Latest / The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast / No Fail Love | a conversation with Kristen Clark & Bethany Beal

Transcript

No Fail Love | a conversation with Kristen Clark & Bethany Beal · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Hi friends, welcome back to the Simply Wholehearted podcast.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: It means so much to have you choose to take our conversation along with you today.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm Amy Wicks, your host, and here at Simply Wholehearted, we provide simple plans for life's most creative endeavors.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: The culture around us lulls us to complacency, half awake to our purpose, and more often than not, it seems as if everyone around us celebrates mediocrity.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: But we believe there is more to your story.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Awaken your heart with extraordinary tales of the ordinary.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Find encouragement as you discover your creative purpose, and be empowered to create your unique masterpiece in life, family, and community.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, happy Valentine's Day! Perhaps a little groan escapes you when you hear that phrase.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, the unmet expectations, the hype, all the sweet temptations.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Like most holidays, a mix of emotions play into our outlook of this tradition.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure if we purposed this or it just sort of happened, but Valentine's Day has become a very sweet day to celebrate the love of family.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: We keep it simple.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Ride a card to each child, and we even did that when they weren't old enough to read it.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: We give them a little treat or a small trinket.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: When we think ahead, we sometimes create a scavenger hunt to make it a little bit more exciting.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'm really glad that Valentine's Day is something that my kids look forward to as a special family holiday.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Though this year I inadvertently scheduled their dentist appointments in the afternoon during their class parties.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Oops, at least they get a little slushy after their cleaning, which does not make any sense to me, but hey, they love going to the dentist.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: So today I am sharing a conversation with the most perfect guests in light of this special day.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Two sisters who are obviously dear friends and have grown a community together for girls and women to find a safe place to ask the hard questions.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Girl Defined is helping other women get back to God's design in every stage of life.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Kristen, Bethany, and I are talking about wholehearted singleness, purity before and after marriage, and Christ's perfect, no-fail love.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that so spot on for No Fail February?
2:20
SPEAKER_01: These gals were super fun to chat with.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: We laughed a lot, and of course I had to squeeze in a little romance.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: So newly married Bethany indulges with a story of how she met her husband not too long ago.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: I love this conversation and I'm so excited to share it with you today.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: So funny, we're literally obsessed with Woolfy 2.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, what's the favorite flavor?
2:45
SPEAKER_01: I like the grapefruit one.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do too.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: Do I try?
2:49
SPEAKER_01: We always get the grapefruit.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we always get that one.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried the bubbly?
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Because that's kind of similar.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: I think I want to say Coke puts that one out.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: Oh it's a different brand, or yeah.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: So it's a different brand, but it's still the sparkling flavored water.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: No, I haven't tried that one.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, again, a recommendation because I think so I have my favorite LaCroix too, but the some of the bubbly flavors, they're more intense.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: Like you taste.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what they do.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: There's probably some ingredient they're not disclosing.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: But yes, like usually is the case.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: My friend sent me an article the other day telling me that there was rat poison in LaCroix or something like that.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I saw that too.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Hush, hush, hush.
3:34
SPEAKER_03: It's not this crazy stuff.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: Like it's just water.
3:36
SPEAKER_03: I don't want to hear anything else.
3:37
SPEAKER_03: Nope.
3:38
SPEAKER_03: Don't hear it.
3:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
3:40
SPEAKER_03: Well, are you the are you the founder of the Simply Wholehearted?
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I am.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: I am the girl.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:47
SPEAKER_03: How did you when did you start it in?
3:49
SPEAKER_03: How did you start it or why did you start it?
3:52
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, I'll try to tell you the shortened version.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's actually been almost three years.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: My mother-in-law and I went to a conference together, actually the business boutique conference, you may have heard of it.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh yes! We've been there.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh fun! Oh, awesome! So this was Dallas 2016.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: And I was doing Norwex and I had a really great, like, you know, from home business.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: I was still mom full-time and homeschooling and doing all this stuff.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I went there to learn, but I also um my mother-in-law had written this book and done this thing with her kids called the Super Summer Challenge.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: She used to speak to mom's groups and just share it.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: And I I had adopted it in my own life, and my sister-in-law, and I'd been sharing it with my friends, and so she kind of they had some hard things that they encountered, and so she kind of lost some steam about sharing it.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: But I was like, no, people, you know, young mom need this message.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I took her in hopes that she would get energized for it, but instead, I literally, it was the weirdest thing, and so either this will freak you out or you'll resonate.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: But I sat next to her and I felt like a spiritual mantle like lifted off of her onto my shoulders.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: And it was this moment where I'm like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to carry this message of intentional parenting.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And I so and out of nowhere, as I was just sitting listening to all the speakers, I was I was dreaming about all these ideas, not about Norwex, but about this intentional living.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: And I was dreaming about like, oh, I would love to talk about to people like Christy Wright.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: How do they do like how as strong women do they do marriage and parenting and all the things?
5:31
SPEAKER_01: And what I didn't know is I was dreaming of a podcast, you know, essentially as a kid, I used to listen to talk radio, Paul Harvey, some of those things, and I'm like, I'd love to get into radio.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's kind of like all these things collide, and they are several.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: So crazy.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's super.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: And you just do it from your home?
5:54
SPEAKER_01: I do, and now my kids go to school.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: So the hours that they're at school, yeah, um, I get to do this, and you know, everything's a process, right?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just learning as I'm going and probably doing too many things at once, but it's what I'm doing.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: So yes, totally.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: We know about that.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Ladies, how did you get into the book business and decide to write a book together and everything?
6:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, we're we're both like a year, we're like a year and a half apart.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: So we feel like we're practically twins, but not really.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: I have two girls 14 months apart, and so yeah, it is.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: It's awesome.
6:27
SPEAKER_03: We love that.
6:28
SPEAKER_03: We love being so close in age, but really just you know, kind of hitting our later teen years, early 20 years.
6:33
SPEAKER_03: We both we were passionate about ministry and wanted to get involved in kind of being like big sisters, examples, role models to the next, kind of like the next generation behind us, and just seeing a lot of our kind of acquaintances and friends around us grow up and not really hold on to the faith, kind of just like ditch it.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: And we were like, what like what's going on?
6:51
SPEAKER_03: Why are so many of our peers like not holding on to this and making it their own?
6:55
SPEAKER_03: And so I just kind of planted this desire in our hearts, both of us, to want to do something.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: It's been a long process.
7:01
SPEAKER_03: We you know, dabbled in like blogging, and it was just like we were awful at it for so long.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: So terrible, so terrible for years.
7:09
SPEAKER_03: She got married, we kind of dropped everything off maps.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: And then after she had been married for a little while, we were like, hey, let's get back into this.
7:16
SPEAKER_03: We got really serious.
7:17
SPEAKER_03: We read some stuff by Michael Hyatt, and we were like, okay, you know, coming up with our plan.
7:22
SPEAKER_03: And then we decided to start, you know, start a blog which was Girl Defined.
