Preview:
Gabe Lyons: Yeah, the light came on for me, Jim, when I could start to see these eight emotions as gifts from God. ‘Cause I grew up in a home where crying was off limits. Like-
Jim Daly: Uh-huh.
Gabe: … you don’t do that.
End of Preview
John Fuller: That’s Gabe Lyons and he and his wife, Rebekah, are our guests today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. They’re gonna offer tools for couples to understand your emotions and to connect with each other better and more deeply. Thanks for joining us. I’m John Fuller.
Jim: John, I had the chance to speak to Gabe and Rebekah at a conference in Nashville earlier this year and they shared some powerful insights about the ways your past could still be affecting you and causing conflict in your relationship. And if you just stop and think about that, I think you could probably identify two or three things in your relationship that your past is affecting. And, uh, we’re all gonna hear more from them how to process those experiences with your spouse specifically.
John: Mm-hmm. And Gabe and Rebekah are speakers, writers, and co-hosts of the podcast called Rhythms for Life. And they joined you, Jim, to talk about their book, The Fight for Us. Uh, we’ve got details about the book online. And here now, the conversation with Gabe and Rebekah Lyons.
Jim: Gabe and Rebekah, welcome to Focus on the Family. It’s good to have you back.
Rebekah Lyons: Oh, it’s a joy.
Gabe: Thank you for having us. We love being with you.
Jim: Now, you know, one of the key things…this is a great marriage book, a great life book, The Fight for Us. I love the idea of fighting for your marriage. Uh, it feels like too few of us in the Christian community are willing to do that.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: So let me ask that bigger question. Why do we give up so easily?
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Why is our divorce rate 35%, 40% in the Christian community?
Gabe: Well, I think people get discouraged easily. I mean it’s hard, right? Marriage has conflict in it. You have arguments with your spouse, you start to get narratives-
Jim: Really?
Gabe: … in your head.
Jim: I’ve never experienced that.
Gabe: Yeah, no? (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs) I know.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: We, though, are professionals at fighting.
Gabe: (laughs)
Jim: (laughs) No, I love that.
Rebekah: We felt fitting to write about fighting, because I do think we see the reason why even Christians walk away is that we see each other as the enemy instead of the ultimate enemy-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: … who is really trying to divide us. And so, the only power the enemy has over his sons and daughters is he accuses and then gets us to agree.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And so, he might say or plant an intrusive though that’s saying, “Gabe is not attentive to your needs. He’s suppressing you or dismissing you. He’s transactional.” And then I’ll be like, “Hmm, that hurt or that felt that way.” And so I’ll internalize that.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And then I’ll ruminate on it and all of a sudden it grows.
Jim: Yeah. It’s so interesting, you write about unhealthy conflict patterns. I mean, this is it.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: This is where everybody needs to lean in.
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: ‘Cause every marriage experiences that.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: There’s just things that we do that we learn from our childhood, typically, that we build on in our adult years. These unhealthy conflict patterns. What was happening for you particularly, Rebekah, where you’re experiencing that with Gabe?
Rebekah: Yeah. So we had something that we had cultivated- (laughs)
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: … without intention called the dysfunctional dance. And it was triggered by these emotions, and it was silent, intense, avoidant, and anxious. And the more we talked to other couples about it, we found this was a trend. The silent was always triggered by hurt, like some form of hurt that was never expressed or repaired that started to grow into resentment or bitterness. And so, we just kind of said, agreed with, “It is what it is,” and we moved on. Um, the intense one is the one that really (laughs) was ours.
Gabe: We’re good at this one.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: And that’s triggered by anger. That, you know, and the scriptures say, “In your anger, do not sin.” So it’s okay to go … There could be a righteous anger around some of the things that we feel like we might not be honoring in one another or recognizing well in one another. But again, anger unexpressed is toxic, right?
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Like it becomes rage, it becomes depression, it becomes all kinds of things. Um, and so we have to express it. So the intense one is one. And as we’ve pulled so many marriages, intense is like the top one and silent is second. So those extremes, but there’s also avoidant and anxious. Avoidant is triggered by guilt, and anxious is triggered by fear.
And so, these are all stress responses, and they happen so much in the margins, the transitions, because the bottom line is, is we’re rookies. Like we’ve never … You know, before kids, had kids, we never had special needs kids till we entered that. We had never, you know, did a cross-country move and then there’s stressors there, and then launching kids, and kids getting married, and going off to college. And we realized that we saw every transition differently-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: … based on our origin, which created stress, which created conflict-
Jim: Uh-
Rebekah: … ’cause we’re rookies. (laughs)
Jim: Well, how long have you been married? You’re not rookies.
Gabe: (laughs)
Rebekah: 28 years, but-
Jim: I mean, you look great.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: Don’t get me wrong, but 28 years.
Rebekah: 28 years.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: You’re kind of moving into the-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: … MVP category. (laughs)
Rebekah: Well, I just felt like the first time we tried everything-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: … in whatever season we were in, we missed each other a little bit.
Jim: Let me ask you.
Rebekah: … and so we’ve learned.
Jim: Yeah. Which is good. And, you know, people are hearing the definitions and kind of, “Okay, that’s me, that’s my husband,” whatever.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: I do feel like there can be some gender application to this.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I’m not sure, but I look at the silent marriage. I would’ve thought that was first though, but you’re saying the intense marriage is first.
Rebekah: Right. Or maybe they recognize that and then they grow silent over time.
Jim: Right. And I think that … Right.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: There’s not any one thing. You just don’t fall in one bucket-
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: … and stay there.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: But the silent marriage I kind of see as a husband’s domain.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Because we’re little boys.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I don’t know that we truly ever emotionally grow up. So when we are wounded or we’re frustrated, we tend to pull out of the battle.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Gabe, was that your-
Gabe: No, it’s true. And I think, I think for men, we want to deescalate. We don’t want to-
Jim: Right. (laughs)
Gabe: … get so angry and puffed up. So we tend to just turn inward. And we don’t … Uh, you know, it’s intimidating when your wife’s really great with emotions, understands emotions, can communicate to you-
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: … the hundred different emotions she’s experienced over the last few days. And yet, as a husband, I, I know there was many times I was at a loss of words. I didn’t have the same feelings, the same emotions that would lead her to feel disconnected-
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: … because I couldn’t relate. And so I think for a lot of men, this journey towards understanding our feelings, realizing that they’re valuable. They’re not just soft things that you should avoid or you should press down, but you should learn how to express them, because when I started to do that, that’s when we began to have better conversations. I’m still not an expert the way Rebekah would be.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: And I think most husbands need to feel comfortable. Like you’re probably never gonna be that. But to just spend some time and energy learning how to relate is gonna open up a whole new dimension of the relationship instead of going silent. ‘Cause when we go silent, what happens is we stop talking. And Rebekah and I have learned this time and time again. If we’re not talking, we’re not healing.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: And so a marriage that stops talking, over time, the silence becomes resentment, the resentment becomes contempt. And as we know from Gottman and others, contempt is the marriage killer.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: And so we wanna avoid that at all costs by getting the conversation moving again.
