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Face The Difficulties

It’s so easy to run away from the hard topics. It’s easy to hide and guard ourselves from our spouses even in intimacy. Melanie shares how God changed her marriage to be one that works through the difficult times and is grateful for how He changes her through them. Sex is vital in the process of growing unified as a spouse and we dive into how to grow in that unity. Listen in to be encouraged regardless of where you are with your marriage, God wants to grow you and your spouse towards Him and towards each other.

Check out Part I at delightyourmarriage.com/84

You’ll Discover:

  • We have to have our spouse as number one in our hearts and it will reflect in our conversations.
  • How talking about the hard things is way more important than pretending everything is okay.
  • Understanding how sex is vital to the health and vitality of your relationship.
  • How God redeems our struggles (in or out of marriage) and uses them to bless others.
  • How to assume the best about your husband.

 

Books & Resources Mentioned:

Sex Is Good

Tweetables:

  • Don’t make me choose between me and my wife, because you won’t win.
  • Talking about the hard things is a learned skill.
  • Marital intimacy is a lifelong journey.
  • God takes our struggles and redeems them to help other people.
  • It is such a gift that we are changed through circumstances.
  • God wants us to share ourselves without having self-consciousness.
  • Just as we can never fully unpack God, so we can never unpack all He has for us in our marriages.
  • I wish I had viewed sex as a way he wanted to connect with me because he missed me.
  • Sex is good and it is holy and God wants you to embrace it to the fullest.

 

Thanks for listening! I hope you are encouraged to live in wholehearted intimacy!

 

Love,

Belah

—

 

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Transcript

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.

0:19
Hyde there and welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. I’ve got an awesome show for you, again, about marriage, about sex, about intimacy, about all of that together. And I’m really excited to share, I want to first take a moment and share with you a review that I received on the iTunes app on your phone or on your computer, whether you have an iPhone or a PC or whatever you use to access podcasts. That’s a way that you can provide feedback on the podcast. And it actually helps people get a chance to hear the podcast, because the more reviews you have, also makes it easier for people to find it in the iTunes charts. So if you haven’t yet left us a review, that would be really awesome. It takes a couple moments, but it would be a huge help to this ministry. So if you’re not sure how to do that, go to delight your marriage.com/itunes. And you can find out how this listener wrote, thank you belah rose for having the courage and tenacity to bring an often taboo subject to the forefront, and for approaching it with scripture purity and wisdom. Husbands and Y’s desperately need godly guidance in the area of sexuality, especially what God Almighty created to set us apart as a married couples, Satan has perverted with his deception. Our culture is sex saturated, less saturated and falling fast from what God intended to be sacred. Thank you for your honesty. Well, I just could not agree more with that review. And I’m so grateful that God has given me and the guests that are on this show the ability to go ahead and share the good news that sex is great, and really wonderful in the context of marriage. And it’s meant to be that way. And we have a lot to learn in those areas. And by God’s grace, there are many out there that have learned quite a bit more than we have. And we can follow in their footsteps and learn from them. So I just want to encourage you to have a teachable spirit and open mind as you listen to the second half of Melanie Lloyd’s interview. Another first half, we talked about the journey towards sexual freedom. And it really is a journey. It’s not something that happens overnight, especially depending on your background, how you were raised with your understanding of sex, but she talks about her journey that way. So please listen to episode 84, if you haven’t already. But otherwise, let’s go ahead and talk about the next half of this interview talking about the insights God taught Melanie and what God is doing in her marriage today. So let’s dive in what does your marriage look like now?

3:11
You know, now I think our marriage is amazing. Brian is my best friend. He’s my safe place to go to where I can be honest and vulnerable. And I, I think part of the reason we got there is that as I revealed all of myself, I found out that even with my main my past failures and my weaknesses, that I was still completely adored and loved. And again, I think that’s him being Jesus to me, right. And that, that he, he wants to love all of me because he appreciates who I’ve become, and who I’m becoming as we walk and become more and more Christ like so now, you know that undertone of resentment is gone. We’re very intentional and taking time to nurture our relationship, encourage each other in our faith, make sure that we have that alone time with God that each of us needs. But I think that we’re also just bolder and more courageous, you know, life feels less daunting, because we’re definitely a team. There’s no question about that. And so we can navigate the tough patches, you know, with more strength and more unity, but also just a little quicker, because we’re we’re both looking to resolve conflicts, we’re both looking to admit our faults, and we’re both looking to confront those really difficult issues that come up. Because every relationship has issues. It’s just, you know, the strong relationships are the ones that actually tackle the issues. And so we’re willing to step out and confront the junk that comes up in our lives because we know that’s moving us closer to Christ. And that’s moving us closer to each other.

