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PII: When we don’t have a shared vision, everything feels important. It feels vital to win the argument, to get our point across, and to nitpick at the problems in our spouse. But, once we are intentional about envisioning a shared legacy we want to leave, everything comes into proper focus. Kimberly shares how creating goals as a couple has revolutionized the way she and her husband interact with each other. It was one of the biggest turning points in my marriage and continues to ground us as a couple. This episode is not to be missed!
All the links, resources, and show notes available at: delightyourmarriage.com/92
Check out Part I: Dealing With Anger at delightyourmarriage.com/91
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
Today, we are talking about something very near and dear to my heart. Now, if you are anything like me, once you have a goal, you have a course you have a way to move forward. Now I will have either a very productive weekend, or a completely relaxed, enjoying restful weekend. But if I don’t set the intention of one or the other, I’ll have somewhere in between where I feel kind of uncomfortable, not really getting things done, not really relaxing, just feeling kind of blocked. So for me, what’s so helpful in my life is to create an intention, create a goal, something that I want to move towards. And what I have found in my marriage is that it’s hugely helpful for my husband and I to create life focus goals, to help us come together to achieve something that matters, not only to me, not only to my husband, but most importantly to God. What does he want our lives to amount to? How does the most important relationship, human relationship in our lives support us and achieving what God wants to do in our lives? That is what we’re talking about today. I’ve got Kimberly Holmes talking, this is the second half of her interview, I’d love for you to go back to the first half talking about anger in marriage. But here’s the second half. And I think it’s just a wonderful conversation about how you and your husband can get on the same page, and why that matters.
2:01
And would you go ahead and share what your marriage looks like now, after kind of this season of dealing with anger that we we’ve talked about and kind of dug into what does it look like now?
2:14
It’s so different. It’s, it’s amazing. It’s everything. I won’t say that is everything I hoped it would be. There’s still a lot we’re working on.
2:26
But hey, everyone is right. Exactly.
2:28
It is definitely more like, what I imagined a marriage to be probably not what I imagined a marriage to be before we got married. Because I think my expectations of it, we’re very odd. I mean, just because other than, like my parents and other people I didn’t, I still didn’t really, I don’t know, I still had this thought like, it will be like movies or TV shows. So but you know, ever since being married and, and being around other marriages and having friends who are married and things like that, I It’s definitely so much better now. So for example, where, you know, if if one of us is angry, or dealing with something going through something, then each of us is more patient now, just so much more patient, so much more grace that goes on. And we just laugh a lot more in our conversations. We, we talk about difficult things when we need to, and it’s it ends up being great and very relieving to have those conversations, but we also have a lot of fun together. So we always want to we always did that before. But I think we enjoy it more now. And we take it more precious now. And so, you know, we we make it a point. Since we don’t have kids, we have date nights, like at least three a week.
3:55
So nice, good work
3:57
all the time. But and we make you know, that’s very important to us. And we we have one of the biggest things we were able to do after moving past that season, is we really started making shared goals together. So what do we want our marriage to be? What good do we want to do with it? What kind of legacy? Do we want to leave individually and together? And how can we support each other in that? How can we work towards that? And it’s really brought us together as a team. And I think that we’re an amazing team. He thinks of doing things that I am not creative enough to think about he’s insanely creative. And he’s very funny. Oh my gosh, he’s hilarious. So, you know, he kind of takes over that creative type of space and, and I’m much more like okay, here’s how it can actually be executed and making goals that go along the way. And things like that. So we’ve made we’ve been Get up making a pretty good team.
5:03
Yeah. I love that. Well, a couple things I want to just mention you said, now we have a lot more fun together, we laugh a lot together. And I think that’s a huge, huge key to staving off anger. So sometimes my husband or I will say something kind of in a tone that you know, like, Okay, this is the start, we’re going to get into this now, you know, you can just tell it’s coming. But on our good days, either of us will respond in a joking way. So I’m just gonna try to think of an example. Like, oh, so my husband, he’s really cute. He has now come to this place where when he’s like, frustrated about something, he’ll like, say, Did you mean to put our my favorite shirt in the trash or something like that? He’ll like, he’ll ask us a question, which is a wise thing. For husbands who are listening, that’s a really good way of asking us a question. Like, I didn’t realize you wanted to throw away all of the things I love. But whatever, I mean, asking us a question, because nine times out of 10, there was either a reason for it, or maybe the kids did that. And it wasn’t her fault anyway, but Right, but the, but anyway, so. So if he says something like that, you know, and I could just tell like he is really agitated or something, a lot of times, I try to really make it into a funny, laughable moment. So so if you can find ways in your marriage, that you can just poke fun at it. So I’m just trying to give another example like, you know, I’ll get us lost, I’m terrible with directions, and he’s really good at direction. So I’ll get us completely lost. He’ll be frustrated at me. And I’m just like, well, aren’t you glad we got to spend this extra time together? Yeah, honey. And, and it just just puts up poke of little fun to just, you know, defuse the situation, it’s so much better to just defuse it rather than Well, you didn’t tell me how to get there, this and that, and that, and it’s your fault. And you know, just just decide how can I just poke fun at this or poke fun at the situation? Or isn’t this going to be funny later, or, you know, we’re late, but you know, they’ll be happy to see us because we’re not there on time, or whatever it is. So that’s the first thing is that anger can absolutely be diffused with with laughter and fun. And the other thing I love that you said shared goals, because when we first got married, we were into a lot of little bickering, just little stupid arguments that just crept in little by little. And it wasn’t until that was actually a huge marking point in us just having a much more peaceful existence together, when we made goals. And I’d love your insight on this. This is what worked for us was we just took out a normal piece of paper, a normal notebook, and just wrote at the top 30 year goals. And together, we just jotted down the first things that come to mind, we want grandkids, we want to have a house in this situation. We want to have these kinds of friends, we want to have this kind of ministry, we want to serve people, we want to be generous with our funds, whatever, just just brainstorm together. And then from 2030 years, that’s the big, big, long picture and then go to just five years. What’s five, that’s more attainable. That’s more like grassroots, what are you trying to do? Like? What are you trying to achieve more shorter term? And from there, I would say just go to one year goals like just what do you want to be the next small step to that? degree. And for me, that has been so helpful for our marriage because it gave us a longer picture a longer view, you’re not just working for the here and now to make ourselves happy. We’re looking at 30 years. And honestly, I would uh, now that I’m thinking about it, I would add eternity just put eternity on there. What do you want to look like before Jesus? What do you want your husband to look like before Jesus? And how can you help each other get there? What do you think about
9:15
that? Uh, no, I think that’s absolutely awesome. That’s pretty much the way we did it. So we we kind of followed some questions to kind of help us figure out those goals. You know, what are you passionate about? What kind of change do you want to make in the world different things like that, and you know, what, what is a legacy you want to leave and one of the things that that my husband is really passionate about, and I’m completely supportive of is he wants to have a lot of acres in Middle Tennessee with a lot of greenery, a lot of hills and he wants to build our home on it. He wants us to build a house and he wants it to be big enough for us to have all of our children in it, which we hope to have a couple and adopt a couple. So You know, we want at least like four or five kids at the, you know, at the end of things. And so when we say that’s our, you know, 30 year goals, so then when we move back from that, it’s like, Okay, how are we kind of afford that? You know, I’m, I’m, I know, my career path, I’m set in what I do, I love my job. And, and so now my husband, you know, that’s one of the reasons he wants to be an entrepreneur. So as we stepped back, he’s like, Okay, well, I have to own my own business. And, and we need to invest in these kinds of things. And we need to, you know, do this, this, that and the other. And so we kind of stepped back from there. And it’s like, okay, well, how, how is all that going to happen? So, you know, that’s, that’s one of the goals, but we have cashed me so many I want to build an orphanage in India. And so, yeah, so he’s like, how can we do that? You know, so we just kind of work, we just kind of work in that. So it’s, you know, that’s, like what you have done, but that’s just specifically like, these were the things we did and how we kind of step back from it, and how that’s gonna happen, which was also why when I found out my husband was getting out of the Army, and essentially, you know, losing his job is, you know, and that’s what happens when someone gets out of the army. They, they’re quitting their job. They, they’re without income. And so, he were most people when we told them or, you know, when they would react, you’d be like, Oh, we’re so sorry. We’re like, no, where I was able to be excited for him. Like I didn’t, I didn’t make him reenlist or what he didn’t enlist, but I didn’t make him, you know, up his commission. Again, I didn’t hound him to do that. Because I knew we have a goal. And I knew in order to get that goal, he had to start his own business. And in order to start his own business, he had to get out of the army. And so we were able to celebrate, you know, we were super excited. We’re like, we don’t care that we’re losing all this money. Because we have a goal that we’re working towards. And this is just a stepping stone towards it. So we’re not letting it stress us out. We’re, we’re just excited. And it’ll be great. Yeah.
12:09
I love that. That’s so cool. Well, in my book I wrote, there was, there was a quote that I just really thought was really good. It’s by a guy named Larry Winget. And it says, no money, nobody set out with a plan to be fat broke and stupid or something like that. And it’s so true, like you don’t plan and then you end up in a place that you didn’t want to be. But if you plan and you get on the same page, that’s huge. And, you know, I love that we both both of us kind of gave examples of what we’ve done as a couple to, to align ourselves make our dreams kind of combine as a marriage. And I just want to encourage anyone listening, if you haven’t done this intentional work with your husband or your wife, I would say book sometime like make yourself do it within the next month, just have that as your intention, figure out a date night where even if you haven’t a data date night in two years, like just figure out where you can focus together on the things that you care about. And, and you’ve got to roadmaps like this is the way Bella and her wife did it. This is her husband did it. This is how Kimberly and her husband did it. So just think about that and get it together. Because it really does put you on the same page. So you’re on the same team trying to accomplish the same things. And it just gives you a vision of how to get there what to do what needs to happen in order for that to happen. Like you said, he needed to quit his job, that wasn’t a surprise that needed to happen, which because you’re already on the same page with it. He knows it needs to happen too. And, you know, I love that you also have big goals, which is huge. Make big goals for your marriage. I think that’s wonderful. build an orphanage in India. I mean, having gone to India, it’s a it’s a very amazing, amazing country and culture and they need things like that. Like that’s amazing. So, why India, I’m just interested.
14:08
I I’ve been in India too. When I was a senior in high school, I just became obsessed with Mother Teresa. And then when I got into college, and I was a freshman in college, I went to a Christian school in Tennessee, and they did not they had a mission trip to so many places, but they didn’t have any mission trip to India. So I had never been before. And so I said, I want to lead one. I want to start one I want to go and so I I put together a whole trip to India. And I took well other people I found partners of churches in our area that had already had partnerships with with organizations in India. And so we just partnered up with them and we went to India for a month and casos kids at the orphanage i like they’re the kids are really what gets me but we get even more is how much that country needs Jesus. Mm
15:04
hmm. Absolutely, absolutely. Yep. And I love that you dug into what you were passionate as a young person even before you were married. And I think we can all while we’re thinking about our goals and our dreams for our life, and what God is directing us to accomplish, we got, you know, God puts little seeds in our lives throughout, and the experiences, maybe the hard times the struggles, the difficulties you’ve encountered, that might be a reason, God let you go through that. So that you can encourage and help others, you know, and give you a better empathy for that. And so, you know, God has put those seeds in your life. So I just encouraged as you’re having this conversation with your husband, and maybe the cool thing, you know, we’ve done this whole episode about making dreams together, have the two of you listen to this, this episode together, and that’ll give you some you know, and just as, as ideas come in your mind like things that you liked as a, as a kid, jot them down, and then and then make goals out of that. Because, you know, God does direct our lives. And I’ve been, it’s funny, we’re talking about this, because I’ve been thinking about this so much. And I love your ideas on it. Kimberly, I mean, I love books on success and accomplishment, achievement, all that stuff, Taipei, I hear what you’re saying. I think a lot of times our society encourages us, success means wealth, so get as much money as you can. And then after you get that money, you know, then you can be generous and all that stuff. And I don’t think that’s the way God wants us to be living in a way that like later, once I get X, Y, and Z, I’ll be who I want to be. God calls us to be that daily. So if you have $18, to give a month to a mission organization that you believe in, because that’s the person that you have set out to be I’d say, you know, make those small steps. So you become the person you want to be long term. But also have that vision long term. I mean, how do you grapple with that, like, almost being content, as well as striving for goals? Do you have ideas on that? Kimberly? Oh,
17:11
gosh, I struggle with topics, thinking, gosh, that’s me. And I think, you know, this, the beginning of this podcast, I was talking about how I you know, my birthday had been praying for that, that, yeah, they that verse for the year of the blessing from God, and I felt very defeated. And so one of the reasons is, I’m definitely that kind of person I do I gosh, like I read all of these books on like Jim Collins and Dale Carnegie. You know, I just see all these successful people that I’m around and successful people I’m friends with, and I feel I can get very defeated. And one of the things my husband even he’s he’s like, how are you measuring? Your your success, because, you know, just because you don’t have an audience of millions of people, it doesn’t mean that you’re not changing lives with what you’re doing right now. And if it’s only one life, that’s changed, isn’t it all worth it. And, you know, he humbles me. And so I think you’re so good. And so I really, you know, I struggle with that finding that contentment with what you’re doing now. And in maybe it doesn’t look like what the world sees it as. But something I’ve always struggled with, is jealousy. I’ve always been a very, I can get very jealous of what others have, I guess, envy is kind of really what I have. And I, my husband has actually helped me a lot with that. And I didn’t even think it was like a big problem. But it is it changes the way that I’m happy with what we do and what we have. And so that’s that’s something I struggle with, I struggle with it big time, always. And just one of the one of the ways I’ve tried to help myself through that struggle is always going. I mean, it sounds so cliche, but I really do always go back to the Word of God. And I just look and I just I have to believe what it says when he when he says that each person that he makes, you know, they’re all individual, they’re all unique. They’re all wonderfully made. And he has plans for each of us and their plans that will not only benefit us, but they’ll glorify Him, and I just have to believe that my plan that He has for me, is for me, and he meant it that way. And so I shouldn’t be looking at other people and wanting what they have, because then I’d be missing out on what God had planned for me. And that’s how I do it.
