Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2: I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 2: I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2: Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
Speaker 2: in your life.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 2: I am here with New York Times bestselling author Don Miller.
Speaker 2: Entrepreneur Don Miller, husband Don Miller. I loved the book
Speaker 2: Scary Close.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: In fact, I read this book two times, and second
Speaker 2: time reading it it was just as powerful as the
Speaker 2: first time, and I thought it would be cool for
Speaker 2: us to talk about some of the things that you
Speaker 2: said in the book that resonated so deeply with me
Speaker 2: about intimacy.
Speaker 3: Well, the book is about intimacy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about the fear of, the overcoming the fear of,
Speaker 4: and the challenges to have intimacy.
Speaker 2: And you kind of talk about the enemies through the
Speaker 2: lens of your own crisis of intimate See. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: I love how you start the book. You're such a
Speaker 2: vulnerable author. You know, I've told you I love your books,
Speaker 2: and I like how right at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: book you're in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Right,
Speaker 2: And you say I had to deal with my hang
Speaker 2: ups or whatever you call them, you basically had to
Speaker 2: deal with your dysfunction. So take us into that moment.
Speaker 4: So I got married at forty two, was never married before,
Speaker 4: dated a bunch and had some great dating relationships and
Speaker 4: some that were just no good. And they were no good.
Speaker 4: Really my fault. I had this pattern that I would
Speaker 4: date a gal. I would basically kind of come in
Speaker 4: as the rescuer kind of guy. And there's this triangle
Speaker 4: that psychologists talk about that rescuers are attracted to victims,
Speaker 4: but then when they get into relationships with them, they
Speaker 4: resent them, and then they begin to get angry because
Speaker 4: they resent the factor in a relationship with a victim,
Speaker 4: and so they begin to oppress them, which further makes
Speaker 4: them a victim. It's a really weird loop that people
Speaker 4: can get into. And I found myself into that a
Speaker 4: couple times. And the last time I was in that,
Speaker 4: in my late thirties, I broke off an engagement. I'd
Speaker 4: taken it so far that we had gotten engaged and
Speaker 4: then got out of it and great gal, but it
Speaker 4: was probably the most damage that I'd caused sort of
Speaker 4: someone emotionally and had some friends just coming and say, man,
Speaker 4: you know, had good enough friends that they would come
Speaker 4: to me and say, this is a pattern, and you.
Speaker 3: Got to figure this out.
Speaker 4: And so I kind of went into a dark place, thought,
Speaker 4: all right, I'm never gonna get married, I'm bad for people,
Speaker 4: and blah blah blah and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: And my buddy Bob would call me every once in
Speaker 4: a while and he would just remind me, you know,
Speaker 4: you're actually good at relationships. Think about this one, think
Speaker 4: about you know, your friendships. You're good at it. You
Speaker 4: just got to figure this thing out. And he kind
Speaker 4: of helped me through this season of you know, just
Speaker 4: in relationship because my career was going great and you know,
Speaker 4: these weren't like moral failing kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: it was just it was just like codependency and all
Speaker 4: this stuff that I even know existed. And ended up
Speaker 4: at a place called on Site Workshops, which is a
Speaker 4: it's a it's kind of a therapeutic retreat center outside
Speaker 4: of Nashville, about an hour outside of Nashville, and in
Speaker 4: seven days you're supposed to get nine months of therapy
Speaker 4: and all my songwriter friends loved going there and helped
Speaker 4: them with their career.
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, I'll go. And it was eye opening.
Speaker 4: I mean, they explained so many of the things, the
Speaker 4: patterns that I had in my relationships that were causing
Speaker 4: dysfunction and causing her pain and me pain, and.
Speaker 3: Came out of there. And it's not like I was fixed.
Speaker 4: But I knew I knew what was wrong and could
Speaker 4: start building healthier relationships. And then right after that, and
Speaker 4: not right of that, about a year after that, Betsy
Speaker 4: and I met, and I was scared to death because
Speaker 4: I thought, you know, I really liked this girl. I
Speaker 4: really do feel different. I feel like I've healed a
Speaker 4: lot and transformed and changed.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: If I just I hope it's true. I hope I
Speaker 4: don't blow this one too. And we kept getting to
Speaker 4: know each other. She's this really healthy, amazing gal, and
Speaker 4: start of dating, and I moved to d C for
Speaker 4: about eight months to court her if you will or whatever,
Speaker 4: and and just it never became dramatic, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 4: it's possible, like you can actually transform as a human being.
Speaker 4: And so it came time to write another book, The
Speaker 4: publisher was kind of calling me and saying, what's it going.
Speaker 3: To be on?
Speaker 4: I thought, I think I'll start with this falling apart
Speaker 4: and end.
Speaker 3: With this wedding, and you know.
Speaker 4: That's a beautiful story, and so that's what that's what
Speaker 4: the book has come out of.