7:26
SPEAKER_03: And then it really was within our first year, she wrote a post called Why Christian Girls Post Seductive Selfies that went viral.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: And it was just everywhere and through that.
7:36
SPEAKER_03: Super unexpected, unexpected.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: But like literally, we had launched a blog through that um blog post, actually, Baker publishing group, Baker Books, who is now our publisher found that blog post, reached out to us, and asked us to write.
7:50
SPEAKER_03: So we just it was like a miracle of miracles because we had we had no connections, no way, you know.
7:56
SPEAKER_03: So then we published our first book, Girl to Find, and then Love to Find, and now our third book will come out in May.
8:02
SPEAKER_03: Sex Purity and the Longings of a Girl's Heart.
8:04
SPEAKER_03: So it's just been a wild, wild roller coaster since then of just publishing.
8:09
SPEAKER_03: We just signed our next contract with them.
8:10
SPEAKER_03: So we'll have an additional two more books coming out.
8:13
SPEAKER_03: So it'll be five books total so far, which is just exciting.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it's been fun, it's just been so cool to see, like, you know, just God opening doors, not opening doors, and just kind of directing the ministry for me one day.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: So we're having a blast.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: Being faithful and just writing what is on your heart and what you're seeing and speaking to that, that is so great.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord, I mean, that's when you know that the Lord's in it.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of all those things collide at once.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Right, yes, it just goes forward.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's beautiful.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's a great thing too, because it's hard, it is hard work.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: It's it takes so much.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: We can all be a good thing.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: Yes, the day in and day out.
8:49
SPEAKER_03: It's just like being consistent.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: That's the thing that has helped us the most.
8:52
SPEAKER_03: It's just having a plan, being consistent, and then sticking with that plan.
8:57
SPEAKER_03: So whether it's our videos once a week, our blog posts, yeah.
9:00
SPEAKER_03: We just that was Michael Hyatt's biggest advice.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: Like be consistent.
9:04
SPEAKER_03: Take your number and do it, and don't stop doing it.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: And we haven't stopped since 2014.
9:09
SPEAKER_03: We've been very consistent with our goals.
9:11
SPEAKER_03: So we're like, praise the Lord.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: It just you know this.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: It's like most of the work, like 95% of it, is not glamorous.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: It's like behind the scenes, like you know, and then a book comes out or a great podcast, and people are like, Oh, how fun! And you're like, You have no idea.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: It's what's behind every post, right?
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, yes, they get the pretty, but the things that went into it before that I know the drama.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, by the way, I feel like something I have something in my teeth.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: I literally inhaled my lunch right before we packed.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: So if I do, we'll just pretend it's behind the microphone.
9:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we can't really see your teeth, so we're good.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: There you go.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: I just had a green smoothie, so I'm sure my face is like.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, you're good, you're good, you're all clear.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, I I am excited because it's Valentine's Day.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: We're sharing this on Valentine's Day.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how fun! Yes, it's awesome.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: And I think love defined just works perfect, right?
10:05
SPEAKER_01: Purpose defined, love defined.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's so great.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I think a lot of um what you have to speak to.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: I am both raising young girls, you know, and and a boy in there.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: Um my girls are just hitting those, you know, they're in the tween age years.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this speaks to me as as I teach it, but it also speaks to married women.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how I love that you approached it from both the single and the young, but then also those who are married and the different issues we're dealing with in that.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: So we know a little bit about how the book came up, but I know too when we get the contract for the book or we're even like talking about titles, where we start and where we end up often looks radically different.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit more about the process and why you landed with you know the structure and the content and what you chose to speak on.
10:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:55
SPEAKER_03: So for Love Defined specifically.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:59
SPEAKER_03: So this book came as a result of literally hundreds of emails that we received from the Girl Define.
11:06
SPEAKER_03: We call it the sisterhood.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: So the girls who follow us, um, they every day we get emails about guys, romance, relationships, dating, marriage, all of those things.
11:16
SPEAKER_03: And so it was impossible to respond to every question.
11:18
SPEAKER_03: So we just started taking note of all of the questions that were coming in.
11:22
SPEAKER_03: And then we decided to actually send out a survey.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: We're like, you know, let's let the Girl Define Sisterhood really help us write this book.
11:28
SPEAKER_03: And so we sent out a survey and said, basically asked maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 questions asking what their most pressing questions were about love and romance.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: And the results that came in really helped us actually write the topics in the book because there were some questions that were coming in over and over and over again, like, what's your number one question regarding love and romance?
11:46
SPEAKER_03: And so many girls said, How do you know if he's the one?
11:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, so then we wrote a whole chapter on answering that question, how to know if he's the one.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: And then other girls were asking, you know, what are some red flags to look for?
11:56
SPEAKER_03: Like, are there things I should be concerned about as I'm dating, as I'm moving towards engagement?
12:01
SPEAKER_03: So we wrote a whole chapter on 10 red flags to look for in a romantic relationship.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: And so that is something that has been really cool is listening to your followers, listening to those people who are tuning in and hearing what their questions are, hearing where their heart is at, hearing what they need and want to learn about, and then writing something that's meeting that need.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: And so doing that also gave us confidence as we were writing, because you're not writing to the mystical person in the sky, right?
12:27
SPEAKER_03: Like this some person, Sally somewhere.
12:29
SPEAKER_03: You're like, you're writing with all of these girls in mind answering their questions.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: So that's really what helped us form the structure of Love Defines.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, and what's crazy is you know, the girls, I don't think they often realize, and the young women, women, that we can see behind the scenes, so we know which posts, which videos are the most popular, you know, the analytics.
12:45
SPEAKER_03: That's not something so godly, you know, like how to have a good quiet time.
12:49
SPEAKER_03: And you know, the click rates.
12:51
SPEAKER_03: It's like they barely open email, and then we write about like, you know, how to, you know, deal with go through a breakup or you know, dealing with this crush, whatever, and then the click rates are like off the charts.
13:00
SPEAKER_03: We're like, it's very clear the topics that they're interested in.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: But you know, love and romance is very much on their minds, so we need to address this.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh that's good.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, what surprised you the most?
13:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think I think for me, when I I mean, 13 years ago, I was working with at-risk youth in high schools and junior highs, and I was shocked then that the questions that they were coming to ask or the issues that they were dealing with and the stuff going on at school.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: What are some of those things that you've actually been surprised and maybe it breaks your heart along the way too?
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And and in the process, what can we do as parents or as leaders in our community to help?
13:39
SPEAKER_03: I think not necessarily most shocking, but just really sad are the emails that we get from girls who are saying, I've never told anyone this before.
13:47
SPEAKER_03: This is the first time I've ever said this.
13:49
SPEAKER_03: And so many of those email headers, they literally it's just help.
13:53
SPEAKER_03: I need help.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: And then you go into the email and they're so often about like guys, romance, sexual struggles, um, issues with purity, a guy that's pressuring them to do certain things with him and they don't want to lose his attention.
