0:02

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.

0:18

Hi there, and welcome. Thank you for joining me. If this is your first time to the show, I want to say welcome. This is a place where we talk about marriage, and give you encouragement and inspiration for the road ahead. Now, I don’t know why you clicked on today’s episode, maybe you’re a regular listener, and you tune in every Tuesday. That’s when they’re posted. And I would encourage you to do that. But maybe this is a one off, click, and you happen to be here because you really need some hope you really need someone to say that your marriage can be healed. And I think my guest today, Penny Bragg is exactly the person to do that. Because she not only has gone through the treachery of divorce, and the difficulty that went through that whole process, but then she has come to the other side and then been healing a lot. You’ve been through the healing process of her marriage that was ended. Anyway, it’s just an amazing story. And I want penny to dive into that. So let’s go ahead and do and, and be inspired and encouraged wherever you’re coming from right now.

1:47

Alright, welcome back, delight your marriage listener, I am thrilled that you’re with me. I have got a wonderful guest, Penny Bragg from inversed ministries.org. And she has actually been on the podcast before. We’ve talked since and I just so appreciate her insights and her wisdom. If you haven’t gotten a chance, I would encourage you to go back and listen to her first interview with me. But Penny, welcome to the podcast.

2:14

Thank you so much. belah thanks for having me back. That means a lot. You can have somebody once, but if there’s a relationship and commitment there.

2:23

It’s true. It’s true. Well, I really did appreciate so much of what you shared, and I kind of had been thinking about what, how I could have you back on and what would what would the topic be? And I think we settled on a good one. And, and I guess I just want to start the conversation, you know, first of all, we all kind of grow up in life. And we’ve got certain dreams and visions of our lives maybe handed down from our parents or from different church leaders even of how we are different leaders in our life in any any capacity, but how our life is going to go and what it’s going to look like. And, and then life happens. And the years past and, and sometimes really big events happen. And sometimes, you know, it’s just the slow, drudgery of of things happen. And it doesn’t turn out necessarily in the direction that we think we want it to go. So I guess, you know, just to fast speed people up on, you know, your testimony and and kind of where you fall in in this kind of conversation. Penny, would you be willing to kind of share a little bit about your background in in talking about this?

3:50

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Billy, you know, you mentioned about you have one way that you picture life is going to go and I think as a young believer in a little Baptist Church in a small town, you know, I went by what I saw, I didn’t have Christian parents at the time they are now but they weren’t then I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. So you know, you kind of look around and you gauge, maybe not consciously, but you think okay, you know, so all these Christian women are marrying a Christian guy, and you get married in the church, and then everything goes forward from there. And then you have kids. And so I, you know, all I knew was that a Christian woman is supposed to marry a Christian guy. So that’s exactly what happened. I mean, I was 26. And that Clint, we got married, but boy talk about being unprepared for marriage. And I think not only was I maybe unprepared, but I had a lot of pain from my childhood and didn’t realize that marriage is such that the intimacy that requires all that stuff is going to come right up in the middle. And so did his I mean, I now I look back and I’m like, wow, there’s one thing I wish I knew and That was that I was a broken woman marrying a broken man. And I think if I would have known that I would have maybe known to pursue, you know, healing and what that brokenness might look like as a broken married couple, allowing God to, you know, heal us where we needed it. But that’s not what happened. And unfortunately, my, I guess you call it baggage came up, and I just kept trying to shove it down. And long story short, our marriage just bombed out, completely bombed out. We hadn’t even been married two years. And I was on the fast track to escape. So if you know anything about escaping to You’re running away from one thing, and you usually run toward what feels good, that’s exactly what I did feel good relationships feel good. In my personal life, I was always good at schools. I went back to college and got my master’s degree. And it’s just running from God and running from my pain and all that, and about eight years of running and God, it’s not that he caught up with me. I know, he just caught me. Yeah. And so when all that came to a head, I realized, I mean, of course, God is so forgiving and loving, because I had done so many things that were I mean, my sexual sin was deep, really deep. And yeah, so I thought, I mean, a friend of mine asked me, What do you want from the Lord? And I was like, Well, I just want to be free from these burdens in my past, and that and I, what I meant by that was the sexual sin was the poor choices I had made leaving, leaving my husband, I mean, just all of it, I wanted to be forgiven. And so she really pointed me into the Word and that’s when my track of healing began. I mean, just personal wholeness in Christ, I had totally missed that part of his redemptive love, just really seeking Him for wholeness and healing and that Shalom of my identity being rooted in Christ, but man that I have some consequences to deal with Bella, you know, it’s just that path. I just didn’t see it going so dark there for so long. So I’m back on his path, and of course of healing. And he just really urged me to do right by Clint and at least contact him and say, I was sorry. And I asked, asked for his forgiveness. And of course, I did not want that path. I did not want to do that. Yeah, you know, I’m like, Really, it’s been 11 years, so and I had not ever heard from him or seen him or anything. I mean, we just like parted. As the Red Sea parted, we just went our separate ways. So the thought of that was really fearful. But because I was truly in love with God, like I had never been before I did want follow wherever he was leading, even if that felt risky and vulnerable. So I did make contact with Clint, and lo and behold, fast forwarding, again, he ended up on a similar path of healing. And God ended up six months later, six months later, God remarried. reconcile this. And so together now we have known for 14 years that we were both broken, and talk about a lot of brokenness to heal, because not only did we have the brokenness from our childhood, but then we had a broken marriage, that needed to be healed also. But we really decided that if we’re going to accept the path that God had us on this course of learning how to do marriage, learning how to dig into those areas of broken trust and intimacy that we were all in, we’re just going to do it. So that’s been our path for 14 years now just learning how to heal and then in the course of that help others heal their marriages as well.