Speaker 2: I mean, did you really get to a point of
Speaker 2: thinking I am.
Speaker 3: Bad for people? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's you know, some of it was
Speaker 4: stuff that I needed to work on, you know, stuff
Speaker 4: that you know, not bad for people, but bad in
Speaker 4: this context of relationships. Something's going on and I'm not
Speaker 4: I'm not leaving these people better than I found them.
Speaker 2: Is that because you're so good at being on a
Speaker 2: stage or writing?
Speaker 1: Was it hard for you to Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a little bit of my personality that that you know,
Speaker 4: you know, I really pride myself on being authentic and vulnerable,
Speaker 4: and I realized that part of me priding myself on
Speaker 4: being authentic and vulnerable was going into a cabin for
Speaker 4: six weeks and writing something that made me look very
Speaker 4: authentic and vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the least authentic in the world.
Speaker 1: That's actings.
Speaker 3: You're acting like you're not an.
Speaker 2: Actor, A vulnerable vulnerability.
Speaker 3: I want to say it like a preacher.
Speaker 4: So but anytime we're hiding anything, it's all about fear,
Speaker 4: fear of being owned, fear of being rejected, fear of
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. And that's all intimacy is.
Speaker 4: It's just is trusting somebody else to hopefully not hurt you.
Speaker 4: That's all it is. And fear of intimacy is just
Speaker 4: like that person could hurt me. And so I had
Speaker 4: to learn not to do that. And Betsy proved to
Speaker 4: be the most amazing companion. And I mean the first
Speaker 4: time we went out, I laid it all out. Can
Speaker 4: you imagine like the very first you know, date, if
Speaker 4: you will, You're like, yeah, I just got out of
Speaker 4: like psychological rehab because I've wreacked so many girls' lives
Speaker 4: and it's been really hard. And I told myself it
Speaker 4: wouldn't date for six months, and now six months is
Speaker 4: over and I'd love to date you.
Speaker 1: What kind of I think, excused herself. Betsy sounds like
Speaker 1: a special Betsy had been It.
Speaker 4: Was such like guys who would never say that. She thought,
Speaker 4: all right, I'll give you a month, you know, give
Speaker 4: you a loth and then it just turned into something
Speaker 4: really healthy and good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like endearing to her that you would
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 4: I just think it wasn't a movie. I mean, it
Speaker 4: really wasn't a play, right it was. It wasn't alive,
Speaker 4: you know. It was like, if you're going to get
Speaker 4: into this, you got to know not been great at
Speaker 4: this in the past, but I really want to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I told the church and one of the messages
Speaker 2: that I preached in this series the other half. You
Speaker 2: know a great dating line that I read somewhere. If
Speaker 2: you want to get a really good dating line that
Speaker 2: predicts the successive marriage, it would be.
Speaker 3: So, what kind of crazy here are you?
Speaker 2: Because I know you're some category of crazy?
Speaker 1: What time? That's exactly what you have to find out
Speaker 1: what the fear was?
Speaker 2: If fear is the enemy of vulnerability, do I understand
Speaker 2: you correctly to say that ultimately all of our intimacy
Speaker 2: is kept it baged by fear.
Speaker 3: Well, I think so, I think.
Speaker 4: And there's a lack of trust that you know, fear
Speaker 4: leads us to not trust somebody.
Speaker 3: Trust.
Speaker 4: Lack of trust leads us to not expose ourselves to somebody,
Speaker 4: and that lack of exposure means we're not going to
Speaker 4: be known.
Speaker 3: You know. I think we're really great.
Speaker 4: A lot of us are really great at letting people
Speaker 4: know and being impressed by our act, by the character
Speaker 4: that we put on, and it feels so good. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: if I do this thing, you know it works.
Speaker 1: You call it a costume and there it's a costume.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that isn't fulfilling. Now here's the thing everybody
Speaker 4: watching goes, I don't have that, And I would have
Speaker 4: told you I don't have that.
Speaker 3: I would have told you that.
Speaker 4: The thing about going to this place on site is
Speaker 4: you turn in your cell phone, you can't give anybody
Speaker 4: your last name, and you're not allowed to tell anybody
Speaker 4: what you do for a living. I thought, fine, whatever,
Speaker 4: and I mean, steven, within ten minutes, I wanted to
Speaker 4: tell somebody that I was the best selling author, because
Speaker 4: reality is, it would have come up by now, and
Speaker 4: now I can't bring it up. And I mean the
Speaker 4: first three days where I felt like I felt naked,
Speaker 4: I mean it really was saying, will anybody get to
Speaker 4: know me and want to be my friend?
Speaker 3: For just me? And then it's amazing. One night, my little.