4:52
Yeah, and I think I like how you talked about everyone has issues but but the strong ones are actually confronting those issues and working through through them. And I think that’s a really good perspective to have on difficulties in your marriage or arguments or disagreements or things that come up. And I think that if you think about arguments or disagreements is something that you’re working through, and that’s growing you together and understanding and knowledge in wisdom for the next time. I mean, then it’s not so scary to confront something that’s something you are working towards together to resolve and figure out, it’s not something you’re running away from, is that the kind of way you see disagreements in your marriage?

5:30
I do definitely that. I think as a lot of our motivation is that we both want to be closer to God. And we know that if we’re harboring unforgiveness, or something that’s unresolved in our relationship, that that’s a roadblock to getting there. And so I mean, it, it certainly benefits our marriage, for us to confront things and talk through them in the security of knowing that neither of us are going anywhere, like the only solution is to get to the other side of this, and we’re walking that road together. But also the motivation of hey, like we there’s so much joy in our marriage, but also our relationships with the Lord that we want to keep going like we want more, we want to keep moving closer and closer to his original design what he intended for us to have.

6:21
Yeah, and I love that also bet perspective thinking through that, just as iron sharpens iron, so So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. I mean, during these disagreements, God’s causing you to get sharper and be purified and cause you to be more like him more holy, more righteous. It’s so often when we have to humble ourselves and say I’m sorry, and change that causes us to have to grow closer and be more like Jesus. Right? Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I like also that you talked about, you’re more, you’re bolder, and you’re more courageous. I think that is exactly what unity can do for each individual partner, that they’re not in this alone.

7:03
Yet, I think Unity has been a huge and characteristic of our relationship, if that’s from the beginning, and but we’ve only seen it grown, it grow over the course of our years together. So I absolutely agree.

7:18
And it’s so funny, as I get older, I feel like there’s this tendency, and I don’t know if you feel this way or not Melanie, but fairly This is tendency to fear, like, okay, life is slipping away. You’re not, you’re not as young as you used to be, you don’t have as many choices you’ve got, you know, more responsibilities and less life left and all this, you know, it’s so easy in the world’s eyes, and you’ve got more wrinkles, you’re not as beautiful. I mean, there’s all this not as vital and strong and healthy and all these things that the world, you know, the enemy wants you to believe that, you know, life is fleeting, well, the truth is, life is fleeting, and you’ve got to rely on Christ. But I think there’s in the world, there’s this tendency to fear. And I think that’s the opposite of what God wants to do in you. He wants you with those, those temptations to instead choose faith, choose reliance on him, choose unity with your spouse and growing in relationship with your spouse to grow in your relationship with Christ. I think that’ll kind of really make sense.

8:15
Yeah, absolutely. I think that it’s that growing in the depth of understanding of our spouse, whether that’s physically or emotionally or spiritually, that is carrying us through this lifelong journey of, you know, becoming who we were created to be. So yeah, I absolutely agree with

8:35
you. Yeah, I love that.

8:37
I love that well. Okay. So when we think about the central things that have been, excuse me, chief in your marital success, what would you say they are, if you could pick three,

8:49
I would say first, and like, we’ve talked about being unified, you know, we started our marriage being unified in our faith and our goals, our priorities, our values, we’re really solid team. But as we’ve moved through marriage, and strive to do everything in partnership, we’ve really found that being unified has created some really healthy boundaries, you know, with our kids, but even with our extended family, that those that are around us, and that we interact with know that they can’t pit one of us against the other. And a little story, you know, when we had our first son, and he was an infant, he was not an easy infant, he was fairly inflexible, and we needed to keep the routine for him. And there was one time that we went to go visit my husband’s parents and they lived in a different time zone. And we chose to keep our son on the schedule that we would have had at home. And so he wasn’t necessarily, you know, at the dinner table with the family at dinner because that was, you know, that was time for him to go to bed or whatever. And that caused some strife with my mother in law at the time because she had an idea of what she She wanted our visit to look like and you know how our son should be involved in the visit. And, and that turned into a discussion between my husband and and I remember him saying to her, don’t make me choose between you and my wife, because you won’t win. And even though that made everyone else in the house uncomfortable and made the rest of the visit a little rocky, such an important statement for him to make. I was so, you know, affirmed by that. And we have a fantastic relationship with my husband’s family. You know, my mother in law and I are great. But I think it’s because we set that boundary of, you know, we are one and we are cleaved together and we are unified. And don’t, you know, don’t try to do anything to tamper with that. Because, yeah, we won’t have it.

10:54
That’s powerful. Yeah, I love that also, because I think sometimes, I mean, that was a reflection of his heart, that was a reflection of conviction that he had. So solidly in his heart, he didn’t even I mean, he didn’t have to craft that sentence that was like, just something that came out of him. And I think that we have to have that same conviction that we are with our spouse. Number one, we are not letting friendships or gossip or even joking disrespectfully to other people about our spouse, that’s not who we are, we’re called to be unified. So I really think that you know, that that felt like a conviction to me, I don’t know if anyone else felt like that, if that, if that’s something that you need to rearrange. If you’ve been even just disrespectful in your heart to your spouse, or causing some division, I just would encourage you to check yourself and and consider if you were in that situation where someone is putting you against your spouse, would you have that conviction, that strength to be able to say, No, we are one, this is not a choice here, this is already a commitment that’s been made. So I just encourage you to, to think through that. Because I think that’s a really wise steak to put in the sand. That’s not something you’re going to go back on. Well, and

12:07
that’s just another parallel to between our relationship with God in our relationship with our spouse, like God said to be number one, our spouses supposed to be number one.

12:17
Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s good. Um, yeah, that’s really good.

12:20
Another keystone to that success to our marriage has been that we talk about hard things, you know, we don’t stuff stuff down, we don’t hide behind our feelings, that we really tackle the challenges that are in front of us. And that hasn’t been something that’s come naturally, you know, it’s a learned skill, for us to be able to open up and, and talk about what we’re feeling, but definitely has matured our marriage very quickly. And, you know, I think, again, you know, in my relationship with God, when he wants to grow me, it tends to be uncomfortable. And it’s that same way in our marriages, where, you know, we’re just mining for gold, I like to say we’re just going deeper and deeper. And we, my husband, and I will talk until we understand each other’s motivations, because we don’t want to react to each other’s actions, we really want to understand the heart of what what each of us was thinking or feeling or why we were choosing to do what we were doing. And I think that benefits our marriage, but it also supports each other’s growth and maturity, and it creates this environment where I feel like I can talk to him about anything. You know, we’ve had really hard conversations where earlier in our marriage, he came to me once and told me that my expectations of him were crushing him. And him and he has told me since then, you know, that conversation was kind of a crossroads in our relationship, because you could have been very defensive. But instead, you heard my heart and you responded with grace. And, you know, we’ve had other times we’ve had a couple of miscarriages, and that is really hard to process. And so and for us to be able to talk about our hurt and our disappointment, and even our doubts, you know, questioning God’s plan, and this really brought us closer together, rather than allowing a difficult situation like that to drive a wedge between us. Yes. And then of course, sex, right? difficult conversations all the time taking you outside of your comfort zone to be able to share what you you enjoy or share what you would like to try or you know, to even allow yourself to be expressive and responsive in the bedroom.

