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All of us face severe challenges in this life. And we all will (if we haven’t already) experience grief. God does give the grace to receive comfort through our marriages in the times we need it most. But it isn’t automatic and it needs to be fostered intentionally. This is the second half of my interview with Penny and she shares very practical step by step instructions on how to grow in your emotional intimacy together. She also shares what sexual intimacy is like during grief and how to help yourself and your spouse in the midst of that.

 

Check out Part I at delightyourmarriage.com/88

 

You’ll Discover:

• How to cope with grief in the midst of marriage.
• Practical ways to sort through your emotions.
• How to be intimate heart, soul & body even in the midst of life’s challenges.
• How grief affects the sexual relationship and what to do about it.
• How to pray about sex and even after.
• How God healed Penny’s heart through specific action.

 

Books & Resources Mentioned:

• Marriage On The Mend: Healing your relationship after Crisis, Separation or Divorce by Penny A. Bragg

 

Tweetables:

• God, am I outside of your will in any area of my life?
• In our marriage, we nurture the culture of reconciliation.
• Resist the culture’s pressure to be busy & constantly occupied, and just unplug.
• I had to learn to cry with him and lean on him and let him hold me.
• Who can you talk to about praying for before sex?
• There is nothing beyond His restorative reach.
• Unresolved things in marriage impact intimacy.
• You can’t touch my parts unless you touch my heart.
• I didn’t want the grief gig–it’s too painful–but God led me to minister to those who are grieving.
• Don’t keep secrets. Don’t think you need to hold on to this in the darkness. Tell someone.

 

Intimacy Prayer Prompts: Dear Lord…

• Erase any prior images or memories that are a consequence of our sins.
• Increase our desire and passion for each other.
• Heal the areas of insecurity and vulnerability in us.
• Show us how to please one another and be sensitive to each other’s needs. Cleanse us from the sinful ways we damaged intimacy, and help us rebuild it in our marriage.
• Restore and protect the fidelity in our marriage, and let no one and nothing come between us.
• Teach us how to know and respect each other’s areas of insecurity and vulnerability when it comes to self-image and sexuality.
• Enable us to communicate our emotional and physical needs without the fear of rejection.
• Give us the words to affirm each other’s inward and outward beauty.

 

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
No matter what your story is, what your life has been, what you’re going through even right now. intimacy in your marriage will be helpful. And today, I’ve got the second half of my conversation with Penny Bragg. And she just gives so many wonderful insights. Because of the hardships she experienced the horrible grief that she has had to endure, and how intimacy in her marriage was fostered, even in that environment. And if you haven’t heard part one of her story, I really encourage you to go to back to Episode 88, where she talks about being married, getting divorced, and then 11 years later, getting remarried to the same man, and then how disaster struck, and how they’ve come through it. So this is her talking about the insights she’s learned, and what she did practically, to keep her in a place of desiring her husband even intimately. How did things happen in the bedroom? And what specific steps that she taken? What did not teach her through it? So let’s listen in? Well, I want to kind of move on to focusing in again on how your marriage was affected and through not only the 11 year apart, this space in between building your marriage again, after remarrying but then also this grief, I mean, what kind of how does your marriage look like now, on the other side of this whole experience? Well, it’s closer. Because of the grace of God, we let we saw each other I mean, like my husband saw me, just snot all over, you know, just tears running down my face. And often, he saw that, and he came alongside me. And so you see each other, you know, having seen each other in such a vulnerable place, I can honestly say that we have grown closer through it. And I think the key I mean was times the unfathomable grace of God is that I had made this commitment that we were going to pray together each morning, no matter what happened in our lives, pray together every morning. So even during the grief, especially during the grief, we have that we’re praying together each morning, even if it was only one minute, even if I was crying, you know, during that he would just pray or whatever. And so that I know, I’m like, Lord, every day, we got your grace. Thank you. So it looks like it’s still and still to this day, just that daily prayer together, anchoring together just you know, really clinging to God together. I think, too, we realize that once you get down the road aways, that there are opportunities to come alongside others. And so Clint, now, a huge part of his ministry is to husbands, and some of those husbands have wives who are going through struggles they don’t understand. And he can say, Brother, I know what you’re going through. I thought I was my wife, you know. So it looks like that. It looks like we’ve come alongside through the local hospice, to just come alongside families and other marriages, because the divorce rate is so high for those loved ones, I think to the Word of God has gotten more deeply into our hearts. Because when you read David saying, you know, my throat is parched, and my tears are I’m crying tears day and night and like, oh, we know what that means. You know, we know. So yeah, it’s definitely deepened. I think we are more compassionate. I hope and pray that we are more compassionate. Having been through this with other people and yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if you could kind of think through, maybe daily habits or practical, you know, how to guidance that. Wife struggling in similar areas that we’ve discussed. What would you kind of suggest? Well,

