God is at work and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs. truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope.
Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. Really, the issue wasn't the issue. I was trying to. Read into, assign wrong motives to his actions.
And so often, that's how marriages start to unravel. And that's what we start focusing on: those things.
Well, Ron Destapi is with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Bailey, talking about how you can change the way you view your marriage and see some really positive results. You know, John, at Focus on the Family, we want everybody's marriage to be as healthy and intact and thriving as possible. And it's why we have so many resources for folks, whether it's a video clip or a full broadcast like this one or podcast. Whatever we're doing, we want to help you in that area. Yeah, and the show today is about ways that wives can make their marriage more joyful, whether or not their husband or their circumstances change.
We want to be clear, though, we're not trying to say women are causing all the problems in marriage. Both spouses usually make mistakes. We're all fallen people. But we want to reinforce that wives are a gift to their husbands, and we want to empower wives to see their marriage from a new perspective and to experience as much love and connection to their husband as possible. Rhonda Stoppe is our guest.
She's been a pastor's wife for over 30 years, and she's an author, marriage mentor, and speaker. And today we're going to be talking about one of her books called If My Husband Would Change, I'd Be Happy and Other Myths Wives Believe. You'll find the details about Rhonda and her many books, and that one in particular, in the show notes. Rhonda, it's great to have you back.
So fun to be back with you. Boy, you're tapping the nerve center on this one. This is like going to the dentist for a root canal. Yeah. But I'm sure it'll be insightful.
Let's start with your love story with your husband, Steve. I mean, uh,. Oh yeah. You know, I I am just crazy about him. We've been married 43 years.
Okay, good. Yes. And I actually On one of your shows. Embracing your unique love story. Steve and I go into our love story, and you guys can watch all that episode later to get all the details.
The highlight of it was he couldn't remember more. He remembered more about his 1969 Mach 1 Mustang than he did about our date life, but it did take place in the Mach 1. Wow, it sounds like the expectations are already in the gallery. Thumbs up. Yeah.
Way to go, Steve. And then we sold it when we got married to be grown-ups. And so we used whose idea was it to sell the car. I just needed to. Oh, his dad, not yours, though.
No.
Okay, I love that car. You were already a wise wife at that point. Yeah, I learned to drive in that car. But he, yeah, so I think he sold it for $3,000. It's worth over $100,000.
We used the money for our honeymoon.
So I like to say he took me on a $100,000 honeymoon. That's the way to look at it. And I'm sure your first kiss was in the car. I don't know. No, it was not.
No, it was not. It was not. Actually, and I'll say this: the first kiss, he'll. say I kissed him first. But he did that thing where he gets right up there.
And didn't lean in, just waited. He didn't have an option. And then I finally leaned in, so he will say I kissed him first, but it was a setup. I know technically, I think Steve's in the right there, but I don't know. People can write and call and text us if you just agree.
But he's super fun. He is like the love of my life. We laugh all the time. But it wasn't always laughs. It wasn't always, you know, when we got married.
So when we first get married. I walked down the aisle with that big white hat veil thing in the 70s. No, I got married in the 80s, in the 80s. When we went on our honeymoon, we took a month and we went to all the places like that I've never been. The national parks that I had never been.
Wow. And we went to Yellowstone, it was one of these places. And we'd been traveling, car rides, fast food. I got super constipated.
Sorry, just being real. And uncomfortable.
So he gets these little pills and he gives me one one night. He says, Take it, you'll be fine in the morning.
Well, I wasn't fine in the morning, but we'll try again tomorrow. We go to Yellowstone, and Yellowstone has Old Faithful.
So he's, you know, young, and we're going to hike up this hill, this mountain, to look down on Old Faithful when it erupts from that vantage point. It's going to be so good. I'm like, yeah, it's going to be so good. And at that point, you know, when you're dating and they want to go hiking, you're like, yeah, I'll go hiking. I really didn't like hiking, but I liked him.
So on a honeymoon, I'm like, yeah, let's hike. We hike up to the top of this hill. But as we're hiking, my morning coffee and that pill that I took the night before and the exercise started working. And I was like, hang on, hang on. And finally, I'm like, dude, I got to get down that mountain to that bathroom where there's going to be our own old faithful visor right here.
And he's looking at his little blushing bride going, okay. For better or worse.
So I think that's when he realized he didn't marry a princess. He married a woman with needs. But for me, when we got married, we went to work, we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, we flipped houses. we would um because it was so expensive, you know, California. And so we would live in them, flip 'em, and we had moved into this one little house and I worked full time and he worked full time and he was the carpenter.
And so he would on Black Fridays, they didn't have to work, him and his brother, or went on rainy days. And I would come home and he and his brother would be playing um Atari video games, you know, Pong and uh uh uh was that Space Invaders. And they would have made peanut butter toast for their snack throughout the day and there would be crumbs on the counter. And I would just clean them up. And the next time, there would be peanut butter toast crumbs, and I would clean them up.
And finally, one day I walked into the kitchen, and there were peanut butter toast crumbs, and I just started sobbing. And he comes in, and he's like, What is going on with the peanut butter toast crumbs? And I said, You don't care what I do all day. I felt like those peanut butter toast crumbs screamed to me. Clean it up, lady, do it again.
And he said, I was just making them on the counter instead of dirtying a plate so you didn't have to have a dish to wash.
So it wasn't really the issue, it wasn't the issue. I was trying to. Read into, assign wrong motives to his actions. And so often, that's how marriages start to unravel. And that's what we start focusing on is those things.
And when I knew I had a potential to become the wife that I had watched in my family, I come from a long line of divorce in my family. I knew I needed help. And I knew that if I didn't get some help from older women, because hashtag old ladies know stuff, that's the name of my podcast. And I will swear by that, Titus Two Women, they saved my marriage. I made friends with older women who enjoyed their husbands, and they were just amazing mentors.
That's good. Rhonda, there seems to be this eternal battle where the perception is, and it's not always the shoe on that foot.
Sometimes the roles can be reversed. And we've heard from people that say, hey, wait a minute, I'm the one that wants more physical intimacy, and this is the wife speaking. But typically, maybe that 90-10 rule, 80-20 rule, the husband's desire, the appetite that is God-given. I mean, let's face it, if we didn't have that appetite, there may be no children in the world. But that feeling like this is what he's thinking about all the time.
It's all he cares about. I'm tired of it. It just is unending. And then on the other side is this emotional need that the wife is typically. Saying, you know, you don't meet any of my emotional needs.
Why should I meet your physical needs? And it seems to be this brokered thing that we got to figure out in marriage. What's a healthy, spiritually led, God-centered way of dealing with this? You nailed it. The Lord.
Created us to long for intimacy in those specific ways. When wives understand that God gave your husband a longing to connect with you in the marriage bed. It's not wrong, it's God-given. He created in you a longing to connect with your husband through your emotions, through conversation, through all of those things.
So I'm speaking to the wives right now. Let's say your husband came home from work every day. You're a stay at home mom. You're eating the crust off the kids' peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, all the things. You're just surviving.
He comes in, you've been in the same yoga pants for a week. And he comes in, and he, you're saying, What's it like out there? What did you have for lunch? What are people talking about? And he's like, I can't, I have used all my words for the day.
I can't talk to you. And he sits in his chair and he turns on the TV and watches sports. You'd give it to him. If you did that for two weeks, you would feel unloved. And Not valued.
disconnected. In the same way, if your husband comes home for two weeks and every day you say, Do not touch my skin. I have been touched by babies, I have been nursed on. I've been talked to. I don't want that.
I'm tired. I'm too tired for that. It's the same exact rejection he feels if you are rejecting him physically as you feel. When he rejects speaking to you for that length of time, is that alluding to the golden rule you're talking about in the book? What's the golden rule?
Well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I want you to talk to me. I want you to, well, then you serve him. And I know that everyone's like, oh, you just lost me, woman. But.
He's vulnerable in this area. This is a vulnerability that he has. And the only person on planet Earth that can meet this need without him struggling with shame or fear is you. And God gave you to him to do that.
So for wives, Your husband comes home and he brings you some Gerber daisies, and you're in the thick of it, and you're doing homework with the kids, and you're making dinner, and he sees you're busy.
So he puts those daisies on the counter and he goes in and watches TV to get out of your way so that you can get done. But he's thinking he's gonna get lucky tonight because he brought you those Gerber daisies, and you're looking at those daisies, going, I'm gonna whop him upside the head with those daisies. Get in here and help me, buddy. But he doesn't. And the more that he doesn't help, the more irritated you are, right?
So when. The kids are finally in bed, and he says, you know, gives you that little wink, and you're like, no, I'm tired. If we're gonna live with our husband according to knowledge, real romance is different in different seasons of our life. When Steve and I were dating, he'd bring me flowers from across town and I would be like, oh, how romantic. When my kids were little, it's like, you wanna romance me?
Make all this crazy go away. I don't care if you feed them cereal for dinner. I don't care if they go to bed without a bath. Just give me five minutes. I've had my mama hat on all day long.
My sexy mama hat is somewhere under the bed in the dust bunnies. Let me go find it. And I'll meet you in the bedroom. You have to coach them. That speaks romance to me so much more.
Text me throughout the day. Tell me you're thinking of me. Coach them to know how to romance you because they really don't know. And we're the only one that can tell them. And I think when you've watched marriages around you unravel growing up, You know I don't want to do that.
But it's so easy to focus on what you don't want to do. that you don't really know what to focus on that you should do. But having the understanding that God called Titus to women To mentor younger women. And what did he tell them to do? To teach them how to love their husbands and love their children.
And that word for love, their husband, is to be a friend to their husband. That word is friendship love. I wanted to be my husband's friend for the rest of his life. I didn't want him to have to like walk in the door, take a deep breath. Like, how's she going to be today?
You know, walking on eggshells.
So, this book. really walks women through what I learned from the older mentors in my life. Yeah. In that regard though, the woman and I think this is pretty common today, women that feel like they're falling out of love. You know, as if it's a switch, and the fact that feelings may not be your best detector of what is true, but they have a superpower over us.
How we feel is who we are so often rather than the reality of who we are. But speak to that woman who, you know what? He just, yeah, he hasn't met my expectations. That's category one. Then it moves to.
Therefore, I don't feel like I'm as in love with him as I once was. Therefore, maybe this thing is coming to an end. Whew, that's a hard one. And I feel like we have to back up to understanding the expectations when they're not met. We start keeping a record of those expectations.
Have you noticed that? Yeah, never noticed that. And 1 Corinthians 13 says that love does not keep a record of wrong. It also says love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Believes all things in that passage means believes the best about the other person.
The same way that I want my husband to believe the best about me. I want him to do that for me. I want to do that for him. But, you know, in our own self-righteousness, it's common for us to blame someone else. And when we are judging someone else for not measuring up to our expectations and keeping a list of those, there is a tendency to fall out of love.
Because, how did you fall into love? You thought about what was good, right, honorable, praiseworthy. You rehearsed the things that you loved about that person. And it's the same way to fall out of love. You rehearse the things you don't love about that person.
You know, That's true. I'm thinking... You fall out of the feeling of love. You know, think of our relationship with the Lord. You know, if it's based on our behavior.
The Lord would be saying, I am so done with you. You haven't met my expectations. You haven't lived up to the standard I set for you. Why have you disappointed me like this? I mean, you can hear that conversation.
If that were the nature of God, thank heavens it's not. He loves you unconditionally. And it's hard to repeat in the human experience. Rhonda, let me ask you in the book, you mentioned the three R's that you encourage couples to follow to get that feeling back, that feeling of love.
So let's hit that. For hope. You know where those three R's came from? When Jesus talked to the churches in the book of Revelation, and he said, Remember from where you have fallen. He says, repent, remember, return.
And that's a beautiful picture. When our relationship is starting to not be what we had hoped it would be, when we know we need to rekindle it. If you think about it, your kids are going to emulate your marriage. What do you want for your kids? Do you want them to just tolerate their spouse or be tolerated by their spouse?
You want to live in a way that they say that's our normal. Steve and I do premarital counseling with couples, and the first thing we unpack is: let's talk about your family of origin. What is your normal? And let's create your new normal.
So, remember. The first one is repent. And that's when we talked about the log out of your own eye. Most people will judge others harshly, right? But they don't want to.
Evaluate their own sins.
So search me, O God, know my heart. Try me. Know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any wicked way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting.
And then the next one is to remember. Remember how you longed for them to look your way, to call you, to give you attention. Remember how you fell in love. Remember those magical moments. And, you know, we talked earlier about being a friend.
Remember, you were their friend. When you were dating, they were like, she's my best friend. She's going to be my best friend for the rest of my life.
Well, who do you like to hang out with? Do you have friendships where they keep record of? He didn't call me on my birthday. You haven't called me in two weeks. I've been waiting to see how long it was going to take you before you threw me a test.
Hey, you said this and it hurt my feelings. those relationships we're kind of careful with. Don't you don't want to be that spouse. You want to be the one that you know he knows that woman believes the best about me. Um in the book, you also mention a story about your parents and what they taught you and in I would say kind of sacrificial love.
I think it had to do with late-night trips to the hardware store or something. But this is one of those things to keep playfulness alive, to keep connection alive. What was the story about your parents and how did you embrace that and increase your time with Steve in a positive way?
