Best of 2024: Loving the Spouse God Gave You (Part 1 of 2)

When his wife became pregnant with their fourth child, Greg panicked. But a focus on the family counselor put everything into perspective. He said, the first thing you need to realize is kids are a blessing. They're all of the blessings.

They're gifts from God. The second thing he said was, kids value relationships, not stuff. Greg and his wife found the encouragement they needed, and today they have a happy, thriving family of seven children.

We had been really influenced by the culture and by just the kind of overall negativity about kids. And to hear from someone, you know, just godly truth that kids are special, that they're wanted, and that they're a blessing was huge to us. I'm Jim Daly, and we love kids. Let's work together to give more families hope, like Greg's.

When you donate today, your gift will be doubled at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash gift. We are forever changed and tremendously grateful for the tools given to us to change our stormy relationship into a peaceful calm. What a gift God has given us here in a safe environment with counselors and staff who are totally walking in a close relationship with Christ.

Miracles happen. Those were comments of someone whose marriage was transformed through Hope Restored, Focus on the Family's marriage intensives. Marriage transformation is the topic of the show today. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, this conversation is so important because marriage is the foundation of the family.

I think we're seeing that now throughout the culture, and everyone goes through difficult seasons of life, which can cause married couples to become disconnected, and in the worst case, divorced. Whatever stage of the marriage journey you're in, our conversation today will offer some ways to get even healthier. I'm really looking forward to the conversation, Jim. As you know, Dean and I, we went through a season where it was really hard, and we actually attended a Hope Restored marriage intensive. It changed us significantly. We used the tools we gained there every day, so I'm really thrilled that we have this conversation for you.

It was one of our best of shows for the year. So many were touched by the encouragement and what was offered, so we're coming back to it again today. The guests you'll hear from are Tara Lalande, a counselor with Hope Restored at Focus Canada, and Bob Paul, vice president of the Focus on the Family Marriage Institute, which means he had a major part in creating Hope Restored. They've co-written a book full of concepts from Hope Restored and how they've applied them in their own marriages. It's called Empowered to Love, discovering your God-given power to create a marriage you both love.

You can find details about the book and Hope Restored in the show notes. Or give us a call for further details. 800- the letter A in the word family. Let's go ahead and hear the conversation now. Tara and Bob, welcome to the program. So good to be here. I am excited about this.

This gets me going. When we're helping a hundred and seventy thousand couples through crisis, that's meaningful. In a year.

I mean that's just one year. So thank you for your efforts in making that happen so directly. There's so much that we're doing in that marriage space, you know, not just kind of this drastic moment where you can come to Hope Restored and hopefully get your marriage back on track. But even maintenance things like marriage 911 and some other things that we do. So if your marriage is not where you want it to be, just get a hold of us. You know we've been at it 45 years.

You're not going to surprise us. We want to help you. And you know everybody can use a little bit of help in this space.

Even if you're doing well. Tara let's get into it. The big part of the book is the research you found during your dissertation. I love this. You did a PhD program at Liberty. Can you give us kind of the background and what you were looking for? What caught your attention to even do this?

Yeah so really exciting. This was back in probably 2014 I think is when I defended and I studied the Hope Restored program. Didn't even know what it was when I started my research. But as I interviewed, I did a qualitative study. Qualitative is different from quantitative. Quantitative is numbers.

My brain doesn't do numbers. It was qualitative. I interviewed six couples who had all gone through a marriage intensive one year prior. Okay.

All right. Three of the couples, all of them said it was amazing. They loved the program. They were hopeful going forward. They were gonna do this at the end of the intensive.

Because we always do end of intensive survey. So they all said it was good. One year later three of the couples were continuing with their gains. They were doing well. Things were moving in the direction that they were wanting it to.

Three couples were not. Two of them sadly were on the way to divorce. Yeah and in that it's some of that is just putting into practice those things that you're learning. And I don't you know we as human beings I'm guilty of that you know.

I can know to do the right thing but doing the right thing is a whole nother thing. Bob we're talking mostly today about practically treating your spouse well and managing that conflict and we're gonna get into all that. I also want to share some encouragement with people who feel like they have lost that love in their marriage. The fact that it can be rekindled. Is that truly a hope if it feels dark and not very warm in my relationship with my spouse?

Without question. What we find is that you know we ask couples one question before they come to Hope Restored and this is the question. If God was to work a miracle in your marriage would you accept it? Now this miracle could seem impossible to them and we consider a miracle both people loving the relationship and the direction it's headed. So it's a big deal.

We're talking the you know the bar said high and that's the only question they have to answer yes to. So we see these couples come in in desperate shape. Oftentimes can barely look at each other and what our staff gets to witness is God comes in and does miraculous work in our hearts because if our hearts available he will not hesitate to come in.

They walk away hand in hand. Well the the follow-up there is you know why is it so important that a person stay connected to God for the best outcome? I mean it's kind of self-evident but. Well I mean really God is critical to our life period just survival. I mean we don't the only reason I'm here breathing is because God's hand is on me. So to not do this with God and to not open our heart to him and to see what's possible with him because he is so devoted to our health and well-being and he wants our relationships to be awesome like his relationships are.

Tara I don't know let me ask the question this way it seems like from the garden way back when we hide we hide from God I mean it's like in our human DNA now that's I think part of the definition when sin entered the world we became shameful. I mean it's kind of interesting to think about it what does taking personal responsibility look like in a marriage? Oh good question big question because this is kind of the big piece with both the intensives but also our book personal responsibility is really taking your power back it's what I have responsibility for and knowing what I don't have responsibility for. So many couples like fix him right or her. Jenny might agree with that I don't know but we don't have any power over there if I'm trying to do all this work to get Vince fixed I have no control there yeah but if I can focus in and look at what can I do differently how can I make this situation better how can I care for my heart yeah that's well you know what comes to mind you know coming out of Proverbs one of the wisest people or the wisest person outside of Jesus King Solomon said above all else guard your spouse's heart above all else guard your heart it's the wellspring of your life this is so important above everything else we need to do internal personal work. Well I mean even going back again to the garden when Adam says yeah that woman you gave me right I mean he quickly deflected responsibility but that is the example we're talking about you know I'd have I'd have a lot better marriage if you fill in the blank if you did this if you did that and that's part of working on your own stuff and and kind of letting your spouse work on their stuff again how did personal responsibility help and I'm sure these are not their real names and we protect people that way but in your study you talked to Sadie and Bill within that research group how were they managing that personal responsibility or not? Yeah oh I love that they came out of it both excited about it but very quickly after that Sadie went back into just pain and hurt the betrayal from Bill was pretty significant leading into the intensive but Bill grabbed hold of this and he has changed and he dug into his relationship with the Lord he took that responsibility and decided I'm not gonna be that guy anymore and that changed things it was nine months nine months before Sadie was able to recognize you know what I think this is gonna stick I think the change is real and then she was able to start looking at her own pain and doing her own healing I saw them three months later and they were in a very different place it was so well that's good Bob let me ask you why is creating and and let me for the listener and the viewer you know we'll talk about reactive cycle you may have heard that a moment ago we'll get into all that definition but Bob why is creating a safe marriage so important and what's the definition of a safe marriage? Well you know it's interesting because the most people if you ask them is their marriage safe the first thing and maybe even the only thing they think of is it physically safe which of course is extremely important however we broaden that because when we're talking about safety we're talking about not only physically but mentally spiritually and emotionally because what we found is that when people truly feel safe in the relationship in all those ways they just relax and when they relax their hearts open they give the Lord access and things start to change in them and between them almost effortlessly so we really focus on saying you want to be taking an inventory do both of you really feel safe in all those areas and if not what's missing and what could you do differently to increase that? Yeah you know I want to get to an example of what that looks like how your marriage can have that safety and what that looks like. Jean caught me on a parenting one and I have that application where you know I'm a pretty big guy and when I would be upset with the boys she was just noticing how they were responding to me if my voice was up I mean I physically that would never happen but it just you know my aggravation on something and my voice would be up and my stature would be up and they're like five and she said man you got to get down on a knee because I was watching the boys when you are upset you get bigger and you're already a big guy so that was interesting just how to manage my physical presence in front of my sons when I wasn't pleased with something they had done to kind of get down on their level I'm sure that application is true in marriage too.