8:51

And yeah, before you continue on, I just think your story is just incredible. You know, I, I have definitely been on that. In that area of journey, where escaping and running from God, where it was just, I didn’t want what, I didn’t want that path. I didn’t want to go down. So I was divorced as well. And then when I had that season of sexual sin, and just adventure, some relationships, that meant nothing and just things that, you know, just so much brokenness. You know, why, why do we do that? Like, why is that? You know, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s like, it’s, it’s like this brokenness, we almost like we, we I think I was offended at God, you know, Like I knew, I felt like I had done it the right way I’d save sex till marriage, you know, I had, I had tried to be a submissive wife, I had tried to do all these things, and then the marriage fell apart anyway, and I was so hurt, and so unbelievably just disillusioned by it all, and, and then I added fire to that, you know, added to energy injury, and, and, and when in all this sexual sin. You know, I just wonder when we think about what God wants for us, and we think about why he wants us to save sex, and keep it in the marriage boutons when you talked about the brokenness that incurred? You know, I don’t know. Can you speak to that a little bit to kind of know what I’m getting at?

11:01

Yeah, I do. You know, I wish that there was some kind of rite of passage as a Christian that where you’re sat down when you’re young, and you’re told that old proverb, it’s in the Bible somewhere, I have to look it up, but says what a man desires his unfailing love. And that’s what a woman desires to. But we don’t realize that desire has been lodged in us, you know, that the lowering of false intimacy on Satan’s part is so I mean, I was so lured into because I did want to be loved. I mean, that’s the longing we all have, you know, that just desire to be loved, and our sense of belonging and all of that, why doesn’t someone sit us down and say, okay, so look, you’re going to be lured into thinking that all these other things are going to satisfy you. And they’re not. I don’t know if that would work. But that’s what I, you know, I have often thought about that. If I had kids, I’d be like sitting them all down, saying, Okay, let’s talk about false intimacy and true intimacy as if I could save them from all my day eggs. But gosh, yeah, but you know, it is, it is common, unfortunately, to search for that, and not even realize we’re on a search. Now I can look back, I’m 52, saying, you know, I can look back and I’m like, oh, here, I was searching this way. And here, I was looking at my career to do it, and relationships, and then sexual sin and all that and not realizing to my childhood, I didn’t have a horrible childhood, it wasn’t like I was beaten or, you know, just molested and stuff like that. It was just that there were things that happen in my parents divorce, for example, that significantly tore my heart apart. Of course, I’m not ever going to say that to them, Hey, mom, dad, by the way, totally broke my heart. Michelle, that caused a lot of issues, you know, in my life, and this and that, but you know, it’s just so common that so many of us have grown up with, I mean, just that pain of growing up and know, our perfect perception in an imperfect world and what we do to try to resolve that, you know, and I think now I can look back and see I was really trying to resolve I think it goes back even further to to when we experience our first losses, I can remember losing my grandmother. You know, most people lose their grand parents when they’re young, I was five, losing my grandmother, and I saw my father just go into this tailspin. And he scared the daylights out of me. And I thought, Okay, I can’t ever lose people, I got a hold on tight, not lose, people don’t let anybody get away. And this is all you know, subconscious as a five year old girl thinking, okay, death is a horrible thing and look at what’s going to happen when I get older. And boy, that just just the losses that we go through whether they be relational losses, like like death, or they be losses, like, you know, molestation, loss of innocence, or those kinds of things. I know, I’ve been working with young women who maybe lost their father at an early age and just the impact of that on our lives. So I don’t know if I answered your question. We, you and I always get into it so deep right away, it’s like, it’s so good. Let’s talk for hours. It’s

14:23

No, it’s true. I appreciate that so much. I mean, you know, and that’s part of kind of this, this conversation, you know, accepting God’s path really, you know, the brokenness, the hard things that we’ve gone through, and are going through, you know, what that means for what God wants to do in us and through us how he wants to use our marriage. So, I guess, you know, to kind of take us from where you said, you know, from the the brokenness and then the remarriage, you know, what was that process? Like have of healing in your marriage from not only the brokenness before you were married, but then also the gap of 11 years? Yeah. What was that, like,

15:11

kind of a big gap there? What’s funny is, you know, then we were caught up in a little bit of the euphoria. I mean, it was like this. Is this really happening? I mean, I haven’t heard of anybody’s marriage restored, you know, after an 11 year divorce and all our stuff. So, I mean, there was some euphoria, but it only took like, well, actually, I think it was our wedding night, or rewedding night when I was irritated, it clicked because he wanted to leave the reception. I knew he just wanted to, you know, consummate.

15:40

I was all, you know, enjoying my family or my friends. And I was irritating, because I’m like, Dude, that’s all you’re thinking about. I mean, come on. So you know that that started up. And so it didn’t take long for us to realize that we really were going to have to be actively pursuing our, our healing together. And because we have experienced some individual healing before the remarriage, and all that really came through means we have some good counseling. But when we are remarried, we didn’t really realize that we should probably have some counseling. So we did what we had done individually was really get tight with God and, and the Holy Spirit and the Word of God and prayer. And that’s what we use to heal our marriage. I mean, we just got on our faces before the Lord. And we’re like, okay, we can either screw this up again, or truly learned to do marriage your way. So show us God. And we did things like no church service until for the first year of our marriage. I mean, we just were no extra additional commitments at work. Like I had the chance he had the chance to coach and I had the chance for an additional leadership position. And we actually said no, I mean, that was so unlike us, we’re like, no, not doing it. Priority is our marriage. And first people were like, what, but then we’re like, No, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’ve got we couldn’t find anybody else who had walked this path. So we were like, Let’s figure this out. Let’s be actively pursuing God together. So we spent with we weren’t at work. We were home working on marriage stuff. And that look like reading books, reading passages of the Bible about marriage, asking each other questions about our past that we had never asked before, you know, and for example, Clint spent two tours in the army in Vietnam. I knew that when we were married the first time I knew that, but I never asked him what was that? Like? I mean, I never realized how much he had compensated for the horror of war. And, you know, he didn’t come out, like maybe some veterans do with a lot of, you know, mental, you know, PTSD and stuff. But surely, that impacted him as a man. And it had a lot to do with how emotionally unavailable he was in our first marriage. Because in the army, you’re taught no emotion, you know, don’t show it, don’t use it, don’t get connected with people. And he carried that into our first marriage. So, you know, we were just on this path of let’s figure this out, not ever realizing that God would down the road, call us to help other couples, you know, find healing and, and hope and heal from their brokenness. We All we knew was, man, we better get it right this time. You know, we don’t want to disappoint people. Again, we don’t want to disappoint God or each other again. So I would say for five years, we really were on it in terms of healing. And that’s where our book marriage on the mend comes from the first five years of paying at the kitchen table going, okay, so we don’t communicate. So what are we going to do to figure out how to communicate with each other. And, you know, God would just keep showing us all these tools of what to do. And one of the things we actually suggest, and I’ll say this to your listeners, was making a timeline of our brokenness. I mean, that was so powerful, actually drawing out a horizontal line across a big piece of paper, going back into our paths and our childhood and saying, Okay, let’s look at our life, big life events. You know, like him going into the service and losing his father, at a young age and me the loss of my grandmother, and then my parents divorce, we looked at our big were what we could identify as our big broken life events. That was, oh, Bella, that was so huge. So it’s saying, wow, you know, just look at let’s get a God’s perspective on this. And let’s look at how many things we had had happened in our life before we ever married the first time and then the stuff that happened while we were apart. I mean, it was like we had some work to do, Lord, but you know, he took us through it and what to do so we do suggest that to people Anyone listening that I did it individually first, and Clint did too. We used our journals, because we’re both journals that Journalers that came in really handy, but made this timeline looking at it, you know, and we decided, let’s not totally drag ourselves down with just the brokenness, let’s look at the good stuff, too. So we had some great life events, like getting saved, and, you know, jobs and, you know, just wonderful things that happened blessings, but we really dug in under that line and scratch deeper than the surface, say, Wow, we got to heal from this stuff. And Clint is a very honest sharing, you know, his brokenness, so it’s okay for me to say this, here. But he had some real financial, you know, struggles, bankruptcy and stuff. But he also had some things happened to him as a little boy, sexually that were that I mean, when he exposed that, and now he exposes it in our seminars with men. Oh, wow. Did that make so much sense to me as to why he struggled to bond with people,

21:04

you know, including me, but just why he developed this persona. He calls it the John Wayne persona of being a tough guy and a jock. He said, If he could take his anger out on the football field on somebody, that’s exactly what he did. He just so we looked too, then at our coping mechanisms, and how we cope with those losses. And with that brokenness, and I’ll tell you about that, I cannot say enough about God’s ability to heal broken people, because through His Holy Spirit, through prayer, and praying together daily, through spending time in His Word together, learning how to do that we do it on Sunday nights, we still do it. And just talking about our past and our hurts, and wow, God, just you you put that stuff in the light is uncomfortable, and it was awkward. I cannot even tell you how awkward it was so uncomfortable to say, you know, to expose that stuff to each other. But wow, God’s healing just has been amazing.

22:06

Yeah, well, I mean, it sounds like and I know this about you, you just you dug in, you didn’t. You weren’t gonna let this kind of go get away from you, you know, you allowed. You know, you saw that there was lots of hard things, lots of difficult things in your marriage, lots of things that you had to deal with. And you dug in. And God met you there. He honored that he totally did. And I mean, I’ll say honestly, too. I was I was unfaithful in our first marriage. So that adultery I mean, letting God letting Clint ask me questions. See, I once I engaged in that I split from our marriage, so he never got to ask, you know, like, no. And I never had to talk about it. So having to talk about it with him of all people was like, Whoa, you know, but yeah, I mean, God is just so faithful to you know, people think like, No, I my sin is too deep or I did such awful things. God can’t heal that that is a flat out lie. I mean, if he can heal us, and the depth and darkness of our, our sin boy, I mean, our water was muddy and ugly, and dirty and yucky. And he truly I mean, that that verse in Isaiah about taking our sins, you know, a scarlet, I will make them whitest No. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow, that is so amazing. Wow, that’s just incredible. I you know, so, so when you when you think about the path that you’ve been on, and then how you’re able to lead people from their brokenness and where they are in their marriages, you know, how are you able to kind of see God’s hand in it along the

23:55

way? Well, I mean, we definitely didn’t know that that’s where he was leading us to, to use our brokenness to help other people mend. And that was, when I first started happening. We kept looking at each other like, hey, wait a second. I didn’t, you know, did you see this coming? I didn’t see this come in. And, and so the, but what we decided to do was be really honest with people about, you know, because we’re not we’re educated. I mean, I’ve got my master’s, he’s got his bachelor’s degree, we’ve, we’ve taken a million classes and all that, but we’re not we’re not counselors. We’re not, you know, educated in that way. All we knew was let’s just be transparent. So we use you know, we decided to be transparent, maybe too transparent. I don’t know. I don’t think they could handle it. It was like, I can’t believe you’re saying that. But we were in public, you know, but we were really transparent and of all things fella, it seems like that transparency was what people were, were longing for. So then they would peel back their stuff and be really transparent with us. And that shocked us that people would hear we were, you know, to strangers, because what we started to do was take our story on the road. That was kind of crazy, too. But, you know, we were kind of just blown away that the more transparent and honest we were, when we told our story, the more transparent people were with us. And that’s when we were watching God literally heal people in our, in our midst, through that transparency through His Holy Spirit. And so we did things like we, and we still do it. We just did it. On Monday night, we went to share our story with people and we brought our divorce papers with us. Recently, we were cleaning out some files. And Clint called me in his office and he said, hey, you need to see what I what I found. But you know, guard your heart, because if you don’t want to look at it, it’s okay. And what it was, were all the letters of anger I had written to him when we divorced, and I was so cold. Have I said, No, I want to see him, thank you for guarding my heart, but I want to see what I wrote. And man, I was just so cold, it was very businesslike, it was like, you know, sign these papers, and this and that. And there was a copy of of our divorce papers. And then he had taken a black pen, and he had ext out all the things he wouldn’t agree to. And then it said things like, Take back your maiden name, he had written that like in the margin. So here we have these divorce papers. I mean, it was like death, it was like finding your your death sentence or death papers or, you know, autopsy was like looking at the toxicology or autopsy report on a death. And so we were speaking somewhere last Monday night, and I told him I said, I think I’m supposed to bring all these papers with us let’s and all the people we were talking to they’re they’re in a class called marriage 911. And it’s a it’s a class for, for spouses who are who are struggling and sometimes, like their mate is there with them. But most of the time, they’re there by themselves. And they feel super lonely and super desperate. So I had brought the papers with me, and I held them up. And I said, this was our, this is how dead Our marriage was. And I showed them and and then there was a page where Clint had written all these prayers to God about what he longed for, for our fighting to stop and all of that. Well, I did not know there were three women in the audience who had all been confronted with divorce papers this week. Oh, my God. Yeah. And so to their faces, I said this, this deep, there’s no power. One of the women said, there’s no power in those papers is there? And I said, No, there’s not. You know, this is what the world says is divorced and dead. But look at what God, you know, can do. And so, so the more Another words, and to get back to your question, the more transparent the more real things, we have our unity candle from our first wedding, we bring that with us and show how Satan just snuffed it out. And the light that that that candle, you know, was snuffed out so quickly, and why, you know, we bring all that stuff with us. And then people, you know, like those women, we sat down after we were done speaking, and we were using a video at the end. And there was a woman behind me one of the three women who had been faced with divorce papers this week, and I reached back and all I did was take her hand, I felt like gods that her husband wasn’t there. And, you know, he wasn’t going to show up to class I all I did was took her hand, Bella, she just burst into tears, just that release.

28:39

Emotion, her whole body was shaking, and I just didn’t let her go. And I knew God was doing some healing work, even though you know, the marriage still isn’t healed, and the husband still wants the paper sign. She was letting God touched that broken place in her. Yeah,

29:00

yeah, that’s powerful. I mean, it’s just, you know, I imagining receiving those divorce papers. And, you know, I’m sure that there are listeners who have received those or are concerned that those are on the horizon for their marriage. You know, what would you say to a listener who is in that space right now?

29:26

Well, there is, there is no power I mean, those those are the papers of the world. But it is very, it’s heartbreaking. And I enter into that with you. There’s a it’s a death of sorts, but the person’s still alive and allow yourself the opportunity to grieve because divorce unfortunately has become so common. You know, a lot of people might tell you, Oh, just get over it. Move on. You got your freedom. Those are your walking papers, but the woman that the person who’s received those is craving and that there is a there is a death of sorts that has occurred and to actually allow yourself, the freedom and the grace to grieve. Like, this is something that’s happened. Don’t let people push you out, you know, push you out there too soon. Don’t let people dismiss what’s happened in your life. But let yourself grieve and go through that the healing process with God and knowing that God does, whether he heals he mean, he can heal the marriage, whether the marriage is healed or not. Knowing that God has you want a course of healing, but surround yourself with people that are going to honor that process and that are going to hold you literally I had one woman say to me, no one touches me anymore. And that just Bella that just got me, you know, to know that these people need to be held in a godly way. Just that ministry of holding someone and letting them you know, praying over them that the Ministry of true healing prayer of, you know, placing your hand appropriately on a person, and just holding them and praying over them. To me, the older I get that ministry of prayer, if healing of just the ministry of holding someone appropriately, you know, and, and just praying over them and letting them cry, letting them grieve. I mean, that’s truly so anyone who has received that, yes, God can totally heal. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what God does through one spouse who’s fully submitted and committed to the Lord. We see it all the time. Matter of fact, we’re writing a book right now called shattered by separation. And it’s full of stories of people who let God do what he wanted to do in their own heart. And then the other spouse came around, and the marriage was was healed. But oh, it’s always about so much more than just our marriage, isn’t it?

31:55

Yeah, yeah. And it brings me back to something that you said. In the beginning, you said intimacy, the intimacy that marriage requires all that brokenness, all that do and gook comes up. You know, Can you can you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah.

32:16

Oh, it does. I mean, marriage, if you’re truly going to bond, I guess I don’t think Clinton I ever bonded emotionally, spiritually. I mean, we may have bonded physically or sexually, but there was so much more to it than that. And so I really feel like the emotional intimacy part is lacking in so many marriages, and it was lacking in ours, too. And so we had to figure that part out, like, I’m so different than him emotionally. I always say, I’m a psalm, and he’s a proverb. I’m like, you know, he’s hold, if then, you know, and I’m like, No, it’s not black and white. It’s like this. And so I think true. It the intimacy that marriage requires to be good and strong and long lasting, is really understanding each other’s emotions. And I’ll give you an example of this. So five years ago, and I know I shared this on the other show, my brother took his life. And here we were, you know, 11 years into our remarriage. And we’re faced with this deep grief, and we start grieving, but we grieve in totally different ways. And I wanted Clint to grieve like I did. And he was like, wow, why are Whoa, what was happening to my wife, she’s, she’s changing. She’s crying, like a lot. And I remember one night, I was crying by the side of our bed, and I remember him coming in the room and saying, what’s wrong? And I was like, Are you kidding me? What’s wrong? I lost my brother killed himself. What do you mean, what he wasn’t saying like, what’s wrong? He thought maybe I got another piece of the puzzle, or, you know, somebody showed me a picture of my brother because those things do set off grief. But, but the potential for separation because of a lack of emotional intimacy was just so huge. And so we really had to dig in at a deeper level had to figure out how to honor clinch grief. Because what it did for him was it triggered all his Vietnam stuff. And he was watching a lot of footage and watching war movies. And I’m like, why are you in my inside myself? I didn’t say it. But I did later. I was like, why are you doing that? Why are you watching military movies of all things, you know, but I realized, Oh, he’s grieving. He’s, he’s needing to go back to that place. And same thing with him. He would be like, Why are you going to, you know, I was going to different groups, and I’m not a group person. I’m not unless I’m going to lead it. I’m not a real good participant. And yet here I am going to these different grief groups and he realized he had to give me the grace to do that. And just say Hey, you know, whatever you need. So, again, that intimacy that marriage requires, you know, with each other 24/7 Sometimes, and you’re seeing each other in the depth of sorrow, you know, that could be a place of total irritation, separation, you know, Clint likes to build things when he’s struggling, he’ll go in the garage and like, start totally start hammering on stuff. And he’ll go to Home Depot like, 15 times and build something. I used to think like, what are you doing? Why are you building something in the garage when I’m falling apart, but I realized that’s what he’s doing. He’s working it out physically, and let him build it, let him pound with a hammer, whatever he’s got to do in the same way, you know, I heal through art. And so he knows I’m going to make 15 trips to Michael’s and, you know, or Hobby Lobby or whatever, and buy tons of art supplies, because this is going to come out some way and has to come out so complicated. It’s simple. Like it’s simple, but it’s not. It’s so complicated, because we’re such different men and women are so different in you know, the way we’re wired that I guess we decided we were all in, you know, so even in times of loss, it’s easy to accept God’s past when it’s feels good, like, Oh, we’re helping people, men, their marriages, that’s so awesome. It’s not so easy when you’re faced with something like suicide in your family, or, you know, divorcing your own family or tragedy hits. And then it’s easy to go like, Okay, I don’t want to accept this path. I don’t like this one. Too narrow, too hard, too rocky, too elevated, too. Mountainous or whatever. It’s, I think in marriage, the key is learning to when the path isn’t pretty. How do you do that together in your marriage? And how do you how do you suffer together in marriage? That’s a big, that’s become a biggie for us learning how to suffer together.

37:04

When the path isn’t pretty? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Right. How do you do that together? I love that. Yeah. So I guess, you know, as we’re wrapping up, I kind of want to know, just from you, what are some kind of last takeaways when you’re thinking about accepting God’s path for your marriage and your life? What are some takeaways that you’d want to leave with our listeners?

37:36

Well, I think whether the path is pretty or not. I think Clinton I have learned to really crawl into the bunker with God, and learn how to be content like Paul talks about that contented in plenty or in want, there are going to be seasons of plenty and seasons of want. But it says he learned how to be content. So that tells me that learning contentedness is a process learning contentment is a process and to realize that we’re learners together in this thing called marriage, we are not going to get it right. You know, people think, oh, you’re a leader in marriage ministry. Yeah, that does not mean anything, except that we help people. Other than that, you know, we do not have this all figured out. So we’re, we had to embrace that being a lifelong learner in marriage and not ever thinking that it’s going to get perfect, and it’s going to be awesome all the time. And, you know, all of that, yeah, you’ll have seasons of that. But so I think embracing the fact that we’re learners, and we’re gonna be learning from each other, we’re going to be learning through each other in the process, and just, you know, embracing whatever that looks like, is huge. And then I think really, the intimacy that marriage does require requires that intimacy that only Christ, that true intimacy, of wholeness and Jesus and to continue to actively pursue that. I mean, we are committed to being in the word every day individually, that’s just a non negotiable in our marriage. And then we do that on Sunday nights, we get together in the word and I cannot tell you, we’ve done it now. I think I calculated over 5000 something times together on Sunday night, on our couch. I know it’s weird when you think about it that way, you know, for 14 years, every Sunday night 53 times a year or whatever. And you think, Wow, Lord, what he has done on our sofa, lot of conversation and, and stuff and then I also think of not keeping secrets from each other has been a huge source of healing. And again, it is uncomfortable to say to someone, this is what I did, or this is what someone did. Efficient, especially men, I think to really exposed that but wow, you know, God can heal all of it and he wants to heal it. He longs to heal it and so, whatever whatever the path is, you know, we We’ve learned not to get too caught up in the pretty because it is going to change. You know it is going to look different right now we’re in a path of transition, God’s relocating us to another state. And it’s funny because we’ve, our houses already go, we don’t have a buyer yet. But you know, it’s up for sale. And we’re now we’re in this other period of transition where we feel like we’re in between two places. And it’s weird. It’s really strange, but we’re doing the same thing. We’re praying together every day. We’re in the word individually every day, and we’re doing our Sunday night, you know, times together. And that’ll, you know, that’ll help us through this transition time. So most of all, I say to your listeners, God is a God of healing and a God of hope. There is nothing that is beyond his ability to reach down and touch those broken places and restore him. That’s awesome.

40:50

That’s awesome. And where can our listeners follow you online? Again,

40:55

inverse ministries.org is our website and then our blog and all the rest of the stuff branches off from there. Awesome.

41:05

Awesome. Well, thank you, Penny, I appreciate you and everything that you shared today, once again. Yes, I just echo that, that our God is a God of hope. So whatever you are going through whatever is happening in your marriage, remember that God is with you. And you are not alone. He is with you. In this in the in the storm in the sea of difficulty he is with you. And I say that as a co laborer in the midst of a storm myself and God is not in the business of leaving us by ourselves. He is a good father. And so I just want to encourage you to hang on to hang on and remember that he is in the business of healing. He is in the business of hope. God bless you, my dear sister, my dear brother. I look forward to talking to you next week. We’re going to talk a little bit more on this subject. Exactly. So I hope you’ll tune in again. That’s going to be on next Tuesday. I love you. I’m praying for you, and whatever you are going through. Remember, this is temporary. God bless you. Bye bye.

42:27

Thanks for joining. If you’ve been inspired by this 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