4:36
I really feel that, you know, as simple as it sounds, my daily time with God. That is my lifeline to being married. Because I’m really I really ended the marriage failure. I mean, I was not good at the whole marriage thing. And so my journal has been a huge thing. And people often think, oh, journaling, you know, there’s fine art to it. It’s like, No, you’re just right. So I’ll say that yeah, that Clint is my second husband, God is my first you know. So write down in my journal, even just this week, I felt a little tension between the two of us because we’re working on this project video project together. And my idea was very different from Clint. And I could feel that kind of tension. So I went to my journal, I’m like, Okay, God, you know, change my heart, maybe I need to look more at cleanse way of dealing with this. So definitely the daily habit in there, you know, being in the word and prayer, but also just writing out my frustrations about Clint, I write him in my journal first, so I can kind of get some of that stuff out before. Yeah, you know, go to God. And then I would say definitely, you know, praying together each morning, but we still do that Sunday night thing. It’s kind of funny. So at 730 It’s like, we’re two little squirrels, getting getting our little nuts in a row, the tunnel couch, and we just do live for an hour talking about it. We talked about our calendar, that sounds dumb, but just like what’s going on this week? You know, and how are you feeling about what happened last week? Because sometimes we have to review some things. And then we open the Word together, too. And we just pray like, what’s on your heart for prayer? We’re going through illness? My dad’s been really sick, as you know, I had to Yeah. So now we’re going through the elderly parenting stuff. So he was like, how are you doing with that? Like, wow, this is different. I’m not used to seeing my dad like this, you know. So just that’s another tangible thing. Just meeting together for that hour intentionally and just checking in with each other in the word that’s made a big difference for us? Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s huge. I like that you talked about during, I’m a big journal or myself. And I also have had that, you know, in the back of my mind, like, am I even effective at journaling? Like, is this just a bunch of scribbles? And a lot of times, I’ll like, I’ll just do bullet points and just like, talk about my thing about Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s kind of nonsense if you were to try to go back and honestly, I almost never reread my journals, because they’re just, it doesn’t make me feel good. I know. I was such an idiot. You should see my grief journals. I mean, they’re just, you know, and I, and it’s funny, because people do have this funny thing. But there is something about getting that out. On paper, we’re taking it from being inside of ourselves to just saying, Look, God, this is how I feel, or this is what I’m thankful for. Or, you know, this is what I’m worried about. I do that a lot. Like I’m worried about this, this and that. Yes. And I loved it. There was a guest A little while back, Larry Hagner, who said, and he might have quoted it from someone else. But he said the quality of our questions determine the quality of our life. And I feel like journal journaling gives you the opportunity to ask those questions that you need to be thinking through and maybe, maybe will change your entire perspective. So sometimes, I’ll think about that. And I’ll think, okay, what can I be grateful for? And I’ll write that question. What can I be grateful in the midst of this or something like that, after I’ve just detailed this long, you know, terrible, yeah, exactly. This wonderful Psalm that, that I’ve put together. But then that’ll kind of give me the opportunity to reassess or what have I learned through this? Or how am I growing, if you ask yourself those questions, and you actually give yourself the space to articulate it. Like, in my book, I’m delight your husband, I believe, we really have to go through a big transformation to get our hearts into this space of being willing to be fully intimate, not just emotionally and all this other, but actually physical sexual intimacy, our heart has to go through a serious transition depending on where you’re coming from. And so I ask people to articulate the answers to these specific questions about their childhood or wherever they’re coming from. Because if you articulate it, why then you actually get a greater understanding of where you’re coming from, where they were just like, foggy, you know, unclear. Yeah, unclear impressions of what you think might have had, you know, just this. And once you get it on paper, you can look at it and say, Wow, that’s where I’m coming from no wonder this, this starting to make sense. I mean, how do you feel about that?