14:06
SPEAKER_03: Um, and so those emails come in literally every single day.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: And what's so sad is one, we're the first people that they're ever telling, you know, because we're safe, but we're also at a very much of a distance.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: And so they don't have to feel like, okay, they don't really know me, I can share this with them.
14:22
SPEAKER_03: But the people, you know, their parents, the, you know, teachers, people who are around them who may love them most have no idea the struggles that these young women are dealing with.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: And so I think, you know, I think for parents specifically, not assuming like, well, my daughter, you know, like Jenny, she doesn't struggle with anything.
14:39
SPEAKER_03: She's fine.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: If a parent acts that way, it only keeps the young woman in bondage because she's like, my mom doesn't know anything.
14:45
SPEAKER_03: She has no idea.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: She thinks I'm fine.
14:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she thinks I'm fine.
14:48
SPEAKER_03: And so if I speak up, she'll be shocked and so disappointed.
14:51
SPEAKER_03: So I think parents bringing up these conversations and saying, hey, let's talk about this, or just kind of, you know, even casually kind of approaching the topic.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: So, what are your thoughts about guys?
15:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, is there anyone you're interested in?
15:02
SPEAKER_03: Even just being a friend to her may give her the young woman the idea, like, hey, my mom actually has a clue.
15:07
SPEAKER_03: She knows, I think about guys, you know?
15:09
SPEAKER_03: And then I think slowly the door will open and maybe that young woman will go to her mom or go to like a trusted older woman next time instead of emailing us.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: Even though we love the emails, we wish someone in person in their life would be able to talk to them.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's so important.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: I think I think that's the sad thing in general for most our society is the lack of community that we're having to go to these online places.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing that you know you're cultivating that.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: That's what you know.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: My hope is to create that safe place.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: But the idea is to get it, you know, in person because it's so much better that way, and there can be so much help along the process.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Um how about speaking to marriage?
15:50
SPEAKER_01: What were some of the questions, or what did you feel led to speak on about marriage that surprised you, you know, in that process?
15:58
SPEAKER_03: I think the biggest question was just what is true love?
16:02
SPEAKER_03: You know, really.
16:03
SPEAKER_03: So many of us get married, and we have this idea that marriage is all about just emotions and fantasy and us marrying our perfect prince, charming, infatuation.
16:12
SPEAKER_03: And so often, so many girls that we've eaten that have emailed us, that we've talked to, they get married, and then it's not at all what they expected because I think their view of what love is has been so shaped by society, shaped by the culture, tick flicks, the music.
16:27
SPEAKER_03: And so they're thinking it's just gonna be this romantic ride their entire lives.
16:31
SPEAKER_03: And so many of them haven't seen godly marriages that have been lived out through the thick and thin.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: And so they have this perspective, which we call it in our book the fairy tale facade, this idea that it's gonna be a fairy tale.
16:42
SPEAKER_03: But then when you peek behind the scenes of what's really happening in Hollywood, what's really happening behind these movies that always then happily ever after, it's not pretty.
16:50
SPEAKER_03: It's not ending well when we define love on our emotions, on what feels good in the moment.
16:54
SPEAKER_03: And so that's probably the biggest thing for married women is just, and for myself and now Bethany's married as of less than a month.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so good.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: She just got married.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:06
SPEAKER_03: But it's that idea that as we look at the Bible and we start defining love according to God's word, we see such a different picture of what true love actually is.
17:15
SPEAKER_03: And so in our book, we really we took several chapters just unpacking God-defined love that it's self-sacrificing.
17:21
SPEAKER_03: It's loving someone else when you don't feel like it.
17:23
SPEAKER_03: It's choosing to be Christ to this person, how regardless of how they're acting, how they're responding.
17:28
SPEAKER_03: And in marriage, when we take that kind of love in, kind of that long distance, I'm in it for the long haul, I'm gonna love you wholeheartedly as Christ has loved me.
17:37
SPEAKER_03: It really changes expectations.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: It changes our perspective as we look at our spouse as far as what is love.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: Do we have love?
17:44
SPEAKER_03: Well, we don't know, you know, we can be responsible for ourselves and if we're loving them.
17:48
SPEAKER_03: And so I think just kind of changing the narrative surrounding love for married women has been probably the biggest thing that we really touched on that I think was for so many people of our age, millennials, you know, growing up in this society, it's very confusing to them to even know what true love is.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: And well, you know, single women, I was single for 30 years.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: I just got married three and a half weeks ago, literally.
18:09
SPEAKER_03: So fun.
18:10
SPEAKER_03: Congrats.
18:10
SPEAKER_03: You know, thinking back to my single years, I mostly, I, you know, wrote wrote several chapters in love to find specifically to the single women, because there is just this misconception that as a single, you think marriage will solve all your problems.
18:21
SPEAKER_03: Right.
18:22
SPEAKER_03: If you have an issue, a struggle, an addiction, you really feel like marriage will cure that.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're addicted to pornography, you're like, no, once I get married and I'm having sex, it'll be fine.
18:30
SPEAKER_03: I won't have this.
18:31
SPEAKER_03: And so you think almost like your sin will go away and your perfect prince charming will make all of your dreams come true.
18:37
SPEAKER_03: So I think it's helping single women understand, no, only Christ can satisfy ultimately.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: And then we need to develop that Christ-like love that we can offer to someone else.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: And then married women, they're already there.
18:48
SPEAKER_03: So it's like, okay, you're already in the marriage now.
18:50
SPEAKER_03: How can you, you know, pour on that Christ honor love?
18:53
SPEAKER_03: And now being three and a half weeks married, I'm like, okay, yeah.
18:57
SPEAKER_03: It's wonderful and it's great, but it's not always, you know, the honeymoon's over.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: When, you know, even leaving to go to our honeymoon, we actually we flew into Colorado, and when we, after our flight had been canceled, we've been completely redirected, got in way later than we were hoping.
19:14
SPEAKER_03: We had four bags with everything in it, and not a single one arrived.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: So we had to drive two hours to our like little VRBO cabin without a single bag, just hoping that they would come to the show.
19:26
SPEAKER_03: So it's like in that moment when I'm feeling so stressed, so frustrated, you know, with my brand new husband.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: It's like I was even challenged there, like, okay, I have to make a choice.
19:34
SPEAKER_03: The feelings aren't really here because I'm like flustered for the whole day.
19:38
SPEAKER_03: So it's like it hits, it can hit pretty early, that true love needing to come to the doctor.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Where's my fairy godmother?
19:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wouldn't that be nice?
19:46
SPEAKER_01: I know.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Give us a little bit.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I have the book, I've gone through the book, I get the structure of it.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Share with our friends um just how you decided to structure it and what it would look like to go through it, maybe with a group even or with our girlfriends or individually.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: We love doing book studies, and so we wrote this book intentionally to have a chapter-by-chapter study guide for personal use, for group use.
