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Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs, and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host belah. Rose.

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Hi, and welcome. Thank you for joining. Is this your first time at the delight your marriage podcast? Well, if it is, I want to say welcome. Here is a place where we talk about marriage, we talk about a God’s way we talk about what the Bible says about a woman and a man coming together for life. One thing I know my husband reminds me of, is right before we were married, a pastor friend told him this really great advice that he’s my husband has brought up many times since then. But he said, when you’re getting married, there’s a spot in the Bible that says, you leave your father and your mother and you cleave to your wife. So his advice to my husband was to always choose your wife. And I think that’s been a really important thing in our lives, and has really guided us a lot of times when maybe there were issues with our in laws, or my parents or whatever. And the question comes down to wait a second, we are in this together, we are going to do this God’s way we are going to cleave to each other, we’re going to forget the past whatever was going on beforehand, whoever we were before we said I do before we made those vows before God, and we are going to be someone different after that. So today is the second half of the enter my wonderful, wonderful interview with Ruth uses. And she again has a fantastic. First half it talks about really believing in your beauty as a wife, it’s a difficult thing to do. But why that matters in our intimate life and our relationship with her husband. But today’s episode, the second half, is also really wonderful. And one of my favorite things that she says is about the roles of a husband and wife in the household. And she says this, just like submission is the hardest thing for us as women, leading is the hardest thing for husbands. And I think our society acts like men have to lead and they have to be everything to everyone and we as wives so often we make them feel even more like that, that that not only are they supposed to be making the most money and being the most ambitious and, and being the most affectionate and taking me out on dates and, and being kind to your kids and being the best father and the list is endless. But in addition to that we want them to be the spiritual leader. And of course, that’s what God wants to but the question is, how do we get to that place? Next week, you can listen to my story in that my understanding of what God’s taught me. And I wanted to especially let Ruth just begin this topic to really talk about doing marriage God’s way and understanding what the role of a husband what the role of a wife and understanding how that works together. Again, we’ve got really juicy tips about sex because we always do but definitely listen in to hear what Ruth has to say further on this topic.

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will tell me if you could think through. You know what your marriage we talked about the season the struggle, and what does your marriage look like now?

3:49

What a man I don’t know completely different. ways we are we are glued together. We are glued together. Through connecting physically we are glued together through our words like we talk about anything in everything. We pray together, we pray over each other. We read the Bible together. My husband, his you know, husbands are on a different journey than we are. Yeah. And he’s been great the whole time. He’s been encouraging but but I’ve had to say you know what, this is his own journey. This is his own pace. And and he’s on a journey to and I love watching him just kind of gain confidence and open up. Whether it’s whether it’s sexually in the bedroom or whether it’s he loves to teach kids at Sunday School young kids. Just his excitement for that. Yeah, but I don’t know. We’re glued together. We are.

4:52

That’s awesome. That is so cool. Well, I want to dive into that a little bit more. i You said your husband’s on your separate His separate journey. And I think, you know, logically, our language is limited, I guess I’ll first of all say that our language is limited to really understand what’s going on here. Right. But the best we can say is we’re glued together. But we’re also on separate journeys, right? How does that make sense? And why does that make sense in God’s world?