Jim: Yeah. No, I can appreciate that. And I think men, we struggle. I, you know, a vulnerable example of that, Jean’s second brother committed suicide-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … probably, yeah, probably four years ago.
Rebekah: Wow.
Jim: And it was one where it was heavy, right?
Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah.
Jim: Rightfully, understandably.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: But as the months went by, I remember talking to Jean. And my experience in life was losing my mom at nine and my dad at 11.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: You gotta pick yourself up, you gotta go-
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: … ’cause we can’t just sit here.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: And she was grieving. And I remember saying to her, I remember exactly where we were standing in the kitchen. And I was giving her that speech, you know, the husband speech. “We gotta get up. We gotta go. We need to deal with this.” And-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … she just looked at me and said, “You know, Jim, not everybody’s wired like you.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: “I’m not wired like you. And you gotta choose to sit in this grief with me.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: “Or just keep moving.” And it scared me.
Gabe: Right.
Jim: It literally was like-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: … one of the few times in my life I was fearful.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Like, “What do I do?”
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: I didn’t know what to do, Gabe.
Gabe: Well, I think-
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: … as husbands, we do freeze in those moments. We know we’re supposed to be feeling something.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: But like, you’re like, “Is this on?”
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: And I remember in a counseling session I was having at one point having a conversation. The counselor just asked me a simple question about how I was feeling about our marriage and our family. I responded and he says back to me, “Gabe, I feel like I’m talking to an Excel spreadsheet.”
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: And I go, “Well, wait, is that a compliment?”
Jim: It’s- (laughs)
Gabe: “I mean, I love Excel spreadsheets.”
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: “This is how I-“
Jim: I can do that.
Gabe: “… budget.”
Rebekah: Be like-
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah. (laughs)
Gabe: I love-
Jim: (laughs)
Gabe: … like, analyzing logic. And he goes, “No, this is not a compliment. Like that distance between your head and your heart.”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: “If we can’t work on that to where when Rebekah’s expressing need, you can’t meet her in that space, then there’s gonna always be a disconnect.” And that really began a journey for me of deciding, “I’m gonna better understand emotions so I can at least start that journey towards better connection with my wife.”
Jim: It’s so good. But it is…it can be scary.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: But it’s so good on the other end of the reward-
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: … of that intimacy.
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Let me ask you-
Rebekah: Well-
Jim: … probably the … Oh, go ahead.
Rebekah: I was just gonna say, emotion is energy in motion, and it’s given to us by God, right? You know, you think of David, God’s bestie, a man after His heart.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: And if David wasn’t emotional, I don’t know who was, right? Because he lamented before God, he praised, he danced, he rejoiced. And I think there was a fullness because out of the heart, right? He wasn’t betraying the heart. And when we suppress emotion, we betray our hearts. But the scriptures tell us that out of the heart, uh, the mouth speaks and it’s the wellspring of life. So it’s the source of life. And so recognizing that the heart needs to be in tune.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Right? Like it’s part of the soul, the mind, well, and the emotions, that it needs to be in tune with the Spirit and going, “Oh, grief- If Jesus was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, then grief and living through grief, you know, He comforts us so He can, we can comfort others. Like this is part of God’s design.” And so I think part of it is a recovery-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: … of that. Not in a way that, um, emasculates men, but gives them the fullness of understanding like there’s a wellspring that comes from our recognition-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: … of that emotion.
Jim: There’s also a deep honesty with what I see, David, you know,
Rebekah: As-
Gabe: Right.
Jim: … as humanity. He seems to be a really straightforward, honest-
Rebekah: Yes. Yeah.
Jim: … person. And you often have to ask yourself, I have, like, “Lord, he made the big errors and yet-“
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: “… you say he has a heart after you.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: “How do I reconcile that, Lord?”
Rebekah: Yes.
Gabe: I know.
Jim: And I think it’s in the space you’re saying.
Rebekah: Well, he withheld nothing from God.
Jim: It was all out there.
Rebekah: Yeah. And vulnerability is a risk.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: You know?
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And I think for men and for women, that can be the reason why we don’t go there, because maybe we were vulnerable in our past and we were betrayed or silenced.
Jim: All the things that create that-
Rebekah: And so then that puts that wall up.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Like you, I can understand, like, “Hey, as a child, I needed to disassociate for survival.” But sometimes the skills we learn as children don’t serve us as adults.
Jim: Definitely not.
Rebekah: And … Right?
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: So it’s coming back to that, like, that younger version of yourself and going, “How does God wanna continue to reveal what He wants to heal even as I become an adult?”
Jim: Yeah. So, with the silent marriage, the intense marriage, the avoidant marriage, the anxious marriage, and, you know, I think people need to get a copy of the book to read more about that. We’re not gonna cover it all right here. But how do we avoid those behaviors so that we have a stronger marriage? Just, you know, kind of the million-dollar question-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: … in the first 15 minutes here.
Rebekah: Yeah. It’s basically what we call notice and name, right? The … ‘Cause there is an emotion behind our triggered reaction. So, often, we focus on behavior management.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: We, we erupt or we’re silent and we finally come back together and like, “I’m sorry for how I handled that.” But we never go to root cause, like, “Why was that so triggering? Why is this topic on money so triggering, or sex so triggering, or parenting so triggering to me?” There’s probably, um, you know, in psychology, that popular phrase says, “Everything hysterical is historical.”
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Rebekah: So where has this bumped up against us in the past that has been a trigger that we kind of really respond to? The amygdala goes offline, fight, flight, freeze.
Jim: (laughs) This is-
Rebekah: All the cortisol is … Uh, you know, that stress hormone is surging. It takes four hours to leave our system. We’ve gotta get to the root cause. And so what we have encouraged a lot of people to do when you take 15 minutes apart, you deescalate, you get with the Lord, “God, show me what you want me to know about this. Like, is there more to this topic that just keeps becoming friction for us?”
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And then coming back and asking God to just show us places of pain, places of wounding in our past, that He wants to heal so that when we talk about parenting, we’re in unity. When we talk about money, there’s an honoring and, um, a showing of empathy to one another because our origin stories didn’t look the same, which does now reflect in why we see things differently.
Jim: You know, and so much of what you’re saying, for some people, “Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah, that’s true.
Jim: And it is.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: But it’s good work.
Rebekah: Yeah. It’s confession.
Jim: ‘Cause the, ’cause the-
Rebekah: It’s like a rhythm of confession.
Jim: Right. And the intimacy gained in that is what the goal is, right? That you are one flesh.
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: If you have a vision and understand, you know, God gave me Rebekah because she was gonna likely be the healing agent embodied.
Jim: (laughs) Right.
Gabe: He was gonna use to help me grow closer to Him, to better understand my story, my blind spots. Instead of seeing her as the enemy, this is what happens in the fight. We see each other as the enemy versus recognizing if she’s curious, which she’s been with me. Like, she’s asked me better questions than anybody’s ever asked me about my childhood, about the story-
Jim: Wow.
