybe even know a little tiny semblance of rest in the midst of it. I eventually asked them, but I was stunned by how difficult it was for me to confess fears. And I don't believe that fears are sinful. We're not rebuked by the Lord in the midst of our fears, but it didn't matter if it was sinful or not. It felt like a kind of weakness. And to confess my weakness to the people I loved and the people who loved me, I was stunned by my hesitancy. But that's the phase I am now, where I've been able to do that with my wife for a while, but to go outside the boundaries of my own home, to ask friends to pray for me about my own fears, and maybe even give them a passage to pray.

That's where I am now. The thing that hit me of the last 20 minutes with you was pour out your heart to me, not only to God, but to another person. And I thought, you know, Ann, do you feel that? Do our kids feel that? As a husband, as a dad, as a mom, as a wife, do you feel like you've created a space in your marriage where your spouse feels like, I want to pour out my heart to you because you want to know my heart? We know God does. And so we don't even question it.

We do. But do we feel that fear you felt with sharing with your small group? Does our family feel that? I want to create an environment in my home where my sons are like, I want to run home and tell dad. I want to run home and tell mom.

I want to run home and tell my wife because she's safe and she wants to hear it, and there'll be a comfort there. And the temptation would be just to fix it, that we become fearful as a parent or a spouse and just kind of want to fix it for them instead of asking that question, tell me more. And doesn't it make sense that the times that my wife, my children, and even some of the people I counsel, the most memorable times for them have been times where I've confessed sin or asked them to pray for me in the midst of my weakness. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that those are the most dramatic intrusions of the kingdom of heaven in their lives. When we're humble enough to be honest about how we're not doing well, these are the moments when God and others move toward us. Remember that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, and the people in our lives have a tendency to do the same, give grace to the humble.

Man, if only I lived that way more often. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Ed Welch on Family Life Today. He's written a book called I Have a Psychiatric Diagnosis. What Does the Bible Say?

It's an important question to ask, especially because mental health is very much on the landscape of people's hearts and minds this day and age. You can pick up a copy at familylifetoday.com, or you can give us a call at 800 F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. You know, I'm excited because the end of this week, Dave and Anne Wilson are going to be talking with Paul Miller in the studio. And Paul has written a book called Love Walked Among Us, Learning to Love Like Jesus. This book is really encouraging and convicting because it gives us a look of Jesus's life on Earth. Now, through that lens, it gives practical answers to questions such as how do you love when you have your own baggage in a relationship?

And when do you take care of yourself? Again, these are honest and practical questions that Paul addresses. Now, this book is going to be our gift to you when you partner with us financially here at Family Life. You can go online to familylifetoday.com or give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329.

Again, that number is 800 F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. And feel free to drop us something in the mail. Our address is Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. Now, if you know anyone who needs to hear conversations like the one you heard today, would you share it from wherever you get your podcasts? And while you're there, you can help others learn more about family life today by leaving us a review. And I'm super excited because tomorrow, my friend, Heather Holloman, is going to be with Dave and Ann Wilson. She's going to talk to us about how wherever you are, God has a reason for you to be there. And when you're there, you need to keep your eyes open for what God is going to do in your life. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann 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.