9:10
Oh, absolutely. I think, you know, one of the things that’s funny that Clinton I did when we first saw each other, after 11 years, we both were Journalers. We put our journals out and kind of looked at the parallels, but one of those big questions was God, am I outside of your will in any area of my life, and we actually kind of asked that pretty regularly, you know, my outside of your will. And that includes, you know, like, if I’m frustrated at him for something, not will pop up, you know, just the Holy Spirit will just bring it up and say, and like Clint said to me yesterday, he said, I just want to let you know, I was a little bit frustrated yesterday, when I needed you to do this at this time, and it seemed like you were stalling or delaying like, I wasn’t as important to you, as, you know, the other thing that you were doing and once I understood that and putting that out there, because it was foggy? I was I was trying to figure out like, is he upset at me right now? You know, he’s rolling through that and like, yeah, I don’t know if that answer your question, but no, yeah, I love that. Yep, I think that did. Um, so then if you could kind of dumb it down to I know it’s hard. But if you could get dumb it down to the three chief reasons, your marriage your marriage is successful, what would you say? Definitely the daily reconciliation like reconciliation isn’t something that happens once it’s not a recipe. It’s a daily, it’s a daily culture that is really we nurture that culture in our marriage, our marriage exists in a culture of reconciliation. So whether it is 11 years that we need to forgive, or the frustration over having two ways to unload the dishwasher, which happens often. So this nurturing the culture of reconciliation is one, I would say it’s a daily thing we do together just, and then to the praying, praying together each morning, it sounds so simple. It’s like one minute that is impacted the other 24 hours and whatever in our day, is just so huge. And then I haven’t talked about this, but we retreat with God four times a year. Sounds kind of crazy. But we get away together. And it’s just like a little one over two overnighters just a little overnighter cheap place out of the home. And we just get away with God. We listen to each other, we talk to each other. We listen to God, we unplug. And that’s kind of counterculture right now because everyone is plugged in and on the go. And people are like what you set aside? That’s crazy. How can you do that? Yeah, it’s something that we’ve done. And we can look back and say, you know, now we’ve done fifth, D, I want to say 55 retreats with God, I think. So now we have like 14 years of this history of retreating with God. It’s like, look at what looked back, look at what God has done and look back and pray forward kind of thing. So yeah, I think resisting the cultures press to be busy and, you know, not unplug. We just we got to pull the plug on this stuff and really talk to each other. So we do that. Matter of fact, we’re getting ready to do another one. But we do it four times a year, we just get away with God and talk to each other. Sometimes it’s hard because we sticky stuff comes up, you know, you have to talk about but we do it it’s we call it a mini marriage retreat. That’s what it’s in our books. So mini marriage retreat. And am I wrong? Do you take others on these trips? We’ll know on we teach others how to do the mini marriage retreats, and we take marriage mission trips that involve you know, kind of, yeah, I know it’s kind of confusing. We have all this goofy stuff. It’s not good for you, but it’s like wow. Yeah, so no, we don’t take other people but in our seminars, we do teach people how to do it, how to take little mini marriage retreats. And when you if a couple’s considering this and you know, just seems like we need to get away. I mean, what are the How would you kind of suggest that they organize this or how should they be thinking about it and and why should they be doing it? Well, it pretty casual the first time around, like we had all these expectations, like we’re getting there with God. We’re going to talk deeply Okay, clip clip lasted like 20 minutes, and he was toast. And here I was like, with my bullet journal.

13:40
Let’s talk about this. And let’s I’m seriously belly 20 minutes and he was like, I’m out, you know? Okay, so the first couple of times, we just didn’t have a lot of expectation on it. Now. We’re really dialed in. We talked about seven different areas. Finances, we talk about spiritual things. We talk about relationships, like family, friends, we talk about our health, health, we talk about our professional aspirations, which for us now, ours is ministry, since we’ve kind of retired from educational ministry, we talk about our big dreams. That’s one of our categories, big dreams and possibilities. So we talk about those seven things. And now we’ve been doing it so long that we look back 90 days and forward 90 days. And the reason we do it simply stated is so that we can assess our marriage like Is it is it growing deeper? Are we growing stagnant in any area of our lives? Especially let’s just talk about I know this show deals a lot with sexual intimacy. We actually when we get away we talk about the bedroom. You know, what we need what we like or don’t like, what feels good, what doesn’t I mean, that’s not something usually gets talked about every day. So it forces us to talk about our Sexual intimacy or physical intimacy, when we’re not being pressed to Oak got around to the store, talk about it later, you know? Yeah, kind of thing. So that’s part of going away really forces us to make sure that we’re, you know, growing and, uh, going back to the grief thing. When you’re grieving. You do not want to have sex. I’m sorry, I’ll just say it honestly, all the intimacy stuff. It’s like, I don’t even want to deal with that right now. So when we go on these mini marriage retreats, we would talk about, okay, so not feeling it not feeling this. So what do we do? What do we do? I mean, is it right for me to just shut that part of our marriage down? Because I’m grieving? So we would talk about it. And there’s no like, book to show you how to do that. Yeah, I was actually when we were talking originally, I was just like, What does sex look like in the midst of exactly let’s talk about that? Oh, my gosh, well, and I can be honest, I mean, we’re Clinton I are really transparent. And say that, that was definitely a difficult area, because I could have gone like the whole year without, you know. And so I had to be willing to kind of step out aside what I needed and realize that Clint had needs during that he needed to be close to me, and I wanted to just pull push everyone away. And so I realized that in order to serve him during this time of grieving that that physical closeness was something he needed to be assured that I wasn’t going to pull away like I did. Let me know. My first marriage. So oh, it was hard. So yeah. Wow. Wow. And so did you end up like kind of having to push through your, your feeling like you just realized there was I did, you know, is okay, you would actually, I would cry after we would be intimate together. Because I’ve done that. So she’s so stupid. I’m like, Okay, we’ve just had sex, and I’m crying. That’s great. But then click learn to say like, so we could talk through the tears, and I didn’t feel like I had to turn away and cry. I could just cry because it just triggered stuff. So yeah, now that’s kind of that just happened some times. And we know it does. And we don’t know why it just comes up. Sometimes. They’re, they’re tears of intimacy, sometimes they’re tears of sadness, you know? So, you know, you don’t want to have like, are you thinking about your brother while we’re having sex? I mean, you know, that’s awkward. How do you talk about that kind of stuff. So that’s part of what we’re doing in marriage ministry now is if we’re, if we’re feeling this, and if we’ve gone through it, we can’t be the only ones. So let’s let other people ask us questions and say, like, so. Did you have sex while you were grieving? I mean, no. And yes, we did. And yes, it was difficult. And but we worked through it. So yeah, yeah. Well, I like one thing. I mean, certainly, this is a program mostly for, you know, focused on wives. But there are men that listen, and I just love the way that your husband had to learn that the tears were not about him. And he had to take himself out of that and lie to try to figure out what you’re feeling right. He

18:17
did. He did very much so and that was really a stretch for him being he’s a jock. You know, he’s a jock. He’s an athlete. He’s a, you know, he’s that he’s had to learn. Yeah, he’s a manly man. had to learn how to, you know, and I had to let them hold me because my temptation. I mean, normally, when I cry, I kind of crawl into myself a little bit. And I had to let them it’s okay. I could cry on him and let him hold me and, you know, work through that. But yeah, he realize it wasn’t about him. And he could take, you know, he could remove himself from that. So kudos to him. It’s, it’s, it’s not easy. I’m sure. You should interview him. There you go. Yeah, no, that’s, um, that’s amazing. And I know, it took so much of you. I mean, was that something that he was able to express that this was a huge need for him? And that and then, you know, you’re able to kind of put yourself in his shoes, or how were you able to? Yeah, he did we, again, with the many marriage retreats that gave us that time and space, and I had to listen, you know, not be so consumed by my own grief that I couldn’t listen to his needs. And, and so he would say, like, I need that physical intimacy, and I’m kind of guessing that you don’t right now. And I’m like, Yes, I don’t but and here’s the other thing, though. This might seem kind of weird. So what I would do before we were going to be intimate knowing that I’m feeling all this grief and all this or I would just pray before we had sex. I just was like, God, I know where I’m at with this right now. So I’m asking you to come into this bedroom. I mean, Holy Spirit. Yeah. So That’s what you know he did. He gave us that, that grace to be able to still be physically intimate. And both are nice. And Clint. Also, I have to say that there were times when I’d be like, bam, I am not there right now. So if you could just wait a little bit, and he would, he would just be like, yeah, totally. I just want you to, I think the thing was, we weren’t pulling away and being dishonest or making up stuff. Like, I have a headache, you know, just thing. It was, like, I’m grieving really hard. And I don’t want to be around anybody right now. So. So we had to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. I really love that you talked about praying before sex? Because I know, I’ve had seasons where I literally tell the Lord, I have no interest in sex right now. No, and I need your help. Because I know my husband’s got a lot, you know. And, and he does, and he helps us, he helps us push through those times. Because I, you know, a lot of times after words, I’m just like, Wow, I did need that. I have no idea. I know. Right? You know, yeah, it’s, you know, for us emotionally, there’s just so much connected for women, as women, with our emotions. And then who are you going to talk to you about like, praying before? Tax mean, do you? Do you have somebody that you can ask about that? So then we bury all that stuff. And I’m glad that you are a safe place to land where people realize, oh, well, shoot, I can ask about praying before sex? Because no has anybody to talk to you about this kind of stuff? Yeah, it’s huge. I mean, I especially I mean, us as women are so different than the way our husbands are wired, whether you’re the HYDrive spouse or the not Hydras. But I mean, still, you are so very, very different than your spouse, and in praying, so that you can meet your husband or your spouse’s desires is absolutely acceptable. Absolutely, absolutely. can pray about your sex life and every intimate part about it, because God made it. He knows it very completely. And he wants to help you with it. He does. You don’t? Yes, waiting right there. So I wish I would have known that a long time ago. So now I just actually now I intentionally, I kind of do that with my own heart beforehand, all the time now, because I realize, Well, why would I stop now with the prayer before? You know, not just in times of struggle, but let’s just do that all the time? You know, yeah. Yeah. So and this is amazing. Take it a step further. It’s kind of weird. But Clinton, I finally and it was through the grief thing got to the point where we could pray together after we had made love and that might seem kind of weird. But, you know, what does that look like? And it was so I mean, you know, Bella, the emotional intimacy for a woman is, like, huge. So if you can be that raw and literally naked, and just just kind of pray. It’s, that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I even I was talking to a mentor of mine that I actually got connected to through this podcast, and she’s just an amazing woman, I admire her so much. But one thing she was telling me is that she would pray

23:11
you know, even that God would remove past baggage and past experiences, and, and the memory of any other pleasure, any other experience that that would fade. And she said, it did faded. And I mean, that God wants us to absolutely bring these things before him every you know, whatever’s going on. And I know I hear from a lot of women that are, we’ll talk about, especially with the topic of a lot of things we talk about is, you know, serving your spouse, you know, that’s a lot of the content of this podcast, because that’s, we can only work on us, we can only do us. And I feel like you know, sometimes we get this dense discontent, like well, how, why am I supposed to do all this great stuff for him when he’s just never reciprocated? And you know, I think pray about that. Get that before God and get his perspective on it and help ask God to even give you satisfaction in what you are receiving. Absolutely. There’s nothing that’s beyond his restorative reach, you know, that we can’t cry and pray about and I know we talked about when we’re working with couples, we had to reestablish, you know, intimacy not only after the 11 year gap, but after my unfaithfulness. And I remember Bella so vivid, we had these mentor couple before we remarried and they came into our house, and they were praying with us in the house and they said, Let’s go pray through every room. Well, when we walked into the bedroom, that would soon be our marriage bed bedroom, I started bawling my eyes out. I was just like, oh, Lord, how are you going to do this? And we knelt with our marriage mentors around our bed, and we just prayed, God just got a restoration. restore this and we even kind of from that wrote, these little prayer prompts things like a race and prior images or memories that are a consequence of our sin, because I had stepped outside of God’s will, I did have images and things that you know, I had been involved in or whatever. And I did not want that coming up in the middle of things. So, yeah, cleanse us from the sinful ways we’ve damaged intimacy and help us rebuild it in our marriage. I mean, that’s one sentence, and God can do a lifetime of rebuilding with that one little, you know, there.

25:31
Yes, that’s amazing. Yes. Do you happen to have those prayer prompts? Could we link those? Or is that something that maybe we could find? No, actually, I do.

25:41
We wrote a book that covers the first five years of our restoration. So it’s in there as well as I can send you a link and give those to you there. We call them our little sample prayers for establishing intimacy, our book is marriage on the mend. That’s the new element. So it’s in there, because prayer has just been an artifact. We’re gonna teach on it this Sunday again, those prayers in the bedroom. Wow. Who knew? Yeah. So yeah, I will get to those links, also. Thank you. Yeah, we’ll have that in the in the show notes. So it’s easy to, to click on and get those. Cool. Well, we’ve talked a bit about intimacy already. But if you have a tip or advice that you would give, maybe you wish that someone let you in on earlier, what would you say? The recognition that unresolved things do impact intimacy. So you might not think they do, but they do. And so, Clinton, I have this, it’s kind of funny with men, they want to, or at least with my husband, to resolve an issue. He wants to draw close physically, and I can’t draw close physically unless the issues resolved. So that one thing has impacted our intimacy. So we have this little phrase, it might sound dumb, but it’s like, you can’t touch my heart. You can’t touch my part. Unless you touch my heart. We do this. I mean, that sounds kind of dumb, but we do this thing where we kind of work, you know, realize that the heart is so involved in our intimate relationship, have we touched one another’s heart in such a way that our intimacy is unblocked, is unhindered? And so it would probably be that you know, find your little phrase, find your thing that works for, for you to bring your own heart before God beforehand and just say, Lord, you know, I just is my heart intimate with you. And out of that intimacy comes the intimacy in marriage. Think. I love that. I mean, and that’s really a lot of the vision for this whole ministry is wholehearted intimacy in your marriage, because that is so intertwined with your relationship with Jesus, it’s just so yeah, it really is. I mean, God is, desires, that intimate relationship with us. And we learn that through our intimate relationship with our husband, and vice versa, and it’s just back and forth. And we can learn to grow in, in love for Jesus. And yeah, I just, yeah, I really appreciate that advice. You know, due to your specific marriage, what opportunities have you had to serve God and get to know him? Well, personally, you know, I did not realize when I first became a believer that my intimate relationship with him would be like, so the, his depth, I mean, just the that wholeness in Christ, that was all new to me to realize that Christ wanted to, to really make me whole. So I think and just speaking into, you know, other women like me, who didn’t realize that there were a lot of gaps in their heart that she’s could fill all those emotionally, that’s been huge, of course, we’re out, serving together as marriage missionaries on the road. And we just signed for a new book called marriage on a mission. And that does cover some of the stuff that we’ve talked about with the grief but realizing that God has a purpose that is called couples together for a reason, even if your marriage looked as blown apart as ours did, you know, God still has a mission for that. So that’s another avenue of ministry. And then I didn’t share how God healed my heart through grief, but it was art. He just handed me a paintbrush. And so I’ve been leading art classes for women who have lost loved ones dramatically. And that as well as grief, grief, share, grief shares a wonderful program. And so I just been started to leave that in ministry and so I didn’t want the grief gig Bella you know, it was like, I don’t want to minister to this is too painful. I don’t want Yeah, but God just really I mean, relentlessly pursued me to be willing to minister to others who are grieving. So that’s a new, a new part of ministry that came very unexpected. But God has Gosh, it’s just such holy grail. to hear people’s losses and to just hold them and let them cry, you know? Yeah, so ministering to the brokenhearted in a new way for me. Yeah, absolutely. It’s powerful. Would you share a little bit more about marriage on the measure?

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So it came out in 2015 from critical publications, and it is called marriage on the mend healing your relationship after crisis, separation or divorce. So it does cover the first five years of our ugly process, ugly and beautiful process of restoration. It we’re very honest. In it, we talked about, you know, that just how to rebuild sexual intimacy, all that stuff. And it is really for a couple of who has maybe just repeated crises, like maybe you blow up every month or something like that. Maybe you didn’t go all the way to separate your divorce like we did. Maybe you just realize that there’s more to marriage. And unfortunately, some people feel like picking up a book that says, you know, marriage on the mend means that people are going to know that, you know, but, but really all our marriages need mending. You know, they really do. So it’s even for a couple who is new in their marriage, and they want to learn from because we interview other couples in the book, who have also had struggles and who have been through the fire. And it’s really interesting to hear from the other couples in that book. So yeah, it’s available online, on all online booksellers and our website. Awesome. Yeah. And I’ll have that linked up to so people can get that easily. Okay, so if you could go back to your one, let’s say of your first marriage, and sit yourself down, what is one piece of advice that you would give to you don’t keep secrets? Secrets, Penny, don’t hold all those things in your heart instead of holding them and thinking that, you know, you’ve got to hold on to this in the darkness, tell tell another person even if it’s just you’re having a temptation, you know, you think you’re the only one who’s been tempted to do that? It’s like, no. So I would definitely give myself especially like a female prayer partner, which I’ve had now for 15 years. I can call her at any minute and just tell her all my stuff. Mm hmm. Yeah, don’t, don’t keep secrets, tell, put it in the lights or like, you know, there’s, um, we’ve got a Facebook group for the DVM show. And people just share different things. And one woman said that she shared the podcast with some women at church, and she was a little worried, like, they were gonna judge or whatever. But that actually gives such an opportunity for you to just connect and come together and have a shared understanding of what you’re praying about that kind of thing. I just encouraged to get that to get a female prayer partner. I love that. Huge. That’s awesome. Well, okay, so, um, after an amazing interview, we finally reached the last question is just, you know, how our audience can connect and find you online? Well, we can be found through our website, which is inverse ministries.org. Inverse ministries.org, is the best way to find out about our ministry or book or connect with us. And then I also have a website for those who are grieving. And it is for those who weep.com. Yeah, yeah. And I just encourage, you know, if you’re listening to this, and you know, someone that this could be good for, I mean, we all know people that are grieving. And everything we’ve talked about, I think, can really minister to others. So I just encourage you to try to share this with who God puts in your heart. Well, thank you so much for everything. This was amazing. Thank you for sharing your heart and your and your wisdom with us. Thank you for your ministry of Allah. God bless you. I’m so grateful for this interview. If you’re anything like me, I like took so many notes and have really been stirring a lot of our conversation, my heart these last couple of weeks since the interview. And I mean,

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one thing I really love about penny is her clear devotion to Jesus, and how that infiltrates everything in her marriage. And I want to just challenge and encourage you today, that wherever you are, in your faith, walk with God, maybe you’re questioning faith for the first time. Maybe you’re thinking about returning to maybe checking out church again. Maybe you are, you know, mature spiritually and you have consistent quiet times with Jesus. Whatever you are on that spectrum, I just want to encourage you to take another small step. So by listening to this broadcast, I don’t think it was mistake. I think that God made sure that you listened in today, but I want to encourage you that he wants to draw you closer. So if you don’t have a consistent time with Him every day, that’s your step. That’s your step to do that one minute prayer that Penny suggested before all the craziness of your day happens, spend a moment if you’ve got kids, and there’s crazy going on your house, hang out in the bathroom for one extra minute, and, and pray. Also, Penny gave me the list of those prayer prompts that she suggested and they’re good. And I just encourage you to go to delight your marriage.com/ 89, just the number 89. And you can find those lists those prayer prompts, and pray through them. And it covers things about your past past relationships, maybe infidelity, or what’s going on in your heart. And it’s very easy to start applying. And I’ve been starting to use some of those prompts in my prayer life, and it’s very much been helpful. So I encourage that. Penny’s got an amazing ministry. Please check her out, especially if you know someone that can benefit with her resources, share this stuff, we need to help each other in marriages. It’s not okay for divorce rates of people that have gone through trauma, dramatic, horrible experiences in their marriages to fall apart when they need the most. So please pray for those that are going through hard stuff and see if you can share these insights. Well, God bless you. Thank you for listening. I look forward to talking to you again next Tuesday. And I’m praying for you and make that extra step. Do that extra step today with Jesus. God bless you. We’ll talk soon.

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Thanks for listening. Stop by delight your marriage.com to check out all the show notes as well as many more resources and articles. Until next time, live with love, wisdom impassion