Speaker 4: Group's about forty people at the workshop, but there were
Speaker 4: ten people in my little groups broke up with Smarkers
Speaker 4: and we had a game in the parlor over at
Speaker 4: the Big House and it was a game night. We're
Speaker 4: playing games and we're only got night four or some
Speaker 4: kind of comfortable people there with me, but nobody knows
Speaker 4: what anybody does, nobody knows who anybody is. And I
Speaker 4: crack a joke and everybody starts laughing, and I crack
Speaker 4: another Joe and every I mean, I had him rolling,
Speaker 4: And it was like a drug was going into mind
Speaker 4: because it was what it was was you matter. Now
Speaker 4: you're dominating the room, you're entertaining, you matter. Like if
Speaker 4: I can never be a Christian writer again, I'll just
Speaker 4: start up a new career as a comedian. And what
Speaker 4: was amazing is they took away my costume and it
Speaker 4: took me four days to start building another costume.
Speaker 3: Four days.
Speaker 4: So I still went, I don't trust that people aren't
Speaker 4: gonna are gonna like me for who I actually am.
Speaker 4: That's I think that's an understandable thing. I don't think
Speaker 4: there's anything wrong with being a great entertainer. The last
Speaker 4: thing we want is Steve Martin not being a great entertainer,
Speaker 4: because we won't have a chance to laugh, or you
Speaker 4: on stage won't have a chance to be inspired by
Speaker 4: your sermons.
Speaker 3: The problem is when we when we use that as a.
Speaker 4: Costume and and we bring it into intimate situations, and
Speaker 4: you know, that's got a real short shelf life because
Speaker 4: you just can't hide who you are for that long.
Speaker 4: Sooner or later you got to go, all right, here
Speaker 4: are my flaws. Uh, you're still gonna like me. And
Speaker 4: I think there's two things. One we have to show
Speaker 4: those falls, and two we have to choose people who
Speaker 4: we can trust to actually follow through and like you.
Speaker 4: So you have to choose because there's a significant part
Speaker 4: of the population that literally will go, Nope, where did.
Speaker 1: That come from?
Speaker 4: For you?
Speaker 1: The need to wear that armor, to wear that costume to.
Speaker 4: Be funny, Well, I hope it's just a human thing
Speaker 4: and it's not just me, right, but you would.
Speaker 3: Have to go it's you know, there's a there's.
Speaker 4: A funny passage in Genesis when the fall is described
Speaker 4: like the fall of man.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, ev see Apple, Adam, E see Apple.
Speaker 4: And in that passage God comes back and he talks
Speaker 4: to this couple who have disobeyed him, and that whole
Speaker 4: passage is about one thing, because it's I think it's
Speaker 4: repeated four times. There's one theme to that chapter, and
Speaker 4: it's who told you you were naked?
Speaker 3: And there's this idea that.
Speaker 4: Here's the only human beings in the history of the
Speaker 4: world so far who walked with God one on one,
Speaker 4: And if you walk with God one on one, you're
Speaker 4: that close.
Speaker 3: There's no separation between you.
Speaker 4: The only thing I can think is that there's something
Speaker 4: about this external character that is pouring so much love
Speaker 4: and acceptance into you just by their presence that you
Speaker 4: are so not self aware because you're so fulfilled with
Speaker 4: their love, you don't even know you're naked.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, but when I'm naked, I
Speaker 4: know I'm naked. There's never a point where I'm like,
Speaker 4: what I think I'm naked?
Speaker 3: Like I always know.
Speaker 4: I never get to the grocery store and think, Oh
Speaker 4: I left my wife, Oh I left my clothes. It
Speaker 4: never happens. That's a weird phenomenon. We're the only creatures
Speaker 4: on the planet who do that. Wow, the only ones.
Speaker 4: Nobody else. Like, I saw a poodle in the park
Speaker 4: the other day wear in a sweater, I thought it
Speaker 4: happened to them like some poodle ate an apple and
Speaker 4: now they're wearing clothes. But it's you know, what is
Speaker 4: it about a separation from God that makes us so
Speaker 4: unbelievably narcissistic and self aware and afraid that we would
Speaker 4: cover ourselves. So I think clothes are literally they're they're
Speaker 4: built around shame.
Speaker 3: I'm not telling you everybody's educating. I'm not advocating that all.
Speaker 1: But then there don't know what kind of interview you think.
Speaker 4: There's all these other clothes that we wear too, you know,
Speaker 4: personality traits that we've learned, skills that we've developed, and
Speaker 4: we put on those, you know, to hide whatever vulnerability
Speaker 4: or hard.
Speaker 3: Thing we have that is the enemy of intimacy.
Speaker 2: I love when the guy in the book sat down
Speaker 2: and drew some circles for you. He said, hey, basically,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you why you need to be funny.
Speaker 2: And he did this thing do the thing because to
Speaker 2: me it was he said.
Speaker 4: It's got named Bill Loki, and Bill's a great psychologist.