14:33
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I want to just backtrack a little bit in and point out a couple things that I love that you said is talking about the hard things is learned skill. You know, it’s not something that is easy. It’s not something that comes naturally. It’s not something whether you have it or you don’t. It’s something you have to practice and you have to be willing to be vulnerable and be willing to be open and make yourself yeah, open into being hurt or, or attacked or disagreed with, you know, but that’s you’ve got to make those steps that are scary, and they’re hard. But you’ve got to make those steps. And of course, if you’re on the other side of hearing vulnerability, I think that that’s something that has been key in my heart in my life is that I try to be really aware, looking for vulnerability almost in anyone else, whether it’s a friend, or a guest, or my husband or whatever, I try to really recognize, oh, my gosh, they’re really opening themselves up right here. And I try to affirm that right away as quickly as possible. Because, I mean, that’s the moment that they’re like putting themselves out there. And if you aren’t going to meet them in that space, they’re not going to feel safe. And, and it’s like that you have that moment to to, to affirm them and say, it’s safe here you can share you can express yourself. And, you know, I think we can all think back on times when our husband has left himself open to us, and we’ve shut it down, or we’ve walked away, or we’ve not responded in, in love and empathy. But the cool thing is, God forgives us, our husband will forgive us, we can apologize, we can move forward, we can change. So I just encourage you, that’s that’s definitely something that is definitely learned through practice. And yeah, and then the last thing you talked about was sex and how that is, is also something that you’ve got to learn. I mean, I think sex is so paralleled with life like you, you become more confident in life, you become more confident the bedroom, I mean, God just uses that as a, as a little litmus test for how you’re doing in life, like God kind of reveals a lot of that stuff in your bedroom, I think. Right? So if you would be able to share an advice or tip about intimacy that maybe you wish someone let you went on earlier, or something that has been significant that you learned? Could you share that with us?

16:51
Yeah, you know, I think that the best advice I could share is that intimacy is a lifelong journey. And that just as we’re hopefully constantly growing deeper, and our relationship with God, that God wants us to grow deeper in our relationship with our husbands. And that means to being transparent, physically and emotionally and spiritually, so we can get back to that original design of being naked and unashamed in this garden of bliss. It wouldn’t take stretch, trust, stretching ourselves, it takes growing communication, it takes giving ourselves permission to have sexual thoughts about our husbands. And it takes growing in the freedom that God gives us and really embracing that he truly does want us to experience exquisite pleasure with our spouses. And so I think my tips for women who, you know, want to grow in this is to figure out where you are now, and then stretch yourself a little bit, and celebrate that growth forward. And then you repeat, you know, because you can’t, you can’t do it all at once. But at the same time, I I caution women to know that if you know if they’re stretching, and they’re growing, and they’re working towards really embracing God’s designed for their marriage bed, to also not become weary in that because it’s hopefully it’s a journey that we’re going on with our spouse. But on some level, it’s always our own journey. And we can’t force our husband to go on that journey as well, we can invite him to go on that journey. But we can’t harbor any resentment toward him, if he’s not at a place where he’s ready to embrace, you know, God’s design and grow in that. But whether he’s doing it with us, which is ideal or not, we can stretch ourselves. And we can be encouraged remembering that when we stretch ourselves in our relationship with God, there’s always a blessing that comes from that. And so when we’re willing to stretch ourselves and overcome our insecurities, or replace a lie with truth and openly communicate with our husband, that there’s going to be a blessing that comes from that as well.

19:09
Yeah, I do love that. Not harboring that resentment, that he’s not growing at the same pace that you are. That’s kind of a maturity thing of you recognizing that, you know, this is where this is where God’s leading you, and this is what you can do to change, but not requiring him to do it or forcing him or nagging him or any of that. I mean, how would you say if a wife is like, you know, I’ve been doing the work, but, you know, I’m not seeing any movement on his side. How would you counsel her?

