Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
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Honest Christian Conversations
Creating a Vision for a Faith-Centered Marriage
How can spending just 15 minutes together each day transform your marriage? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Doug and Leslie Davis, the heart and soul behind the Vision Driven Marriage platform. We kick off by sharing their delightful first date and journey towards creating a mission-driven life dedicated to supporting couples through marital challenges. Doug and Leslie open up about the stigmas surrounding multiple marriages and the significance of seeking God's redemption, offering a fresh perspective and a lifeline for those navigating similar paths.
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Doug and Leslie Davis are super fun people. I enjoyed chatting with them about marriage. Their heartfelt wisdom is easy to understand and through our conversation, you can see how they've implemented this advice into their lives. I am so excited for you to hear this episode. Whether you're married, engaged or looking for a spouse, you will want to stay tuned for this sound biblical advice from two of the most encouraging marriage pastors you will ever listen to. Be sure to share this episode with family and friends so they, too, can be blessed by the contents of this episode. Well, hello, doug and Leslie. I'm very excited to talk to you guys. Your podcast is fun, that's what I would call it. Your banter between each other is great and I just I enjoy listening to it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's good to be with you, Anna. Thanks for having us on.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't you give us a little introduction into what you guys do, who you are and how you guys?
Speaker 3:met. Well, we're Doug and Leslie Davis and we have the Vision Driven Marriage platform. So we have the website and the podcast called the Vision Driven Marriage and we have a coaching program that will soon be out, and so we're excited about that. But we just really long to see couples who are striving in their marriage to be closer together and closer to Christ and they can't figure out how to do it, and we like to come along beside them and just help them out a little bit and let them know the weird things they're going through are not unique to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sometimes they're pretty normal struggles. And how we met our first date was just really kind of funny. Because I was, I know right. I was in the Miss Pyatt County pageant Craziest thing I ever did. But I got a note that night delivered to my house from one of my friends and it said you were worthy of the crown, let me take you out to a dinner fit for a queen. And I'm just like that's it. That's all I needed. That was our first date.
Speaker 1:Nice, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's how we met.
Speaker 1:That was smooth yeah it was, I was hooked. And it's been downhill ever since.
Speaker 2:I was hooked and it's been downhill ever since.
Speaker 1:You guys are funny. I love it, all right. So I'm going to start off with a question that's kind of personal to who I am, because you guys say that you work with people who are married, who are having struggles and everything. Do you work with people who have been married more than once, like in my case? This is my third marriage. I'm on because I made two not so good choices the first two times, but I also, even though I grew up in the church, called myself a Christian. I don't believe that I was living obviously the way you should, and you know I made poor choices and then just added toppings onto those poor choices. So you help, do you help people who have had more than one marriage? And you know to going.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that is amazing that is not only part of your story, but it's part of, I think, so many people's stories is that so many times we've made choices that didn't necessarily include what God's plan for us was. We do that a lot, and, whether it was something like a marriage or something that was a day-to-day decision, I think that's something that's part of the normal struggle, and what we want to focus on is what God has for us the redemption that comes through Christ, the opportunity to live for the Lord today. The opportunity to seek God's plan for your life today and to realize that God didn't ask us to stay in the things we've done previously. He's asking us to surrender to his will today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense Because I know that there's a lot of stigma in many different churches and Christian areas where you said you've been married more than once. They just kind of look at you like you should just stay single, or shame on you. And it's really hard. There's a lot of people who claim to be Christians who may have been in the same boat that I was in. They weren't actually. They didn't fully know God the way they should have.
Speaker 1:I don't believe that I truly became a Christian until I was 30. And that's when I was going through my second divorce. So that's why, in my marriage I'm in now, I met my husband at church. We're both Bible-believing Christians. We are trying to work on our marriage through all the struggles. I have two different kids, two different dads. We're working through all that.
Speaker 1:Which is a question I'm going to have for you too, is how should a blended family work to make God center? Because it's difficult, because you're co-parenting with other people who may or may not agree. In my case, with my first husband, it was a very volatile type of co-parenting situation, although he said he was a Christian, but honestly you wouldn't know it by looking at him. And my second husband has also said he's a Christian, but it's you wouldn't know it by looking at him. And my second husband has also said he's a Christian, but it's kind of the same way, but it's a little easier to work with. But then I have my husband, who's also trying to instill different values from them, and it's just how. What kind of advice would you give to someone who's in a situation like that?
