Sticking Together

One of Jesus promises to us is that in this world we will have trials and tribulation Dave Harvey says that's true for our marriage as well. Suffering is remarkably disruptive to a marriage and a lot of times we don't get that and we don't see that God doesn't just kind of allow this as if he doesn't control this.

But there is a loving God introduces these things because he wants to do a work can only be achieved in this manner. This is family life today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson and Bob Lapine find us online@familylifetoday.com have you stop to think about how seasons of difficulty. Seasons of suffering have impacted your relationship as a couple marriage will explore that today with our guest Dave Harvey stay with us and welcome to family life to.

Thanks for joining us. I have to tell you guys when it when I picked up a copy of the Dave Harvey's new book called I still do and I saw the subtitle which is growing closer and stronger to life's defining moments. I thought you because we've all had defining moments yearbook vertical marriage is about a lot of those defining moments in your marriage, and I think all of us can look back and go there have been landmark moments in our lives in our marriage that have reshaped us and made us think differently about who we are and about how we interact with one another and often those moments are hard. They're not the mean they can be mountaintop moments, but they're often very difficult year above you've heard say when that moment on a 10 year anniversary. When and said I lost my feelings for you and we started to walk into that.

I remember consciously thinking no one will ever hear this.

This is going to be a private little. Hopefully we get through it moment our life that will just keep to ourselves, and yet God shows up and it's like there's a lot of people have this moment and they need to see where God can meet them and I like them through it and those moments are like forks and apartheid. Which way will you go and where all face but those in is not easy. We do remember those defining moments because they can just thought I've said to people for years I've said look back at your life and ask yourself this question, times of accelerated spiritual growth. Have they been times when when everything was going really well and when God was blessing you and there was abundance or have they been times when you have been in the valley when you been fighting when there's been hard times. Everybody says my growth is accelerated. So if your goal is to be more like Jesus, you're going to have to walk through hard times that are the outstanding device that God uses to rub off the rough edges. Dave Harvey's joining us again on family life today.

Dave welcome back. It's great to be back. Dave is an author.

He is a speaker. He is a pastor for more than 30 years.

He wrote a book a decade ago called when sinners say I do and wound up involved in our art of marriage, video series, which if our listers have been through that series. They benefited from Dave's contribution in his wisdom to that Dave is written a new book on marriage called. I still do and it's all about defining moments you've identified some of those paradigm moments that most of us go through in marriage and talked about the beginning part of our marriage send some of the common moments couples go through the heart of the marriage relationship.

When we learn to stick together and become one and then how we end well together. Were you aware of defining moments in your own marriage was at what led you to kinda unpack some of this in part yeah the book is built around 11 specific defining moments and I would say that many of them were defining moments to Kim and I experienced and then others just in looking over people that we had the privilege of counseling with Thor gotten to know over time and you know I do marriage events and and get to travel around and talk to people at those conferences and in the states and outside of the states and just listening listening to how material is affecting people listening to poor people are, they begin to group up into these 11 defining moments. I've shared before that one of the defining moments in our marriage, at least for me was when we had moved. This was early in our marriage we had moved from the city that Marianne had grown up in where her family was. We were now living in Phoenix Arizona.

I was there with the new job she was pregnant with our second child. It was summer in Phoenix.

We had just moved into a house that she had not seen before.

I purchased it… About a mistake and she was depressed. I mean this was a season in her life where I would come home at the end of the day and I do everything I could to turn on my sparkle magic and try to bring joy and happiness into the household.

And here's how I knew how bad it was. It was the summer of 84 and the Olympics were on and gymnastics were on and she didn't want to watch gymnastics and I'm like something is really wrong with my wife if she doesn't want to watch Olympic gymnastics. If that she always delighted in watching these gymnasts perform. So I would say you know let's go out to eat tonight and the reason I said that is because she had been making a dinner so if I was going to eat. We were going out. I remember one night been on the backyard in our house in Phoenix and I was just kicking dirt and kinda looking up at the stars and just talking to God and I I this thought hit my mind. I understand how people get to a point where they go. I will be in this anymore and I was in.

I'm not to go there because biblically I can't belong to Christ. But I understand how you get there because this was not the life I wanted for me him and think about that because one of the chapters.

One of the defining moment you talk about in your book is when suffering visits a marriage that can be physical suffering. It can be loss or grief that comes through illness or through the death of a loved one decision by your husband something like that any defining moment right when you're eating you just kind of miserable or in angst will day on looking at your first defining moment.