Oh my gosh I want to I want to create a place where for both me and Jenny both of us feel so relaxed not fearing in any way that either our bodies will be dishonored or disrespected our thoughts that's mental safety that we would not feel that we're about to be criticized for the way we think our hearts would be safe our feelings would feel welcomed and safe and our spirit that we would be able to pray together and be in front of God together without fear of criticism or ridicule. And right here we're talking about something that was really meaningful to Dean and me and that is what you mentioned earlier Tara the reactive cycle this is something that just was huge for us because we were always hitting that once you describe what that is. Yeah so reactive cycle is one of our most powerful tools I mean they're all really really powerful but it's a diagnostic tool really so how that works is one or the other gets triggered a button gets pressed and immediately our prefrontal cortex go offline and we are in this fight-flight place or a shutdown place but what that ends up looking like when we feel that we're no longer adult brain driving the bus now we're reacting so our button gets pressed and immediately we react and our reactions pretty much guaranteed are gonna press a button of our spouse and their brains go offline too. We are so good at that I mean we are so good at pressing each other's but oh yeah it's crazy and what most couples don't go out I'm gonna get you right we just we just don't but anything can press a button because they're my buttons. Yeah actually the more subtle the button pressing the more sophisticated we perceive ourselves. I press that button so easily. I am so good at this. You in fact have an example which will help everybody and maybe the others of us here at the table will have examples but it was a restaurant with your husband and describe I mean this is such a simple example of how this works. Oh yeah right I mean it happens all the time but we were at this beautiful little restaurant we were in Nice it was gorgeous a lovely day we had this lunch I can't remember what we were eating it was wonderful but it was lunch and I mean we're on vacation you're eating tons and we had decided together that let's just share an appetizer and share a main because we don't need a huge meal and then have dinner later a good plan it was all good I ordered and they brought the appetizer and then they brought the main on two plates and we just thought that was nice they split it because you've been to restaurants where that's happened they've split it up for us very nice this is good it was delicious it was a tuna it was amazing you ate it all both of you and we both indeed it's important for the end of the story go ahead it wasn't too much food but the problem was when the bill came they charged us for two mains oh so it was a mistake a miscommunication or the waiter I don't know but it's France and I don't speak French so there could have been something like that now Vince does speak French he's fully francophone but I happen to be the one making the order and that pressed a button for Vince and he was really disappointed you gotta understand Vince is somebody who values precision and getting things right and accuracy and when this didn't happen and I was the one who made the order okay so you're beginning to see where this might go button button button button so there's this disappointment button in him that's being pressed and I'm the cause of it so immediately he blames me and how'd that make you feel great no right that then pushes that button to say you've got shame and guilt because you didn't manage that well right now you're gonna push another button of his now yeah so I feel judged and that's a big one for me and back up there you go brains not there adult isn't present anymore and I start reacting and I don't remember if I got defensive probably that would have been the first one out of the gate getting defensive and of course my defensiveness gets hit and we ramp it up and out and another buttons pressed for him and he starts criticizing and now we're off to the races this is a wonderful vacation so glad we did this and spent all this money in France I had no idea that you were there oh believe me I was there yeah so we and off we go and we do that you know what got worse about this I mean I teach this stuffs more confession right I teach this stuff so I was able to kind of pause this and in fairness Vince doesn't spend too many times with this he'll shut down and we don't but then I take the baton and okay so we're not gonna do this I'm gonna start doing it in my own head and I started having my own reactive cycle of here we are we're on vacation this was what I doing what you said but in my head and I'm pressing my own buttons making this worse until finally my adult brain went tar this isn't helping maybe it was Holy Spirit to saying um honey this isn't helping and I took a deep breath you're right and then I moved to a place of back into my own yard paying attention to my own heart caring having compassion not lighting myself on let me ask both of you since you are the practitioners at Hope Restored Tara you with Canada and Bob of course here in the US is this I mean I have the impression that this is like 80% of the problem in this communication style of course we have severe issues of infidelity but just in the day-to-day all of us kind of category the button pushing to me seems to be like for Jean and I this is the issue and we try to do it better and to Jean's credit she is so good now it kind of de-escalating the energy which is really good but but I'm just saying from kind of your day-to-day normal stuff in marriage is this one of the big things you know when we first found this many many years ago we didn't realize that it applied to everybody we found out this is this is what's going on underlying conflict with virtually everyone everyone's got their own you know unique version of it because our my buttons are different than Tara's buttons than your buttons and John's buttons and Jenny's buttons they're all different but the cycle itself operates exactly the same and once you can see it as Tara said it's diagnostic it doesn't fix anything it just helps you it turns the light on yeah shows you the problem so you could then begin to see like Jean like you just described Jean how you break the cycle that's exactly what you want to do is you want to pause and not react so that the cycle stops now let me ask this I mean this to me sounds like most of the antecedents in a difficult marriage which lead to the big issues like infidelity and other things these things these button-pushing things are probably the things that are weakening the relationship to the point where the other things happen is that fair I think that that's going on constantly there's a variety of things that can get people to that point sometimes just inattention can get people there but yeah there's a bunch of things that can affect it but this certainly has a big influence and I guess what for me it's rationalizing okay what do I need to concentrate on back to your example of that couple if I could concentrate just on this does that solve 80% of my problems in my marriage and I don't know that it's that clean but you can tell them a numbers guy I would I am NOT a numbers person so I can't talk numbers but I would say for sure work on this even more maybe than 