Speaker 4: And he said he just drew a circle and he said,
Speaker 4: don here's how everybody starts. They start as self. And
Speaker 4: he wrote the word self inside the circle. And then
Speaker 4: he said, something happens at a different age for everybody,
Speaker 4: but it's at a young age. And he said, something
Speaker 4: happens you, you know, you mess up on the baseball field,
Speaker 4: or your parents get a divorce, or you you realize
Speaker 4: that your family's on food stamps, you know, and you
Speaker 4: got a crush on the guy.
Speaker 3: Whose dad's president of the bank, you know whatever.
Speaker 4: And he said, that brings, for the first time in
Speaker 4: your life something called shame.
Speaker 3: And he said, so you draw it.
Speaker 4: He drew a second circle around the first circle and
Speaker 4: it just it just said shame. And we've all felt it,
Speaker 4: we all remember it, you know, the first time you
Speaker 4: probably experienced that. And he said, what happens is shame
Speaker 4: is really scary. And so he drew a third circle
Speaker 4: around the shame circle and he just wrote the word costume.
Speaker 4: And he said, now you learned to wear this thing
Speaker 4: and it was the thing that you know, and he said,
Speaker 4: you know, it was that cateristic that you had that
Speaker 4: you found that other people would clap for you or whatever.
Speaker 4: They admired you for it. And he said, what would
Speaker 4: that be? I mean, he didn't have to finish sense
Speaker 4: and I said, smart, funny. You know these sorts of things,
Speaker 4: the things that people would say about me, you know
Speaker 4: if they got to know me, they're saying those things
Speaker 4: because they got said about me really early on.
Speaker 3: And I've just honed my craft and my ability to
Speaker 3: wear that costume.
Speaker 4: And he said, this is all totally understandable, Like, no
Speaker 4: judgment against anybody who tries to cover their pain with shame.
Speaker 3: It's pain, right, he said.
Speaker 4: The problem is, in order to have intimacy that person,
Speaker 4: are those people friends, whatever, they got to get to
Speaker 4: know the self. Because you can't have intimacy with the
Speaker 4: costume and you can't have intimacy with the shame. Wow,
Speaker 4: So you got to take off the costume and you
Speaker 4: got to deal with the shame, and then you can
Speaker 4: be free to be yourself and then you can have intimacy.
Speaker 4: What intimacy does is it nurtures us. It recharges us,
Speaker 4: It gives us strength, It gives us the ability be honestly,
Speaker 4: gives his ability act with other people, makes us great
Speaker 4: husbands and wives, makes us great parents, helps us have
Speaker 4: happy kids and healthy kids. Contributes to that, and it's
Speaker 4: also how we connect with God, right, I mean, we
Speaker 4: connect with God. Not God's not impressed with our costume.
Speaker 4: He's impressed with ourself. That's the part he made right,
Speaker 4: and we made these other things.
Speaker 2: I love that I preached on Jacob one time, and
Speaker 2: Jacob is, of course, you know, dressing in esau Us clothes,
Speaker 2: pretending to be his brother to get the blessing and
Speaker 2: it works.
Speaker 1: Kind of is the weirdest story, weirdest story.
Speaker 2: Weirdest story, that his mom's dressing him and his brothers.
Speaker 2: And these are little boys anymore. These are older men,
Speaker 2: you know, at this point in their life. But I
Speaker 2: came to the realization that God can't bless who I
Speaker 2: pretend to be. Yet the things you mentioned, smart, funny,
Speaker 2: these aren't bad things.
Speaker 3: No. So where does it go from.
Speaker 2: Being a gift that I'm smart, that I'm funny, to
Speaker 2: being something that becomes a costume.
Speaker 3: How do I know that difference?
Speaker 4: Well, I think when you're covering yourself up, when they
Speaker 4: are hidden, things abalue not. I want to be real careful,
Speaker 4: you know, standing up on stage and airing all your
Speaker 4: dirty laundry is unwise.
Speaker 3: There are people who are simply out to get you right.
Speaker 1: Or sitting on a date and sharing from the beginning.
Speaker 3: Of all this.
Speaker 1: It is unwise that I'm six months out of rehab.
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, that worked for me.
Speaker 4: You know, not everybody is gets access to yourself. Yourself
Speaker 4: is valuable, you know, it should be protected. But I
Speaker 4: think when nobody gets access, that's where there's a lot
Speaker 4: of trouble. And then trouble starts with just real loneliness,
Speaker 4: you know, that's what it feels like.
Speaker 2: It you had caution against either extreme to say that
Speaker 2: if everyone has access, that's a problem.
Speaker 3: If nobody has access, that's right.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people have the act of like
Speaker 4: we talked about earlier, vulnerability or you know, and they
Speaker 4: tend to become kind of a shock jock or whatever,
Speaker 4: and it's a bit of a turn off at some
Speaker 4: point because people realize that's a costume, like that person's
Speaker 4: just so you know, but I think, you know, when
Speaker 4: you really look at a phenomenally successful folks, there's always
Speaker 4: almost always a wound that started that journey. And hopefully
Speaker 4: the wound started the journey and then there was a
Speaker 4: healing also, so they got the benefit of that fuel
Speaker 4: of becoming really funny and famous or really smart and
Speaker 4: solving problems. In physics or whatever, and then hopefully at
Speaker 4: some point there was a healing process where they were
Speaker 4: able to enjoy the gift that they were given but
Speaker 4: also find intimacy.
Speaker 3: And I feel like that's been that's.
Speaker 4: Been my journey. It's been really blessed journey in that way.
Speaker 4: But there was certainly a dark season.
Speaker 2: No, that's really powerful when you talk about the relational pattern.
Speaker 3: You say my.
Speaker 1: Dating life was a death spiral.
Speaker 2: Codependency and resentment. I wouldn't say that about you, but you.
Speaker 3: Said that about you.
Speaker 2: All right, So if anybody, first of all, feels like
Speaker 2: there's no hope for you, here's a happily married man
Speaker 2: who says my dating life was a death spiral. If
Speaker 2: someone resonates with that in their dating life, relational life,
Speaker 2: how do they break that pattern? What is one thing
Speaker 2: I can do because I'm overwhelmed by a death spiral?
Speaker 2: What's the first move out of the death spiral?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I have to go back and say there were probably
Speaker 4: a few women I day that you could talk to
Speaker 4: and say, don was great, give me a break. You know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't that bad, but there were some relationships that
Speaker 4: were really tended. Uh, this counselor at on site during
Speaker 4: this time gave me this great analogy.
Speaker 3: She said, okay, look, she put three.
Speaker 4: Pillows on the floor, like couch pillows, you know that
Speaker 4: people could stand on, and three pillows and she said, okay,
Speaker 4: don you stand on this pillow. And then she had
Speaker 4: some other representative of our groups stand on this pillow. She goes, okay,
Speaker 4: those are your pillows. They represent yourself. Right now, let's
Speaker 4: say this person is really frustrating you in the relationship.
Speaker 4: Your temptation is to cross the middle pillow and get
Speaker 4: onto their pillow and try to change them. She said,
Speaker 4: that's codependency. She said, that's not your pillow, that's their pillow.
Speaker 4: Now what's the middle pillow mean? And she said, the
Speaker 4: middle pillow is the relationship. So you both agree that
Speaker 4: you were going to step on the middle pillow and
Speaker 4: have a relationship, and both of you get equal say
Speaker 4: and what you want that relationship to look like. So
Speaker 4: everything is really about the relationship. But as soon as
Speaker 4: she steps over on my pill and says I don't
Speaker 4: want you to be this kind of man or whatever,
Speaker 4: that's not what she should be saying.
Speaker 3: It's something I should think.
Speaker 4: What we should both be saying, is is this the
Speaker 4: kind of relationship that I want? So rather than going
Speaker 4: over here and saying I'm going to try to change you,
Speaker 4: I go is this the kind of relationship that I want?
Speaker 4: If not, I step back on my pillow and I
Speaker 4: get out of the relationship. But at no point do
Speaker 4: I ever get on her pillow. That's codependency. And of
Speaker 4: course when you make that commitment in a marriage, you're saying,
Speaker 4: whatever this relationship becomes, I'm in. I've done due diligence
Speaker 4: here and I think we're going to be okay, but
Speaker 4: there's no guarantee. But I'm never going to step on
Speaker 4: this person's pillow. I was codependent. I was all over
Speaker 4: this person's pillow, right. I want you to be this
Speaker 4: so that we can have a good relationship.
Speaker 3: And it just never worked. It never worked.
Speaker 4: And now, I mean, you know, who knows, ten years,
Speaker 4: I'll probably figure out some other flaw that I have
Speaker 4: in relationships. But Bets and I just don't try to
Speaker 4: change each other. We've never tried to change each other.
Speaker 2: So get off the other person's pills.
Speaker 3: Get off the other person's pillow.
Speaker 2: Three people and say get off my pillow.
Speaker 4: And they'll tell you this. It's driving you crazy trying
Speaker 4: to change that person. If the relationship isn't working, if
Speaker 4: the dating relationship isn't working, even if the business relationship
Speaker 4: isn't working, and you're all over there pillow and they're
Speaker 4: all over your pillow, get out, get some health for yourself.
Speaker 4: They can get some health there's and then ask yourself,
Speaker 4: I want somebody that we both love standing on that pillow.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with this?