19:41
I love that I think that’s really good. Because when we are focused on what someone else is experiencing, or what they, you know, have in their life. It does it causes us to unfocus from what God’s trying to do in our hearts and our lives and and causes this distance Tennant that I don’t think is appropriate. It’s makes us frozen. And I appreciate, you know, the sharing of struggling with jealousy. I certainly do. And I think anyone on any kind of social media does, because it makes it so easy. And before that magazines, I mean, and before that, who knows what it was. But I think it’s it’s definitely the human condition where we want to see the grass greener on someone else’s lawn. We want what they have, it’s just the way it is. But something that I think has encouraged me is to think about your road, your journey on this life, no one has experienced what you’ve experienced, no one is, no one even has your face. I mean, you have a very particular piece to play that God made sure you are here for. And so I think that helps us to see, you know, where has God brought us? What has he taught us? Why did the upbringing we had, why did we have those parents? Why did we live in this country? Like, what has God taught us throughout that? And how can we serve him going forward with everything that we have and have been given? And I think another part that really encourages me, is something I heard Joyce Meyer say, one time, she was like, you know, Joyce Meyer, if you haven’t heard of her, many of our listeners, she’s wonderful, I love her. But she is this big, big preacher and, and a woman preacher. And she was, she has been doing it for, I don’t know, 3040 years or something. So she’s one of the earlier female preachers. And anyway, she was talking to God about kind of grumbling that like she has such a terrible singing voice and this other lady sings so beautifully. And, you know, why can’t I have what she has? And God really had a really funny response to her of like, What are you saying, here, I gave you this other woman’s voice for you to enjoy. And all you can do is grumble about it.
22:04
Isn’t that good? That is really good. And I’m sitting here thinking, well, he gave her an amazing speaking voice. So I don’t know where she’s complaining about. Exactly,
22:13
exactly. It’s like no matter what God has given you, we are such children to look, you know, across the way and say, well, they don’t have I don’t know what they you know, whatever. I mean, it stifles our own ability to make an impact. Like if Joyce just focused on this other person’s gifts, if she’s not able to bless people in the ways that she’s been gifted to bless them. And I think that’s the same with ourselves and our own hearts. And, you know, as we think about the part we play in this life and the dreams we want to accomplish in this life. I think that’s very vital for us to keep that in focus, that God has given me a part to play, why do I have the passion to build an orphanage in India? Because he wants an orphanage in India. And if I don’t put that goal in my chart and work on that in my marriage, that’s not gonna happen.
23:09
So good. I love that. He wants it to happen. That’s exactly. I love that. It’s good. Well, we
23:18
have gone all over the place. But I want to ask the questions I was intending to ask you, of course. Chief, three things that you think have been central to your marital success? Oh, my goodness.