20:08
SPEAKER_03: And so that was a big thing that we really wanted to have is to facilitate discussion.
20:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:12
SPEAKER_03: And if, you know, a woman married or single picks it up and she's like, I've never led a study, it makes it so easy because you read the chapters, you do the study, you can facilitate it with the group.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: So that was one thing that was very important in the structure of this book was to make it group friendly and personally.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: And then the other thing was we divided our book into five sections.
20:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
20:30
SPEAKER_03: And each section takes a little bit of a different turn, covers something a little bit differently, starting with section one, we called happily ever disaster.
20:38
SPEAKER_03: And until we really understand the problem and the lies that we're believing about love, marriage, I mean, marriage is being redefined and our society is just defining the problem of so many people are longing for true love, but so few women are experiencing it.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: Married, single women are longing for it, they're getting married, they're not finding this happily ever after.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: So what's the problem?
20:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, so we really break down here's where we're going wrong.
21:02
SPEAKER_03: Here's this crazy cycle.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: We call it the merry-go-around method for modern romance.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: And you get on, it's infatuation driven, it's all about how can they make me happy.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: And you get in all involved, you get married, they don't meet your needs, it's not as happy always as you thought.
21:15
SPEAKER_03: So then, okay, I'm done with that relationship, moving on to the next one.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: You're on this constant search that's just round and round and round and round.
21:21
SPEAKER_03: And so so many women find themselves on this crazy cycle.
21:24
SPEAKER_03: So we talk about that, really break it down.
21:26
SPEAKER_03: And then once we understand the problem where we're going wrong, then we go chip part two is bringing back true love.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: So that's where we really dig in to just understanding why did God create marriage?
21:37
SPEAKER_03: Why did he make a man and a woman and put them in this union called marriage?
21:42
SPEAKER_03: Creates, you know, he created sexual intimacy, he created family.
21:45
SPEAKER_03: Like, why did he do this?
21:47
SPEAKER_03: Romance was obviously his idea and it's such a beautiful thing, but why?
21:51
SPEAKER_03: So we really dig in and help the reader just understand God had a beautiful plan.
21:55
SPEAKER_03: Sin came in and really messed that up, but God wants us to chase after his original.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Design for true love, romance, and really lasting relationships, marriages for a lifetime.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: So we dig into that.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: I think too, kind of speaking to that, and this was uh uh somebody said this um idea about how God loves us more than our marriage, and I think this fits in right with that idea because we have idolized marriage, we have put it on this, you know, the fairy tale thing.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: But part uh in conjunction with that, Christians, well-meaning Christians, believers, godly women, have put it as that, like, well, God really can only use me, or like I was purposed to be married, and therefore I'm missing something if that's not there.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: And so we have been they're saying we're saying that God loves marriage more than he loves us as individuals, and that's where I think too this speaks to that of like, no, he has purpose for you, has plan for you.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: He loves you for you alone before marriage even comes into the picture.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: Totally, and I think it's so important.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: I think that's a key for single or married women to remember that our purpose here on earth never changes.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: Whether we are single or married, our purpose is to glorify God.
23:06
SPEAKER_03: And we, although marriage is a wonderful, beautiful covenant institution created by God, we do not have to be married in order to fulfill our life purpose.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: We can do that as a single woman or as an unmarried woman.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: And if you're married, your purpose is still the same, it just looks different now.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: So if that's your mindset, as a single woman, there's so much hope and contentment that can come in that because you're like, hey, you know, my life purpose is still the same, you know, whether I get married, then if you're married, it's like it just looks different now.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: But this is glorifying God.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: Glorifying God.
23:35
SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's so cool.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: And I love that you pointed that out because it's so important to not not idolize any season.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: You know, we always want to go back, like, well, I'm married now, I want the freedom of people, I'm single, I want to be married.
23:46
SPEAKER_03: But saying, no, it's not about really at the heart, it's not about any of that, it's about glorifying God.
23:50
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for pointing that out.
23:53
SPEAKER_03: And that's actually the next part, part three in our book, we called it single and waiting to mingle.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: And we wrote it specifically.
23:59
SPEAKER_03: She, Bethany, actually wrote that because at the time of writing Love Define last year, she was 100% single without like her now husband, like she didn't even know that was gonna happen.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: So when she wrote these chapters, she wrote two chapters specifically on how to find contentment, how to trust God.
24:14
SPEAKER_03: And then when your heart's desire is unfulfilled, how can you, as a single woman, still desiring marriage?
24:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, the desire isn't wrong.
24:21
SPEAKER_03: It's has this desire become my everything?
24:24
SPEAKER_03: Am I waiting for this desire to be fulfilled in order to start living, in order to start serving God?
24:28
SPEAKER_03: Or can I have this desire and really say, Lord, I trust you with this, but I'm gonna serve you wholeheartedly right now.
24:33
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna glorify you in this season of singleness.
24:36
SPEAKER_03: So those two chapters were I was so just grateful that you were in a season of singleness, trusting God and writing them to our single sisters to say, hey, like God is so good and He will He will pull through in this season.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: I think, yeah, so many, and that's what I appreciated because as I've got um got several several siblings, but I'm the oldest and I have a sister eight years younger.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: So she's 31 and is still single as well.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: And she's very much in that season of waiting, and she's phenomenal, and she's living what she believes and is making the most.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: But it's just you want something that speaks to love without like without it being about a single book.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not it's not a book for singles, it's about love and how we're created and the identity piece and the purpose and all of that.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: If I could ask, would you indulge us in your romance story?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: Because we all love a good, you know, love story on Valentine's.
25:33
SPEAKER_03: On Valentine's Day, yes.
25:36
SPEAKER_03: So I was I was probably a lot like your sister.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: I was like, okay, you know, I I was kind of planning, and my family, they were like, you know, Bethany probably will be single from my dad.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: He was like, I just kind of assumed you're probably never gonna get married.
25:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, thanks for giving up my baby.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: Dad.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: I know, I'm gonna find, and my family's like, well, we just kind of thought you were the time to be single.
25:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my goodness, you know.
25:56
SPEAKER_03: So I uh it had been a long time since I'd been in a serious relationship.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm 29, not in a relationship, gonna be 30 next year.
26:04
SPEAKER_03: And I had this friend who I had known, David Beale, who was just a friend at the time.
26:10
SPEAKER_03: But I had known him for probably seven or eight years.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: I've met him when he was about 14 and I was about 20.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: We're like five and a half years apart.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: So he did when I met him, didn't think anything about him, of course.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: Right.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: So he was not on the radar.
26:27
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm very tall.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm six one, and he's a little bit shorter than me.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: So he's younger, shorter.
26:31
SPEAKER_03: It's like he just wasn't even on the radar.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: Anyways, he, you know, our groups kind of merge.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: It's years later now.
26:37
SPEAKER_03: He's in his 20s, I'm in my 20s, you know, the age gap kind of doesn't seem like that much anymore.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: Our friend group kind of merges, and we have a group of maybe like eight, eight of us, and we all just start hanging out, and he's a part of that group.
26:50
SPEAKER_03: And slowly over time, I'm like, hmm, he's like actually pretty cool, and he's like a lot of fun.
26:57
SPEAKER_03: I really get along with him well, but I did not reveal that to anyone because I didn't want anyone to know like I was crushing on this guy because I'm like, you know, I run this ministry, I'm like giving, you know, I can't.
27:08
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, single woman.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I'm speaking to single woman, and I have no idea if this will work out.
27:13
SPEAKER_03: So even Kristen, we're so close, and she had no idea that I was interested in that.
27:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm still a little bitter about that.
27:19
SPEAKER_03: But now that they're married, I'm getting over it.
27:22
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it was.
27:22
SPEAKER_03: She kept it such a secret because you just you thought it was a little bit like crazy too.
27:26
SPEAKER_03: Like, wait, how could I be interested in this guy?
27:28
SPEAKER_03: He's so much younger.
27:29
SPEAKER_03: And is am I just I truly believe that God, because I, you know, I was living very intentionally and still am, even though I'm married, but I really believe that God gave me like a desire and a love for Dave because it was just so, so there.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: And I was it's surrendering it, trusting God.
27:47
SPEAKER_03: But it just obviously God was working in Dave's heart, and Dave was very much interested before I knew.
27:51
SPEAKER_03: And so by the time that Dave actually spoke up and expressed interest, I was very hesitant and kind of nervous because I hadn't, you know, I'm gonna be 30, and I'm like, uh, you know, I had been, we've got girl to find, writing books, life is going really well.
28:04
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, now this is a big change to really start pursuing this relationship.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: He's my friend.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: I don't want to ruin this friendship.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: So we go out, he takes me to dinner at a restaurant called Bliss, and it was wonderful.
28:16
SPEAKER_03: We were out for hours.
28:17
SPEAKER_03: It was such a blast.
28:19
SPEAKER_03: A week later, we decided to get into a serious relationship, and then it was the whole relationship was just around a year.
28:26
SPEAKER_03: So it started last October of 2017, and then we um got married literally, you know, a year later.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: So it's so, so fun.
28:35
SPEAKER_03: We're really loving life and just enjoying, enjoying the married, the married season.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: So it was a good year.
28:41
SPEAKER_03: 30 was a good year.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: I turned 30, got married.
28:44
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, 30's great.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: Live up their 30s.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's awesome.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: It's so fun.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know if you've met or talked to Sarah Bragg.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, she has the surviving Sarah podcast.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: I was just thinking, oh, you've got to meet it.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: But her story's kind of similar where he's six years younger.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: And so for, yeah.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: And so it was kind of that weird thing too, because I think he was 19 though and she was 25.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, it was like it felt even a little bit more drastic, but it's worked out just fine.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: She just turned 40, though, so she was like, Oh, I can't say we're in our 30s.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm 40 and he's in his 30s.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: That's so weird.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I'm ready bad.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: It's all right.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: It's all right.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: That's you right now.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: You can't say, oh, I know I'm in my 30s and he's in his 40s.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: It brings our average age down though.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: So I feel that's well, yeah.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: And you know, usually the man approximation of how long they're gonna live, like it's really good to marry them younger anyway.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: So then they we don't outlive them too long.
29:49
SPEAKER_03: But I know so when we're in our 80s, it's just gonna be like, yes, we're in a good place until we die at the same time.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: We got this, babe.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Marry younger men.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, God's story, and I think it's just the reminder of like, we might have this list, we might have these expectations, which aren't wrong.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think it's great that we have a standard that we go to the Lord, we ask the Holy Spirit, what are what do you have for us?
30:15
SPEAKER_01: What do you want us to envision?
30:16
SPEAKER_01: And then in the same time, surrender it, right?
30:19
SPEAKER_01: And the process along the way of God shifting our hearts and directing our gaze and all of that sort of stuff.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Which is so great because it's in Love to Find, we talk about that in like the fairy tale facade.
30:30
SPEAKER_03: It's this, as women, we often have our expectations and hopes really set on the wrong things.
30:35
SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, he needs to have this kind of six pack, he needs to have this color hair, you know, and it's like those aren't the things that last, you know.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: When you're 80, you're not gonna be like, hey, babe, and I said six pack, it's like you stole for a lie, you know?
30:47
SPEAKER_03: And so in love to find really it's like, you know, trusting God with your love story is so much better because if I had written my own love story, I wouldn't be with Dave.
30:56
SPEAKER_03: I would be with someone else.
30:57
SPEAKER_03: And I know I probably wouldn't even be sitting right here right now doing this, you know, podcast.
31:01
SPEAKER_03: And so it's like, wow, God, you knew so much better.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: You knew Dave was the best one for me.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for allowing me to trust in you.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: So single women trusting in God to really guide their love story, maybe even being bullied to look at a guy where they're like, okay, in my natural sinful flesh of what, you know, my chick flicks, I may not consider him, but what about his heart?
31:19
SPEAKER_03: What about his character?
31:20
SPEAKER_03: Like, hmm, maybe that would be more attractive in the long run, you know, when he's a father in the future, you know, just thinking a little bit bigger.
31:27
SPEAKER_03: I think that's part of the goal of love to find is to really help single women do that.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: Like seeing a little bit differently than a Hollywood chick flick.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it where you're rooted is really gonna matter in the long run.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: Because, like you said, the superficial stuff, but where is he rooted?
31:42
SPEAKER_01: And what your what is your relationship wrapped around and the identity of even that love that you share?
31:47
SPEAKER_01: What is that wrapped in?
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and all those temporary things, they will fade and shift.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: And if that's how you're wired to, then you're never gonna be satisfied because there will always be someone else that you could turn your gaze towards, you know, your eyes might catch, or you know, if that's what you're focused on, that will then define, you know, how you interact with people even after you're married.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: So I think I think that's like a critical piece too.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: Would you, you know, maybe talk about that a little bit of okay, the after marriage, maybe um maybe there is the re where the reality sets in, but what about the purity after marriage?
32:22
SPEAKER_01: And speak to that a little bit.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, we talk about that.
32:26
SPEAKER_03: Just we called it um romance without regrets.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: And it's this idea of being intentional before you're married, to set yourself up for success, to lay a good foundation for after you're married.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: Um, because purity doesn't stop once you get married.
32:39
SPEAKER_03: Right.
32:39
SPEAKER_03: You know, we wouldn't be seeing so many marriages crumbling because of pornography and adultery and all of these struggles that married, you know, married spouses are having because purity is just as important then.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: And so we so encourage young women to think with that bigger perspective, to not just think, oh, let me have fun now and just do what feels good and give into my emotions and just like kind of mess around with this guy, but to really think in the long run, is this going to lay a good foundation for you in your future marriage with your husband, whoever he may be?
33:08
SPEAKER_03: He may not be this guy that you're messing around with.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: So let's think about that too.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Like this could be somebody else's husband.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: And so I think for so many girls, we we narrow in and we get this really tunnel view perspective of what's fun right now.
33:20
SPEAKER_03: And then we don't realize that that very casual, shallow mindset goes into marriage with us.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: And then when our marriage isn't satisfying us, or maybe our husband isn't as cute afterwards as we thought he was before, then yeah, those same temptations strike of like, oh, how can I have fun somewhere else?
33:35
SPEAKER_03: And so in that chapter in our book, we really paint this picture of like you're driving up to the top of a mountain.
33:40
SPEAKER_03: And we tell this whole story of when we went to Austria to visit our grandma's homeland.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: She's from Mary.
33:46
SPEAKER_03: We went to the Gross Glockener Mountain, and it's beautiful.
33:48
SPEAKER_03: And the whole time we're driving up, these like switchbacks and they're super steep and there's no guardrails, you know, like the goal was to make it to the top so we could experience this spectacular view.
33:57
SPEAKER_03: But in order to make it to the top, we had to be really intentional on the journey up.
34:01
SPEAKER_03: So staying on the road and not getting too close to the edge, viewing the guardrails that were there as protection for us to get us to our end goal.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: And so we really paint this picture and say, for us as women, it's the same journey.
34:13
SPEAKER_03: As we're journeying towards marriage, if that's what God has for us, we need to keep the big picture in mind.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: What is marriage?
34:19
SPEAKER_03: What kind of marriage do I want to have one day?
34:21
SPEAKER_03: If it's one that glorifies God, is built on a foundation of purity, then I need to be intentional now to embrace boundaries, to embrace those guardrails as help in my life, to pursue purity, to pursue holiness, knowing that these pursuits are gonna help me get to the top one day if God has marriage for me and the view is gonna be spectacular.
34:38
SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be so much better than settling for a cheap roadside regret.
34:41
SPEAKER_03: And we kind of use that example of like, you know, it might be fun in the moment, a little off-roading adventure, a little thrill, but it's really gonna leave you with so many roadside regrets.
34:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
34:50
SPEAKER_03: And God can redeem that and he can restore our future, and that's what the gospel is all about.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: But if we as women can be wise now and learn and grow and set ourselves up for success in the long run, then I think so many of us would lay a strong foundation of purity going into marriage, which would then be a foundation as the years go on in our marriage and we're facing different temptations, we would have that history and that trust with one another.
35:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so true.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that's I don't think um, unless we're really told and even like coach and you know, kind of how your book does of that, like the long-term view.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: We just don't have it naturally.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: We're very short-sighted, instant gratification.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: And I think we have to be told over and over again, take the long view, like look at the big picture, and what you do now so affects later on.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: And it does.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: And you can't fully ever realize it until you're on the other side, but it sure does help to have people come alongside and be like, hey, this is what you do.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: So, what what's maybe a piece of your book that you um address to regret?
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe, maybe there is regret, maybe there's doubt that you married the wrong person, or maybe there's just mistakes that you've made in your singleness.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: Talk about the redemption piece.
36:05
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
36:06
SPEAKER_03: Well, one, it is we do emphasize the gospel in our book and also remembering that that the gospel, Jesus didn't come to die for perfect people, you know, he came to die for sinners, and we are all sinners.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: We're all broken.
36:17
SPEAKER_03: So we're all broken.
36:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, we didn't write a book for perfect girls saying, okay, where are all the perfect young women and women out there?
36:25
SPEAKER_03: This book is for you, you know.
36:26
SPEAKER_03: No, this book is for anyone, you know, any young woman, woman who just wants to learn about God's design for love, whether she has, you know, a past that she is not proud of, whether she grew up in this conservative Christian, you know, homeschool family, we can all learn from God's truth and we can all learn from the gospel.
36:45
SPEAKER_03: Um, actually, in the very back of our book, in the back of Love Defined, we have Appendix A, and it's called Finding Freedom and Forgiveness from Past Sexual Sin.
36:55
SPEAKER_03: And so we were first, we wanted to include this in the back of the book because we wanted, you know, to walk a young woman, woman through how do I, you know, find freedom?
37:04
SPEAKER_03: How do I find forgiveness?
37:06
SPEAKER_03: Because Satan loves to keep us in that bondage.
37:08
SPEAKER_03: Satan loves to keep us trapped in our sin and to say, no, you're not good enough.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: You are, you know, you're not good enough for this.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: You don't deserve a future, you don't, and really putting, you know, kind of like this workspace salvation upon us, like, hey, your good works, nope, now you can't have that.
37:22
SPEAKER_03: And so we really wanted to show young women the truth that it is possible to find freedom, it is possible to find forgiveness from past sexual sin.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: That doesn't mean that there may not be consequences, that there may not be things that last into our future scars, but God can redeem that.
37:38
SPEAKER_03: And so if there is a woman or young woman who looks back and maybe she's never even told anyone, I know even married women experience that years in.
37:45
SPEAKER_03: They're like, I never told anyone this.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: I would encourage them to go to the very pack, go straight to page 243 and love to find and start there.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: Start with finding freedom.
37:54
SPEAKER_03: Because if you, you know, if you try to jump in and you're like, I have all of this bondage and baggage, you're not going to hear anything because that's just gonna be glaring in your mind.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: So I would really encourage women to go there because we do.
38:05
SPEAKER_03: That's God can redeem us and we want that for every woman.
38:09
SPEAKER_03: That is our prayer and hope that every woman could find freedom and forgiveness.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: And we believe that God can give that hope for the future.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh, preach.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: That's so cute.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: How about a little sneak peek about your book coming out in May?
38:22
SPEAKER_03: Ooh, yeah, we are this one, I would say by far was the hardest of the three.
38:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
38:27
SPEAKER_03: And tell me because it is called Sex, Purity, and the Longings of a Girl's Heart.
38:32
SPEAKER_03: And the subtitle is Discovering the Beauty and Freedom of God-defined sexuality.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: And what ages are you thinking with this one?
38:39
SPEAKER_01: Like T.
38:40
SPEAKER_03: What this age group, yeah, it's really um young women, single, young married women, all the way up until, you know, any age, really.
38:47
SPEAKER_03: Like this 20s, 30s.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: We wrote it so that it would be relevant to women, whether married or single, young or old, because our sexuality and our, and like we just talked about, purity isn't something only for single women.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: It's something we all need to understand and pursue as women desiring to honor God.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: And so there is just a lot of confusion surrounding our sexual design, just in general.
39:10
SPEAKER_03: Why did God give me a sexual design?
39:11
SPEAKER_03: How does my sexuality impact how I live, how I think, my worldview?
39:15
SPEAKER_03: What is the biblical perspective?
39:17
SPEAKER_03: What's a worldly perspective?
39:18
SPEAKER_03: And so unpacking that is a really challenging topic.
39:22
SPEAKER_03: It's not envy.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: I know.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: And we don't envy ourselves, don't worry.
39:27
SPEAKER_03: We did, we just, this was also a result of hundreds and hundreds of emails that we received from single women and married women expressing confusion, concern, regret, just quite basic questions regarding their sexuality and regarding purity and just their design in general.
39:45
SPEAKER_03: And so, because of this, the many, many emails, we were like, we have got to write something on this.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: And we don't write as experts who know all the answers, but really as women who are learning and growing in this ourselves, we did a ton of research to even prepare to write this book because of how heavy the topic is.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: And we, I would say we strive to be extremely vulnerable and honest in this book, just sharing our own struggles.
40:07
SPEAKER_03: That we have had lust issues, we have gone through seasons, like we have not walked this perfectly, this journey of understanding our sexuality, of embracing purity, like we are broken, just like every other woman.
40:17
SPEAKER_03: And so we bring that aspect in and just try to be extremely transparent so that as readers are reading it, they're feeling like, yes, I resonate, I can connect with this, and I want that same freedom because we have experienced incredible freedom as we've embraced God's design and pursued his good plan for our sexuality.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: So we unpack, we always like to say some of the big, I don't know, the big clincher, hot button topics.
40:39
SPEAKER_03: You know, we dig into pornography, masturbation, erotica.
40:43
SPEAKER_03: Like we have sections devoted to talking about things that women have questions about.
40:47
SPEAKER_03: Christian women are wondering and wrestling with what is right, what is wrong.
40:51
SPEAKER_03: But so often the church is silent on some of these issues.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: And it's becoming more common to talk about it.
40:56
SPEAKER_03: We're grateful to see this shift in church, but even now, so often these topics of sexuality, sexual purity are geared towards men and not as much towards women.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: And I think for a while, lust was viewed more as a man's problem and not so much a woman's problem.
41:10
SPEAKER_03: Right.
41:11
SPEAKER_03: But now we're seeing like it is just as much a woman's problem.
41:14
SPEAKER_03: And the Bible laid that out very clearly from the beginning.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: It was never, you know, lust and sexual impurity is something every heart wrestles with.
41:20
SPEAKER_03: And so writing a resource geared towards women, for women, helping women, answering their questions was something that we became very passionate about.
41:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:28
SPEAKER_03: Kind of like digging our heels and like, Lord, really?
41:31
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no.
41:32
SPEAKER_03: And you know how that is.
41:34
SPEAKER_03: Just taking one step at a time, like, okay, God, are you calling us to this?
41:38
SPEAKER_03: We want to be faithful.
41:39
SPEAKER_03: We want to write something that is gonna be honest and raw and real, but is gonna provide a freedom.
41:45
SPEAKER_03: The truth as women learn your truth about this, that they would find that freedom and hope and answers, really.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: That's so great.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we had um a conversation with Mo Isom uh Sex Jesus and the conversations the church needs to have.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: And the we kind of talked about like this just scratched the surface.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: This was just the beginning of starting the conversation, and I I'm so glad to hear just more women like you speaking to it specifically for women because it is so absent.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: For now, our culture sex is a big deal, and it's in you know, involved within the government and the social issues, and everyone's talking about it, and the church can't just give sound bites, and that's what's often being taken and then misconstrued and misunderstood.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: It needs to have a conversation.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: The crazy thing is, it's like if we as Christians, if we as the church aren't talking about it, where are we supposed to go for answers?
42:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, we have to look outward and say, okay, well, I guess I'll go to the internet, I'll guess I'll listen to what's happening in the news, you know, instead of like we as Christians should be the ones talking the most about this.
42:45
SPEAKER_03: We should be saying sexuality, God designed that.
42:47
SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna we're gonna be champions of God's design and not be silent and awkward or embarrassed or you know, not talk about it because we think it's growing, whatever, we should be the ones talking about it.
42:56
SPEAKER_03: So our hope is that this new book coming out will kind of help propel that, you know, and just even women listening to this right now that they would say, okay, if they can talk about it, they're not superheroes.
43:06
SPEAKER_03: We are not superheroes, you know.
43:07
SPEAKER_03: If we're willing to talk about it, you can too, you know.
43:10
SPEAKER_03: Like let's open up the conversation between us as women and start sharing, start talking, start lead a Bible study about it, you know, do whatever you can because we we're thinking about it.
43:19
SPEAKER_03: The other woman's thinking about it.
43:21
SPEAKER_03: So let's just speak it out and we'll realize a lot more women are thinking about it than we might realize.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: And we can might actually lead ourselves to God's truth and freedom.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: It's the whole vulnerability thing.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: We've sometimes struggle so much with sharing this one thing.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And once we share it, suddenly it's not a big deal.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: And someone else will say, Oh, yeah, me too.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: You get prayer and like so much, maybe not ultimate freedom, but you start getting down the path of freedom and the road to freedom.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: That's really just bringing it into the light, and that's something we talk about is and we were just having this conversation that it's so important the enemy keeps us trapped when we're in darkness, when we're in secrecy.
43:57
SPEAKER_03: But as we bring things into the light and we speak what's really going.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: On in our lives.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: We're honest about our deepest, darkest struggles.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: That step alone, like you said, it doesn't bring ultimate freedom, but it's a step towards freedom.
44:07
SPEAKER_03: It kind of breaks those initial chains of secrecy and that burden that's so hard to get over, it breaks it when we speak what's really going on and invite other people to bear our burdens, which is totally biblical, right?
44:18
SPEAKER_03: That we would bear one another's burdens, walk alongside one another, and help, you know, link arms and then get on that path towards freedom.
44:24
SPEAKER_03: But for so many of us, it starts by actually speaking the truth and the reality of what's going on in our hearts.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: Raising our hands to it.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: That's really great.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, something we like to ask that I think actually is kind of fun to talk about for Valentine's Day.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: And with the fact of you're both married now, and Bethany, you're newly married.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: Really mad.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: So fun.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, soul care looks different in different seasons of life.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really important to fill ourselves up so that way we can be a better wife, be a better mom, be a better person in general.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: So maybe Bethany, you can speak to okay.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: Have you, I mean, you're kind of early in, but you know, what's a soul care practice that you feel like, oh, I might have to refigure out how to do this or what looks like soul care as you're, you know, entering in this newly wed stage.
45:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:19
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think it was in one sense, it was kind of like easier before because my schedule and everything was just kind of my own.
45:25
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't, no one was really not dependent on me, but my if I, you know, wasn't caring for my soul and just spiritually kind of taking care of myself, it didn't affect someone so directly.
45:37
SPEAKER_03: Where now if I'm not, it's like then I'm kind of looking to him or I'm easily irritated.
45:45
SPEAKER_03: And that's just not a good thing.
45:47
SPEAKER_03: And so even though I'm a newlywed, I have already noticed that that I, you know, I still need to be intentional.
45:52
SPEAKER_03: And so um, for me, it kind of looks like um something that I'm really excited about and grateful for is Dave and I have actually decided that one, we will pray every day together and then we're gonna read like we read a short devotional that um kind of has a scripture passage to go with it, and we do that every day and talk about it.
46:11
SPEAKER_03: And so that's something we do together that I feel like has really helped my soul in this new season of transitioning into marriage.
46:18
SPEAKER_03: Um, that's been awesome and something that I would highly recommend for any, you know, married woman, no matter how long, to pray together and to, you know, read scripture together and to talk about it.
46:29
SPEAKER_03: There's something just so peaceful and unifying about that.
46:32
SPEAKER_03: So that's been really good.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: I think figuring out how to just kind of like minister to my soul through scripture and really care for that.
46:40
SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm still trying to figure out my schedule.
46:42
SPEAKER_03: We're very much like not pros.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: We are not the most organized, like, okay, we get up at this time and we go to bed at this time.
46:49
SPEAKER_03: So I'm, you know, still trying to figure that one out, but I definitely like see a difference when I am faithful in the morning or just sometime during the day to pause, to take a minute to just get in the word or put pray.
47:02
SPEAKER_03: It really does change my outlook on the day.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: And one, I'm a better wife because I'm just more outward focused.
47:07
SPEAKER_03: There's just so much more joy.
47:08
SPEAKER_03: So that that's something I'm imperfect in, but you know, hopefully within the next few weeks and months, I'll continue to figure out my schedule and we'll be able to kind of have a routine.
47:19
SPEAKER_03: But I think the most beneficial thing is definitely the praying together and the devotional together.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: That's so great.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: How about you, Kristen?
47:25
SPEAKER_01: What's your soul care routine that you're like, this?
47:27
SPEAKER_01: I stake my life on this.
47:29
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
47:30
SPEAKER_03: Well, I we always joke because I'm really an emotional, like very emotional woman, and Bethany's not as much.
47:36
SPEAKER_03: And so in my marriage, my husband is more like Bethany, like more steady.
47:39
SPEAKER_03: And so I need truth in my life so desperately because my emotions just want to take over like every single day.
47:46
SPEAKER_03: And so yes, and like, you know, your emotions are driven by what you're thinking, and that directly feels how you feel.
47:53
SPEAKER_03: And so for me, I see such a difference when I'm in the word and I'm receiving God's truth.
47:59
SPEAKER_03: I'm repenting, I'm applying it to my heart for that day and saying, God, would you help me today to live and to drive my feelings based on your truth, not just according to wrong thinking and how I'm feeling.
48:09
SPEAKER_03: And I see it affect my marriage so directly.
48:11
SPEAKER_03: And so for me, my goal is also like to have a morning quiet time.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: Zach and I get up, we kind of he makes our coffee.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: We got in this routine where he makes the coffee.
48:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm really happy about that.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: And then I sit down and just, you know, get in the word and open up my Bible, and that's my time.
48:26
SPEAKER_03: He brings me my coffee, then he sits down, and then we each just kind of there in the same room but separately, just get in the word.
48:33
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, sometimes I'll bring a journal so I can write things down, you know, not every day.
48:37
SPEAKER_03: I try to not be like so rigid where it always has to be this way or else it just for me.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: So sometimes bring a journal and then I usually wrap it up with praying.
48:46
SPEAKER_03: And I have an app called Prayer Mate that I love that really keeps me on track with praying.
48:51
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's awesome.
48:52
SPEAKER_03: It has like rotations and you can pray for certain people certain days.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: It's really cool.
48:56
SPEAKER_03: Free prayer mate, just a shout-out to that.
48:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, try that out.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: That's clever.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's I've been using it for several years now.
49:01
SPEAKER_03: Zach actually got me onto it.
49:03
SPEAKER_03: My technology husband, he's very into high-tech stuff.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, so for me, I just see such a difference when I'm in the word in the morning, when I'm reading truth and really soaking my heart in truth.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: Then the rest of the day, that's more on my mind than just instantly giving in to every wrong emotion, every feeling, and driving my day like a roller coaster.
49:21
SPEAKER_03: It's just much more steady and constant because I'm I'm seeking the Lord first thing and then I'm depending on him more throughout the day.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, so good.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: This has been a blast, and I'm so thrilled to get to share your message with just my friends and continue to promote your good work.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got lots of exciting things in store.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: So we'll probably have to have you back on for some of your other books coming down the road, and we'll just love it.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, life unfold for you ladies.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking the time and the courage to speak to this and uh create the community um a safe place for a lot of young women.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: So what a gift um to them.
50:01
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
50:02
SPEAKER_03: We love it, it's like, you know, we're all sisterhood, sisterhood in Christ.
50:05
SPEAKER_03: So all your friends, our friends, we're all in this together.
50:07
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for sharing them and kind of expanding the sisterhood for us.
50:11
SPEAKER_03: Totally.
50:11
SPEAKER_03: We have loved talking with you.
50:13
SPEAKER_03: You're so fun too.
50:14
SPEAKER_03: I feel like, you know, we'd be good friends if we lived close with us.
50:17
SPEAKER_03: I know.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking like, oh, we gotta like figure out how to meet up at some conference.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I know, it would be such a blast.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: It would be.
50:25
SPEAKER_01: I think we could talk for hours.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the that's the only hard thing about the podcast.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I enjoy everyone, but there's every once in a while there's some people that I'm like, oh, we need to meet in person.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: It has happened.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: It has happened, so you never know.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, you never know.
50:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we probably go to some of the, I mean, we've obviously been to one of the same conferences at some point.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: So you never know.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: I'll just have to send an email.
50:46
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm going here.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Yes, right.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I am learning a lot as we explore this idea of no fail February.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: And the most perfect example of this truth is Christ's no-fail love.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: Whether your plans for this year are right on target, or perhaps all your plans have fallen to the wayside, you can take comfort in the truth that the Lord has not given up on you.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: He has a great plan, and it's not thwarted by our screw-ups or mess-ups.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: We always have an opportunity to reframe our messy middle or shame-based ending and rewrite the story we are in.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: I'd sure love to have you join us on the Simply Wholehearted socials as we continue the conversation.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, if you're in need of some inspiration and creative ways to say I love you to your spouse or to your kids, you might want to check out the 21 Simply Wholehearted affirmation props and a few other resources which I've linked to in the show notes.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, next week we're continuing the theme of No Fail February with an amazing woman who lives in Nigeria.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Of course, we had to overcome a few challenges with distance, but we came away with some incredible and clear content.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Lord.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: Shioma is the first female lawyer in her family, and she is also a blogger encouraging single women to live with purpose and attention.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: Just like this week, we talk about way more than singleness and that woman can preach.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: Of course, with her lovely Nigerian accents, I wanted to hear all that she had to share, and I think you will too.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we sure do appreciate it when you share our episodes with your friends and family.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: Help us spread the word.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: Invite them to tune in with you as we continue to pursue perspective, purpose, and plans for a simply wholehearted life,