80% like if you can start recognizing what your buttons are what gets you going and resolve that mm-hmm I think that can resolve just about everything whether it's infidelity things whether it's a good trajectory for a healthy marriage is the point but in the book you talk about these reactions knee-jerk reactions we might refer to them regarding conflict and there's two words very scientific hedgehog and shadow monster this is why you get a PhD so what are the hedgehog and shadow monster definitions you know a shadow monster and this is really a credit our for this because this was really ideas that she brought forth and they're fabulous but the truth is we typically go to one one strategy or another and the shadow monster is like when something vulnerable gets triggered in you and you don't want to admit it or share it or even acknowledge it what we tend to do is we project a pretty scary image out there as if you had a flashlight focused on you projecting a big image on the wall to get the other person to go hmm and back off and that's a way to keep your vulnerability from being evidenced by what's going on in the moment so that's what a shadow monster is and many times we do that we want to look big and scary so that they don't know how vulnerable we feel inside the hedgehog is when we just want to curl up in a little ball and have our pricklies out there and just basically wanted to hide and and you know that you want to leave me alone because if you come and try and embrace me at that point you're gonna get stuck so those are two strategies that are very very common that any one of us could employ either or both yeah I'm laughing because I think I do both at times I probably all do yeah and we're protecting the little child inside that doesn't want to be seen yeah yeah stopping that reactive cycle requires in the book you say it requires healthy self-care when I first read that okay I want selfies self-care because it sounds kind of flaky sorry but give me that definition of healthy self-care honestly we have five steps to healthy self-care first you got to become aware you know what is going on notice what's happening in your body because there's pretty much always a physiological thing that's going on when your button gets pressed huh yeah so whether it's boom hearts racing or I'm feeling sweaty or I'm just noticing that my muscles are getting tense and I'm oh or my stomach is dropping or jumping or whatever there's something and if you can slow down and become aware that's the beginning okay the next step is really really key accepting this one is hard because you're accepting the feelings these yucky things that we want to push away I have to accept them and the responsibility to take care of them yeah and that's really hard and we go into more detail about that then we want to allow God to be part of this because why not get the perspective of the one who actually sees better than I am without my adult brain well I so appreciate that because I was gonna ask that follow-up blending of you know things that are happening psychological models you know God created us people can study how we think how we behave what our emotions are and some of us in the Christian community kind of trip on that a little bit like again like we have to be on a switch all about psychology and not God or all about God and not recognizing how he's created us but you guys I mean it's the blending of that correct the understanding of the models and yeah he created us this way so if we can understand his creation and how he wired us and bring him into it as believers we have something that the rest of the world doesn't have we don't have less we have more it's not an either-or it's both which is why it brings us all the way back to what we started with you know if you can answer that question can God do a miracle in your marriage you got to be able to say yes he can if you say no your heart is already indicating it's so hard it's going to be nearly impossible to change that Bob let me extend that self-care idea the idea that you need to work on the proactive self-care describe it for me okay so proactive is just general maintenance you know just taking care of yourself you know making sure you get plenty of exercise eat well rest and so forth the reality is though that Jim nobody ever comes to us for help with proactive self-care they come to us with for help what do I do when my buttons get pushed that's reactive and and then there's the care cycle is one of the things matter of fact the whole purpose of us writing this book the distinctive that makes this book different than what we've done previously is we're saying many times in the culture and even in the church we inadvertently put the cart before the horse we basically make it all about the marriage the moment we get married like we blow out the candles on the the unity candle and we ignore ourselves but the reality is the marriage doesn't exist apart from the people and can never be healthier or more empowered than the people so we're saying let's make sure that our personal journeys to be fully who God created us to be and bring every drop of what he gave us is actively in place and then add to it caring well for the relationship and building a good relationship so first two-thirds of the book is on the personal responsibility on our relationship with God on getting whole and healthy finding our purpose and how that relates to the marriage and then the last third is and how do you take those great principles and turn your marriage into something you love what great insights from Bob and Tara they shared so many important tools for loving your spouse well and there's so many more in part two of this conversation so come back and listen to that tomorrow and I hope you feel empowered to care for yourself and your spouse and remember a focus on the family we want to help your marriage thrive especially to thrive in Christ if you have a desire to see your marriage transformed I want to encourage you to check out Hope Restored couples who participate in that program have an 80% success rate of remaining married and we go back to those couples two years later and we do a survey of everyone that goes through the program 80% of them are still married and doing better and John you'll have the details on how to find that information in a minute if focus has made a difference in your marriage please consider financially supporting us as the year comes to an end and I want to personally promise you that your donation will go right back into ministry to give families hope yeah call today donate generously as you can our number is 800 the letter a and the word family or we've got details in the show notes and if you enjoyed this best of 2024 show and want to hear more of the conversations check out our best of 2024 audio collection it's free and it's 18 terrific conversations from the past 12 months we've got the link in the show notes thanks for joining us today for focus on the family with Jim Daly I'm John Fuller inviting you back tomorrow as we share the continuation of the conversation with Tara and Bob and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ do you feel that chill in the air it's finally that time of year to decorate the tree put up those Christmas lights and bake some cookies then kick back with some hot cocoa and a new season of the Christmas stories podcast 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