Speaker 2: I was sharing in one of the weeks of this
Speaker 2: series about the magnifying glass and the mirror and both
Speaker 2: their tools in marriage, because you choose what you magnify
Speaker 2: sometimes when it comes to the issues in a relationship,
Speaker 2: marriage or friendship, put down the magnifying glass, pick up
Speaker 2: the mirror. I think that's the essence of what Jesus
Speaker 2: was saying with the speck in your eye. You've got
Speaker 2: a plank in your eye, and there's a speck in
Speaker 2: his eye. In terms of in terms of taking responsibility
Speaker 2: in a relationship, you say pretty strongly in the book
Speaker 2: that the human lunging can't be met in another person.
Speaker 2: The real human longing can't be met through another person,
Speaker 2: can't be fulfilled through a human relationship. Whenever I preach
Speaker 2: about relationships, people who may not be married in the
Speaker 2: church kind of look at their watches.
Speaker 3: How many weeks? Is this the thing I go on?
Speaker 2: Because you're going to tell me I don't need somebody.
Speaker 2: And you have a wife and all of that. But
Speaker 2: you know, you did a lot in your life before
Speaker 2: getting married. So you're forty two years old when you
Speaker 2: got married, and you had accomplished a lot. You wrote
Speaker 2: a book that was read hundreds of thousands of times.
Speaker 2: You made kind of an impact on the world. Would
Speaker 2: you speak to that now as someone who maybe has
Speaker 2: the credibility to say, I went through that season and
Speaker 2: I accomplished some things, and I dealt with the loneliness.
Speaker 2: What is your perspective on what you call the unfulfilled longing?
Speaker 4: Well, I'll say this, My years being single were you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to paint them as dark. They were fantastic.
Speaker 4: I traveled the world and got all sorts of stuff done,
Speaker 4: and probably stuff that I wouldn't have been able to do
Speaker 4: if I were married because I was just devoted to
Speaker 4: work and all that kind of stuff. So they were fantastic.
Speaker 4: So anybody who's single listening. Just have a blast, I mean,
Speaker 4: and get some work done because that's going to slow
Speaker 4: down real quick, especially when you have kids.
Speaker 3: Right. Yes, but I will say this in terms of.
Speaker 4: In terms of you know, you can't be fulfilled by
Speaker 4: another person. I agree with that that is true, that
Speaker 4: only God can ultimately fulfill us. But I also believe,
Speaker 4: you know, there's this myth that Jesus will fulfill every
Speaker 4: longing of our heart. I do believe that ultimately at
Speaker 4: the wedding, feast of the land and even in today.
Speaker 3: But here's how he does it.
Speaker 4: Jesus fulfills the longing for water and thirst with water.
Speaker 3: Right. Jesus fulfills the longing for food with food. I
Speaker 3: love that.
Speaker 4: Jesus fulfills the longing for friends with friends, keep going.
Speaker 4: Jesus fulfills the longing for a woman, guess what with
Speaker 4: a woman. So all of that is how Jesus does it.
Speaker 4: So here's what's beautiful about. You know, God is walking
Speaker 4: with Adam. God is walking with Adam. There is no sin,
Speaker 4: so Adam should be completely and totally fulfilled if God
Speaker 4: fulfills every desire. But what does God say of Adam?
Speaker 4: He's not complete for men to be alone. He's not
Speaker 4: good for man to be alone. He's lonely. Well, how
Speaker 4: can he be lonely? If God fulfills every desire of
Speaker 4: the humans. I'll tell you why, because God put another
Speaker 4: desire in that guy's chest for a woman.
Speaker 3: Awesome, and he withheld the woman. And you say, okay, well,
Speaker 3: then he gave him Eve. No he didn't.
Speaker 4: God said, you're lonely. You cannot find a helpmate suitable.
Speaker 4: Here's what I want you to do. Name the animals now,
Speaker 4: pastor Stephen, if you were charged with naming the animals.
Speaker 4: We all have told it in a children's way that
Speaker 4: it's going to be an afternoon in when you say giraffe, monkey, whatever.
Speaker 4: Even Darwin on the Galopagos Island took years just to
Speaker 4: chart a small microcosm of the species. I think ten
Speaker 4: years to one hundred years of no woman period. So
Speaker 4: this longing, he didn't just take the longing and fulfill it.
Speaker 4: He took the longing and made it worse. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Made it worse. Wow, literally made the man wait and work.
Speaker 4: Then he gives. Of course, he puts Adam to sleep.
Speaker 4: As the story goes, takes from Adam a rib and
Speaker 4: makes Eve. Adam wakes up and sees Eve. And it's
Speaker 4: the very first place in the scriptures where you see
Speaker 4: an ancient form of Hebrew poetry called parallelism. It says,
Speaker 4: though the text has broken into song. So here he
Speaker 4: sees this woman. He says, bone of my bone, and
Speaker 4: flesh of my flesh. He broke in the song when
Speaker 4: he saw her. Why did he do that? I'll tell
Speaker 4: you why I did that. Because God made him wit
Speaker 4: and name the animals. He had to work for it,
Speaker 4: and he had to feel that longing. And you know
Speaker 4: what I love about You know, I don't want to
Speaker 4: discredit my wife, because she's.