Well, my parents were teenagers when they got married, and they were not believers. My dad came to Christ when I was four years old, and it literally changed the trajectory of our family. I actually led my mom to the Lord six months before she passed away in 2016. But. My mom and dad didn't have good examples in their upbringing.
They came from families with addictions and all that.
So they tried as the best they could. And my dad one day came in and asked my mom, Hey, I got to go to the hardware store to buy a ladder. You want to come with me? And she said, Why? Why would I want to go with you?
I uh uh And she didn't go. And I saw it deflate my dad.
So what I learned wasn't, look how they did it right. It was she just deflated him. And you could see it physically. I could see it. And I remembered that experience as a child, not dwelling on it in a resentful way, but saying, I want to learn not to be like that.
So Steve and I, we would flip houses and we would live in these houses. Let me just tell you what a mess that was, but it was like part of our story. But one night he was like, we're gonna go to Uh Hardware store, there was one open all night, and our oldest daughter was old enough to watch the two younger ones.
So we'd tuck everybody into bed and we would go to this hardware store. And then at midnight, they actually dimmed the lights. To start the new day, and then the lights come back on. And so we would go to this one hardware store, we'd grab a coffee, and they would play the best 70s music. I think they knew that it was those of us that age that were there at that time.
Drinking coffee at midnight. You guys were gangbusters. We were in youth ministry. We were up till 4 a.m. most of the time with those teenagers.
And so we. We would listen to the 70s music that we fell in love to in the aisles at the hardware store. And we would dance and he's probably going, don't tell that.
Well, he must be a good dancer. But it was so romantic. And I would have missed that if I would have said, you go, I'm going to stay here with the kids, right?
So learning from just making it fun, making it playful. You would have dropped everything when you were dating if he asked you to go, right? And so another fun story.
So Steve took a new job. We were in Texas. We had a Opportunity to come back, and he was a pastoring at a church now that he's actually been here 25 years. We just celebrated. And he was a brand new pastor there.
And I was in his office, and I was praying for him because it was a hard decision for us to come back. We really loved our church. No, in I'm sorry, California.
Okay, we loved our church in Texas that we had planted. And to come back to California, we're both Californians. California is not the easiest place to be in ministry. We came back.
So I was in Steve's office praying for him while he was out in the sanctuary doing band practice. And he's got his mic and he's playing the keyboard, singing every whole band's out there. And he comes into his office to get some music. And I grab him and I pull him to myself and I'm right in his face. And this is a family show, so I'm not going to tell you what I said to him.
But I said something like, I'm so hot for you right now, or something like to that effect. And he said, Let me just turn off my mic. And he reached back, he had his mic right by his mouth. And I just was like, No. And he's like, yes, everyone in the band.
I stayed in there till everybody went home. But those are playful memories that you just want to keep in your marriage. Honestly, especially when you're raising kids and you're sleepless nights and you're hormonal and you're tired, there's so much work to be done.
Well, that's the question I was going to ask. Very next one.
So nice setup. For that woman that is dealing with difficulties physically, emotionally that keep her from being the person, the wife that she wants to be, what do you say to her in a counseling session? I've been there. Yeah. I have been there.
And even when you know that you are, those things coming out of your mouth that you know are hurting your relationship and you just keep going. A hard season in our life. We had um The ranch that we own in California, we moved to the middle of nowhere. We lived on a generator for almost three years. We were off the grid.
You are gutsy. But I love that guy.
So I followed him. We had a one-bedroom house, slept on a sofa bed in the living room, so our two kids that we had at the time could have the one bedroom. And I had a surprise pregnancy with my youngest, did the whole pregnancy on that sofa bed. brought her home to this little cottage. And Steve's parents, his mom came down with Alzheimer's.
And so we had his dad move up on our property to a house on our property.
So he could take care of her full time. And it was hard. And I would watch his mom so his dad could go to town. And his mom, who used to love me, all of a sudden didn't love me anymore. She was irritated with me.
And it was hard. And I had little kids and I was hormonal. I had postpartum after that baby. It was a very hard season. And living on a generator.
So, you know, you're like. And sleeping on a sofa. Yeah, I'm going to turn on the generator to run the dishwasher. You can watch cartoons while I do. I mean, you know, it's all those things.
And sleeping on a sofa, no place to hide. But I remember one day Steve came in the house and I s I can see his face as I'm looking at him over the kitchen counter. And I just started in. You know, they're coming home from work and they're hi, honey. You've already had the argument.
You've already had it and you're ready to tell them what all the things you're going to tell them. Hi, honey. And he, I just said, you always, you never, this, that, and the other. And I was just dumping on him all the hard parts of my life. And he just looked at me and he said, Rhonda, what do you want me to do?
And I realized we were just in a hard season and there was nothing that he could do to fix it. There was nothing. And I was expecting him to somehow make it better. And I knew I'm wounding this man with my words. I'm trying to help him be better at what he can do, but this is the best that we have at this season.
And so I apologized to him and I promised myself I would never do that again. But our words, you can't take them back. And, you know, when we're in that place, it's so hard. And I remember saying when I was so hormonal, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, gentlemen, patience, all those things, self-control was the only fruit on my vine. I could hold my tongue, keep my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking lies and ask the Lord just to give me strength because I knew this could be the unraveling of what I wanted for our friendship, for our relationship, for our adoration of each other.
And who's watching your kids and how insecure do they feel? That's good. You know, we're right here at the end. I want to ask you this. You have a story of a married couple in the book.
If my husband would change, I'd be happy. I'm not going to give the tagline. You can give that in a minute, John. I think their names were Bill and Eleanor, who had a wonderful love story. What happened and why is it important to end on this?
That's my mother-in-law and my father-in-law.
So Bill and Eleanor, I had never seen a couple be friends with each other. I'd never seen somebody love each other the way that my husband's parents did when I met them. And over the years, I know I have to make this short, so I will. You can read the whole story in the book. Their love for Christ, for others, for sharing the gospel, they were just the picture of what I would have wanted for my marriage.
Okay. And then Eleanor came down with Alzheimer's. And Steve's dad just took care of her. And you know, the Bible, Jesus said, there's no greater love than this that a man lay down his life for his friend. And she was his friend.
How long did that take? 10 years. It was 10 years.
So for 10 years, he took care of this woman who had been his friend all of their years that they had been married. And he adored her. He wouldn't put her in a home. He took care of her. And I watched, and my kids watched that selfless love.
That didn't start the day she came down with Alzheimer's. It started the decades that they worked on loving Christ, loving each other, and loving telling people about Jesus. And the last, before she lost her ability to speak, she stopped talking, except she could speak in German. It was so funny. But I was watching her one day, and she was telling me, I led this woman to the Lord.
We have to help her. And I'm like, she never goes anywhere. Who'd you lead to the Lord? Like, literally. And I took her to the restroom later that day.
And then she was washing her hands. She looked in the mirror and she goes, That's her. And she didn't recognize herself in the mirror. That's her. That's the woman that I led to Jesus.
We have to help her. And it just so resonated with my heart that her love for Christ. even to the end. And the love that she had for her husband so reflected her love for Christ. And that is reflected in her children, her grandchildren, and now in her 15 grandchildren, her great-grandchildren that are ours.
That's what we want, right? Passing the baton on, our hope is in the few years that we're here that we will live in a manner worthy of our calling that will draw our children and our grandchildren toward Christ and to live out a marriage that they'll one day want to emulate. Wow, that is a perfect place to end. And what a beautiful love story that is. You know, we say those vows when we get married for better or worse, rich or poor, in health and sickness.
And that sounds like he kept those vows right to the end.
So well done. Rhonda, thanks for being with us. This is good. It went by really fast. And I just want to look at the viewers on YouTube and the listeners.
I just want to say we're here for you. If something that we've talked about today is resonating with your heart, get in touch with us. A good first thing to do is let's get you a copy of Rhonda's book. If my husband would change, I'd be happy. And other myths, wives believe.
And it's a wonderful resource. You got a taste of it through the program today. Maybe you know somebody who needs. That kind of help. Also, we have a marriage assessment tool.
It's free. You can take it. It takes like seven, eight minutes to do, and it will, in a good way, point out the things you're doing well and some areas you may need to work on. And man, it's just a good way to get started to get to the marriage that you really want and that the Lord wants you to have. That's the key.
And let's get started. If you can make a gift of any amount, monthly or one time, we'll send you a copy of Rhonda's book. To get started, you help us in ministry. We can help you in your marriage, and we can go from there. Yeah, you can find that marriage assessment, ways to donate, and request the book.
If my husband would change, I'd be happy, and other myths wives believe. All the details are in the show notes, or you can call us 800, the letter A in the word family.
Well, join us next time as Cynthia Tobias explains how to get along with family or coworkers who have a different thinking or learning style. How many of you know someone who is definitely Not like you. You know they don't think like you. Did you also know this? They don't want to think like you.
On behalf of the team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. God is at work and he's calling his people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. see how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs truth.
Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope. Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. Yeah.