Speaker 2:You want to do it, first Go ahead, okay. Well, the description of being able to look at a blended family immediately takes the similarity from one case to the next case completely away. Every blended family has unique characteristics that are unique to that family, and so the very first thing is understanding that, if you and your spouse are seeking God's will for your not only your relationship, but for your family, there's going to be a couple of things that are going to be difficult, but they're important. One of them is, of course, the communication between husband and wife on not only what matters to you and what values matter to you and what the Bible says you should do and how you want to raise your kids, but to be able to be honest about how now our child's father has a different set of values and opinions. What can we do to make sure that our kids never have a negative view of their dad but they understand why we believe what we do? And it's really a difficult thing, but if you can emphasize the godly value rather than trying to say you need to disagree with your biological father, most kids can see when you genuinely care about the spouse. Even if you're co-parenting just on a part-time basis, they can tell that genuine love and that genuine care.
Speaker 2:And if I want my daughters to understand the love that Christ has for them, I have to have that kind of love for people that I'm working with. Even if I'm not always agreeing with them and even if I'm not always getting along necessarily the way I should with them, I still need to love them because it's that demonstration of love, even in the midst of a disagreement, that will point our children toward Christ. And when they see Christ and understand that, you know, I'm amazed that Jesus loved me before I even gave him a second thought, that he loved me enough to die for me so that my sins could be forgiven when I was in direct rebellion against him. If he can love me like that, I can love a person that I'm co-parenting with that I'm not getting along with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And I think I would add to that I don't know the ages of your children. How?
Speaker 1:old are your children? My oldest is 17. And then I have a 12-year-old, 8-year-old, 5-year-old and almost 2-year-old. Oh, eight-year-old, five-year-old and almost two-year-old. Oh, that's a good age range. I've got them all. I've got them all, that's a good age range.
Speaker 3:But the thing that would come to mind for me and I actually I heard Anna McLaughlin talk about this she does the podcast, she Considers a Field, so she homeschools and she's very hands-on with her children's decision-making and their education, and that, and one of the things that she was talking about on her podcast, is that she works to allow them communication in that realm.
Speaker 3:It would be like asking them in this situation how do I honor your father and stand for what we believe in and then get them involved into in that conversation? And so at least your older kids are old enough to to take part in a conversation like that and just say you know, here's the situation and we need to honor your father and also honor our beliefs. And how do we do that and get them involved in that kind of decision making and that helps them understand the position that you're in, the position that the family is in, and they under that. One of the most important things that you're trying to do is to honor those that are involved you know gets them thinking about how do I honor people?
Speaker 2:It helps them learn how to do that as well, because, you know, in Romans 10, we're told that the only thing we're supposed to try to outdo one another in is showing honor to one another.
Speaker 2:And so being able to let them see that. You know, there's going to be times where honoring your dad and doing what's right feel like they don't fit. But we have to figure out how can we first of all glorify God but secondly, honor your dad because it's something that's the right thing to do, and when they see the difficulties of that decision, they also then can take away that argument. Oh, they're just making decisions and they're not thinking it through.
Speaker 1:They can see not only that you're thinking it through, but that you're valuing the right things be helpful. I mean, I've heard some horror stories about how parents don't get along and their kids have to suffer. I kind of felt like monkey in the middle with my parents, because they didn't really get along and I felt like my dad would let me do the things that he knew I wasn't supposed to. Just despite my mom. My mom would always grill me, wanting to know what was going on. It was just I didn't like it. It made me feel anxious. So I never want to do that to my children. I've tried really hard to be respectful. Even though I don't care about a lot of stuff, I don't want my eldest.
Speaker 3:I didn't want her dad's snarky, disrespectful attitude towards me, but I tried really hard to not say anything in front of her because I knew she'd figure it out on her own which she has and in the big picture, they're going to get on the other side of that and into their own adult lives and in their own adult lives and look back and say mom did the right thing, or she tried really hard to do the right thing and that's honorable, you know. And so they're going to see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a hard thing as parents to understand. Is that one day they're going to be adults, they're going to have that epiphany moment, like we all did, because we were all children once that thought our parents were stifling our fun or whatever. But as we get older, we're like oh, I get it, I understand, I know why you did what you did. I see what you did and you want to thank them for it. And I think when you're in the middle of it, when you're in the thick of it, it's really hard to see that one day that's going to happen for you too. So just stay the course. So it's very good that you reminded us of that, because I know I need that reminder often.