The one right here and I would've never known that when in yelled at me. Six months after were married. Like the third chapter of our book menu is the worst decision of my life.

We were in defining moment number one. I didn't realize it. In that moment. I'm just like yeah right when were you thinking the defining moment number one is when you discover brokenness is broader than sin.

I didn't know that at that moment that we were dealing with a brokenness that we previously talked about but let me ask you this. So when a couple hits that defining moment how they get through it from your perspective, it is says, and said you're often not aware that you're in it and so you feel like you're treading water.

You don't have clear categories you not diagnosing yourself for your your heart or it is often able to help your spouse and so II think you can be really helpful. At moments like that to be able to reach out beyond yourselves to build a get in trusted people involve the pastor of your church that you know one of the reasons why God is created. The church is so that we can reach out and lean on them in times were we need perspective, we need something from outside of ourselves. You're a pastor you've written two books on marriage. You and Kim ever set out and got marriage counseling weeks at time it marriage counseling off time so this is what we kinda need to destigmatize them easily here.

For all of us to get this outside help and perspective right yeah I think you make it more you put more in the category just fellowship and doing light. The rhythm of life kind of thing and tuneups is a great way to do it to and think about it.

Yeah so I I think that when we consider that God has created us in such a way that were were not completely autonomous that we don't have all that we need an evening. We pair up with somebody else in a marriage. It's not like we have with in our marriage. Everything we need to succeed in our marriage that we need God in the first and primary way, but also we need to community of people around us to be all that God has called us all. He said that with a counselor and did what we previously talked about at that person walk through the heart and this anybody effect that your social systems. The dependence on God to meet all that that changes everything you said that previously is like lightbulb to step back and you start to look your spouse and go whoa.

I thought it was all you and all of a sudden I'm now realizing there's a lot more going on here talk about what a marriage is in a season of suffering. You and Kim have been through seasons like this, or we have yeah and I think what what intrigued me about the topic was that I've read so much rich material on the topic of suffering, but I had not encountered a lot of material on what to do when your spouse suffering so so that's the defining moment. As you know when your spouse suffers and how to position yourself in a way that's really going to be caring for them.

Loving them. I think recognizing the reality of what's happening because you stay married long enough in one of your gonna suffer. I'm used to married long enough in one abuse, die first.

You know in an previous death. There's oftentimes suffering that attends that and so you know how we respond when our spouse suffers just says a lot about our understanding of marriage, our assumptions about life, our awareness of how God moves in a fallen world. There's a lot of things that map onto that. I've got a good a good friend right now Lee and his wife Rhonda and Ann Lee has contracted ALS. He was a member of the church where I was pastoring and I just become a dear friend, so we were with Lee you know when he was he was hiking with his wife and over the past two years we've watched him as he has slowed down and then began to limp and then you know he was on crutches and then on a walker and now in a wheelchair and you know he he he knows he's readily declining were watching Lee's courage as he faces his suffering and the inevitable end of his suffering and were seeing this God centered. Is this desire to ensure that his children are interpreting this experience in a way that has God's goodness in the picture. We were watching this remarkable wife who is caring for her husband in a way that is considering both body and soul you so often it just it's reduced down to just fretting and become preoccupied with all the medical features of whatever's going on about how their praying together and how they're really looking to take this season as a way to continue to encounter God together and to finish well together. I may just inspires me lightweight Bob what happened. I'm kinda sitting on the edge of my seat with you and Marianne because she was suffering she was an honestly, I didn't know what was my right response in the midst of her suffering. Like I said I would try to cheer her up. But I didn't know do I back off and give her space and let her processes herself, do I try to be there. Do I get other people involved. I was kind of running through what my options were and none of them seem to be working to help her in this situation, and Dave, I think that's one of the issues that that we face when a spouse is suffering. It affects us and it affects our own mood because to see a loved one suffer is emotionally difficult for us. It adjusts our life. You talk about Rhonda and she's had to make significant life adjustments and all of a sudden I life can't go on the way it was going on before she has her own fears she's facing in the midst of this, and she's trying to be a loving, godly wife to her husband who is suffering. Maybe it more profound level. I don't even say that that made the he suffering a profound way to this is a season in a marriage where often we find ourselves like I was in the backyard. We don't know where to turn, were just crying out to God and send God I don't know what to do if you don't show up.