19:43
I think that we again, we have to go back to that foundation of our relationship with God. And knowing that, you know, as we’re stretching to grow closer to our husbands, we’re growing closer to Him and that God is going to fill in those gaps. He’s going to give us You know, a soft heart toward our husband, he’s going to give us the desire to pray for our husband, and really encouraging our husbands to grow in their relationship with God is the first step in them, hopefully having their own awakening to wanting to grow in intimacy with us. And so I think it’s it, it all points back to God, but it’s, it’s making sure that you have that right mindset. And it’s okay to get frustrated with it, and to feel, you know, like, you’re the one that’s doing all the work sometimes, but that’s the frustration that you take to God and you talk to him about it, and he refreshes your heart. And he gives you new strength to press on in the journey. And, you know, and hopefully, hopefully, a husband sees these changes in his wife and is at least intrigued by them. And that opens up even more conversation. You know, I think that sometimes our husbands want to please us so much. And they can get anxiety about performance, especially if we’re bringing sure new ideas into the bedroom. Right. But if instead of focusing on mechanics, and focus on communicating to them that like, what does intimacy mean to me, you know, that I want to be known by you that I want to be comfortable with you and talking to him about, you know, what does he do that makes you feel close and connected to him, and really affirming the positive things that he does, or the positive step forwards that he’s taking. And that’s really going to help keep your hearts in the right perspective, but also give him that motivation to maybe continue diving deeper and figuring out, you know, this journey that we’re on, because it’s supposed to be an exciting journey. You know, God didn’t create sex within marriage to get boring. And he created it for both of us to enjoy and to connect, and to continue learning about each other over the course of our entire lives.

22:06
Yes, that’s so true. Yeah, that’s,

22:09
that’s so true. It’s just it’s, it’s really as a journey. It’s not static, it does change. You have to be intentional every day, you have to make those steps forward every day. It’s like our relationship with God, it really is, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards, right? Something that matters what you do each day. And that’s why that’s why I you know, when I think about at the end of our lives, when we meet Jesus, you know, when I think about him, looking at us, and seeing those moments that no one else saw, and those times that we, you know, even said, I love you to Jesus, when no one else saw, you know, those times mattered to him, it says that a day is like 1000 years and 1000 years is like a day to God. And I think about that, as like, if one day is 1000 years, then that means, you know, each moment and movement of my heart. You know, it’s like an hour to him or like, a

23:03
day.

23:04
Yeah, it does. It matters. Okay, well, let me ask you, it due to the specific marriage you’ve had, what opportunities have you had to serve or get to know God,

23:14
my husband and I have had opportunities to serve at church and through you know, leading Sunday school classes or teaching a class. I’ve been involved in the women’s ministry planning events, you know, we’ve been involved at our boys school and in our just in our community, we have a great street where we love to get together and have block parties or Christmas parties for the women on our street. But as I was thinking through this, the thing that really stood out to me as being the most gratifying and the most surprising is that God has given us opportunities to minister one on one to parents, who’ve had similar struggles, as we’ve had, you know, we’ve had some medical issues with our kids, our youngest actually was allergic to food for many years, which I know sounds strange, but that was quite a struggle just to figure out, you know, what, what, how to take care of him. And so, you know, from having, you know, complications and pregnancy to sick babies, to figuring out how to balance work and home life. It’s been amazing to see God send people that we don’t even know, you know, we don’t have an existing relationship with them into our lives. And for us to be able to help them not reinvent the wheel, and also maybe offer hope to them that were a little bit further down the road and the journey, or even to tell them that they’re not crazy, you know that the OBS office that delivered my second son, she routinely sends me women who have newborns that are really calm, ugly and crying a lot and you know, the moms are just kind of at the ends of themselves and just to talk to them about like, what what are the things that we can explore, like, what are the things that we could see that could maybe help. And it’s been amazingly satisfying. And I’m always thanking God for him taking our struggles, the times that have just left us on our knees and, you know, made us depend on him, we had no other choice. And those times I’ve grown our desire for him and the awareness of our need for him. But for him to take those times, and to redeem them, you know, kind of going back to that verse and Joel, to help other people. So it’s not only bettered our marriage and us as individuals, but we’ve seen the fruit of other people benefiting by, you know, having some solution, some new solution come into their life, or just a new perspective of how to handle a challenge. Yeah.

25:47
Yeah, that’s powerful. And I, I love sometimes when we talk about struggles on the podcast, comes out that God really transforms us in ways that we would never have been transformed if we didn’t go through those

25:59
struggles. Right, that

26:01
it really is the diamond becomes a diamond through pressure through difficulty. And then it also reveals that God’s perfect plan, you know, we can’t understand why these things happen. And it’s so easy for us to ask the question why, but I mean, one result that you can see through so many of the struggles that we hear, you know, where God is getting the glory for it, when we have it in the perspective of God’s plan, is that he allows us to help others and he allows us to be Christ to others to be part of comforting others, because we went through it. And if we hadn’t have gone through it, we wouldn’t be able to have that insight or that empathy or that hope that we can give them that you can get through this.

26:45
Exactly. And I think that’s such a gift to us to be able to be changed through difficult circumstances, but also to see God using them for good. And knowing that, you know, there was a good purpose for us to be walking through that.

27:02
Yeah. And

27:03
I have to ask, so your son was allergic to all food.

27:07
Um, well, by the time he was one, he could eat for foods. But he was allergic to the protein and foods, and it’s a really rare condition. So it took it took 15 months before we were able to get to a doctor that confirmed that I wasn’t crazy. And then I wasn’t making this up. And, you know, impressed to get test results that show like, yeah, like he can only eat these foods. But thankfully, he’s, he’s grown out of a lot of it. And now at seven, there’s only three foods he can’t eat. So that’s an amazing change. But we were certainly in a tunnel for a while figuring out how do you care for a little baby who can’t tolerate anything? Oh, my gosh, he’s the one that loves life and embraces everything with joy. When do I look at him and times, I’m like, man, like, you could really be resentful about the challenges you’ve gone through, but he’s never seen them as challenges. I mean, that’s just, it just is it is and we should love life, and we should love God, and we should dance and we should sing. And it’s so inspiring to me to see him growing up.

28:14
Oh, my gosh. And it’s just like, you know, Christ says, Be like little children. I mean, that’s amazing what we can learn when we look at the kids.

28:22
Oh, yes. And those are the same characteristics that God wants us to have in our relationship with Him. And in our marriage bed. He wants pressive and responsive. And you know, he wants us to share ourselves without having that self consciousness.

28:37
Hmm, yes. Mm hmm. That’s cool. I like that a lot. Yeah, without having that self consciousness. That’s good. Awesome. Well, okay. Well, you’ve shared a little bit about the Bible study. And I’d love for you to give a little more insight on that. But if there’s a book or program that you’d specifically recommend to our listeners, would you share that with us?

28:58
You know, I think I would just recommend the the awaken love Bible study. It’s, you know, the mission of our ministry is to equip and encourage men and women to claim God’s design for intimacy and to share that truth with others. And I think that the six week Bible study that Ruth created, and God brought me alongside her to partner with her. And it’s just amazing for married women to really go through and discover God’s design for intimacy. And based on His Word, you know, the only reason that we can teach this is because it is based on His Word. We go through Song of Songs, to see his design for a relationship that goes through many seasons, but the fire remains hot, you know, they continue to affirm each other and explore new territory with each other throughout their marriage. So this the six week curriculum, there’s more information about it on our website, but we go through defining what is intimacy, you know, really exploring what God’s designed for sex is Talking about why we have this divide between being godly and sensuous, and how there isn’t that divide in God’s design, how powerful our mind is, for women in in our marriage beds, and really working through the lies and the baggage and the body image issues that are holding us back from experiencing freedom, understanding God’s boundaries, and stretching and communication, you know, how to know our spouse through our five senses, and working through those frequency issues, and really appreciating how he designed our bodies, to complement each other, but how to how to work, you know, some of the mechanics and how they’re designed to experience pleasure. And it’s a lot packed into six weeks, but it’s been such a blessing to see God use this to just give women this complete paradigm shift and where their eyes are opened, and their marriages are transformed. And then we’ve seen that in women who have been married for two months, and they’re newlyweds and they’re going through the study. But we’ve also had women who had been married 40 or 50 years that are going through the study, and still gleaning new insights. Because just as we can never fully unpack God, I feel like we never fully unpack all that He has for us in our marriages.