Speaker 3:I think we all do yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to have staying power for a lot of different things, and our pastor was just recently talking about this on Sunday, how you have to have staying power for anything. I mean, just stay the course. It's going to get hard, you might have to suffer, but you've got to stay strong and you've got to stay at it. God is faithful and you have to learn how to be faithful too Tenacity.
Speaker 3:I think that's what they call that, right yeah.
Speaker 1:So what tips do you have for couples since we're on the subject of children, with kids where their relationships just kind of taken a backseat to the fact that they're parenting not just blended family parenting, but parenting in general? You got little kids, you know. Maybe you got like three under five years old, you know. It's like you know you don't have the family around you maybe to help you babysit. It's just kind of you guys against the world or whatever. What kind of advice do you have for them to make sure that they put their relationship in perspective of where it should be on the pyramid? God first, spouse, children, everything else we call that the messy middle.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do.
Speaker 3:When you're in the messy middle and there's a bunch of things that are on the back burner, because the only thing on the front burner is getting the kids fed and changed and in bed without killing them, keeping them alive.
Speaker 2:That's the priority, and we do.
Speaker 2:We refer to it as the messy middle because I think anybody who's going through it understands the messy part, because there's things that you're doing, and most of them are really good, but sometimes you're so tired you have absolutely no idea what's going on and you can easily get frustrated and you put the needs of the kids up front, and so sometimes you end up putting the needs that you have especially the needs with you and your spouse on the back burner and things can get difficult because you're doing what's good for the kids but not always what's good for you too, and it's a normal place to be, but it's not a good place to be.
Speaker 2:We call it the messy middle because a lot of times we'll have a little bit of time before our first child comes. Some people don't have that opportunity. They marry right into instant family, but then, after the kids are grown and you have the empty nest which we have now, it's the other side of that messy middle, and so one of the things that we would tell people who are in the midst of it all is as busy as it is, as difficult as it can be, make sure that you communicate really well, because your spouse is a terrible mind reader.
Speaker 2:And because it's so easy for us to think that our spouse has been running with the narrative that's been going on in our head all day, because we've been so busy doing all these things, not realizing that we did those with the kids. Our spouse wasn't there. They don't know what we've played in our head for four hours. And then we start a conversation in the middle of what we've been thinking about, but they're lost and confused and have no idea what we're talking about. And then it frustrates us more because they're not being helpful. And so you know the very first thing remember your spouse isn't a mind reader. Communicate as clearly as you can, and it's okay. It's okay. Like when, when I would get home, it was good for Leslie to tell me what it was that she needed. I could see there were things going on where I could help. I didn't always know what those things would be. That would be the most helpful. She had to be able to communicate it with me, because I was going to guess wrong if I tried to guess.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you would guess wrong if you tried to guess. But the fact that you know when he would get home from work. We had four kids. At one point I was in school full time and he was working a full time job and another part time job, you know too. So, like so, we were busy on top of the kid busy also.
Speaker 3:But one of the things I think that was was very valuable in our relationship at that time was that we had, well, two things. We had one tea time, what we called tea time. When he got home from work we spent 15 minutes. That was just him and I, like the kids, knew it was their time out. That's why we called it tea time. It was their time out from me, it was their time out from their dad. It was just him and I for 15 minutes so that we could get caught up, get connected with each other before the evening started and just slow things down and kind of recenter, because I know, emotionally his presence kind of recenters me and physically my presence recenters him, and so we just would take that 15 minutes or so and just kind of recenter each other.
Speaker 2:Right, and to understand that. You know we had daughters and it wasn't very long. Our girls weren't very old.
Speaker 2:When I would get home they would sprint as fast as they could to the door, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, and they would jump and I'd have to catch them. You know it was a good thing I could catch them, because they would fly at me and you know they and they wanted my time, they wanted my attention. I think it's normal for kids to want that time and want that attention, and so I promised them that they would get all of that time, they'd get all that attention. But their mom got the first 15 minutes and that did a couple of things.
Speaker 2:First of all, it did allow her to be able to communicate whatever needed to be communicated and to be able to center her world and actually have a conversation with somebody who was an adult, for just a minute, but on top of that, what I didn't realize until later was that it gave our girls a sense of security that a lot of their friends didn't have, because, even though they might say ew, gross, they had no doubt that their dad loved their mom.
Speaker 2:They had no doubt that she was important, she mattered. I told them you know, you're valuable too. Mom gets the first 15 minutes and then you guys get the rest of the night, and so they got to see that our relationship mattered to us. They got to see that we were on the same page, you know. So they couldn't be the kids that would try to say, but mom said it was okay, cause they knew we actually talked to each other. But then also it gave them that security to know that things are going to be okay. Their friends were going through issues where their parents were separating and their friends were going through things where their mom and dad didn't necessarily like each other.
Speaker 2:And it was an amazing comfort for our kids to see that our relationship mattered and it didn't take priority over theirs, but it was put before theirs and I think that was important. The girls still mattered. They absolutely mattered. But this was first.
Speaker 3:And the second thing that I was talking about that was really important is very subtle, but you can hear him, hear him say it that he was there and present in the evenings to to be with the family, to support the family you know, not just my kids, but me also and I think a lot of times men don't realize that their emotional support just kind of centers the family and they, because they're not emotionally geared, you know, and so so that that's one of the things like if, if for the husband, if you're not emotionally geared or emotionally centered, begin to begin to raise some awareness on what that might look like, because that's really an important thing.
Speaker 2:Still really don't feel much of anything but the concept is I'm not a feelings kind of guy.
Speaker 1:My husband's the same Right but understanding. But you were there.
Speaker 2:I mean you were emotionally supportive. Being present and making sure the things that matter are made clear. I think that's the part that was really important.
Speaker 3:Because that tea time that wasn't about physical intimacy, that was about emotional intimacy and physical presence. You were engaged and on and talking and aware and all the things right yeah.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, security for the children is definitely something that's very important. I know they need that structure. They need to know that they're going to be okay. Their foundation isn't going to crumble, so that's really good that you were able to instill that in them in a young setting as well, and I'm sure their friends benefited from that as well If they were over there at that time when you came home and they saw that that's still.
Speaker 1:You know, you're planting seeds for them as well. They may not see it at home, but maybe they'll remember that as they get older and be like you know what. I remember this. I want that for myself. This is what I'm going to look at. So I really like that you guys did that. It's so hard when your kids are excited to see because my kids do that too as soon as their dad walks in there, they're like yelling for him and running over and my girls want to talk to him and they want to try to get something that mom already said no to. Yeah, sometimes I'll have to be like no, I already told them no. And they're like, oh, and then he gets upset with them because he's like really, your mom already told you no and you're coming over here to try to pin me against her.
Speaker 1:I don't think so. So they know that if they want something, they got to try to go to dad. And he'll say something like oh well, what did mom say? Oh nothing.
Speaker 3:We've had that conversation once. We've had it a lot. Yeah, I think our girls knew, like they tried that too, but they just knew that that wasn't going to be. That wasn't going to be the case.
Speaker 1:So sometimes my girls will do it boldly. I'll be in the car and sitting next to him and they and they clearly heard me say no. He heard me say no, and they'll still ask him seriously. I'm right here in the car, we all heard what just happened and you're still going to do this.
Speaker 3:I think at some point the teenage girl's ears just shut off to mom. I think that the mom voice just tones out, or something Like I don't know. But man, those teenage years had some challenges, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my little girls, especially my eight-year-old. She's like obsessed with marriage. She wants to get married. She already knows who. She wants to marry One of her friends and everything. She's got it planned out. And every single time we watch that cheesy hallmark movie or something like that, she sees some kiss, she goes marriage. You know it annoys her older brother, her 12 year old brother, but every single time my husband and I go to kiss or whatever. She's like marriage. You know love, you know. So I I keep reminding her brother when he gets annoyed I just say at least she's got it right, she knows what you're supposed to do. Say at least she's got it right. She knows what you're supposed to do right. You know she's got the trajectory, how it should be. Let it go, it's just so annoying.
Speaker 1:I understand just let it go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like, everything an eight-year-old gonna do is gonna be annoying to you, right story?
Speaker 1:of my life, yeah.
Speaker 2:Eventually our girls, cause they did the same thing. But eventually it was pretty funny, especially our youngest one. She would look at me, give her mom a hug and she'd be like but the funny thing was she. She always smiled and was still very thankful that she knew that her dad loved her mom. Yeah, it's pretty funny and she's unfortunately got my sense of humor, so she'd say things like get a room that I'm not in, that's funny.
Speaker 1:I could see my kids saying something like that. So let's transition away a little from children aspect and let's talk now about the spouses. I was listening to one of your episodes recently and you were talking about I think it was like the four pillars or something, and you were talking about active listening, which I thought was interesting and is definitely not something that a lot of people do, and I find I also have that problem.
Speaker 3:But explain to us what active listening is and how it can benefit a marriage Well active listening starts when you're listening to your spouse and you can reply back in a manner that is respectful and conveys the fact that you have heard what they just said.
Speaker 3:Usually start it with the phrase so I understand you're saying that or heard you say this, and if I missed it then that would give Doug the opportunity to correct it right to clarify, and the thing about that is that that also gives you the opportunity, when you're reflecting back like that, it also gives you the opportunity to address tonality, Because when you're judging a tone which we do all the time, like we, you know, we're constantly judging a tone right we can reflect that back and say did you mean to say XYZ in an angry manner or whatever? And it gives the opportunity to share how we thought we heard it and then, if it's not right, if we miss the mark, our spouse has the opportunity to say nope, that's not what I meant. Here's what I meant instead.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that that does. We tend to ascribe motivation to why people say things. We do it in everyday life, we do it whether we're at work, we do it when we hear people on the street. We assume well, I would have been motivated to say that because of a certain feeling.
Speaker 3:Right, it's tainted by how we might be motivated, you know.
Speaker 2:And so when you are practicing active listening, you can get rid of some of those false assumptions, you know, because Leslie might assume that I said what I said because I felt the way she would have felt if she'd said it, and it gives me a chance to say no, it wasn't what I was feeling, or thinking at all.
Speaker 3:Or not just feeling, but sometimes like. Sometimes I would ascribe it to what I knew as a child.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And so you come into a relationship with the baggage that you're carrying from your childhood, and when you project that onto your spouse, that doesn't give your spouse a fair chance, right? So I grew up in a background where, more often than not, I left a situation feeling stupid, and so when we then would have a conversation and he would question something that I said or something that I did, I would immediately ascribe to him the fact that he was thinking I was stupid. When the fact is.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to know what she meant.
Speaker 3:She wanted to just write to me, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know and so, but that helps. Active listening helps you be able to overcome not only those relationships from your childhood, but something else that I think your listeners can relate to, anna, is the relationships that we've had previously we bring into our current relationship, and so if you've been in a relationship before where a certain discussion was because of anger, then you can think well, my spouse is angry with me when they might not be. Or if it was previously because there was jealousy involved, you can falsely think that that's what's motivating your current situation. Being willing to say here's what I hear you saying is that what you meant helps get rid of a lot of those preconceived ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree and I absolutely get that, because I know that's a struggle, that I've had a lot, being married twice. I had two different types of relationships before the one I have now, and he doesn't play the games that I used to play with the others. If he can tell that I'm angry, he's just gonna go on with life. He's not going to, you know, take the bait and everything. So what I've learned to do is I just need to come out and tell him I'm annoyed or I I need you to fix this now. You know, like I don't play the game anymore of just, oh, I'm mad. So I'm going to make sure you know it or can feel that I'm mad, because he just won't play it.
Speaker 1:Either he doesn't get it, he's clueless to it, he didn't know that it actually hurt me that bad, or he didn't think it would because he doesn't know all well. He knows my baggage but I mean he doesn't know how I emotionally handled my baggage or whatever it was. So I've gotten more intentional on just coming out and telling him you know, I didn't like what you said and he's like what are you talking about? And then I'll tell him. He said that's not how it was meant to be at all.
Speaker 1:So I've learned recently especially God likes to humble me and he likes to do it in the most awkward of ways for me, because I recently got humbled by my second husband for something and he was spot on with everything he was saying, which was slightly irritating, but I knew it was God humbling me again in something that needed humbling. So I let him say what he had to say and I processed it later, later and I understood and it was along these lines of active listening and how we carry our baggage in and I actually opened up to him and just let him know that I still have some issues with you and I'm working on them. I said it's just really, really hard to handle and I've gotten more honest with people. I've gotten more honest with myself because I want to have a healthy marriage with the person I'm actually married to. So I'll take it wherever I get my humbling moments, you know, but it it's definitely.
Speaker 3:it's not something that I'm used to doing is active listening. I'm more like active reacting. I try really hard not to, but it's reflecting back what you hear that person saying so that you can better understand or better communicate what you've understood them to say. It really takes a lot of the second guessing out of conversations. Like you said, your husband's not having to guess how you feel about something.
Speaker 2:And if he's active in that conversation. If you're active in that conversation, then there's communication going on and it gives you the opportunity to correct untrue hurts. We've got enough things that we do that are based on reality that cause us to hurt one another. We don't like it, but it's the reality. But if there was something that I thought was motivated by something hurtful, and she's got the opportunity to correct it, no, that's not what I was thinking at all.
Speaker 3:It allows us to not dwell on and have those places fester where we're hurt over something that was just taken the wrong way and in our situation, what it's done, what active listening has done, has solidified a security because I no longer now assume he's got any bad intentions the baggage that I brought in as a young bride from my childhood there was always the assumption of bad intentions at some point along the line.
Speaker 2:Or blame.
Speaker 3:Or blame right, and that was.
Speaker 2:it took us several years to to maneuver through that, but um especially when I saw the reaction and had no idea, because I wasn't thinking anything that would blame her event, but she was feeling it, you know, and so it was really confusing.
Speaker 3:It was residual from childhood stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that a lot of people are going through exactly that, where they say, well, we have disagreements and I'm not sure why the reactions are the way they are. And so active listening gives you an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper, to try to explore what's really going on, so that some of those protective mechanisms don't have to be triggered anymore, because it is a trigger, I protect myself by reacting this way. And then your spouse is really confused why you reacted that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true. Well, this has been awesome conversation and before we go, I have one more question for you guys. Give some encouragement and wisdom to those who are either engaged or they're looking for a future spouse. How can they get on the right foot starting off their marriage? Well, I think it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good question and I'll speak to the engaged people. You want to speak to the non-engaged people?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:I think for the engaged people is to get premarital counseling with Bible-based, bible-based premarital counseling, because the more you know about biblical principles and yourselves going into that relationship, the better off that you're going to be.
Speaker 2:And with both those who are hoping to be married someday and those who are already engaged. One of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give to you is to realize that your partner is a blessing from God. But God doesn't intend your spouse to be where you find your identity or to be where you find all of your satisfaction. That can only come from him. Now he gives you your spouse. What a blessing that he does. But every satisfaction and your identity comes from Christ. When you realize that you'll take away the setup for a lot of heartbreak. Because if you think my spouse has to provide everything for me first of all, if you say it out loud, you realize God's the one who provides for me. But you're setting yourself up for heartbreak because, as good as your spouse is, your spouse is going to let you down multiple times. And if you think that it's because there's something wrong with me, if your identity isn't what your spouse thinks of you instead of what God thinks of you, you're setting yourself up for more heartache and hurt. So it's not going to take away your struggles, but you can limit your struggles greatly.
Speaker 2:Engaged couple. If you realize your identity needs to come through Christ, then you can have a proper relationship with your spouse. But then, for those who are looking for a spouse, first of all, I would encourage you to be praying for them now. Even if you haven't met them, god knows who they are. Be praying for them now and be praying that, in the midst of their current struggles, even before you've met them, that God would be able to give them an identity that's so firmly rooted in him that the things that the rest of the world struggles with anxiety and depression and lack of self-worth that those things would be able to be handled by him in such a way that you'll be able to bless them rather than contribute to the struggles the world has.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, wonderful advice. I wish I had heard you guys say it when I was younger. I wouldn't have made so many choices, because I definitely put a lot of my worth into the men that I was trying to make love me we do sometimes, don't we as women, that I'm going to get a husband that completes me?
Speaker 3:And Jesus is saying I want to be the one to complete you.
Speaker 2:Right Jerry Maguire and Renee Zellweger.
Speaker 3:I can't even stand that movie so yes, I agree. We just heard that on Tanya Joy's podcast too, that she was talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she was talking about Jerry Maguire. Yeah, well, thank you guys so much for coming on today. I enjoyed our conversation. You are wonderful people, so fun, so bubbly. Well, thank you, I would love to one day maybe meet you guys.
Speaker 2:That would be awesome. We look forward to that, Anna.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, thank you guys.