5:19

You know, I, I talk with women a lot because of teaching classes. And one of the things I that I hear over and over is, I just want my husband to be the spiritual leader. Yeah, oh, my gosh, right. And I, you know, that’s so ingrained in us as women that that’s what our husbands are supposed to do. And we do want our husbands to lead we want I think we want to lead them to lead spiritually, I think we want them to lead in the bedroom. I think we want them to lead all kinds of ways, but, but just like submission is the hardest thing in the world for us as women, because we’re so good at multitasking. Yeah, I think leading is the hardest thing in the world for our husbands to do. They are great at letting go of things and going out and playing and being spontaneous, and not worrying about things. And, and they’re not great at multitasking and controlling things and leading things they’re not. And so it’s a journey. You know what, let me give you just one specific example on this. Okay. When we were when, when we were five years ago, when we’re going through this tough year of all this stuff. I remember, as we laid in bed, just holding each other telling my husband, I want to start praying together. And he said, Yeah, me too. And then we just drifted off to sleep. And I swear, that happened at least at least three or four different times. Yeah. And finally, one night. I just started praying. Like he was holding me and I just started praying. And I look back on that, you know, you could look at the two different ways you could go, dang it, like he should have led that he should have started praying. He’s the spiritual leader. But, right? More honestly, what really happened was God was calling me to pray with my husband, like, I had to I couldn’t stop. And it finally got to this point where it just came out of me, because I couldn’t control it. Now, just because my husband’s not at that place to take that lead. If God is calling me to pray with my husband. I need to just pray with my husband, instead of saying, Well, I can’t do it, because my husband has to lead. So So what’s happened from that point is, you know what? I don’t even remember exactly. But somehow, somewhere along the line, he started taking every other night praying. Yeah, and I don’t know, who cares if he started it or not? I don’t care. God was calling me to do it. And, and my husband is on a journey to be in this place where he leads spiritually. And I know that He desires that he mentions it sometimes when I’ll say, Oh, I wish I had prayed about that. He said, and he’ll say, No, you know what, I’m supposed to be the spiritual leader. It’s on his mind. He knows about it. He’s on a journey. And I need to let him be on that journey. And I need to do what God calls me to do.

8:28

I love that. I love that. And, you know, I wonder I have that same, that same kind of back and forth in my own mind of like, Am I leading is elite like, Is this okay to be? Yeah, right. And, you know, one thing that comes to mind from your story is I wonder, you know, I wonder if it’s, if we could look at it in a in a way that even is like, you know, one of you said, we should pray together. And he affirmed it, whether he said it or you said or whatever. And it almost like I would say that was a step of leadership in the affirmation. Yeah. Because he, I think sometimes, you know, as women in it, and this doesn’t apply completely and whatever, but I think sometimes the leadership that our husband gives is making a safe place for us to do what God wants us to be doing. And, and I think of that as leadership, because I think of something like Gandhi, right, Gandhi led so many people into this, you know, India’s revolution, everything changed. India, awesome. All in nonviolence all that he was a leader, but he basically made it safe for Martin Luther King Jr. to do his work. Because if Martin Luther King Jr. hadn’t have known Gandhi had worked with this whole nonviolent revolution. Martin Luther King Jr, who was following God’s in his leading. Anyway, I just think about that leadership often is is just an opportunity. Anybody that says yes, I affirm what you’re saying, I affirm that, that God wants you to do this. I think that’s, that’s appropriate. And I know, I know my husband has done that. Beyond I mean, yes, I really agree with what you said from the beginning about the the bravery, that confidence it requires to do ministry to do the work that God is asking you to do. It takes so much strength and I love like an ox of an art. But I will tell you what if I did not have my husband leading the way, I couldn’t, I couldn’t do this. He really has made it safe. He’s made it so that something is questionable. I asked him to listen to it. I asked him to think through it, I asked him to be the person that is going to protect me if this is all goes to shambles, like he’s the one. And so I guess I say all of that, to think maybe our view of leadership, I guess we each can have a check in our heart, like, what does it really mean? I mean, Jesus led everything and yet he went to the cross for us to do our work, right? If he didn’t go to the cross, we couldn’t do what we did. And yet how was that a leader? That’s not what anyone wanted. They wanted a king that was going to revolt and throw over the government. But Jesus knew better. And if that’s the kind of leader that God is asking your husband be, which it says scripturally just as Jesus as the head of the church, so is your husband, the head of the house? I mean, that’s the kind of leadership we’re asking for. So maybe, instead of, you know, having this the standard for a husband in the way that we see leadership today with the CEOs and the, you know, heroes and whatever in life, maybe that’s not what God is asking us to look at our husband and ask for.

11:43

Yeah, I think you’re right on. Amen, sister. Amen.

11:49

Yeah. I’ll just take over.

11:52

No, no, it’s good.

11:55

Yeah, awesome. Well, I’m just so grateful. I feel like I, I, I’m such an external processor that sometimes, you know, it’s, God teaches me things if I just keep talking. Anyway. So I was so encouraging. I mean, you said 28 years of marriage or 29? Was it?

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Yeah, coming up on 20 990 Amazing. Um,

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so in that, phenomenally a phenomenal adventure, what would you say have been the three central things to your marital marital success? If you could, I don’t drum it down.

12:37

God has God has been at the center the entire time and is much more now than he was but but has always been. The second thing is just spending time together. We love this. We work on things together, we play together, we laugh together, we eat together, we pray together. It just it comes down to just this simple things. I think sometimes marriage is not so complicated. You know, all the books say go out on a date every single week. Do we when we do it? Or do we wait till our marriages live in crisis and wait till a counselor tells us to do it? And then the third thing you know I think for us and maybe this isn’t true for every couple but but physical connection has been a huge deal and and it was it hasn’t always been sex right? A lot of times it’s holding hands or or just sitting next to each other I have in my husband row my feet. But we have always connected physically.

13:41

Yeah. And I find that even that that start of physical connection can make it easier to transition into more or not, but I know that sometimes especially you mentioned hormone levels before I find that oh, that’s a huge thing for me. I’m particularly sensitive to my home runs and so

14:05

we till you reach menopause and you’re a flatline. Oh god, you can either be a flatline way down there, or you can be a flatline way up there, baby. My goodness.

14:17

God willing, it’ll be up.

14:20

You know how much sex is in your mind? Yeah, right. I mean, it’s 85 to 90% in our mind, it is. So if it’s our in our mind that much in our mind, do we have a choice?

14:33

Hmm. Interesting.

14:36

I think so. Yeah. So sorry, I went on a tangent there.

14:41

It’s good. No, I love it. No, it’s really good. Yeah. And and, and actually, yeah, there’s just so much we could say about that. So yes, Allah I would love to have that conversation more soon. I’m just about menopause, hormones, all that kind of stuff. It’s it’s really important stuff to our sex life and in our connection with our husband. So, okay, so so, you know, we we’ve talked about sex quite a bit, but I guess, you know, I always love to find out if there was, you know, advice that you just wish someone let you in on earlier, what would you kind of say to that?

15:15

About Sex specific about sex that Yes. What kind of advice do you want? I get a lot of advice. You

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know, you have a website full of it. And final studies. Yeah. Okay, well, um, you know, maybe your top couple, whatever you think,

15:28

um, tap into words. That’s a huge deal for for women. And, and I think if men understood how powerful words were, they would become a little more interested in using them. But even I mean, we’re talking about even just like for the power of, of taking each other somewhere else, because you can’t get your mind out of the laundry, right. But instead, with your words, you weave stories that take you some to some deserted beach somewhere. And there’s a lot of power in words. And, and so that’s one thing. The other thing is, you know, we think about sex is, it’s like we go throughout our day. And then we go, oh, I guess I better have sex.

16:15

Again, with that to do list, yeah.

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It’s so separate from everything else sex is supposed to just flow out of connecting 24/7 That’s what it’s supposed to be just like, you know, prayer for me used to be on the to do list. It was like, Man, I better prayer. I haven’t prayed in a long time or whatever, right? That’s not what it’s like anymore. Now. I talked to God all day long. And sometimes when when I’m hurting, or, or I just need some more in depth time with him, then then I’m, like, really sinking into prayer. But, but other times, I’m just talking to him throughout the day. And, and so I think that’s how it’s supposed to be with our husband. It’s supposed to be connecting throughout the day. And then sex just flows out of that. It’s not supposed to be this very separate thing of oh, I Well, now I’m better have sex.

17:10

Yeah. Mm hmm. No, that’s really good. Mm hmm. I love that. So we’ve talked about the work that God has called you to. And it really through your marriage. And I guess, because of the marriage that you’ve had, can you kind of share with us a little bit more on what opportunities you’ve had to get to know and to serve God?

17:36

Well, this ministry and we can love is been a huge deal, it’s been a huge stretch. For me, it’s been it, the curriculum basically, is based off of my journey, and what I experienced and the resources I used, and the types of things that I did to stretch and communication with my husband’s with words, and, and, and connect physically, in other ways, other ways besides just intercourse and, and all of that. Yeah. And then just teaching it to women has been a stretch as far as battling insecurities of who are you and what you know, and you’re not really making a difference. And, and all of that. And so certainly, that is Drew driven me towards God, because I can’t do any of this without him. And then switch, you know, it. It’s amazing as I learn more about sex, and and how it drives me towards my husband and intimacy and what it means to get naked over and over with my husband, even when maybe I feel like he’s not getting naked. But I just over and over, I get negative with him. That it just has given me a more of an understanding of who God is. Yeah, of his design of how good he is about how much intimacy that he wants with me. And so I don’t do any of this without God. Whether it’s doing my ministry, or whether it’s getting naked over and over, was my husband. And that’s physically and it’s emotionally and spiritually, right. It’s, it’s sharing all of me, it’s sharing my brokenness, it’s sharing. When I’m in the pit, it is sharing the best of the best of me.

19:39

Oh, it’s powerful. That’s so good. It’s so good. And I just want to outline some of the things that really meant to me from something you said and you’re getting naked with your husband over and over and over again and I love that obviously, you know, we can take that in many ways, but but physically, emotionally, spiritually, at your worst at your best naked For your husband in the same way, that same level of I think, you know, the habit of doing that with our husband helps us to do that before God too, right? That right that that true vulnerability, that true area where we’re like I this is just, this is it and this is. And to at the same moment is to belief the value of that, that this is valuable, it’s worthy. Who I am, what my body is how God’s created me is worthy of a reveal of being fully known. And it’s, you

20:39

know, it’s very easy to get into this place where you feel like, I can’t do that, because he’s not doing it for me. Like, he’s, he’s not, he’s not going through his bag. She’s not for whatever it is. And we start bartering with each other. We can’t start keeping track. And, man, that is not how God is with us. Yeah, he does. He does not keep track. Right. And it and so it’s not about our husband at all. Look, regardless of where our husband is or what he’s doing. And not that, like we need to have a safe place. We need to have trust, right? Yeah, yeah, but absolutely. But beyond that, if we have a loving husband, I don’t care what your where our husband is on our journey. If God is calling us to get naked with her husband, we’re supposed to get naked with him. And that means that means physically, emotionally, all of us.

21:34

Yeah. And it’s interesting, kind of going back to something you said earlier about how you used to feel like you needed to be perfect, like this, this strong drive for that, and I’m sure that’s something I know, I’ve had that my whole life. And in this work, too, I often kind of go back and be like, Oh, I could have said this that could have been structured better. Oh, why didn’t I say that? I you know, that was off the cuff that was a little off. You know, like, there’s, it’s so easy to do that. But the truth is, no one’s God, I’m not God, there’s no way I could be perfect, but I have an expectation of perfection for myself, I will never do what God is asking me to do, I’ll never step out and try. But it’s the same way with our husband. If we expect ourselves to look and act and be perfect with him, we will never get better. We’ll never do the hard work of vulnerability and opening up and, and sharing and being pruned and, and becoming more like Jesus, if we don’t forget, allow ourselves to start. Yeah.

22:30

And our husbands will fail us, they will hurt us they will it whether they intend to or not. And so I think that’s why this drives us towards a dependence on God, we don’t get naked over and over with our husbands unless we have a dependence on God.

22:46

That’s powerful. That is so powerful, is so good. So we will not be able to get naked over and over and over again, with our husbands unless we have a dependence on God. I don’t know if I can make that one of those quotes. to click on, you know, I’m not sure that this would be to prerogative or people will. That’s good. Oh, I mean, so rich, that’s so good. Okay, well, Booker program that you would specifically recommend to the listeners of this audio,

23:20

oh, well, awaken love, of course, you can find us on our website. And we’re, we’re coming out with videos, so so that you don’t have to be in a location where we’re teaching classes, we’re going to have a, it’s a six week Interactive Video Series in, you’ll just stream it online, and you get together with a couple of girlfriends. So because of that small group component of actually talking to the stuff, and getting things out in the open is powerful, and that the video will be interactive. So it’ll prompt you, you know, talk about this, and then pause the video and talk and, and then we’ll do the bulk of the teaching. So that’s available. You know, I was thinking about just my favorite book on marriage in general. And Jim Burns wrote a book creating an intimate marriage. And it’s an easy read is actually just filled with application. It’s always been kind of one of my favorite books on marriage. And I think that I like it because rather than than saying, You know what, let’s work on a communication, let’s work on all these different things, how we are you or whatever, in order to become more intimate, his philosophy is let’s do these things to become more intimate. And when we’re more intimate, everything else gets a little easier.

24:32

Huh? Very nice. That’s very nice. Okay, I haven’t read that one. I’m going to have that linked up. And we’ll wake in love your program. And currently I remember Melanie said, you do on site, you do live Bible studies. And this is working towards video online Bible studies. Is that right? Yep. Yeah. So if someone wants to, I’ll have it all on your web, you know the links to your website, but if they want to If they live near you, right? There’s some. Yes. Is that how

25:03

Yeah, so I have classes in in the Minneapolis area, nobody has classes in the Austin area, and they can just email us and we can get them hooked up with a class. But then there are also the video classes so you people can take video classes anywhere. And then we once in a while we’ll Skype, Skype people into classes. Especially if they want to maybe are interested in being equipped to teach where they’re at.

25:26

That is fantastic. Um, are you hearing that? Are you hearing anything on the line? Okay, good. All right. I’m sorry. All of a sudden, there was a something I’ll have to cut that out. Um, okay. So my final thing is just to ask you, if you could go back to your one of marriage, and sit yourself down and give yourself some advice. What would it be?

25:54

Let’s see. Someone’s gonna get my year one. I don’t know. I think to just go on have fun. You know, one of my favorite books is old as can be. And he says, For the first year of marriage, don’t get a TV. That’s, that’s how old fashioned it is. Right? There’s no computer. He doesn’t even know about iPhones. Oh, seriously, right. You know if that was, yeah, I’ll go with that for advice for the first year of marriage. have boundaries for screens? So maybe Maybe it’s from 8pm to 8am. Every single day? Absolutely. No screens? Like no TV. no computer, no Facebook. No phone, no texting. Yeah, think about just having that time to just discover each other. Yeah,

26:46

yep. We do a weekly rest day in our marriage. And it’s That’s exactly it. Everything’s on airplane mode. sunup to sundown. That’s just it keeps us Yeah. I love that answer. A huge barrier, you know,

26:59

Song songs is filled with eye contact over and over. It talks about the eyes. We don’t see each other’s eyes anymore. Because our eyes are on the screens all the time. Yeah, just a huge barrier. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

27:15

Well, my last, um, that you know, just to clarify where people can connect and find you online.

27:21

i So our website is awakened dash love dotnet. And you can contact us there. There’s information about the classes. There’s also a blog, we blog couple times a week. And there’s email, you can contact us if you want to.

27:36

That’s awesome. Okay, well, this has just been marvelous. Thank you so much for everything. Oh,

27:40

you bet. It’s super fun.

27:45

I’m so grateful to have Ruth’s insights and her lived wisdom. You can tell she just is so passionate about this, the work that she does, and it’s amazing because it changes lives. So I hope that today’s episode has gotten you just excited about the journey ahead what God wants to do in in through you. So just continue my dear one, just continue the journey. Continue the path, don’t let the enemy discourage you. And it’s funny that I’m saying this out loud because I need this tonight. I’m recording this in the evening, and I need this encouragement myself. So let’s not be discouraged from doing good, as it says in the Word. God bless you. I love you. Hey, if you have a chance, maybe five at the most 10 minutes, would you go to delight your marriage.com/itunes and learn how to leave us a review on iTunes. I actually don’t read the reviews anymore. But the thing that it does is it helps people find the podcast easier. So if you want to help others receive this life changing inspiration and encouragement on a weekly basis. Just go ahead and go to delight your marriage.com/itunes and that would be such a blessing. See if you can get that done this week. Thank you so much. All right. Well, I will talk to you next Tuesday. And again, I hope that you will listen in the title is How to get him to do what you want. Sounds a little interesting, but I hope and pray that it will be something that will really touch your life in your hearts. God bless you and we’ll talk to you then.

29:18

Thanks for joining. If you’ve been inspired by the show, would you help spread the word. If you take a moment to review and subscribe others can find us more easily. Find out how to delight your marriage.com forward slash iTunes. Until next time, live with love, wisdom and passion