I don't have the strength left to sustain myself during the season you because you begin to experience the kind of suffering that just can't readily be fixed and it is good to perhaps play out over time, or is is not easily defined or diagnose what's going on. I will know what I feel this way.

Or maybe it is diagnosed, but it can't be fixed. I mean that impulse that that human impulse to one of fix your spouse is suffering because you love them or because you're frightened at what's happening to them and you also see how it's affecting your children. Just something your evening more turmoil of wanting to fix it. That's right.

You want peace you want things to return to the way they were. And so suffering is remarkably disruptive to a marriage and a lot of times we don't get that and we don't see that God doesn't just kind of allow this as if he doesn't control this, but there is a loving God that introduces these things because he wants to do the work that can only be achieved in this manner, and those turn out to be beautiful things regardless of the outcome. Those things become beautiful things to the soul and prepare us for for eternity. So if you're sitting with a husband or wife today and they would save my spouses in a season of suffering, and I want to be a good husband be a good wife.

I don't know whether to back off or to move in. I don't know what to do what your counsel to somebody in that situation will not say are. Are you listening to them in Re: asking questions about where they are and listening carefully to how they respond. I think it's so easy to kind of import.

Our fears into the person that suffering or how we would deal with it and begin to relate to them. Out of that, but we really have to allow the reality of where they are to be defined by them. Listen carefully and then begin to care. In response to that. So the listening thing is huge because it it really does create an environment where suffering spouse is able to say okay I know that we don't understand exactly what's going on but he gets me. She gets me. She understands where this is how this is being because every calling a few months ago when I had just come home from visiting my parents when I come home there's a part of me that screen thing. I'm sad about an era that is kind and so I come home with Dave and we've got an event to speak at night and I told Dave like I my heart just hurts. I'm sitting here I can't even think about this. I'm not making a comment is this spouse didn't suffer well with this way, you didn't do well here that Indu had like me by the house without my wife. Yeah, he said we cannot get it together with the words that did not fly very well with me.

You know that the listing part. I'm thinking of when Job's friends ministered to him. Most it's when they kept their mouth shut and when things start to go south with Joe, but his friends is when they start offering advice and I'm Job's wife and yeah totally cynical, cursed God in my MO in our situation was, well, I just I want to fix it. And so I was trying to marshal all my energy to get Marianne fixed I would listing I was just trying to kinda snap out of it you know Luke let's get on with life. This is inconvenient for me. The other mistake. I think we often make in the midst of suffering is to separate to isolate and to step out of oneness and and in that isolation. We start our heart start to grow old and apart from one another, and so I think your point about presence and listening day, but I think these are huge when your spouse is going through that time you need to say I'm here I'm not going anywhere and I want to hear what's going on in your heart and soul and you asked me what happened. Ultimately, time happened. Ultimately, there wasn't a breakthrough moment, there wasn't a thing where I said this and everything got fixed or where the circumstance shifted in that fixed everything. Ultimately the fog lifted, she kind of woke back up and came out of the grief that she was in from all the disruption in her life and started to come back around and it was gradual and happened over time, but again presence and listing are how you get through that season and we had conversations later about other things I could have done that would've been more helpful and she said no. I needed time. I just needed the time to grieve and to go through and to do the processing I was going through and then to get out of the pity party that I was in and recognize God's in control of his providential care is at work here and I need to be responding to him and and sometimes it might my season of that was maybe a month or two. Some couples go through seasons of suffering that last for years and that's hard on a marriage.

When that happens, one of the things I admire about some of the people that I've seen suffer is that they refused to allow the suffering to define the totality of their relationship or they refused to allow it to define who they're going to be in the community like I got Jill storing the book of of a guy whose wife had a chronic kidney problem regarding Scott's wife Jeannie Jeannie had chronic kidney problems or from Canada there flying through the United States back from an event as their landing in Denver that there connecting flight to get back to Canada.

She ends up collapsing on the flight and they arrive in Denver and in the doctor say listen, you can't leave you have to state she can't fly for a long time and so they basically have to live in Denver therefrom. In a front-end of the living can avail of a mortgage up in Canada they just find a place they live there and after a few months there's people there that didn't know them, they say hey, he's a pastor wanting to start a Bible study he starts Bible study the Bible study grows. She's at home praying as she suffering but she's praying.