23:28
Okay. So I would say, I feel like we’ve talked about a lot of these, but the first one has been God. If it weren’t for God, and the Bible, then for me being able to read the Bible. And specifically, just really, that being my first place to go to not going to social media, not going to my parents not going to my friends when things are going bad or even when things are going really well. And I want to brag about things or you know, if I kind of want if I have that bad, you know, the other part of jealousy like bragging and pride. You know, Peter blast that on social media all the time to so just go into God first saying, God, I need help with this or God, thank you for this. I think that’s, that’s been a huge, a huge, huge thing. Definitely the first the number one thing, and then the second thing that has been the huge part of our marital success is really been taking that time to understand each other. You know, he and I are so different. It just the more I heard you talk about some different things. I was like, Yep, we’re different in that way too. Like he even he is just a very, he’s so much more generous than I am. He would give away probably all of our money and everything. And you know, at first like that was one of the things I loved about him when we were Dating. And then when we got married, I was like, Oh, you, you can’t give it that’s how I like I had so many changes that I needed to do when we got married. And I thought it was just him that needed to change, but it so much it was me. And so he helped, you know, those differences that we have, and the things that that I wanted him to change. But he didn’t thank God because now that we’re in a good place, and that I’ve matured and, and that things are good again, I see like, I love that my husband is generous, and he forces me to be more generous and to think differently. And you know me about him like I’m so type A and he’s seen this, you know, this organization that I’ve that I’ve doubled in the past year, and that’s looking to double again this year. And so he’s like, how does she do that? I want to do that with what I start. And so we’ve, instead of, you know, dwarfing each other and telling each other well, you should do it differently, or you should not do that, or you can’t do that we’ve just always supported each other, especially in the past year or so. So just embracing those differences. And then I think the third thing that’s been a huge, a huge part of us is having is having those goals and but not the 30 year goals are huge. But what I live for what I love my favorite goals that we have, or like the yearly travel goals. So when we have, you know, at the end of this year, we’re going to go to Ecuador, and we haven’t had a trip and a long time when we were when we lived in Korea, we would go to Bali, we would go to Guam, because we were so close to it. We love traveling together. And we just love exploring together. And we learn so much about each other when we’re away from home. And we don’t have stress of life and work around us. And so I those are my goals that I love. It’s like how like, can we travel every year, like just let’s just even if it’s just two hours away, or going to the beach or like something, anything, but just to get away with him. And even if things are going really bad. Yeah, if we can just get away. It just it just changes things. And so I I love that.
27:17
Mm hmm. That’s very cool. And I like that, you know, we’ve talked so much about goals and dreams. And I think when you have that aligned vision, the two of you together, it makes it so much easier to sacrifice in order to get those things because, you know, a lot of people might be thinking, Yeah, I’d like to travel. But have you seen my bank account, and they’ve got so many, so much so much negativity around there. And I get it. I mean, life is not the easiest. But if we can align ourselves together, we can get on some strict budgets, we can pull that extra shift, we can get that extra job. I mean, one thing that was huge for my husband and I was to do the Dave Ramsey’s fpu, its Financial Peace University, if you have you heard about
28:04
oh, yeah, yeah, we’re, we’re big friends with with Dave and their company. Yeah, for sure.
28:09
Yeah, they’re amazing. And if you haven’t done fpu, I would totally encourage it, we facilitated a couple sessions at our house. And it’s very easy to I’ll have the link on the on the resource on on the show notes, but very easy to get into. And it’s just so worth to align your finances with God’s you know, with his structure that he talks about, he talks more about money than he talks about prayer or heaven or anything else. Jesus cares about how we interact with money. So anyway, I love that what you’re saying and and just to be conscious that whatever is going on in your life, don’t fall into the trap of saying, Well, I can’t do that. Because are they you know, this, the enemy wants to discourage you, but, but instead, like, how can you twist that around and say, you know, God’s given me lots and lots of resources? How can I be creative with this goal? And how can I get there anyway, so, okay, we’ve gone through a lot, but because this podcast, I really focus a lot on intimacy in every area, emotional, spiritual, physical. I want to ask specifically about physical intimacy, because that’s so important to marriage. Could you share a little tip or advice that maybe you wish someone let you in on earlier?
29:25
Yeah, yeah. So our, our intimacy, and it’s changed a lot over the years. And one of the things that I I kind of wish people would have let us in on before marriage. Well, first of all, I mentioned before, I still had these thoughts that okay, okay, this is Tom. Yeah, I thought you know, even before we got married, all that stuff, I was like, every time that we are about to initiate sex or anything like that, it’s all He’s going to be this big makeout session. And there’s all of this that goes on, and it’s going to be so romantic. And really, like, I was kind of upset the first couple of years when it wasn’t always like that. But now that we’ve kind of found our groove and our own way of doing things, and all of that kind of stuff, it’s like, it’s just so much for us. And so I think just really figuring out what works for you and your spouse and keeping that communication open. Because so many people, like don’t talk about it, or they just don’t want to, you know, we’re very open my I, my dad is a Christian sexologist. So is that right? Is you should have him on the show. He, he’s so open about the actual terms to use, and he doesn’t think twice about it. And so I grew up in a home where we talked about all of that stuff. And so, in my head, you know, my husband was not inhibited to talk about that at all, when we got married. So I think us just having that communication, and just being able to talk about it, and make it fun. Like, it doesn’t always have to be all romantic. Sometimes it just needs to be, you know, whatever can work at that moment. And sometimes, actually, this is one of the biggest ones for us more in the past couple years, make it happen. So schedule it if you have to, like, yeah, it doesn’t sound sexy, but we love scheduling like to happen like this is gonna happen. It doesn’t happen that day, it needs to happen in 24 hours of that time. Making it happen is so crucial.
31:45
Mm hmm. That’s so true. Because life can just get in the way, if we don’t prioritize. That’s so true. And I love you know, again, talking about goals, something that’s been really helpful for me recently is, when I do my morning runs, I do the first half affirmations, I just say affirmations, things about me that God thinks about me or things about me that I’m working on. And you know, and it just gives me a lot more confidence. So if you haven’t heard of maybe I’ll do a link about affirmations, if you want more information about that. But that’s been really helpful for me, the second one I do, the second half of it is I do visualizations, and I just say all these things out loud, hoping that, you know, no one in the park can hear me talking about sex to myself, but I do. So I’ll say things like, I basically, the way I do, my visualizations is i i imagine myself being 30 years, 20 years down the road and looking back at my life and thanking God for the things he’s created in me and made me into so things like I’m so grateful our marriage has been so passionate and fulfilling sexually. I’m so grateful that I only desire my husband, I only desire His touch, I only desire that I’m so grateful that my skin responds to my husband. And it’s almost like, I think it’s kind of a mix between a prayer and affirmation, you know, of, of just like what I’m asking God to bring to fruition and show me, you know, when I look back at my life, what I want to have happen. And it’s so funny, because as I’ve been doing this for, it’s a new routine, so just a couple weeks, but it’s been but I’ve kind of been doing something similar for maybe years now. And it’s funny, as those visualizations start to kind of come into my present thought process like this is what’s happening, I am turning into this person that I want to become I am you know, these prayers are being answered day by day. It’s changed so much even sexually, like how things work between the two of us things that I wanted to work on in myself, or how I’ve wanted to relate or how I’ve wanted to be more focused and sex or these kinds of things. If I just start really focusing that in my prayer time, that has really translated. So again, thinking about goals for your sex life, I think is a really healthy thing as well. Just to kind of add to what we’re talking about. Absolutely. Cool. Okay, well, due to the specific marriage you’ve had, what opportunities have you had to serve and get to know God?
34:18
Well, I think that I have gotten because of because of the situation that we went through that we talked about a lot at the beginning of the podcast, I really got to know God in a new way, that I didn’t necessarily see those traits or aspects about him before. And so I think that that, you know, maybe it was that I needed to experience that for my relationship with God and praise God for that, like I’m happy to go through trials for God and to be able to love him even more because of it, but just so so that was definitely a huge thing that came out of that and In ways that I’ve gotten to know God better, and then as far as serving God, oh, I want to do I feel like I have so much more in me to be serving God, I feel like I’m not doing enough. Specifically, you know, together, me and my husband don’t We don’t have a way that we serve in the same capacity right now. He, he is very much more of a person who likes to do the the one on one with other men, you know, getting those strong relationships and finding men who have gone through what he or who are going through what he’s been through, or different things like that. And really based friendships, singular, stronger friendships on that could because he’s more of an introverted person. And then for me, I love being able to talk to groups, talk to larger audiences, and do a lot of teaching of what I’ve been through, but not only what I’ve been through, but what I I’ve seen in other marriages and happened like that. And that’s what I do through marriage helper, which I love doing. Yeah, I love the amount of people that were able to reach. And I feel and it’s, I don’t know if this sounds bad, but I feel like when it’s just me and another person, I feel so much pressure on me, like, I feel like they want me to fix it. And I, I can’t be the one to fix it. I know they have to be the one to fix it. All I can do is guide them through it. And so it’s not that I don’t love people, because I absolutely do. But I would just I would rather guide them through it so that they can do it themselves, then feel the pressure on me of like, Oh, they’re really relying on me to like, yeah, this for them. And that’s just too much for me to handle. Yeah, and
36:47
I think yeah, I think that’s brilliant, because I think it’s also an inappropriate thing that are we, I think especially we as women, we want, we have this tendency, I don’t know if it’s cultural, or we’re born with this tendency or what, but we kind of have this desire a lot of times to want someone else to take over the reins, and just like I have this problem, fix it. And, and that’s not at all what God wants us to do. He’s a good father, he gives us limited amounts of support, because he wants us to grow up, he wants us to be able to be self sufficient and self sustaining. And I hear what you’re saying I’m, you know, kind of that way of I would rather talk to groups of people than one on one a lot of times myself. Hmm. That’s interesting. But But yeah, just kind of what you’re saying, like, we really need to embody and take care of the life God has entrusted us with, with help from others, but ultimately, we’re the ones we’re the the person with the authority to, to affect things in our lives. So anyway, just a another takeaway, but Okay, so we talked again, a lot about goals on the second half of the interview and dreams, but the first half, if you haven’t listened to part one, I’d say go back and listen to that. We were talking about anger and how to deal with that in your marriage. But are there specifically books or programs that you would recommend Kimberly to the audience?
38:17
Well, there are so yay, yay for that? Um, honestly, I am. So when it comes to books about very specific things like marriage or things like that. I I’m one of those people who has to just absolutely read it and agree with it before I even feel like I can recommend it. And I’m sure you’re like that too. I just know, I’ve met other people in the marriage space. And this just grates on my nerves more than anything when they’re like, affiliate, they affiliate sell, like other products, or different things like that. And I’ll ask them more about it. And they’ll say, oh, I don’t know. Like, you are giving people anyway, I’m getting off. So honestly, like the, of course, you know, I hope this doesn’t sound like a commercial but everything we do at marriage helper, I believe. So we, you know, the book that that our founder wrote, Joe beam is, you know, the article and in love, which is a really, it’s about the process of falling in love. And that because Joe’s also my dad, so he’s the one who started marriage helper. He and my my mom had an amazing story where he they divorced for three years, and then they remarried each other and they and they built this marriage ministry out of it and, and he’s also a researcher, as I said earlier, and a Christian sexologist. So he did a lot of research and he built or he wrote this book called The Art of falling in love and it goes through the process of how people fall in love, and how they can fall out of love and how they can rescue lost love and how they can go deeper in love. So I absolutely Love, love, love, love that book. And then is as far as other books now I’m sitting here looking at my bookshelf, I’m like, Wait, there’s nothing on there that’s like not business related. I don’t know what to do I know I’ve read some I’ll have to, I don’t know why I’m blanking on them now. But I think honestly, it’s because there became a time when I was so sick of reading devotionals or I was so sick of reading. I was reading everything but the Bible. And that’s not to say that there’s not amazing devotionals because there are and, and I read them, and I’m trying to find them in my office, and I can’t. I just found that when I would go into like, if I picked a book of the Bible, like songs, and just go through it myself, and, you know, figured out what God was saying and did it myself and didn’t rely on someone else’s interpretation of it. It just meant so much more to me. So I’ve kind of been in that phase for like, a year or two now.
41:07
Yeah, I think that’s really good. And again, it kind of comes back to trusting what God is doing in you. Separate from what people are giving you advice on that kind of thing. And also remembering that ultimately, the word of God is our light. You know, that’s the one that’s guiding us. So yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna write down the Bible as your second resource. So,
41:30
hey, it’s a good one.
41:31
It turns out, it’s probably a best seller, I
41:34
would say it. You know, it’s pretty good. If you don’t have it, you should get it. Yes, make sure. And then also, actually a third one. I do see one over there myself. The Seven Principles for Making marriage work by Bachmann. Dr. John Gottman is, is something that we we definitely recommend. It’s a good I love. I love all the stuff that they’ve gotten and goes through in there.
41:58
Yeah, yeah. And he’s very research based, which is cool. He’s just very cool. Well, I’m excited to read your dad’s book. I know that I yeah, I Yeah. I’m very familiar with a lot of his resources on I know, that’s very, very good. For some reason, though. This whole time, I didn’t realize that Joe beam was your father. I so glad we got that clarified.
42:20
Because I like it that way. I would rather I’d rather people know me for me and not associate with me, you know, because of relationship or anything like that until it’s appropriate. Like, you know, I’m not ashamed at all. It’s more like, they’re gonna I just don’t want people to treat me differently. And anyway, that’s a personal thing.
42:40
No, it makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Well, if you could go back to the first year of your marriage, sit yourself down. What’s one piece of advice that you would give to you?
42:53
Of everything we’ve talked about in home life? Just one? I know. And I had a really good answer for this before. No, I, I really think it just, it all goes back to for me, it all just goes back to not having to justify to be right in every situation. And whether that plays out to you know, if you’re someone you know, your spouse comes in angry, and you feel like it’s not right for them to treat you that way. So you’re going to tell them how it should be. Or, you know, if you just I’m sick of fighting there came, I said, I love saying I say I’m sick goodbye. But I don’t mind fighting about things that matter and fighting, I use fighting in the sense of like, any kind of like, if I’m disagreeing with my husband, I call that fighting when it’s not really fighting. We disagree in a very civil way now, you know, and, but we’ll figure it out. And the fact that we’re able to do it respectfully, and we’re able to love each other and do it, you know, in a way that’s not going to harm our marriage is totally fine. But what I am sick of is just the times in my marriage when I would just feel like I had to be the one that had the last day it had to go my way. And you know, all of those things. I’m so over that now. There’s so many things where I if you know if stuff happens, and I just go with it, I go with the flow. I don’t try to control things anymore. Just so much more laid back about it. And I wish I would have known that before. Because before I just felt like it had to be my way and Yeah, well, too much out too much stress.
44:35
Yeah. Oh, it’s so true. That’s really good advice. Yep. And then, of course, where can our audience go and find and connect with you online? For sure. So
44:47
I um I mean, marriage helper.com I write articles there you know, I I I’m on the podcast. We have his marriage radio on sometimes on it, but really, it’s Joe’s, most of them Time. But other than that, you know, our, our marriage helper, we have a private Facebook group, which is open to anyone to join. But we just, you know, when when we get requests, we just want to make sure that so we kind of approve each person individually, you know, looking at their profile just to make sure this isn’t someone that we don’t want in that group, and then it’s called save my marriage. And if you go in there, I’m pretty active in there, you know, you can tag me you can, you know, and you’ll see, like, it’s especially for though if people are really struggling with a deep issue in their marriage, like if there’s been an affair, or if there’s a really controlling spouse, or if there’s been an addiction, if there’s anything like that, that group would be absolutely awesome. And then I don’t have I don’t have like a, like a like page or anything like that. So I wouldn’t say, and I’m not active on Twitter, or Instagram, or Snapchat, I just tried to manage what I have.
45:59
So the fact that you, you know, focus in on the really serious struggles, because we need support in the midst of that. So I would totally suggest, you know, take that extra minute to apply, you know, to to join this private Facebook, I’ll have it linked up on the show notes, delight your marriage.com whatever episode this is. So yeah, just just, I would, I would so encourage to get support for whatever challenging thing you’re going through. And marriage helper.com is a great way to get resources for that. So very cool. Well, thank you so much, Kimberly, this has been an awesome episode. And I’m so grateful for everything you shared all your insights. So thank you. Well,
46:43
I I’ve just had a blast. I think you and I have so much in common. So it’s been a it’s been fun for me. Thank you, Bella, you’re awesome. Oh, my pleasure. Absolutely.
46:56
Well, I think we covered so much on this episode. And of course, my favorite topic goal setting. So my homework for you is really to take the time to do this. To really do this, get around your kitchen table, pull out your notebook, and just write out your goals. You can use Kimberly’s guidelines of thinking about what you’re passionate about what you’d like to establish in this life, what your legacy should be. And then or if you are wanting to do more of a of a year structured approach, you can think about 30 years, then five years than one year, and what you really want to accomplish. If nothing else, just get a list of 25 goals you want to accomplish in this life. What do you want your family to look like? Your your business to look like your love life love to look like? What do you want your sex life to be like? All of these things are just vital for us to focus in our energy. See, our world is demanding our attention all the time. And if we are not intentional, and figure out what matters most to me, what matters most to my life? What is God going to hold me accountable for at the end of it all, if we don’t take the time to figure that out. We are going to be pulled in every direction anyone else wants us to be pulled in. But again, your marriage, that is the only place that you have the opportunity to support your husband to support your wife in what God has ordained him or her to do while they’re on this earth. While they’re on this short time, maybe 80 years. What does God dream for them to accomplish? And how can you and your spouse figure that out together, support each other in that and do that together. So again, that is your homework. I hope that you will take the time to do that. Pick a date night, a time to actually dig in and get that accomplished. You are going to be so thrilled at how more focused and energized you feel as you’re working towards something that matters together. God bless you. I love you. Thank you for tuning in and we will talk again next Tuesday.
49:18
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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai