This Q&A session is a follow-up on the recent Sex Series (episodes 62-67) and includes questions from listeners pertaining to individual, dating and marriage scenarios. The following topics are covered, and we've attached some links to other resources related:
RESOURCES:
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
This Q&A session is a follow-up on the recent Sex Series (episodes 62-67) and includes questions from listeners pertaining to individual, dating and marriage scenarios. The following topics are covered, and we've attached some links to other resources related:
RESOURCES:
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. It's a beautiful day here in Redding California.
Speaker 2:It sure is.
Speaker 1:And today, gosh, we just ended our sex series, which was really fun it was a big hit. It was a big hit.
Speaker 2:I gotta say it was a big hit, y'all loved it. Yeah, you did. You like talking about sex, you like hearing us talk about it? Yeah, you did you like talking about sex.
Speaker 1:You're like hearing us talk about it? Yeah, I mean, I like talking about sex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do.
Speaker 1:So I'm not surprised people like to talk about it too.
Speaker 2:It is profound to think about how big a part of life it is. I mean, we were created as sexual people. It's an incredibly huge and impactful part of our lives that you don't just talk about in everyday circles.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Which is probably appropriate, but it's really important that we dive into those kinds of topics, and we sure did get a lot of questions from you guys in the process, which we love, because we love we love talking about the things that you really want to know about.
Speaker 1:So we're going to cover just a small portion of them. We grabbed a couple of marriage ones, a couple of dating ones, a couple of single questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to. We're going to go after, we're going to do a little Q and a um this week because obviously that big topic from our series just stirred up a lot of thoughts. So we'll take this week and kind of go after some of those things that you guys wrote to us about, and then we'll be on to the next subject.
Speaker 1:It's great, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:Cool, All right. Well, I'll just kick us off here. We had a couple people write in questions that would more so pertain to just um, sexual wholeness in general, regardless of your relationship status. So somebody wanted to talk a little bit about healing, like personal healing from sexual past, specifically including memories. So how do you actually walk through a healing journey as a person to overcome your own history?
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, it's such a great question history.
Speaker 2:It's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's such a great question. Um, when it comes to healing memories, uh, I think a lot, of a lot of the times I've seen, I've witnessed, um, where people go through a process of like the, the repentance part, right when they used to look at pornography a lot, and then they've broken that cycle in their life, which would actually be the process of repentance. Repentance isn't. I'm sorry, but I'm turning and walking the other way and and I've watched as, as they've gone on that journey, god's began to restore their mind, um, and and taking away the old thoughts. Um, but also I, I also have seen and experienced where memories are healed, as we forgive ourself and as we heal the wounds. Um, you raised your hand like you wanted to say something yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say something when you're done okay, I've experienced, even in if I could be so vulnerable in my first marriage.
Speaker 1:Of course, I had hundreds of sexual experiences in my first marriage, because that's normal right where I'm not plagued by those memories of my, of my sexual experiences, and rarely ever does one come up where I have to go like, oh, that was my past, because I've really healed right and done the forgiveness process and gone through. And I think a lot of times people go back to the old memories because there's still some unhealed portions.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying like if you have things pop up in your mind that you need to go on this deep dive and find if you're healed or not.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I'm literally saying a fruit of healing is yeah, a fruit of healing is a lot of the memories are restored, a lot of the past is washed and wiped away. And now are there things in my mind that pop up every once in a while that I have to battle or say no to, of course, but I also think that the other piece is to meditate on what's lovely, what's holy, what's pure. It's Philippians 4, right.
Speaker 1:It's like that's part of the renewal process in our life is we're no longer meditating on the things that are unpure. But I'm starting to really meditate and take my thoughts captive, and the more I do that, the less my thoughts just run rampant and so the if somebody lived a life of pornography, sexual addiction and then in the last year or two is just coming back into getting pure, you have a whole bunch of momentum in your life uh, you know negative momentum and it's just takes a little while of living a life of purity and, uh, health and thinking about what's pure, what's holy, what's lovely, and kicking those old thoughts out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, you know, the thing that comes to mind for me is that, like I actually have a great memory, I, I, I remember all kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember really early. I have really early childhood memories. I have really vivid memories from growing up and so naturally, if I tried to, I could think about some of the most impactful sexual encounters that I had before I was married. Those things aren't. It's not like I have magically forgotten them. I don't dwell on them, I don't meditate on them, I don't go to them for comfort or for any sort of you know, I I don't try to go there, but I I think that you know that you need healing from memories If your memories are actually causing you a bunch of pain or if those memories are keeping you from having freedom in this area of your life. But I just wanted to say, because I think sometimes people feel bad for the thoughts that they're able to have, where it's like you're not actually in charge of whether your brain can forget something.
Speaker 2:No you are in charge of walking through a process of healing which includes ownership and repentance and changing the way you think. Quite literally, like a repentance process is a process of changing the way you think, which would include allowing God to come in and actually speak to the deep places of your heart about those memories and give you the truth about them. You, you essentially disempower the memory like a process of healing from a memory would be like disempowering the memory from having control or power in any area of your life. So but I just want to dispel the, the theory that like, just because you know that you're healed if you actually don't have a memory of some of your past, I'm like no that's not really how it works and that's not what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I just don't want people to listen and think like cause I do that we talk about this when it comes to like pornography and stuff too, or or any anything like lust of any kind. You're like you're not in control of what comes across your screen as far as your eyes, like you could be walking down the road. You're not in charge of who comes walking towards you. You're in charge of what you do with the image that you're confronted with. And a memory would be the same.
Speaker 1:It's feast on what's healthy.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And feed yourself life, and part of the fruit of that is that if you're full on things that are healthy, you you begin to not crave and crave. It's like it's not that you won't ever be tempted, but the pull to go there. So a lot of times our brain, a lot of times we are prompted with old past memories because we're still not feeding ourselves what we should.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, all right, Okay, somebody wrote in and asked about the restoration of virginity. I think we've mentioned that in one of the early episodes in the series. But she's wondering, like, what is actually the healing process for restoring your virginity and how does God actually make us new in that area?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. So we, with more revolution, and then before even more revolution, which is this ministry that my dad started years ago I don't know 15, 18 years ago. It's geared towards educating, equipping and helping restore purity in people's lives, in young people's lives, and so we've seen I don't know hundreds and hundreds of young people literally simply pray a really simple prayer, which is a prayer of repentance, like Father, would you come and forgive me? It's not the words, it's the heart.
Speaker 1:Would you forgive me for my past sins. Right Like sleeping around and I've watched as people go through and they forgive each person. If you, if you, can remember them right and I'm just right now, I'm just teaching people how to kind of clean up that mess in my life.
Speaker 1:so you go through and like forgive for you know I forgive myself for sleeping with whatever Mary and or the, the pieces that you've given, that I gave to her, would you give them back to me? And the pieces that I took from her, would you give them back to her Right and break that bond, that soul tie? And then also, lord, would you restore to me physically and mentally and emotionally. Now I say, some people don't get that physical restoration, like a woman where their hymen's actually restored completely restored.
Speaker 1:But we have seen that happen a lot, and whether or not God actually chooses to physically restore a woman's hymen or not, to me it's great if it happens, but that's not the point. To me, the point is is that you are, you're literally making a brand new start and a brand new declaration and walking down a brand new path in your life and, just like in so many other different areas of our lives, god comes in and it doesn't say that he refurbishes us. It says that he makes all things new, and so that's the promise, that's the belief, and so I mean I've we've just walked, like tons of you, through a simple prayer like that and watch what's happened in their life.
Speaker 2:It could be really cool for me to link in the show notes some of the moral revolution resources or even blog articles that would kind of talk about some of those individual testimonies and experiences, Cause there are a lot of them. I would say too, like whether or not you could even tell whether you were quote physically restored in that process.