Gabe: … I’ve lived, which helps reveal to me all kinds of new things with someone with insight that I need to unpack and process and bring to God. And then I can do the same with her.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: I can bring curious questions. And so, we invite couples to say, “Hey, instead of the stalemate, let’s re-enter the relationship with curiosity, understanding that what’s going on behind the dance is deep pain, deep hurt, and you’re the person, you’re the one that God can use to help reveal and help see that healed.”
Jim: Yeah. Now, you’ve written a book, so I get to ask these questions.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: There’s an example of that-
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: … in the book that you talked about. I think in the area where you allowed busyness and distractions to keep you from connecting with Rebekah.
Gabe: Yeah. Yeah, I call it the- (laughs)
Jim: So I could say amen to this, so.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: Well, I call it the dopamine of distraction, you know? It’s like-
Jim: Dopamine of distraction, like-
Gabe: Yeah. Uh, you know, we get that dopamine hit from activity, production. And that, that was kind of how I’ve went through my life, my career was just, I stayed busy. I always had something on the calendar. Didn’t like a lot of time to just sit idle or quiet. Uh, and that’s what was ultimately tripping me up in our marriage because I wasn’t creating the space for Rebekah and I to have time for those types of intimate conversations.
I mean, these conversations do take time. It is work. And many of us just want to avoid it like I did. So playing golf was way more fun, you know, for five hours than sitting with Rebekah and having a deep dialogue about my history growing up-
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: … and the trauma related to that, that I experienced that was impacting us. And so, I think as we move into this, especially as men, we wanna just take account that we’re giving the time necessary to this relationship. That we’re saying, “We’re gonna prioritize our relationship.” and we encourage couples to look at the next year ahead and say, “We’re gonna give this a year of just investment, of higher priority, maybe canceling some other things on the social calendar-
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: … and giving ourselves some space to do this kinda work together.”
Jim: You know, one thing that is helpful is having good friends that can help you in that way.
Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah.
Jim: And this fits here. I was gonna talk to you about this a little later, but I have a friend Randy and, you know, we’re just talking about that intimacy and how to develop that emotional intimacy with your wife, because it is a stumbling block for us.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: We can go play golf for five hours, come home, and Jean will say to me, “So how’s Bob’s marriage?” ‘Cause they’re struggling.
Gabe: (laughs)
Jim: And I’ll say, “Yeah, it never came up.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: “But he does have a new driver.” (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs)
Gabe: Yeah. (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs) Exactly.
Jim: Yeah, five hours, uh-
Rebekah: And I’m not sure if that’s related, but yeah. (laughs)
Jim: And what’s weird is, like, she is dumbfounded. Like, “You could be with that guy for five hours and his life-“
Gabe: Right.
Jim: “… didn’t come up?”
Gabe: Right.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: (laughs)
Jim: Who wants to talk about that? (laughs)
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: But that’s part of it.
So this friend, Randy, uh, he and I were talking about how to deepen that emotional moment. And he said to me, he goes, “Well, why don’t you treat that time with Jean like you would prep for a broadcast?”
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Gabe: Mm.
Jim: And I went, “Whoa.”
Gabe: (laughs) Right.
Jim: ‘Cause I spend time.
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: You know, reading a book, looking at questions that are prepared, all the connections of that, the emo- … You know?
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: I know your story ’cause I’ve been briefed-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … and read it. And I thought, “What a great example.”
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: For, for me at least, and what I do to have an, have that same intensity-
Gabe: I do that too, Jim.
Jim: … to do prep.
Gabe: Yeah. I will now, on my iPhone, I’ll put in the notes, “Questions to ask Rebekah,” when we’re having dinner one night. And it feels dumb to do that. Like-
Rebekah: I love it.
Gabe: “Why do I, why do I-”
Jim: I was gonna say, “I love to do that.”
Rebekah: I’m like, “You’re prepared for this?”
Gabe: But-
Rebekah: “Thank you.”
Jim: She kinda lit up when you said that.
Rebekah: Yeah. (laughs)
Gabe: I know. (laughs) Um, but I think it’s okay. Guys need to feel that permission. Like, “Hey, when you hear an interesting thought or you’re learning or you’re listening or reading a book, um, think about a question you could discuss as a couple.” This, for Rebekah, does enliven the relationship.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: It shows interest into her. You know, the definition some have used of intimacy is, “Into-“
Rebekah: Me.
Gabe: “… me, you see.”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Right?
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: And like, you can only do that through some good conversation.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah, that’s so, so good. Let me ask you about the list of emotions since we’re putting out the list of questions. I mean, list of emotions that we need to be aware of that, um, we can communicate better.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: What do you think, Rebekah?
Rebekah: Well, we take this from Dr. Chip Dodd in his book, The Voice of the Heart, and the eight primary feelings are hurt, lonely, sad, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and glad. Gabe would’ve thought that I was an ocean of emotion with a thousand feelings, because-
Gabe: Right.
Rebekah: … of all of those eight, they’re, they each kind of encapsulate their … The… it’s kind of like the notes on the scale, the primary notes, so the four primary colors. There’s so many things that come under that. Like you say, “What are you feeling?” He’s like, “I’m frustrated.” I’m like, “Well, that’s under anger.”
But often, we don’t know what we’re feeling. And there were years where I would ask Gabe, I’m like, “Well, what do you feel?” He’s like, “I don’t know.” Like, he wouldn’t even be able to name one or recognize. He’s like, “I’m not feeling anything.” I’m like, “Well, you seem kind of frustrated. You seem angry.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: It’s like, “No, I’m not angry. I’m just frustrated.” You know? So-
Jim: (laughs)
Gabe: (laughs)
Rebekah: … it just felt like a little bit of a loop.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: But the emotions are being triggered by something. And again, like we said, if it’s something historical, then maybe we’ve had this fight for a while. Or maybe, you know, I would just give an example for us, the feeling of fear, right? You know, the fear, there’s an impairment to every emotion, Dr. Chip says, but then there’s also a gift. So fear, you know, the impairment is anxiety. It’s imagining a future without God in it.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Rebekah: But the redemption of fear, the scriptures say, “The fear of the Lord is a beginning of wisdom.” So, uh, a named and confessed fear to Gabe goes from anxiety that might be ruminating in my head to wisdom on how can we come together around-
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: … something that you’re con- that’s concerning.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Yeah, the light came on for me, Jim, when I could start to see these eight emotions as gifts from God. ‘Cause I grew up in a home where crying was off limits. Like-
Jim: Uh-huh.
Gabe: … you don’t do that, and just-
Rebekah: Well, he was told it means you’re feeling sorry for yourself.
Jim: Wow.
Gabe: Yeah. And so, if you grow up like a lot of people did…I mean, our parents didn’t have these emotional health conversations.
Jim: Correct.
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: Most of them didn’t.
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: Uh, there wasn’t a language for this. A lot of our parents were in the silent generation.
Jim: Correct.
Gabe: They just like did their work.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: Provided for the family.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: And that’s how you did it. I think for me to understand emotions are actually a positive that God’s given us, even though they might sound negative. Sadness.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: It does- … I don’t wanna feel sadness. Well, I should feel sadness. I feel sad that my mother passed away recently.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Yeah, that’s appropriate.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: Yeah. Sadness is honoring-
Rebekah: That’s grief.
Gabe: … it’s honoring the memory of someone.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: You know? Or anger. Anger is passion. Like, most of us do the work we do. Like you-
Rebekah: Justice.
Gabe: … lead Focus on the Family because you’re angry about the state of the family in the world and you wanna do something about it.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: So instead of seeing all these as negatives, the moment I could realize, “Wait, no, these are gifts meant to lead towards relationship.”
Jim: Uh-huh.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: And if I can know how to express them, Rebekah and I are gonna walk through feelings together, it can help. And so we try to walk people through that in the book, especially men. I mean, I write half the book, Rebekah writes half the book, but some of these chapters, I really took on a tone so that men would feel heard and understood. And women and wives-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: … would better understand the ways. Sometimes, we as men just struggle with these things. And-
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: … how we need grace and patience. Rebekah had a lot of grace for me in the process as I kinda tripped over my words-
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: … and tried to express feelings. And that was really helpful for me not to create like some shame about it, but to actually start-
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: … to learn how to do it better.
Rebekah: Right. Guilt is conviction.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: … but we could hide in toxic shame, or we can confess the conviction and then experience the freedom.
Jim: You know, and that’s so good. Uh, most of this is the tools to be able to do this, right?
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: It’s … And what we found, we have something called Hope Restored, which is a four-day intensive. It can be tailored for different days, et cetera, but the one that is the workhorse is a four-day intensive. It’s like 36 hours-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: … of counseling right in a row.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Sunday night-
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Monday, Tuesday-
Rebekah: Come on.
Jim: … Wednesday, Thursday lunch. It has a post-two-year 81% success rate.
Rebekah: Amen. Praise God.
Jim: And about 30% of the couples coming already have divorce papers in hand.
Rebekah: Wow.
Jim: What’s so interesting about that and the predictability of it, it’s exactly what you guys are saying. Sunday is rough. Monday is rough. Tuesday’s rough, because all the stuff is coming out.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Stuff that-
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: … the couples don’t even know about each other.
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And then Wednesday, the healing starts.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Thursday, the Holy Spirit just, like, stamps it. And I think that’s why it’s got such a high success rate because you loved each other one time.
Gabe: That’s right.
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: And it’s undoing the woundedness.
Rebekah: Amen.
Jim: The pain that we’ve inflicted on each other.
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: And learning how to do this in a more healthy way.
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Well, the reason we continue the dysfunctional dance is there is, there’s a secondary gain. We get to avoid the pain, right?
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: We just get triggered, we repeat. But you’re right, if we actually go … We’re scared of something that’s, uh, like you felt. Like, “This feels off limits. This feels like this could be a black hole. We might really lose each other because it’s just too painful to go back to.”
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: But with God’s help, right? He exposes and resurfaces and heals. And that’s the only way to move forward.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: And Rebekah and I do retreats. We just came off last week, six couples. That was four days-
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: … going deep with them-
Jim: Wow.
Gabe: … in the midst of their pain. And the thing that happened by the end, like you said, by the last, like-
Rebekah: Exactly you think. The night-
Gabe: … 30% of this, you start to see couples realize, “Wait, you’re not my enemy.”
Jim: (laughs) Right.
Gabe: And I also am not gonna try to make you in my image.
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: Like God’s given us two distinct personalities. We… That doesn’t mean one’s right or wrong, we’re just different. And the more we can learn to respect the differences and see how God’s created a gift in our marriage, then there’s hope again.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: And, and they start to dream again and they go back-
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: … to those dating years and those falling in love years-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: … and they start to reimagine-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: … “God does have a vision here and I need to-“
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Gabe: “… just forgive and move forward with His help, you know, to support us.”
Rebekah: And you’re watching the heart soften, you’re watching the tears begin to flow. You’re watching, like, unity and prayer-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Just transform within three to four days. It’s-
Jim: Yeah, it’s so amazing.
Rebekah: … it’s so beautiful.
Jim: Gabe, in the book, you talked about dropping I think your son off at camp.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: And you’re in the middle of this emotional kind of-
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: … review.
Gabe: (laughs)
Jim: How did that connect to your marriage with Rebekah? What was the Lord-
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: … showing you?
Gabe: Well, my counselor had said, “Look, you, you’re having a hard time having tears,” because I hadn’t cried in a decade. And he said, “I want you to pay attention the next time you do have tears.” It was a few months later, I’m dropping my son at camp, he’s 12 years old, driving away, I am crying for like an hour.
Jim: (laughs)
Gabe: I can’t stop crying. Well, the signal for me was to go back and go, “Why is this so traumatic for me? Like, what am I feeling?” And it took me back to a really hard time in my story when I was 12. And I hadn’t put any of this together till-
Jim: Uh-huh.
Gabe: … I started a process. But in my origin story, it was at a camp type environment where I had a youth pastor that really created a trauma moment for me. But I realized from that moment on, that’s where I started to turn my heart off because I trusted this youth pastor.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: This was a mentor to me. It was somebody that I had shared more with than I had ever shared probably with my parents. All of a sudden, I get harmed in that. And so when Rebekah and I were finally able to start processing that, I realized I’m, I’m in tears right now because I’m scared for my own son.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: I’m dropping him off at a camp.
Rebekah: Like-
Gabe: It’s an environment. It’s where this trauma happened to me. And it was the tears, though, that led me down the journey to better understand and give weight to the story I’d lived through and the story that I’d really tried to suppress.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Not talk about, make it go away, keep moving forward. And yet, it was what was really locking me up and my inability to connect at the heart level with Rebekah.
John: What an impactful story from Gabe Lyons. And, uh, it’s pretty inspiring when a couple is willing to push on through, to work through the hard things together and to really give all of those to the Lord. And Jim, I’m glad we got to hear the first part of the conversation. I’m looking forward to the next part.
Jim: Well, I’m grateful for Gabe’s vulnerability. You know, it’s hard for guys to be that vulnerable. It’s not an excuse; it just is true. And, uh, to hear him search his own heart to find the, the depth that was required there. Of course, Rebekah, his wife’s pulling that out.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: (laughs) “Come on, come on, Gabe, connect with me.”
John: (laughs)
Jim: Boy, do I know that feeling with Jean and I?
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Same thing. He was describing something that many of us experience, which is how the past tends to show up in the present. And, uh, for those of you who are tipping into this, I hope the conversation has helped you understand the conflict in your marriage. And I want to encourage you to listen to the next episode to hear Gabe and Rebekah, uh, talk more about developing community and honoring one another.
We have so many resources here at Focus on the Family to support you in your relationship. Man, 50 years of building help for you in marriage and parenting. If you’re hurting because you are dealing with a crisis in your marriage, I wanna encourage you to check our Hope Restored marriage intensives. It has an 80%, uh, success rate for those couples who participate. Don’t hesitate to sign up to find healing together. Don’t put it off. Um, it’s something you should work on today if you are limping. Uh, John will have more details on how to find that information in a minute.
Another resource for learning how to develop a more connected marriage is Gabe and Rebekah’s book, The Fight for Us. And when you make a monthly pledge of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family, we’ll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for helping others. Everything Focus on the Family offers, including Hope Restored, continues because monthly partners help make it possible month after month.
A marriage restored doesn’t just change one home, it raises children who know what God’s love looks like, and that is a great goal. One Hope Restored participant said this, “Because of Hope Restored, we see a positive future for our marriage and relationships with our children. We can’t thank Focus on the Family enough for providing this and keeping God at the center.”
So if you’re able, become a monthly partner with us to make a generational impact on families for Christ. Probably one of the best investments we could all make today for our culture. Make a one-time gift as well, a gift of any amount, and we’ll send you the book as our way of saying thank you.
John: Donate today. Get, uh, your copy of the book by Gabe and Rebekah Lyons when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. Or learn more about Hope Restored and find the book details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
And thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back for more of the conversation with Gabe and Rebekah Lyons as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Part 2:
Preview:
Gabe Lyons: That created a year where I now look back and call it the Year of Rebekah, but it was… At the time it was just, “I’m gonna give intentional time. I’m gonna make sure on Saturday mornings I take the kids; she goes out with a friend and gets to dream a little bit.”
End of Preview
John Fuller: Well, that’s Gabe Lyons talking about a season in which he prioritized his wife. And Gabe and Rebekah are with us once again on today’s Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim Daly: John, as I shared yesterday, I was able to have a wonderful conversation with Gabe and Rebekah at a conference in Nashville earlier this year. On yesterday’s episode they shared about understanding the ways your past is impacting your marriage. So if you didn’t listen to it, go back and listen through the Focus on the Family app if you missed it.
Today’s episode will include insights on navigating conflict over money, creating a support system for your marriage, and investing in each other so you can both enjoy life to the fullest. That sounds good.
John: It does, yeah. And Gabe and Rebekah are very winsome. They’re speakers, writers, and co-hosts of the podcast Rhythms for Life. And this conversation was based on their book, The Fight for Us, and we’ve got details about it, of course, online. Here now, more of Jim’s conversation with Gabe and Rebekah.
Jim: Gabe and Rebekah, it’s great to have you back.
Rebekah Lyons: Oh, thanks so much for having us.
Jim: Rebekah, you share in the book, um, connecting like spending issues.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: I mean, this is the wide variety of things that we’re talking about.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Something of a sexual nature and then you’re talking about, you know, what, what made you anxious-
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: …about spending money.
Rebekah: You know, it’s wild. We have found in all the marriages we’ve counseled that the top two arguments are sex and money.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And-
Jim: We found the same. (laughs)
Rebekah: Yeah, isn’t that wild? So I’m like, “Oh, well, we got some stories for both of those things.” Um, and because that’s where we kind of find our identity insecurity sometimes-
Jim: Interesting.
Rebekah: And just the way, like, whether that was a healthy or a very toxic version of that. So I grew up in a home with two Christian school teachers as parents. I got to go to these schools because it was free tuition, but definitely it was a more elite school, but I was wearing all homemade stuff and, you know, eating, you know, leftovers for lunch.
Gabe: Even wore culottes.
Rebekah: I wore culottes because it was fundamental Baptist.
Gabe: Anybody knows who that is- what that-
Rebekah: Come on. That’s when skirts and shorts are trying to be the same thing, but it doesn’t work.
Jim: Jean, I’m laughing because Jean just told me a story in elementary school. She took a safety pin-
Rebekah: Oh.
Jim: To make culottes out of her dress because all the cool girls had culottes.
Rebekah: (laughs) Oh man.
Jim: So she was kind of like in your boat.
Rebekah: That’s commitment. I love it. I love it. Well, you know, my mom’s dad left when she was two. She didn’t really know him or meet him until she got married. And so she very much was a survivor. And then my dad struggled with mental health stuff starting with midlife. And so, my mom was kind of a provider, primary provider, you know, into my adult years, teen and adult years. I watched my dad have a mental breakdown when I was a senior in high school. So, the bottom line is money was tight. They would always talk about money being tight. We got double coupon Tuesdays every Tuesday.
Jim: Yep, yep.
Rebekah: They sent me to Liberty, which was such a gift to college, but there was only money for the first year with a bunch of scholarships. And so, then I was just gonna have to go back home. Well, at that time, my first year after school, I had made my faith my own. God had gotten so loud in my ear. He was just transforming me.
Jim: Mm.
Rebekah: And I thought, “Oh man, I’m gonna have to just go back home.” And instead, I just became that girl that went to, stood in line at that financial aid office. And I said, “I will do anything. I will work two jobs. I will…”
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: So I had a job on campus, I had a job off campus. Full loads to finish in three years to save more money, because if you took more credits, it didn’t cost more money. Like, I was just this- Right. Survivor.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Because to me, money meant freedom.
Jim: Right. Yeah.
Rebekah: It meant I got to stay and learn communications. I got to do all the classes that were so inspiring. I got to be independent. And so ultimately, God was so kind to provide. And then God gave me a job right out of school. And then I had paid for our wedding and like just all the things. But what it…money began to be like the savior or the rescue for me.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: Or the, like, if that’s lacking, then the bottom falls out. So that was true in college, but it’s not true today. But still, I found myself going, “Gabe, um, how much did you pay for those eggs? Like, what’s the price for ounce?”
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: Like I still was living throughout our whole marriage in a scarcity mindset.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: It didn’t matter how much money we were making. I’m like, “Oh, we can’t spend that.” Like… Because maybe-
Jim: But it makes sense.
Rebekah: There was a fear that, like, “Hey, when this all goes away or the bottom drops out-”
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: “I’m back to that girl standing in that line.”
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And I didn’t realize that till, like, a couple years ago. ‘Cause I felt shame. Like, “Why am I acting so dumb and controlling about money?” And Gabe got in his mercy. He’s like, “Yeah, you need to go work on that,” you know? (laughs)
Gabe: Yeah. So super compassionate.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Well, but let me ask you this, because this, you know, this is one of the top things in marriages for all different reasons and all different descriptions.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: How did you respond to that, Gabe? I mean, Rebekah coming to you and say, “How much did you spend per ounce on that?”
Gabe: Uh, annoyed. (laughs)
Rebekah: He was so… I felt-
Jim: Okay.
Gabe: Angry.
Rebekah: Yes.
Jim: I appreciate that honesty.
Gabe: I mean, I, it was like, I have no idea.
Jim: “What are you talking about?”
Gabe: Like we needed eggs.
Rebekah: Yeah. He’s like, “We have the money.”
Gabe: Yeah, I thought it was just like an overreach, but it was happening so consistently. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, you know, except to keep some conversations just off limits. We just won’t talk about that. Or I’ll try to-
Jim: So the silent.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: “Oh, let’s go silent on that.”
Gabe: Or I’ll try to participate in your game.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Like, “I’ll remember what the ounces are next time.”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: “And I’ll try to tell you.” But ultimately, that led to us more faking it than getting to the roots, which once she did, it opened a whole new door for our relationship to realize that origin was what was impacting-
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: It gave me compassion for her. It let me know that what is she feeling in those moments is actually deeply rooted and comes from somebody who appreciates the value of the dollar, which is viable to us in our family.
Jim: Right.
Gabe: And how we raise our kids.
Jim: Yeah, I could see that.
Gabe: Uh, in a way that it wasn’t to me.
Jim: Yeah. Rebekah, in that way, what… I mean… Gabe is describing it, but what, where’d you find that freedom? Where did you get-
Rebekah: The revelation of that.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: I literally went to the Lord and I go, “God, why is this always a thing? You know, why does this have a grip?” ‘Cause that’s what bondage is.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: It’s like a certain topic just keeps coming back and you feel enslaved and you’re like, “I don’t know why I do.” You know, pause like, “I don’t know why I do it. I don’t wanna do…”
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: “I don’t wanna act.” And I think that happens in the bedroom for a lot of couples. Like they’re enslaved. They don’t feel the freedom to just confess like, “I don’t know why I don’t desire you. I don’t know why I avoid this.” I… If we could just go to the Holy Spirit and go, “God, would you please just show me the places of pain that are connected here?” ‘Cause this is deep.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: This is deep stuff that we just don’t wanna really wanna visit. But in the revelation of it, it was so freeing. I was like, “Okay, I’m not crazy. I mean, while I feel very crazy about the price of eggs,” they’re now… It now at least makes some form of sense to where I go, “I have compassion for who she was.” I asked God to do the healing work so that I don’t function as an orphan versus a daughter spirit, right? That I don’t function-
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: …out of scarcity versus abundance. And that’s a daily decision, but God has done the work now and there’s not this constant chronic thing that we don’t know why it’s happening.
Jim: Would you say you’re attentive to that emotion when you feel it?
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Like you can capture it. It’s kind of like we speak words that we wish we could take back.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: So in your thought process, when you start feeling that insecurity, you’re able to grab it and-
Rebekah: Yes.
Jim: Contain it-
Rebekah: Yes. It’s-
Jim: And not let it manage you.
Rebekah: Yeah. I think with everything, renewing the mind is a daily choice. It’s like, “Lord, am I gonna invite you, Holy Spirit, into my thought life right now that’s starting to spin up into anxiety or control?” And that can still happen no matter how healed we are. Because the triggers of the enemy are still gonna be there. He still wants to divide. We have a book out. He wants to divide us now.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: He wants to divide us after we let a four-day intensive. Like, he’s not gonna stop because he hates family. He hates marriage. But as a result of that, as long as we keep going, “Holy Spirit, would you show me what I need to surrender to you right now and receive the grace and mercy?” And, and God has just been so gracious. It’s kept us very tender, but it’s also kept us together and tethered.
Jim: You know, one of the things I so appreciate about both of you is your intentionality. I mean, it… you strike me as the couple that if there’s a problem, you’re gonna work spiritually-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: To get to a better place. Not every couple has that desire.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: For whatever reason.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: And in that context, let’s assume one spouse is in. You know, they want to find solutions. They’re desperate.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: They’re feeling lonely. They’re feeling all those emotions like, “I don’t know this person I’ve married.” And they’re not getting the response. It’s like, “I’m comfortable. Let’s just keep going this way.”
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And, and you’re not able to move.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: What do you suggest to that spouse-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: To hang in and keep trying?
Gabe: Well, because marriage is two becoming one, I think the spouse that is feeling that and has a continued burden, they’re feeling the sense of longing for their spouse, but they’re not getting reciprocation. The first thing is humility. It’s prayer. I mean, it’s all the things we would know, like, to begin with. But the second thing is being willing to raise the longing and desire you have for your spouse. I think lots of times the divide keeps growing because one of the spouses isn’t willing to just take the risk to say, “Hey, I need you. I long for you. I long for this to be the way it once was.”
Jim: Uh-huh.
Gabe: “I know I’ve contributed to this distance in some way.” And if a spouse can take responsibility for the area that they’ve contributed, they might think in their own mind, “Look, I’m like 2% of the problem here. My spouse is 98% of the issue.” We would invite you to ask the Holy Spirit, like Rebekah said, “Investigate my heart. Where have I built up walls? Where do I actually have a spirit of resistance towards this person?” And once that’s revealed, confess that to your spouse. Start with humility, confess it to one another, and you’ll be amazed at how that can tenderize the other person’s heart.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: And just create enough of an opening to begin a new type of conversation that maybe they’re not experiencing today.
Jim: No, it’s really good because we use so many cliches, you know? Own your own stuff, don’t own… But this is what that means.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Like don’t project their problem.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Don’t talk about their problem.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Talk about what you can bring in humility is always a good place to start.
Let me ask you about your son, Cade. Um, he has Down syndrome. How old is Cade now?
Rebekah: He’s 25.
Jim: 25.
Rebekah: We are, we’ve been parents a long time. (laughs) Yeah. He made us a mom and dad. Yeah.
Jim: I remember talking to you guys all those years ago. I mean, that was amazing.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: How has that impacted your marriage?
Rebekah: Yeah. Honestly, uh, that was year three. I was 26, he was 25. And a lot of… There’s a high divorce rate with parents with special needs.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: God in His mercy turned us toward one another because we were young. We had no idea. Again, rookies, no idea what we’re doing. And, um, that was actually a fortifying thing where our perspective shifted overnight. Like, the things we used to think were important kind of went back burner.
Jim: Interesting.
Rebekah: The things we’d avoided even special needs families, they became front and center. And so God shifted us that way. And I think, I believe God gave us Cade because he knew 13 years later there would be a joy and this time we would get to choose Down syndrome. Which is why we adopted our little girl from China-
Jim: Oh my.
Rebekah: About eight years-
Jim: She has Down syndrome?
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Wow.
Rebekah: Yeah. So she’s 12. And so they are now our Down syndrome bookends, and she is every bitter name. She’s a joy bomb that goes off in our home.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: She’s a cheerleader, and she just makes sure everybody knows.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: And so we’re full nesting now with a twe-
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: A 25-year-old and a 12-year-old with Down syndrome. And they have probably impacted us more and given us a vision of the Kingdom of God than anything else we’ve touched.
Jim: Describe that because most people don’t touch this area.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: They don’t have this situation. Why would you say that?
Rebekah: Because they are the barometer of our home. They are…they can tell when there’s tension. They…
Jim: They feel it.
Rebekah: Yes. They, they absorb it. And they’re like, “Daddy, be nice to Mommy.” And then she’ll go spanking.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: Like, just kidding. And of course, she can get away with anything with Gabe. But, um, they also are very present.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: They’re not stressed about the political climate, you know? They’re just about, “What is happening right now? Who’s coming over? Who can…what friends can we be with?”
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: “What fun thing can we do?” They really keep us tethered in ways that I think sometimes the mind can spin out a little bit.
Gabe: Yeah, I think that’s the ability to be present is crucial with them. And that helps us. And it also, as Rebekah said, the word tether I think has been important for us. I mean, we look back over 25 years since Cade was born, there’s certainly been limitations in our schedule. Trips we can go on that some of our friends are able to do and we can’t. Or even, like, not being empty nesters. Like, we understand what our future looks like, but we all, we see it as a grace that God’s given us that’s kept us local, tethered-
Rebekah: Slower.
Gabe: Amongst a strong community. Slowed, keep… Yeah, slower. (laughs) We’ve learned patience, like fruits of the Spirit.
Rebekah: Oh my goodness.
Gabe: I probably would’ve never learned without-
Rebekah: 100%.
Gabe: This life. And so we’re…that’s why we’re grateful for it.
Rebekah: I think, yeah, God’s used them in spite of us, because we are both kind of hard charging. We’re both very driven. And the Lord’s like, “I’m gonna give you something that’s really gonna round that out so that you, uh, are near some still waters, some quiet waters and some green pastures.” And they are. I mean, they will smell the roses, and they will take their sweet time. And it has been so good for us and our spiritual disciplines.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And it’s helped our marriage because we’re both like, “We’re doing this together. We said yes to joy in our late 40s.” I mean, we’re old. We’re in our 50s now.
Jim: (laughs)
Rebekah: And so we’re like, you know, we need each other. And that has been such a beautiful thing.
Jim: It’s amazing. Uh, you know, I think of the couples that have adopted out of foster care or from overseas, a special needs child. I mean, my admiration is sky-high for you and for all the others that have done that. ‘Cause you’re knowingly taking on… If I could say it this way and you can help me with this, but it’s the discomfort-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … of what that means.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: The things that you give up. Yeah. And we’re so geared to comfort in this culture.
Rebekah: Yes. Absolutely.
Jim: You know, that’s our goal. Let’s be comfortable in our 401K’s and everything else.
Rebekah: Yeah. Kind of check out a little bit.
Jim: Yeah. And speak to the edge where the Lord wants us to be.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Like, I don’t… The older I get, the more I realize the Lord isn’t about making me comfortable.
Rebekah: Yes.
Jim: But it’s what I wanna lean into.
Rebekah: I know.
Jim: Because it’s comfortable.
Rebekah: (laughs) Exactly.
Jim: But it’s, I think something that the church is fighting in Western civilization right now. I like to say it’s like a fork in the road.
Gabe: Yeah.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, are we mature enough as believers to jettison comfort for the work of the Spirit?
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: I wanna talk also before we end about cultivating strong community. This is probably another one of those modern problems that, you know, we hit the garage door button, we go in, we don’t really know our neighbors, if we’re honest. I mean, Jean and I try to do that and take care of the widow across the street and shovel the driveway and bring her something baked that Jean might do. But by and large, we don’t really know our community well.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: So speak to the strong things we should be doing as Christians in our community.
Gabe: Well, and that’s how marriages, I believe, survive during the season we’re in and ahead is you can’t do life alone. You do need other couples around. We lived in New York City for a season and-
Jim: There’s quite a few couples around.
Gabe: Yeah. (laughs) There was a lot of couples around.
Jim: It’s crowded.
Rebekah: We’re still lonely, though.
Gabe: But it can be very lonely-
Jim: But that’s interesting. Yeah.
Gabe: If you’re not with people that you’re aligned with in terms of your worldview, your faith, how you’re raising your children. And that was part of an impetus for us to move from New York City back to the Tennessee area was we wanted to be around a church, community, school, alignment.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Because we knew how much that would strengthen our marriage versus being on our own. But you’re right. In this age, a lot of couples are trying to do all of this on their own. They don’t realize other couples are struggling. And when you get people together in a small group, in a community and you open up, this is what Rebekah and I’s experience has been.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: When we share vulnerably what we’ve been sharing with you today, you start to see people look up again and go, “Wow, we’re not the only ones dealing with this?”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: ‘Cause the way the enemy wants us to think is that “Your marriage in a crisis. You married the wrong person. You guys have all the issues. Those families are great.”
Rebekah: Right.
Gabe: And what you know and I know and we’ve experienced is when you open the door vulnerably to say, “No, we’re struggling too.” Like that’s what this book is about. We have a fight for our marriage just like you do, but we wanna encourage you. You can do it.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Gabe: And you can’t do it alone.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: You’ve gotta create community around your marriage.
Rebekah: And the only way you create community is create some form of overlapping thing on a consistent basis. Like community needs presence, proximity and permanence. So this idea of going like, it’s not just gonna happen like going to dinner once a quarter.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: Like so, who in your life are you overlapping? So we had to get a little more deliberate, you know, as full nesters. We’re like, “What can we do in our community?” So he started a men’s Bible study every week, 50 guys. It’s-
Jim: Ha! That’s great.
Rebekah: It’s every Tuesday for eight years. It’s not like a short thing.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: Like it’s just a commitment and people come and go, but it’s like it’s always there. And when you open the Word together, that opens the heart as well to one another.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: So, then I followed as a submissive wife. I, like, three years ago, I did one. I started one for women. And we just met this morning before I came down. And the beautiful thing about opening the Word and letting the Word kind of wrestle, um, in the context of a group is that vulnerability just happens.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: And then prayer happens. And then God’s rescue happens. And marriages in this group have been saved. They have been restored. They have been hit. Wombs that couldn’t have babies. They’re now having babies. We call it the birthing room now. So this is just the beautiful power of just being this household of faith. And yes, we’re doing it in practical, tactical ways, but we’re also, like, grounded in faith and the unity of that. And it’s just been transformative. Like, we feel so tethered to community now in Nashville. Yeah. And that’s just one small little way.
Jim: Well, and it’s such a great community for believers. I mean, it kind of fits, right?
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: And it knits together, but you had to get up and move.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: Right. You know and that’s a big step.
Gabe: Yeah. But any…wherever anyone’s at, what we have found in this current age, if you’re willing to open the Bible and say, “Hey, do you guys wanna get into the Bible together?” Like, the hunger for the Bible right now is amazing. So I would invite any couple who’s feeling lonely.
Jim: That’s good.
Gabe: I don’t care what city you’re in.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Find another friend or two because for me, like, Bible study started with just three other guys. It wasn’t a big thing. It was like, “No, let’s, we want community. Let’s see community through the Word of God and how we’re processing our marriages, our families, but also the culture that we’re all trying to live amongst.” And I think that has been the glue that’s bound us together and given us the conviction to make the hard decisions that’s required to be a couple that’s gonna fight for their marriage.
Jim: You know, one of the interesting things with divorce statistics right now, I think the New York Times said it was the graying of divorce.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: So the couples that have been married 30-
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: 40 years. The kids are grown, they’re out of the house, and they look at each other and say, “Ah, I really don’t know you anymore and I really don’t like you anymore.” And mostly women are the ones filing.
Rebekah: They are.
Jim: Let me ask you about how you guys have dealt with the early stages of your marriage, Rebekah, where you were supportive of Gabe and everything he was doing, which is awesome. And then it kinda turned a little corner where, Gabe, you’ve become supportive of Rebekah and what she would like to do.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: Describe that and the importance of it.
Gabe: Well, it happened for us as our third child entered kindergarten and Rebekah was finally in this moment where there’s like gonna be a little more time during the day because our kids were at school. And it started a new conversation for us. I realized she’d been supporting me so faithfully and sacrificially for years in my career as we had launched our organization, THINQ. And she had given a lot to that while raising kids and it started to dawn on me that, “I need to give as much attention to Rebekah’s gifts, her calling, her purpose, her passion as she’s given to me.”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: She was going through a season where there was more anxiety taking place and one of the learnings from that, from Victor Frankl, was just understand that sometimes anxiety is coming from unfulfilled responsibility.
Jim: Interesting.
Gabe: And I wanted to better understand, “Are there things you feel like are unfulfilled that you are to do in the world that you’ve in some ways had to set aside because you’ve been so committed to me, so committed to our family?” And so that created a year where I now look back and call it the Year of Rebekah, but it was… At the time it was just, “I’m gonna give intentional time. I’m gonna make sure on Saturday mornings I take the kids; she goes out with a friend and gets to dream a little bit.”
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Or she went to Parsons Design School for a couple semesters in New York because she’d always loved sewing and fashion. And so she did that. And so it was a year of her experimenting with her gifts. It ultimately landed in her realizing that her gift was writing and teaching and telling her story vulnerably.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: Which ultimately led to her writing a book and beginning that journey. And since then, I would say in our marriage, our calling, we just both look at one another and we try to be strategic about the investment, but we try to find ways to support one another creatively during seasons where perhaps there’s more opportunity in front of us for one or the other. But we do it in unity to try to make sure we’re supporting each other so that it’s not just her supporting me in my career.
Jim: Yeah.
Gabe: But I’m able to support her in the opportunities God’s providing.
Rebekah: Yeah.
Jim: And I would think, Rebekah, for women particularly that are in that spot, that’s where resentment can-
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: You know, you talk about origin issues.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: You know, “We’re not doing anything that I would like to achieve-”
Rebekah: Right.
Jim: “With my life.”
Rebekah: Yeah. I think women initiate because they have not, they have felt subservient. They have felt like they are kind of secondary in priority, whether it’s desire, passion, dream. And there… they might be primary in caregiving, but other than that, like, what skills, talents, birthright gifts did God knit in them in the womb? And what destiny did He call out in advance? Scripture says in Psalm 139 that He made us and our…His works were wonderful and He knit us. And then all our days were written and planned before one of them began.
Jim: Yeah.
Rebekah: So if a father calls out destiny over a son, he also does that for his daughter.
Jim: Right.
Rebekah: And what, how do we, even as a couple, champion and fight for one another in partnership? I’m not called to motherhood more than he’s called to fatherhood. And so how do we partner in parenting? How do we partner in vocation both inside and outside the home? And that looks different for every couple.
It doesn’t always happen at the same time in the same season. But I always tell women, like, “If you’re leaving your marriage because you think you can’t serve God or have ministry and be married, that’s a lie. But it does require an intentional conversation with your spouse to go like, ‘We need to be on the same team here. We need to kind of work this out so that… because if God’s birthing something, then He’s never calling us to something that abandons family. So how do we together partner in what this looks like?'”
Jim: Yeah, that’s so good. I mean, this has really covered the gambit. I love it. Uh, you know, you’ve touched on so many issues here. And, uh, you know, I could just see it being so helpful for everybody. And it is true, the fight for us. I mean, it’s about your marriage.
Gabe: Yeah.
Jim: And finishing well.
Rebekah: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And doing that well. Wouldn’t that be a good place?
Rebekah: I know.
Gabe: I know. And part of what our hope is that couples who aren’t familiar with some of the emotional dialogue or how to connect, that they’ll just begin by taking first steps of just starting conversations with each other. Turning towards one another for repair and listening and learning and beginning to have healthier conversations that can lead to them ultimately experiencing the joy that I think God’s designed for every marriage.
Jim: Well, you’ve done a great job doing it. But yeah, you’re gonna say.
Rebekah: Well, I was just gonna say that we don’t stay in the marriage out of duty or obligation.
Jim: Mm.
Rebekah: But that if we are committed to marriage as a covenant before God, then ask the Holy Spirit to reignite our desire and find that in that beautiful… Like there- that is for even people who’ve been married a long time and have felt like roommates. Like ask the Holy Spirit to just stir and awaken that desire once again, because if you’re gonna be together, you might as well really enjoy it.
Jim: No, I love it. That’s the pitch, right? We want people to improve their relationship. And man, if you’re living like roommates, get a copy of the book-
Rebekah: (laughs)
Jim: And start discovering how to live a more fulfilled relationship, right? That’s a great goal. Thanks for being with us.
Gabe: You’re welcome.
Rebekah: Thank you so much for having us.
Jim: Ah, man, I was so encouraged by that conversation with Gabe and Rebekah. And I hope it also encouraged those of you listening, even if your marriage is broken or not where it needs to be, God can bring healing to your relationship.
If our program today really hit home for you because you are struggling in your marriage, please consider attending Hope Restored. It is the most amazing program that I’m aware of. It has over an 80% success rate and many of the couples coming already have divorce papers in hand. I don’t know of anything doing a better job to repair marriages. Couples who participate go through a few days of counseling and are taught tools that transform their marriages, literally. Uh, John, you’ll have more details at the end there for people to sign up.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I also wanna recommend you get a copy of Gabe and Rebekah’s wonderful book, The Fight for Us. I love the title. When you make a monthly pledge of any amount, we’ll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for being in ministry with us. It takes about 90 seconds to sign up. It’s automatic and you can adjust it or cancel it at any time.
Going back to Hope Restored, one participant told us this. “We arrived hurt and hopeless. We’re leaving full of hope for our future. With God holding our hands the whole way we learned that we are loved and known.” And, uh, we hear amazing stories of transformation from those participants at Hope Restored. And we need monthly donations to keep programs like this running all year long. But if a monthly gift doesn’t work for you today, we’ll still send you a copy of the book for a one-time gift. Just jump on board and let’s do ministry together.
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Partner with Focus on the Family. Uh, learn more about Hope Restored. Donate and get your copy of Gabe and Rebekah Lyons’ book when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY, or we’ve got all the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
And next time, we’ll hear from British evangelist J. John as he talks about having a positive outlook on life.
Preview:
J. John: You see, most of us are constantly being shaken. We’re being stressed. We’re being pulled. But when I look to the Lord, I’m not gonna be shaken. I’m not gonna let anything shake me. I’m not gonna let anything make me feel downcast.
End of Preview
John: Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