31:18
Yes. And I love that, you know, Melanie, it’s very clear that you’ve thought through so much about intimacy. And I would just encourage listener, if you haven’t listened to part one yet, definitely go back and listen to part one. But it’s very clear that these are thoroughly understood topics and new insights are revealed. Just you know, in your I’ve picked out just little portions of what I think is cool. But I’ve I have, you know, a couple pages of notes already. So I, I can imagine that the Bible study is just a very cool new understandings that God can unlock new revelations. And I think, you know, I was reading the mirror meaning of marriage the other day by Tim Keller, and it’s a great book, but I loved you know, he’s very, he he quotes CS Lewis, Lewis a lot and quotes, like a, even other philosophers that he’s just a very heady kind of guy, you know. And it’s funny because you finally get to the end of the book, and he says, and he’s talking about sexual intimacy, you know, finally at the end, and one thing he says is, you can never stop working on your sexual intimacy like that should always be your, you know, a focus of yours. And I think that’s true. I mean, I’ve got a giant bookshelf full of sex books that I, you know, still haven’t gotten through all of them. And I think, you know, no matter where you are now, like, God wants new insights, and new ideas and new experiences, so you can keep things fresh and continue to move. And there’s so many amazing, amazing aspects of sexual intimacy and how we understand God and how we understand our spouse. So just excited about this Bible study, and the fact that it’s a Bible study as well that the Bible teaches us so much about sex, when we think that we have to go to these, you know, X rated resources to understand sex, that’s not the case, the Bible is, is gives us so much insight into sexuality, because God created it that way. So right, and

33:10
that’s one of the things that we tell the women in the classes is, you know, we want you to learn God’s design through the class. But we also want you to become comfortable with talking about this and become a queen, to share it with other women, because there’s certainly women who would never come to a class, about sex, that still need to hear about God’s design. And, and I think going back to your point of it’s, you know, it’s a continual journey, we’re always learning, it’s so important for us in our marriages, to establish those patterns of continuing to journey and learn more about our spouses, because it does change, you know, physically, our bodies change. And, you know, what we enjoy now may be very different than what we enjoy later. And so having that openness of communication already established, but even just having that deeper spiritual and emotional connectedness, to help bridge the gap when we get older, and our bodies become less sensitive and less responsive.

34:08
Hmm, yeah, yeah,

34:10
I’m, yeah, that’s really important. That’s really important. Okay, well, let me ask you, if you could go back to your first year of marriage and sit yourself down, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to you?

34:23
I would tell myself to assume the best about my husband, that he loves me that he wants to please me, but he’s doing his best to balance everything and figure it all out. And you know, that, that he’s willing to help me with things and then I have to ask that I can’t hint about it. And then I can’t negate it, because I had to ask him to do it, that I can be direct with him in a loving way, and he’s going to respond. I think that I didn’t assume that he wanted to be a great husband and a great father and that he was thinking about me so much more than he was worrying. about himself. And so if I could have had that positive perspective and encouraged to successes, and viewed sex as a way that he wanted to love me because he missed me, and he wanted to connect with me rather than a tissue. And I just think that assuming the best about him would have had an impact on so many different aspects of a relationship where I could have looked at everything through a lens of him having good intentions and good motivations. Hmm,

35:29
I love that. And I think that also ties into what you said on the first part of the interview where you shared about writing a list about what you appreciate about your husband. And I think that’s a vital, really good way that we’ve talked about before on the podcast that you can write down specifically what you appreciate about your husband, what you respect him for. You keep that in your mind, right?

35:48
Well, and I would even go beyond that, when you’re writing that list to also write about the physical qualities that you enjoy about him, you know, let your mind go there. And because it’s so easy to affirm our husbands has great providers and great fathers. But I think it it affirms him in a different way, when we come to him and say and then you know, your strong arms when you embrace me, I feel so secure. So we can we can have that list for ourselves. But we can also have that list of verbally affirm our husbands or to even just, you know, write him notes or send him a quick text message, giving him some bit of encouragement.

36:23
Yeah, that’s, that’s really good. And I like that you said, let your mind go there. Because so often, you know, maybe our upbringing makes us feel like we need to, you know, siphon that off, like, don’t, don’t imagine your husband, you know, with his broad shoulders or the, you know, sexy areas that you just love about him. But no, let yourself, let yourself really enjoy that and think about that, and embrace that. And he loves, He wants you to love him in those ways. So that’s, I think, a really good key.

36:54
Right? I think that it changes our perspective and our thoughts when we remember that God created sex before the fall in the garden. And that, you know, First Timothy tells us that all of God’s creation is good. And God created sex. And so sex is good, and it is holy, and it is sacred, and God wants us to embrace it to the fullest.

37:16
Hmm, yeah. Yeah. Yep. That’s awesome. Awesome, Melanie.

37:21
Well, where can our audience find and connect with you online? Yeah,

37:25
we, we have our website, awaken dash love dotnet. I’m on Twitter, we’re at awaken love class, we’re on Facebook and Google Plus as well for at awaken dash love. My email address is on our website. And, you know, I’m in Austin, Texas. So if anyone is nearby, they could come and go through the Bible study live with me. If they’re in the Minneapolis area, they could go through the Bible study with Ruth, and some of her classes. But we’re also putting together right now a small group interactive video series were later this year, hopefully in the fall, it will launch where women could download the videos from our website and invite their, you know, closest friends into their living rooms and go through this six week study on God’s design for intimacy together. And you know, it’s structured to where we’re teaching a little bit, and then you stop and discuss and we’re teaching a little bit and you stop and discuss. So it’s really casual. But if you’re doing it with friends, no, you can really go deep and open up and be vulnerable with each other. So we’re really excited for women to be able to, to get that information in a new form very soon.

38:37
Mm hmm. No, that’s really cool. That

38:39
would be a very cool study to do with some girlfriends. You know, it grows your friendship with them. But it also gives you new insights and new ideas. And yeah, I think that sounds like a phenomenal program. We’re excited. Cool. Cool. All right. Well, Melanie, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your wisdom and all that you do for the kingdom of God and, and for the people that are listening. Thank you.

39:04
Thanks for the opportunity. Absolutely.

39:11
Fantastic, thank you so much, Melanie, for sharing. And if you are interested in doing that Bible study that Melanie was mentioning, I’ve got all the links of everything that we talked about actually, on the delight your marriage show notes, so you can go to delight your marriage comm slash 85. And you can click directly on those links, to be able to get access to the Bible study. And she did share with me off the air that you can even have access to the Bible study. If you’re not in those specific regions of the United States. She’s doing some Skype, like sit ins. So you’re welcome to talk to her. Just go to her website and reach out and say that you’re interested. But otherwise, I’m just so glad that you took the time to listen, thank you so much. I really feel you know, kind of what we were talking about is facing this difficulties in our marriage is really key. Because we can’t just ignore the obstacles, the difficult things, whether it’s about sex or whether it’s about other things in our marriage, we need to really get wisdom on it, we need to get insight and we need to talk about these things head on, we need to deal with these difficult things. And so I really encourage you to prayerfully consider, you know, what’s going on in your marriage? And how can you grace fully in terms of like, filled with grace for your spouse, but really address things with an open heart, and a kind spirit and really get to the bottom of it, I so encourage you to do that. But I know that God is working in your life and in your marriage, I know that you listened in today, and you found some insight, and I just encourage you to maybe write down what you learned. So you don’t forget it. And take action on that insight. Because that’s really what sets us apart from someone who does something or someone who just thinks about something. So I just encourage you to do that be an action taker today. Well, God bless you. And I just want to lift you up in your marriage right now. So Father, I just lift up who ever is listening on the other end of this guide, you know their name, you know, their heart, and you know why they pick this up, whether they’re going through some really challenging things in their marriage, or they just have a little blip in the radar that they need to get cleared up. God, I just ask that you give them to divine wisdom, divine help, divine support God that you’d bring the right people to their, to their lives, that can support them and pray for them and love them through this God. And I pray that you would guide them and lead them in how to interact and how to respond to what’s going on in their marriage. Father, I know you care about them, you care about their marriage, you want it to be strong and healthy and fruit producing. And I just pray that you would change it into that in Jesus name. We love you. Thank you so much for being here. Amen. Well, God bless you do your sister or do your husband that’s listening. I just thank you for being a part and I’m continuing to pray for you. And we’ll talk again next Tuesday. Thanks so much. I

42:19
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 impassion