Speaker 2:I don't think everybody even could tell like that's there's not like a you know, a surefire way to know for certain that that you've been physically restored to how your body was before you ever had sex for the first time. But, like Jason said, I don't know that. That's the point anyways.
Speaker 1:Um.
Speaker 2:I think that there is a um. I think there's a reality to the freedom is in the forgiveness understanding that God forgives you and your own ability to extend forgiveness to the people who you made choices with or who wronged you in this area of your life. It doesn't change your history, like it doesn't actually change the past. The power is in that it that it changes. It restores your heart to a place where you can live in freedom, moving forward. So when people say you know in in this question there was a, it sounded very specifically like you know how, how do you experience all the small things again like they're brand new? And I'm like well, it's kind of like we tell people, when you have a broken marriage and you work on restoring your broken marriage, we tell people we're not going to rebuild your old marriage, we're going to help you build a brand new marriage. It's kind of the same thing.
Speaker 2:I think it's like we're not going to go back and you can't actually erase everything that you did in your past. You can get free and then build a really healthy, free life anew, and it's not that all your old memories have to disappear in order for that to happen. It's not that you know you're going to make out with somebody and you're going. Your body will know I've done this before. It's not like you can not learn to ride a bike again.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I'm saying? In a sense there's like I don't want to be the dead horse, but it to something in my heart. This it feels important to me to just reiterate like if you had a wild sexual past and you walked through a process of forgiveness and then you get married and you're in, you know you're in an intimate, you have an intimate relationship with your husband. Just because you have a muscle memory of what it was like to be intimate with someone doesn't mean you have not been healed or that you aren't empowered to live in freedom inside of your marriage. I don't want people to look for things that as indicators of healing that aren't, that aren't actually real. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, uh, a healed past I mean again I have. I was addicted to pornography in my past. I've been married before in my past. Um had experiences with other people in my past, and the fruit of the fruit that I am healed in this area is that we have a beautiful sex life.
Speaker 1:We have a beautiful marriage and my past isn't bleeding into our marriage. Right, I'm not hung up by what I did in the past. I don't feel less than I don't feel unworthy. I don't deal with shame, we are free. I'm literally living current in the present and I can remember feel unworthy. I don't deal with shame, I, we are free. I'm literally living current in the present and I can remember. Of course, I can remember some of the scenes from the first pornographic video I watched. There's no pull there to go back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't have any power.
Speaker 1:No, it really doesn't, and I can remember some of the first memories I had sexually. There's no pull there. There's no pull to go back. I can if I think I can, remember some of the first memories I had sexually.
Speaker 2:there's no pull there.
Speaker 1:There's no pull to go back. I can, if I think I can remember some of the sexual experiences with my first wife. There's no pull to go back. It's literally the pull is in the present.
Speaker 2:And to me that's the beauty, great. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit and talk about, um, a couple of questions that came in the context of dating. So what wisdom do you have dating people who have extreme sexual history, like prostitutes, porn, homosexuality, et cetera?
Speaker 1:That's great. Do you want me to start with this one? Sure, if you're dating someone with extreme sexual history, then you need to really ask and understand how did they get well?
Speaker 2:What was?
Speaker 1:their process for getting well.
Speaker 2:And how do they know?
Speaker 1:that that life is not still a part of their life. And it's complicated, right? It's complicated because some people really do have like an encounter with God and everything's different.
Speaker 2:Okay great.
Speaker 1:What's their track record and what are the skill sets that they have implemented now that is, keeping them in a healthy spot?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So to me it's one thing to get well, it's another thing to stay and live well.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Sorry, and we know that sexual addiction is someone's solution for the pain, the disconnection that they're living in their life. So the sexual addiction in and of itself is not the real problem. And so it'd be going back and saying, okay, have, how have you built new community in your life? How are you doing managing your pain? What is your process for dealing with shame? What is your process for dealing with getting your needs met in a healthy way and setting healthy boundaries? That's what you're looking for in a relationship, communicating your emotions.
Speaker 1:And to me it's like if someone's really been stuck for a long time I would want a year and a half probably If they've been heavy into porn, heavy into sexual addiction, to me it would be and like prostitution, they would need a decent amount of time to walk through that process. Because I see a lot of people go through the process of healing from pornography and sexual addiction and six months later they go through a small relapse and then they have to figure out like, oh gosh, that was. There's still some, some places in my life where I'm learning and I'm building, and that's fine, it's just part of the process. And so I'm like man, before you date somebody that was really stuck for a long time. Give them enough time and then, while you date, go slow. So, while you're dating, what you're looking for is their ability to manage their emotions, to manage their urges, to delay instant gratification, to build trust, which to me doesn't mean we don, we don't touch or don't have sex. To me it's like are they communicating again?
Speaker 1:their needs their boundaries Are they able to process through pain? Are they managing their insecurities well and do you? You know are? Are they building trust in the relationship? It's?
Speaker 2:good, okay. So maybe like a part B to this question if you're dating someone who is actively struggling with pornography but is aggressively pursuing freedom, what's your advice to those people?
Speaker 1:They need to have a really comprehensive plan because you can really be going after it. But if you're the only one involved in your process, uh, you're not. You're not going to get better. Probably the chances are very low. Um, if you are working with someone who hasn't walked people through sexual addiction, then you're still probably not going to get well. They need to really be working with someone who understands sexual addiction and how to get people free. That's good.
Speaker 1:And then I would say don't move forward at all, don't move any further, any more depth of intimacy in your relationship, in your dating relationship, until you've seen significant changes in your relationship and your dating relationship, until you've seen significant um changes that's good in your relationship and you're really probably looking at six months before you start seeing real significant changes not in abstinence, but in their ability again to communicate emotions, to process with you um, to, to manage their appetite, but really, like probably a year or ish before, you know like this is no longer a cycle in their life.
Speaker 2:It's really good. Okay, so shifting gears again. People don't like that timeline.
Speaker 1:Let me just say, like people don't like that timeline when I get that timeline. Everyone wants to be the exception but a marriage that's stuck, a marriage where someone uh frequently goes, falls back into sexual addiction, is very painful, and so, as much as couples don't like the you know I've been free for six months, I know I'm good to go Like man I'm telling you, if you're dating and you have the option to not marry someone who's stuck in sexual addiction and to know for sure, at least as sure as you can right.
Speaker 1:Like it's worth the time.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, you can be married forever. Yeah, take your time.
Speaker 1:Yep For sure, sounded like I was angry there, just passionate.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, um, in the marriage context, let's talk a little bit about we have a few questions come in, um, about marriage specifically. So, um, let's go with this one first People who are experiencing grief as they process their partner's sexual past, um, and then building trust in marriage when there's been a sexual past. Let's talk about that for a little bit. Okay, I'll start and just say, you know, when I was thinking about marrying Jason, um, I was confronted with this weird reality that, like he's the one who had been married before, but I was the one who had had more dating experiences where I had regrets.
Speaker 2:She got around folks oh, my goodness, not really.
Speaker 2:But even in the few people that I had dated, I had more like outside of covenant sexual encounters than Jason had.
Speaker 2:But he was the one that had been married for 10 years in covenant marriage with another woman and had had, like he had said earlier in the episode, hundreds of sexual encounters, of course in the context of marriage, but still, you know, and I was going to be the second person for him, but still, you know, and I was going to be the second person for him, and I will say this it's amazing how much grace there is for each other's past.
Speaker 2:When you trust the rebuilding process that somebody has walked through, when you can trust somebody's healing journey, it's incredible how little power somebody's past has over your heart and over your mind. And so I can say quite honestly that within mine and Jason's relationship, because I understood his healing process so deeply, because he was able to explain it and because the men in his life who I trusted really trusted him I didn't have, I can honestly say I don't think I spent one hour in our dating life or in our married life worried about what your sexual past was going to do to our current marriage. I really, I really have never had a worry about that and I really contribute that or attribute that to the fact that I trust you so much in your healing, your healing process.
Speaker 1:Um a lot of, I would add, add to this. I think, a lot of people the the challenge with grieving someone's sexual past is lies in their their own insecurities.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so it's not just their, their own insecurities, yes, and so it's not just, it's not just that your partner had an experience. Yeah, it's that you're questioning and wondering is that is our? Was that person going to be better than me? Is he not going to be happy with me? Is? Is this going?
Speaker 2:to be? Am I going to be compared? Yeah, Is he not going to be happy?
Speaker 1:with me Is is this going to be? Am I going to be compared? Yeah, how is this affecting us? So, to me, mostly, it's about dealing with your own insecurities, your own personal insecurities, and it's. I do think that it's different if you're married, if you're already married and your husband is cheating inside of marriage, or your wife's cheating inside of marriage oh yeah, or you found out that they were, or something yeah, the other piece that I'll add in the complexity is a lot of people find out about their spouses past after they've been married because, things weren't fully disclosed.
Speaker 1:and here's the pain with that is, you were pretty much duped. Yeah, if everything wasn't disclosed up front, then you married a different person. Then you knew Then you knew and there's a lot of grief and pain in that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that that's almost an entirely other process. I mean, it is an entirely other process. Um.
Speaker 1:I can talk through that really quick if we want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's worth it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just make it fast to me. So part of the grieving process is literally grieving. It's, it is going through and crying and journaling and, you know, going through the process of working through pain.
Speaker 2:I think we have an episode on pro. Actually I think it's a two part series on processing pain, so I'll link that in the show notes for people. You can go back and listen to that whole message. We we go into it pretty, pretty deeply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's literally walking through pain and getting to a point where you feel powerful in that process. Now here's the other piece to it. If your spouse does a great job. Hearing your pain, hearing your emotions, walking through that with you. Now you build tons of trust, tons of connection, and your marriage is stronger than ever before. That's the key.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's the key to all of it. I've been cheated on. You've had a past. Lauren felt powerful. Part of the process is because I really wanted to hear how she felt and we talked through it and I wasn't afraid to hear her emotions about it, and I was open about it, and so you had a chance to like get all of your questions and all of your fears out Makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. Okay, so quickly. What do you do when your sex drives are different inside of marriage? Example a husband has a high sex drive, wife is much lower, or vice versa. I will like to throw in there I got a surprising amount of messages from women who were like can you please talk about when the woman has a higher sex drive, cause nobody talks about that kind of a thing but just generally, when there's a different uh drive, what do you do about that in marriage?
Speaker 1:I mean rarely is there ever the same drive right. I can't remember the last time I met a couple when they were like, oh, we have the same sex drive. I've met couples who are like we're in a really bad season. Neither of us want to have sex, and it's like, yeah, but rarely, and so it's always this process of pursuing and negotiating the different needs in a relationship.
Speaker 1:That's part of what makes it awesome you and I have a very different sex drive and for me it's making sure that I am pursuing you emotionally and pursuing you with your needs and for you. It's remembering that I work very different than you.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it's your joy to pursue me and meet me where my needs are at, and so the longer we have gone into relationship, the better we have gotten at meeting each other where we're at.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a beautiful thing, honestly, because it really makes me think through. It really makes me think about you and what is awesome for you. It pulls me out of this selfish like if we just both had the same sex drive it would be awesome. But it would remove the piece where I really have to think through what's important to you and my sex drive my drive to have sex with you really pushes me into your needs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's so important that it's that way. We have to stop considering different sex drives to be a problem. It's part of the design actually.
Speaker 2:It is because sex is about connection and intimacy, and you don't get connection to intimacy for free. You do not. That's not how it works, it's it would be wrong Like you don't get that for free. It has to cost something or it's not actually rooted in love. So it is not a problem that our sex drives are different. We have to learn how to navigate them in a way where both partners are getting their needs met. Again, even getting your needs met is about connection. So it's not even that's not even a selfish. That's not even a selfish.
Speaker 1:You know, motivation, um, it's kind of like, uh it, it's like if, if, if money grew on trees, people would be lazy.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:They would just go get it and then go like it's the fact that we have to. We have to innovate, we have to be creative, we have to work hard for it yeah that creates responsible um healthy people, and we see that in our culture today. The easier more supply things are, the weaker people get and the more entitled people get in our marriages, the fact that you and I are different people and that.
Speaker 1:But we have a drive. You have a drive for what I carry, you have a drive for connection for me and I have a drive for connection with you and and what I'm seeking is a little bit different than what you're seeking from me.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Those two forces to do things that pull us together. Yes, and that's a beautiful thing, yeah absolutely Okay.
Speaker 2:Last question for today. We could keep going and going, but last question for today and this is interesting because in the course of both this sex series and in the last two of our marriage intensives, we've had a question or we've had a couple inside of this dynamic where one or the other spouse is chronically ill and it really impacts intimacy. And so this question specifically is what do you do if the woman is chronically sick, which causes sexual dysfunction, and while the husband still wants to engage in sex, she withdraws from physical affection and then he withdraws from wanting to engage in sex because he's afraid of being disappointed after being aroused. So, anyways, let's talk a little bit about how to navigate chronic illness or anything else that might impact. I would throw in there like even postpartum recovery for for women, like how do you navigate one partner having needs while the other person is really out of commission?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Okay To me a big piece of all of this is making sure that you are communicating very, very well and that you're connecting with compassion for one another both people. Yeah, and that's the key, because if we go back to our after you had Edie, we couldn't have intercourse.
Speaker 2:For a calendar year.
Speaker 1:A whole year.
Speaker 2:It was really like 11 and a half months. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I would, looking back on that time, I would say that sexually we were very connected, at least in my mind. Like I, don't look back on that time and go like oh wow, I was in so much pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A large portion for me that was helpful was you weren't shutting down the conversation. For me, I didn't feel like you were hiding from me, talking about where I was at sexually. And there's other things that we're able to do right. Intercourse, like penetrating, is just literally one way of fulfilling that sexual connection in need, and so you know we're able to do other things. And then, of course, 11 and a half months goes by and it's like awesome, now we can. We can do it however we want.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't like a second class deal for me and a large part of that was simply because we I knew that you cared. I think that's the biggest piece. Like I knew that you there was no like I'm being rejected, You're just pushing my needs away. It was literally like this is just where we're at and I think the the main. A lot of the pain for couples with chronic illness is, I think, a lot of the whoever's ill feels a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, and then the pressure that they're, that they're not enough, and the fear that the little energy that they do have is going to get sucked out of them.
Speaker 1:Right, and it is and to me the important thing is like okay, can we get rid of the guilt, can we get rid of the shame? Can we change the expectations and have real conversations about what the expectation should be in the marriage? Can I meet you where you're at with? I'll give it like a really I don't know. Explicit example in my mind is like the woman can just be present while the man masturbates. If, as long as you guys feel okay about that in your marriage, there's nothing wrong with that and being really present while, or vice versa, if the man is ill, like being really present with your spouse while you know they're masturbating, to me is like that's a great option If you have somebody that is unable that's your capacity, yeah, and it doesn't have to be this.
Speaker 1:this drag in, this downer it's back to like, are a lot of our disappointments in life, are our unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's back to you're right Guys and girls who were stuck in, who were stuck in sexual addiction. It's like a chronic illness. You have all these unrealistic expectations of what sex is going to be like because you watch thousands and thousands of videos of people faking it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then you get married and you're like, well, missionary position doesn't sound exciting. It doesn't sound fun, it doesn't, isn't fulfilling and there's so much disappointment. Well, that to me that's a chronic illness. It's like, yeah, you have to go back and re define the expectation and get back to what's real.
Speaker 2:And what is the actual point?
Speaker 1:and not comparing yourself because here's now we're back to life, like, if I look at, I've got friends in my life who are so much better off financially than where we're at and if I allow myself to say I would be happy if I had their money, then all of a sudden, my life isn't happy. Right, I'm not happy because I'm comparing myself. The grace that I have is in the marriage that I have, that's right. And it's in. Okay. How do I take the cards that I've been dealt?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And not thinking that happiness is excessive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this might sound like a. This is maybe like a bizarre way to end this conversation, but I do feel it Like. I think that when we get into these spots in life that are unexpected and painful, it's so easy to feel regret or like I've been tricked, like Mary, this is my one shot and look what I landed a husband who has this horrible past and I didn't know about it and now it's impacting me and my kids and all which. All of that is so valid and there is real pain in that and it is sad and there is a grief that is under understandable and even necessary. But isn't it wild how, like when we look at the Bible, we're told to consider it like to make a choice and consider trials in our life an opportunity to let our faith be tested and let that testing produce perseverance and character in us and trust the process that in the end, we won't lack anything.
Speaker 2:Like it is wild how much energy we spend trying to avoid pain in our lives when Jesus did not one time promise that this was going to be easy. And if we are, if we think we're entitled to a joy filled, happy marriage with no problems, we're wrong, like we're really wrong. And I don't mean to undercut or undermine anybody's pain, I'm saying there is a way for you, like, if you're in pain, there's a way for you. I literally had a conversation with my girlfriends a few months ago. I know you won't mind me sharing this, babe, but Jay had kind of like a re re um surfacing of some serious anxiety. He's battled anxiety in like kind of cyclically, battled some anxiety at different points in our marriage for long periods of time and he, after our son Liam was born, who's now two, jason, went off all of his medication that was really helping him with that and he actually had a real great stretch of some breakthrough in peace. Then we had some seriously intense life circumstance things come up, including my mom's terminal illness and her death and all of that. It required a lot from us and Jason's anxiety kind of spiked again and he worked really hard to keep it under control, like really had to manage his thought life so much to keep from just being wracked with anxiety and then to like function in anxiety and not let it like bleed into our family's experience of all this stuff. It was like crazy and so he decided to go back on the same medication that he knew had helped him in the past to help him through this little season.
Speaker 2:And I had a conversation with a girlfriend and I just said like I feel sad that we're at this point again, like I have sadness about the fact that we're back to the spot where Jason needs medication in order to get through the day and not be racked with anxiety. And and I I said to her when I like close my eyes and think about how it feels, I'm 10, 13 years into marriage now I'm putting it in the category of this is an imperfect area of my life. It's okay. I have the opportunity to consider this a trial. I didn't want to marry somebody that had crippling anxiety. I didn't actually know I was marrying somebody that was going to have cycles of crippling anxiety.
Speaker 2:That is something that is a grief to me and I can put it in the category of life's not perfect.
Speaker 2:This is our reality and I have a husband who works his tail off to manage that sucker and he and he gets on top of it, and then sometimes life happens and it's hard again, and my whole point in sharing this is there are certain things that are just hard and we have. We are going to get the most out of life if the hard things, we consider them trials and opportunities to honestly to lean on the Lord, like there's areas of all of our lives where we are so not in control of them, and they are so unpredictably hard that you get. You really have no other choice unless you're just going to spend all your time in bitterness and fear or you know whatever. Then the choice we have is to consider it an opportunity to let our faith in God be strengthened and our perseverance strengthened, and we just have to trust, like I'm going to win in the end, because we're promised that we're not going to lack anything if we just stick to the stick to the road. So it's true on that note.
Speaker 1:Well, listen y'all, it's been awesome. I hope you guys really enjoy uh, this enjoy this week's episode. We launched our marriage intensive last week. We've had so much fun on there. People have been asking when are you going to launch another one? Probably in the fall, so stay tuned for that, but otherwise, hopefully, you guys have an incredible week. If you like our podcast, please just take two minutes. Go and subscribe to it. If, If you haven't leave a comment for us.
Speaker 2:that really helps and share it with a friend, All right y'all, we love you.
Speaker 1:See you next week.