Speaker 3: An amazing woman.
Speaker 4: But I guarantee you one of the reasons I cherish
Speaker 4: my wife is because it was forty two years of
Speaker 4: naming animals and I find and you think I'm going
Speaker 4: to mess this up after forty two years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: And so I think that's one of the problems with
Speaker 4: sort of quick transactional relationships is it doesn't give us
Speaker 4: the chance to build up the desire which is embedded
Speaker 4: in pain. We tend to think pain or loneliness is
Speaker 4: a bad thing, like he did something wrong, pain or
Speaker 4: loneliness is a gift from God to help us appreciate
Speaker 4: what eventually.
Speaker 3: We began to us when He blesses us.
Speaker 2: You know, the people who are hurting from loneliness are
Speaker 2: hearing that right now, and I hope they're comforted.
Speaker 3: I hope so too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what the enemy is going to tell
Speaker 2: them about that though it applies to other people but
Speaker 2: not to you. You know that other people maybe their
Speaker 2: loneliness is by design, but what you're going through, you
Speaker 2: caused it.
Speaker 3: You know there's.
Speaker 2: Something fought because we will always believe that we're the
Speaker 2: exception to whatever gifts God wants to give.
Speaker 1: And I just I love this picture that you're painting
Speaker 1: for us right now.
Speaker 2: That God allows the void and sometimes creates the void
Speaker 2: so that he can fill it with himself. Now, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that God is going to withhold every good,
Speaker 2: perfect gift comes from above and all of that, we
Speaker 2: believe it. But you're on the other side of this
Speaker 2: now saying I wouldn't have known what to do with it,
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't have known how to cherish it if
Speaker 2: I hadn't had to wait for it.
Speaker 4: My wedding day was the happiest day of my life.
Speaker 4: I mean, it just didn't. I was never sure what
Speaker 4: was going to happen. And we didn't rush into it.
Speaker 4: I mean we you know, we took a long time
Speaker 4: and dated and you know, did all that stuff, and
Speaker 4: but that stuff has to be earned. You can't you know,
Speaker 4: you just can't rush a climactic scene.
Speaker 3: You can't rush it in a story. You have to
Speaker 3: have the tension.
Speaker 4: If you don't have the tension, the climactic scene is
Speaker 4: going to be a dud, you know what.
Speaker 3: I like.
Speaker 2: We don't think of our flaws as the glue that
Speaker 2: binds us to the people we love, but they are
Speaker 2: grace only sticks to our imperfections.
Speaker 3: That's cool in that.
Speaker 4: True relationships that you get to know somebody and it's
Speaker 4: like the fifth or sixth time to hang out with them,
Speaker 4: and they just share some sort of insecurity and you
Speaker 4: suddenly feel closer to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think it's going to drive them away and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you find out the thing that
Speaker 2: you are trying to hide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can't use it as a strategic tool.
Speaker 4: It has to be sincere right. We can't go well
Speaker 4: long gonna be vulnerable in order to smell that out.
Speaker 4: But what happens in those things, I think is that
Speaker 4: essentially between you and I, what happens when I'm vulnerable
Speaker 4: and it creates a bond between us, is in our relationship,
Speaker 4: what I've done by being vulnerable is I've handed you
Speaker 4: a gun. I've literally handed you a weapon, because by
Speaker 4: being vulnerable, you now have information that.
Speaker 3: You can use to hurt me. So what I did
Speaker 3: was I just gave you power in the relationship.
Speaker 4: And when I give you power in the relationship, it
Speaker 4: makes you more comfortable, and you think, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: never going to use this gun.
Speaker 3: But I really like this guy because.
Speaker 4: He's not holding anything, and honestly, if he does anything
Speaker 4: to me, maybe, So I.
Speaker 3: Wonder about like in our marriages.
Speaker 4: You know, my wife has so many weapons to use
Speaker 4: against me. I mean, she could literally, in one sentence
Speaker 4: or one paragraph calls me five years of very dark pain.
Speaker 4: She's got that, and you know how good it feels
Speaker 4: that she never uses it. It just increases my trust
Speaker 4: in God, in the world and the existence of love
Speaker 4: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And I've got stuff on her.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know what she'd be afraid of, and
Speaker 4: those kinds of things, and I could play those games,
Speaker 4: and man, I would never do that. We are at
Speaker 4: the most loving truce right So here we are imagine
Speaker 4: us just hugging each other and there's all these weapons.
Speaker 4: It's just laid down by now, and we're not going
Speaker 4: to pick them up.
Speaker 2: It's kind of the picture of our relationship with God, then.
Speaker 3: Isn't it. Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Because if anybody has their finger on the nuclear button,
Speaker 2: that could plow the whole thing up it's hill.
Speaker 3: And he's not going to do it.
Speaker 2: Not only is he not going to do it, but
Speaker 2: he's going to sacrifice himself so.
Speaker 3: We don't have to be destroyed. That's right, That's beautiful. Man.
Speaker 2: Okay, I could talk to you about this all day,
Speaker 2: but I want to I want to kind of finish
Speaker 2: with a thought.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is deep, but you end your book.
Speaker 2: Talking about kind of the beginning of your marriage.
Speaker 3: How long have you been married now? Three years? Yeah,
Speaker 3: three years in November.
Speaker 2: How would the book end differently if you were ending
Speaker 2: it today then it ended years ago?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, we'd spent the first year of marriage,
Speaker 4: both of us kind of circling each other. It was
Speaker 4: really hilarious, and we just kept Betty and I can
Speaker 4: talk about anything, so we just kept talking about when
Speaker 4: is the other shoe going to drop? Like, when is
Speaker 4: this going to go south? It has to like it
Speaker 4: just can't be. Then we had this real beautiful paradigm
Speaker 4: shift of what if God is good? Like what if
Speaker 4: God just says I actually want you to be happy?
Speaker 3: Like it was.
Speaker 4: My whole design was that you guys would be not
Speaker 4: everyday it's going to be perfect.
Speaker 3: Betsy and I will argue sometimes. So we just made
Speaker 3: this commitment.
Speaker 4: That Betsy and I are going to keep the drama
Speaker 4: outside of the marriage. So we did this thing before
Speaker 4: we got married. I wrote down a marriage plan. I
Speaker 4: actually took a ninety day business plan. I was at
Speaker 4: a business conference and crossed out the word business and
Speaker 4: wrote the word marriage.
Speaker 3: And I just thought it would be fun.
Speaker 4: She's just so attractive, and I wrote, well, what's the theme, right?
Speaker 4: And I wrote, well, we want to have a restorative marriage,
Speaker 4: And you know, I just put down his principles and
Speaker 4: I took a picture of it to her and she
Speaker 4: was actually mad at me that day. Took a picture
Speaker 4: to it, and I texted to her and then I
Speaker 4: felt like, oh, she's gonna kill me.
Speaker 3: Like literally, I just turned our marriage into a.
Speaker 4: Business strategy, like we're gonna franchise our kids, right, And
Speaker 4: she even when back shit down, this is exactly what
Speaker 4: I needed to hear, and it was It was because
Speaker 4: we were in a place where I was taking her
Speaker 4: from her friends, I was taking her from her career
Speaker 4: and all she was She was so freaked out because.
Speaker 3: She was just like, where are you taking me.
Speaker 4: You're taking me to a wedding, but I don't know
Speaker 4: what's on the other side of that wedding.
Speaker 3: So this little document is saying, here's what we're going
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 4: So we made this decision before we got married that
Speaker 4: we would have a restorative marriage. Now that can change,
Speaker 4: we can change the theme of our marriage, but we
Speaker 4: haven't yet.
Speaker 3: And we're three years in.
Speaker 4: What that meant for us is when you walk in
Speaker 4: the door of our home, when Betsy walks in the
Speaker 4: door or I walk in the door, we have an agreement.
Speaker 3: Life is hard.
Speaker 4: Things outside this door, these doors are difficult, and when
Speaker 4: you walk through these doors, we will recharge each other.
Speaker 4: We will sow no unkind words love it. I'm here
Speaker 4: to restore you, Stephen. We will encounter very difficult times.
Speaker 3: We will.
Speaker 4: It's not going to keep going like this. There's going
Speaker 4: to be painful stuff and I'm not naive. God will
Speaker 4: get us through that and he will redeem that story,
Speaker 4: just tike. He redeemed these stories now. But the difference
Speaker 4: is I'll go into those painful times hopefully with more
Speaker 4: trust and going. You know, what brought me through the
Speaker 4: last one, he'll bring us through this one.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be okay. Bob told you you were a
Speaker 3: great at relationship. Do you believe him now?
Speaker 4: I believe him more than I did at the time.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of how the book ends because the
Speaker 4: last time he said it to me, he would say
Speaker 4: it every month or so for years, two to three years,
Speaker 4: and he actually did our wedding, and the last time
Speaker 4: he said it to me, he's never said it since.
Speaker 4: You know, he just looked at me and said, don
Speaker 4: you're good at relationships proof.
Speaker 3: You know, here's your wedding proof.
Speaker 4: And I think we need those friends, don't We Just
Speaker 4: to keep going, Hey, Ma, you'relying yourself.
Speaker 3: You're lying yourself. I know you screwed up, but you're
Speaker 3: lying yourself. Don't believe that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Thanks Ben, thank you for joining us. Special thanks to
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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening. God bless you