Eventually they ask him hate you know it seems like there's a lot of people come to this. Maybe we should start a church. I'm so he starts a church and and then three months later, they're given a building, a year after that whole experience. He and his wife are eventually stabilized enough that they can fly back to Canada. There's a church building a lead pastor that's in existence.

To this day.

My point being is that Scott and Jeannie realize that because of her suffering.

You know there was some good that was able to come out of it and are able to celebrate that no we don't, we see that in real time. You know you always have that story to point back to but they understand that this was why God had parked them in inland and for that to plant a church in a layover city as if God took their eyes off of themselves and their circumstances and they lifted their eyes to God, to God, but you have for us when he wanted to do what he want right now it's hard to dearly know is not that if I felt was me in Denver and with Kim. I don't see anybody I know well and and think with Dr. Raj Job's wife's response to the suffering that they were going through, which was cynical curse God and die.

And what's Job's response. That's the model response for us in the seasons of suffering, whether it's us or our spouse, and I will say this about my husband Dave cowboy we have conversation read like you need to get yourself together because we had an event, I kinda left the room.

Mike okay I'm out of here that on he came back in he came to me he said I am so sorry.

That's got to be really hard and he just kinda hug me, help me set this event isn't nearly as important is that it's so funny.

Just those few words just melted my heart exactly what I needed, which then I was like I I'm ready to go but I needed to talk about it.

I need him to be compassionate and sometimes just listening and holding.

That means a lot. It's it's Christlike he you know he was, for he sympathizes with us in our weakness.

And there's something beautiful we encounter God and moments like that not enough. He felt he might affect it but it still felt really good. Sit right here. I mean it was one of those and I would sit every husband or wife right now if your spouse is suffering going the other room quiet yourself and say God would eat when you want me to do and that's what I did and it was. I guys that I've I've been there for you every time you need to be there for her. She's gone since through something hard right now. This event is just an event. This is your wife love her, you don't always feel at times you just try obeying their winglet sensor says that you should do is God will honor that my diet, I hope. If couples are in one of these defining moments of the season of suffering that listening and having compassion and empathy and being able say I'm here and I care and I know this is hard. I hope this can become a part of the regular rhythm of of their marriage. During this season because God will meet them in the middle of that a you cover this beautifully in your book Dave. In fact I'm thinking couples who are in this season right now would really benefit from getting a copy of your new book.

I still do, which is a book we got in our family life to a resource center or if you know couples who are going through a difficult season. Get them a copy of Dave Harvey's book and give it to them as a gift. The book is called. I still do growing closer and stronger through life's defining moments. It's written by Dave Harvey.

You can order it from us online@familylifetoa.com or you can call to order one 800, FL, today is the number again. Our website is family life to the aid.com, the number to call if you'd like to order the book from us is one 803 586-329-1800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today and of the subject hits home for a lot of us, especially in this season when there has been increased fear and anxiety and all of us were a little bit blindsided by the coronavirus when it appeared back a few months ago and I don't think any of us imagine that that there would be people losing jobs or friends who are infected by this virus that it would be life-threatening for some, this has been a season of national suffering and you need to know that we've had people reaching out to us more during this season, looking for resources for help for help for their marriage and their family people going online accessing articles and podcasts that are available. People tuning into this program. This is a season when all of us have been coming back to what matters most. Our relationship with God, our relationships with one another in her marriage and her family and then how we love our neighbors. Well that's what our focus is been here at family life to the thank those of you who have been able to continue your ongoing support of this ministry. During these challenging times.

In fact, I know some of you have been a more generous during the season, recognizing that there are others who can't help right now you have increased your giving them are so grateful for that.

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Please be as generous as you can possibly be.

You can donate to support the ministry of family life to a by going online to family life to a.com or you can donate by calling one 800 FL today. If you can't donate today. Would you please pray for us and I just pray that God would sustain us during this difficult season. We appreciate your prayers and course appreciate your financial support as well and we hope you can join us again tomorrow morning.

Talk about how important it is to have a vision for your marriage for that season when the kids are going to be investing now in our marriage so the season her marriage.

Harvey will be with us to talk about that tomorrow can be with us as well. Thank our engineer today along with our entire broadcast on behalf of our hosts Dave and Dan Wilson and Bob looking back tomorrow for another edition of family life, family life, to a is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow