Latest / Karl and Crew / Marriage After Infidelity and Reconciling to Estranged Adult Children Q&A with Jill Savage

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Marriage After Infidelity and Reconciling to Estranged Adult Children Q&A with Jill Savage · Karl and Crew

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S1: Broadcasting from Chicago, across North America and beyond its cast
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S1: Delivering the truth daily.
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S4: All of my attempts to, you know, prop myself up
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S1: Now, from the call of Hope Studios, this is Carl
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S1: and crew. It is a week of Ask the Experts.
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S1: And if you haven't been here. Oh my goodness. And
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S4: record breaking again on this Ask the expert series. Just
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S4: text show to 800 555 7898. Text show to 800
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S4: 555 7898. Carl, when's the last time you asked an
1:21
S4: expert for advice on something? Whether it. Can you remember?
1:26
S1: Oh, this morning, I mean, honestly, I asked experts all
1:30
S1: the time. And I'm not talking on a radio show.
1:32
S1: I mean, I, I query AI to ask experts who
1:37
S1: are dead and gone.
1:38
S4: Yeah.
1:39
S1: I mean, I'm always asking experts for input, always living
1:44
S1: and dead.
1:45
S4: I ask my dad for questions on good. I like
1:51
S4: that it's usually related to like home stuff.
1:55
S2: Whether maybe dads and home stuff.
1:58
S4: Whether stuff he gives me, he gives us the weather report,
2:01
S4: which I appreciate. I like being able to ask questions.
2:05
S4: I ask basketball questions of my husband.
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S1: Oh, boy. Of course you do, Henry. He's got it
2:10
S1: going on. He was a three point wizard in Europe, and, uh,
2:15
S1: one of his biggest fans still, obviously.
2:18
S4: Well, the funny.
2:18
S1: Thing is, this guy.
2:20
S4: After games, because both of my kids play. They all.
2:23
S4: They want to talk to dad first, so, like, they
2:26
S4: kind of bypass me. So I'm like, hey, great game.
2:29
S4: And they're like, dad, what did you see? Like, does
2:33
S4: anyone want to know what I saw?
2:35
S3: Hello. The answer is no. Like, I mean, they do.
2:39
S3: There was some really.
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S4: Strong running around out there.
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S3: Great job draining those shots, Allie.
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S1: You're being mean to yourself.
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S4: No, but.
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S3: I mean.
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S1: Because.
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S3: You know.
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S4: Basketball. But I don't know basketball.
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S3: Yeah you do.
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S4: Not not the not the.
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S3: New Henry does.
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S4: Like he will tell them in a heartbeat. Your guide
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S4: hand is not straight enough. That's why your shots not
3:00
S4: going in. That's why you're missing long. I could never
3:03
S4: tell them that. I don't know why you're missing shots.
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S4: He can tell them he's an expert on basketball.
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S1: Yeah, he is asking its experts all week long here.
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S1: Be sure to get the show cast. Look at all
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S1: three episodes for each day, because we're taking every expert
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S1: and giving them their own podcast. How about them apples?
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S2: No joke. It makes. It certainly makes it easier for
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S2: you to find exactly what you're looking for.
3:28
S1: Wow. Young thunders chiming in. You got that beef burger
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S1: out of your mouth. Finally washed.
3:32
S2: Down. I did, yeah, that's great.
3:34
S3: Breakfast.
3:34
S2: Breakfast burrito. And I'm hungry in the morning so.
3:38
S3: Poor guy can't even eat. Tex showed 800 555.
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S4: 78, 98. We've got dueling breakfast in here. Tex. Show
3:46
S4: to 800 555, 78, 98.
3:49
S1: Coming up, you want some advice on marriage? You want
3:53
S1: to hear the tough stuff? We're going to wade right
3:55
S1: into it with our special guest and expert coming up.
4:00
S6: Get your info from a source you can trust. It's
4:03
S6: Ask the Experts week with Carl and crew.
4:05
S1: What a week.
4:06
S4: Ali, ask the expert has delivered on its promise.
4:10
S1: It's been amazing. Well, let's jump right in. And we've
4:14
S1: got Jill Savage with us right now. We're going to
4:17
S1: get raw. We're going to get honest. We're going to
4:19
S1: come out of the shoot hot here. Jill, you can
4:21
S1: handle it. Right, sister?
4:23
S7: I am okay with it.
4:25
S1: Yeah. You know, and all kidding and joking aside, I
4:28
S1: want to go back to something that you've gladly you
4:31
S1: and your husband both have shared on air here with us.
4:34
S1: But there was a time when your husband cheated on you.
4:37
S1: He broke that covenant relationship and it ravaged your home.
4:43
S1: I want to ask. And I've never asked this of you.
4:46
S1: Looking back, did you see any yellow or red flags?
4:51
S1: And the reason I asked that is I don't want
4:53
S1: people to borrow trouble, but we want them to be
4:56
S1: alert to what's going on. What have you learned there, Jill?
5:00
S7: Um, he was definitely not in a good place emotionally,
5:04
S7: and he was not in a good place spiritually. Did
5:08
S7: I think that that would lead to him being unfaithful? No.
5:12
S7: Like that never crossed my mind. Yeah. I just didn't
5:17
S7: think that that would even be possible. Um, and I've,
5:20
S7: you know, sometimes when we share the story, it became
5:23
S7: that he really wasn't my husband. Like, I didn't know
5:26
S7: this man that I was married to. He became someone
5:30
S7: other than who I knew him to be, deep down.
5:33
S7: But I will say, I knew he was emotionally spiraling.
5:38
S7: I knew he was spiritually spiraling and he wasn't in
5:42
S7: a good place. So definitely red flags there. Yes. Um,
5:47
S7: but I didn't realize how, you know, just where that
5:52
S7: would eventually take him. And it doesn't mean that anybody
5:55
S7: who's emotionally and spiritually spiraling is going to become unfaithful, right?
6:00
S7: It doesn't mean that. Right? But, um, certainly, uh, he
6:04
S7: was not in a good place. And when we're not
6:07
S7: in a good place, we're in the flesh. And when
6:09
S7: we're in the flesh, honestly.
6:11
S1: All bets are.
6:12
S7: Off. That's right.
6:13
S4: Jill Savage is our guest this morning. Our guest expert.
6:16
S4: She is an author, blogger, international speaker. She hosts the
6:19
S4: No More Perfect podcast. She's been featured on focus on
6:23
S4: the family, crosswalk, FamilyLife today, Today's Christian Woman. Her and
6:27
S4: her husband are servant ministry together, her husband Mark. They
6:30
S4: meet the needs of families as authors and speakers and coaches.
6:34
S1: You know, I want to follow up on that one, Jill,
6:36
S1: because my personal conviction is, yes, adultery has devastating impact
6:43
S1: on a marriage and children, no doubt about it. But
6:47
S1: the reality is, anytime anyone isn't doing well spiritually, all
6:52
S1: bets are off in any idle can take. The high
6:56
S1: ground of our heart in all of us are at risk.
7:00
S1: Pour out your heart about that one, Jill.
7:02
S7: You know. Absolutely. I think that when the enemy starts
7:06
S7: whispering lies and oftentimes we don't realize them as lies. Right?
7:11
S7: And Mark will even talk about that season of his life,
7:14
S7: like the preseason to his infidelity. What had happened is
7:18
S7: he had lost hope. Like if you lose your way spiritually,
7:23
S7: you're going to lose hope. And so he had lost hope.
7:27
S7: And so then the enemy starts to whisper, you know,
7:30
S7: this is what the answer is. And look, this is
7:33
S7: what the answer is. And oh, this person will really
7:36
S7: understand you. And so we become really vulnerable to the
7:42
S7: lies of the enemy when we begin to spiritually wander.
7:47
S7: And I mean, we're vulnerable to the lies of the
7:49
S7: enemy all the time, but we are much more likely
7:54
S7: to identify them as lies when we're walking in the spirit,
7:57
S7: rather than when we're walking in the flesh, when we're
8:00
S7: in a deep, dark place.
8:02
S4: Jill Savage, our guest. This hour we're going to be
8:04
S4: tackling questions on marriage and even some parenting questions. Let's
8:09
S4: talk a little bit about your background. This No More
8:12
S4: perfect has kind of become your theme. You've got the podcast,
8:15
S4: you've got some books. No more perfect moms, no more
8:18
S4: perfect kids, no more perfect marriages. Definitely see the theme there.
8:22
S4: What is the heart behind just really embracing the idea
8:26
S4: that none of us are perfect?
8:28
S7: Well, let me tell you, all of my books come
8:31
S7: out of all of my struggles. And so I've written
8:34
S7: well over 20 books. So, you know, that's only a
8:36
S7: portion of my struggles.
8:38
S3: But boy.
8:40
S1: Somebody said, boy, this expert's got a lot of struggles.
8:43
S1: The fact is we do, don't we?
8:44
S7: We all do. We all do. It's just some of
8:47
S7: us are more willing to talk about it than others.
8:49
S7: And so one of my struggles was with perfectionism. I'm
8:53
S7: a type A personality. I am first born. I mean,
8:58
S7: it just kind of comes with the territory with a
9:00
S7: lot of that. And so I identified something that I
9:05
S7: used to call before I wrote the books. I called
9:07
S7: it for myself The Perfection Infection. What's the perfection infection?
9:12
S7: It's when we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves or others.
9:17
S7: And when we unfairly compare ourselves or we unfairly compare others.
9:22
S7: And that is what makes the perfection infection happen. I
9:27
S7: struggled with that. I became judgmental and critical with my
9:32
S7: unrealistic expectations of others. I was my own worst critic
9:37
S7: with my unrealistic expectations of myself. And then that whole
9:41
S7: comparison thing. My goodness, we live in a culture that
9:45
S7: makes comparisons so easy because we are in the photoshopped culture.
9:49
S7: We're in the filtered culture, and so we're always comparing
9:53
S7: ourselves to something that isn't real. All of that robs
9:57
S7: us of contentment, and when we experience discontentment over time,
10:03
S7: we then experience discouragement and then disillusionment and eventually disconnection.
10:09
S1: Our expert guest, Jill Savage, coming up here in a moment. Jill,
10:14
S1: I want to cast a picture for you. And it's
10:16
S1: the high ridge. Got to go. High ridge here, Ali.
10:19
S3: Okay. Let's go.
10:20
S1: And the high ridge would be not perfection, but the
10:24
S1: high ridge would be utter dependence on God and clinging
10:26
S1: to him. Now, some people would say, no more perfect
10:29
S1: marriage as. And you don't mean it this way, but
10:31
S1: it's a green light to be rather sloppy spiritually. And
10:35
S1: I know you don't mean that, but it seems like
10:38
S1: we fall off that high ridge in two ways. Either
10:40
S1: we pursue perfection or we say, ah, to heck with it.
10:44
S1: Can't do it anyway. How do we recover from both
10:48
S1: of those perilous falls? More with Jill Savage coming up.
10:52
S6: You've got questions. They've got answers. It's Ask the Experts
10:56
S6: week with Carl and crew.
10:58
S1: Jill Savage, our guest. We're going to have a key
11:00
S1: word here for you in just a moment, because this
11:02
S1: great woman of God has some phenomenal content. All right.
11:06
S1: I posed the question to you, Jill. It says simple.
11:08
S1: If the high ridge is clinging to God, finding our righteousness,
11:14
S1: our identity in him, being fueled by him falling to
11:17
S1: our peril can be perfection. Or it could be saying, ah,
11:22
S1: the heck with it. I'm not going to get this
11:24
S1: right anyway. We don't want to slip off either side.
11:27
S1: How do you call people up to that high ridge
11:30
S1: of dependence on God?
11:32
S7: What we need to do is stop pursuing perfection and
11:36
S7: start pursuing the perfecting process. You see, God wants to
11:42
S7: perfect us. And that word means mature us, grow us
11:47
S7: to become more like Jesus Christ. No, we will not
11:51
S7: hit perfection on this side of heaven, but we can
11:55
S7: become more like Christ every day. And so when we're
12:00
S7: actually pursuing perfection and we fall short, we end up
12:04
S7: with anger and shame and criticism. If we're pursuing the
12:09
S7: perfecting process, then we respond to imperfection with humility, with
12:18
S7: courage to take off our mask and be honest with forgiveness,
12:23
S7: especially when we bump into somebody else's imperfection, with grace,
12:28
S7: with love. It depends on what you are pursuing as
12:34
S7: to how you respond. And so the perfecting process is
12:39
S7: when we're saying, Lord, I know that I've gotten it wrong.
12:42
S7: I know that I struggle with this. Please help me.
12:47
S7: Please show me. Please show me how to respond to
12:51
S7: this in your way. And when we bump into somebody
12:54
S7: else's imperfect, our partner, our kids, a coworker, it's learning
13:00
S7: how to stop reacting and start responding in God honoring ways.
13:06
S3: Love it.
13:07
S4: Jill Savage, our guest this morning. I'm glad you put
13:09
S4: it this way, because it does seem like there's been
13:12
S4: a pendulum swing. And I don't know if you've noticed.
13:14
S4: I almost think there might be an age or generational
13:18
S4: thing too. I think for my generation, the perfectionism was high.
13:23
S4: But when I look at my daughter's generation and she's
13:26
S4: a teenager now, it's sort of the it's okay to
13:29
S4: be not okay, which is okay, but it's kind of
13:34
S4: like this embrace the messiness in a way that can
13:36
S4: start to feel a little unhealthy, where people over share
13:40
S4: on social media, people cry on camera.
13:44
S1: You're right.
13:46
S3: Where.
13:46
S4: It's almost like the the perfection is, is the messy,
13:50
S4: where you get a certain amount of likes and attention
13:54
S4: for being messed up, for lack of a better way
13:57
S4: of putting it. Do you get where I'm going with this?
13:59
S7: Yeah, I do. I do think there is a willingness
14:04
S7: to embrace the more emotional side of our experience on
14:09
S7: this earth than in this generation, than there was in
14:12
S7: previous generations. Sure, previous generations would say, I don't have
14:15
S7: any problems. We're fine. We don't talk about this to
14:19
S7: anyone else. This stays in our home. That's unhealthy too. Yeah, right.
14:24
S7: But I do think that obviously, too often we swing
14:28
S7: too far the other way. And and healthy is in
14:32
S7: the middle where we embrace our emotions. We are vulnerable
14:36
S7: with our emotions, with the right people. And we recognize
14:41
S7: that emotions are God given. But we also recognize they
14:43
S7: don't always tell us the truth. Like we have to
14:46
S7: be really careful about our emotions leading us in the
14:50
S7: wrong direction, but they do. Usually, if we can use
14:54
S7: our emotions in the right way. I like to say
14:56
S7: that emotions are like the lights on the dashboard of
14:59
S7: a car, and when the light comes on and it
15:02
S7: says check engine and then get fuel. And so it
15:05
S7: gives us a message. Well, when our emotions come online,
15:09
S7: they all say the same thing. Talk to Jesus, talk
15:13
S7: to Jesus, talk to Jesus. So our emotions are actually
15:16
S7: designed to lead us to God to say, you know what,
15:20
S7: I'm feeling this. What's going on inside of me? We
15:24
S7: see this in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was
15:27
S7: facing the cross. And so we use our emotions to
15:30
S7: go to the father to figure out what our needs are.
15:34
S7: And then we ask for those needs to be met.
15:37
S1: Coming up here, Jill Savage, we have got a massive
15:42
S1: problem in the Western world today. and I don't know
15:46
S1: how it started, but we've got a lot of wayward
15:50
S1: kids that are gone, raised in church, raised in imperfect.
15:54
S1: How do you like that, Joe? Little imperfect. Imperfect, but
15:58
S1: great homes. And they've walked away from church and they've
16:03
S1: walked away from God. Not that they were ever really
16:06
S1: in Christ Jesus, because you can't walk away from that.
16:09
S1: And hearts are breaking and phones aren't ringing, and it's
16:14
S1: painful and it's an epidemic and it's touched you or
16:19
S1: someone close to you. We're going to tackle that coming
16:22
S1: up with our expert, Jill Savage.
16:25
S6: When you don't know who's better to ask than an expert.
16:29
S6: You're listening to Carl and.
16:31
S1: Jill Savage is our guest right now. Ask the experts
16:34
S1: with Carl and crew all week long. Jill, I want
16:37
S1: to jump right into it. Oh, this is heartbreaking, sister.
16:40
S1: We have got a big, big EG Balagan is what
16:45
S1: they call it in Israel, a big mess. We got
16:48
S1: a lot of parents listening right now and I would
16:50
S1: estimate by the thousands. No joking because the audience is
16:54
S1: big right now and we've got thousands upon thousands of
16:57
S1: parents listening right now who have wayward kids. I want
17:01
S1: to be clear. Some have left the church, but they've
17:03
S1: never left Christ because they were never in Christ. They
17:06
S1: were in church. So there's a there's a spiritual condition
17:10
S1: for a lot of them. But not only have they left,
17:13
S1: a lot of them have have a no contact policy
17:16
S1: with their parents. And there's parents in our little sphere
17:21
S1: of influence. We have 43 adult kids that were raised
17:24
S1: in imperfect but good homes who have walked away from
17:27
S1: the church in it's crushing parents hearts. What do you
17:31
S1: have to say about this?
17:33
S7: You know, on my No More Perfect podcast, one of
17:35
S7: my top five episodes is an episode titled When Your
17:40
S7: Adult Child Shuts You Out And right there. I mean,
17:44
S7: that's one of my top five episodes. This is a
17:49
S7: huge issue. We are seeing it in all in all
17:53
S7: walks of life, and it is a heartbreaker. And unfortunately,
17:58
S7: it's one of those places where things have swung too
18:01
S7: far the other direction. Right. Because a lot of times
18:05
S7: what needs to happen is conversations need to happen. But
18:08
S7: the problem is sometimes kids have tried to have those
18:12
S7: conversations and it's been difficult for them. And maybe the
18:16
S7: parents haven't responded well or the parents have responded defensively.
18:20
S7: And this is something that oftentimes we don't have the
18:24
S7: skills to actually handle well. And one of the things
18:29
S7: that breaks my heart is when a parent responds defensively.
18:34
S7: Sometimes they will almost leave the child no other option
18:39
S7: but to say, we obviously can't talk about this. So
18:43
S7: we have to learn to be good listeners. We have
18:45
S7: to learn how to empathize and validate, even if we disagree.
18:50
S7: Even if we don't see it that way. Because that
18:53
S7: is what helps to keep the like a bridge between
18:57
S7: you and a child that sees things in a very
18:59
S7: different way. So first I want to come at it
19:01
S7: from that direction. And if your child talks to you
19:05
S7: about something that you feel very, um, you don't see
19:08
S7: it in that direction, one of the best things that
19:11
S7: you can do is respond with, tell me more about that.
19:15
S7: Or what I hear you saying is this. Am I
19:19
S7: hearing that right? Can you tell me more? And we
19:22
S7: need to get curious rather than furious.
19:25
S3: Yeah.
19:26
S4: Jill Savage, our guest this morning. You know, I this
19:29
S4: question came in from on Facebook as well. Add to
19:33
S4: that the element of of sometimes there's grandchildren involved. And
19:36
S4: so you have grandparents who not only are estranged from
19:39
S4: their adult children now, they're not allowed to see or
19:43
S4: influence their grandchildren, which is like double heartbreak for anybody
19:48
S4: who's experiencing that. How can a parent slash grandparent continue
19:52
S4: to stand in the gap when they have been had
19:56
S4: an arm held out?
19:57
S7: Prayer is not your last resort. It's your first. Like
20:03
S7: we have to be on our knees whether we're in
20:06
S7: relationship with our adult kids or whether we're not. Whether
20:09
S7: they're keeping us at arm's length. Prayer is the work.
20:15
S7: It is much more effective for God to work from
20:18
S7: the inside out, rather than for us to push from
20:21
S7: the outside in. And prayer is what initiates that inside work.
20:26
S7: And so we have to be prayer warriors for our grandchildren,
20:31
S7: for our children, and believe that God is at work
20:35
S7: even if we don't see things changing. You know, I
20:39
S7: was a prayer warrior for my husband for a full
20:42
S7: year before I ever saw any inkling that something was
20:47
S7: changing from the inside out. And oftentimes, you know, we'll
20:50
S7: pray for three days and be like, well, God's not working.
20:54
S1: Yeah. I'm done.
20:55
S7: And so we've got to be prayer warriors. Yeah. And
20:59
S7: and what I would also add is if you do
21:02
S7: have a relationship with your adult kids, one of the
21:05
S7: things I talk about in my Empty Nest full life book,
21:08
S7: one thing that stands out is I have a section
21:12
S7: where I talk about pray, don't say. And we have
21:16
S7: to learn because sometimes we're the one that's tearing down
21:20
S7: the bridge between us and our kids because we're giving
21:24
S7: advice that wasn't asked for. We're giving opinions that aren't welcome.
21:30
S7: We feel like we're leveraging our experience, but if it's
21:34
S7: not asked for, then what we need to do is
21:37
S7: pray about it, but not say it. And that preserves
21:41
S7: the bridge between us and our adult child.
21:45
S1: Jill Savage, our guest coming up here. Jill. Uh, this
21:47
S1: could sound self-serving because it's become a theme around here,
21:50
S1: but I do want you to respond to it. I
21:53
S1: have had more liberating conversations with parents that have been
21:56
S1: through the hardest conversation. And the conversation goes like this.
22:00
S1: Parent will say to me, man, my kid's not coming
22:03
S1: to church. And then the instant response is, and I'm
22:06
S1: praying that they get back to church. I am challenging
22:10
S1: every parent that I run into, and this is scores
22:12
S1: and scores just in my local context. Maybe the prayer
22:15
S1: is not come back to church but be found in
22:18
S1: Christ for the first time. And what I'm learning personally, collectively,
22:25
S1: very personally, very collectively in the church is that the
22:30
S1: issue for a lot of the kids that have left
22:32
S1: the church is that they were never in Christ. I
22:35
S1: want your take on that coming up.
22:37
S6: Get in the know with life's biggest questions. It's Ask
22:41
S6: the Experts week with Carl and crew.
22:43
S1: Ask the experts week and boy, has this been something else.
22:47
S3: Ali.
22:47
S4: Jill Savage, our guest today. If you want more, she's
22:50
S4: got the No More Perfect podcast and book series. Just
22:53
S4: text perfect to 800 555 7898. Perfect to 800 555 7898.
23:00
S1: Jill, you've spoken a lot this hour about prayer, and
23:03
S1: I'm with you 100%. But sometimes our prayers are aimed
23:06
S1: the wrong direction. As I was just teeing up for you.
23:08
S1: We pray that our wayward kids and it's epidemic, whether
23:12
S1: they've frozen you out or not, they aren't showing up
23:15
S1: at church in the prayer can often be Oh God,
23:17
S1: get him in church. My contention my, I've got empirical
23:22
S1: evidence for this and anecdotal that we've got a lot
23:26
S1: of these kids. They were cultural Christians. At best. They
23:30
S1: aren't in Christ. We need to change our prayers. I
23:34
S1: this is our core conviction here. What do you feel
23:37
S1: about that at the depth of your soul?
23:40
S7: I 100% agree with you 100%. I think that oftentimes
23:46
S7: we even have the priorities mixed up of, you know, well,
23:50
S7: if they get back to church, then that's, you know,
23:53
S7: that will be the answer. Well, they were in church
23:55
S7: for 20 years and it wasn't the answer. Right. And
23:59
S7: so what we want though is and that's not saying
24:02
S7: that church isn't important. Church is important, but it is
24:06
S7: an outpouring of a heart that is open to be
24:12
S7: led by Christ. And so what we want is we
24:15
S7: want surrender. That's what we want. We want them to
24:20
S7: be surrendered to Jesus. That Jesus is not only their Savior,
24:25
S7: but their Lord. To recognize that they don't have to
24:29
S7: carry the weight of this world on their own, that
24:32
S7: they're designed to do that in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
24:36
S7: And if we're just harping for them to go to church,
24:41
S7: we're not helping the situation. That's where having conversations like
24:47
S7: one of the most difficult things for a parent to do,
24:50
S7: and yet one of the most powerful, is to make
24:53
S7: it safe for their adult child to talk about their
24:57
S7: struggles with the church or with God. Uh, what your
25:02
S7: struggles are. Wow. I can only imagine how hard that is.
25:06
S7: That's empathy. And what we want to do is we
25:09
S7: hear our kids struggles and we go into lecture mode,
25:12
S7: and lecture mode is not going to help lead them
25:18
S7: in a direction of safety, of talking about their questions,
25:23
S7: their doubts, their hurts. And so when we can learn
25:27
S7: to be good listeners, and if we will learn to
25:30
S7: ask questions and allow them to even just verbalize some
25:34
S7: of their thinking, and then we also know how to
25:37
S7: pray for them.
25:38
S4: Jill Savidge, our guest expert talking about marriage and parenting
25:42
S4: coming up. I actually want to pull from something we
25:44
S4: heard earlier this week, a theme that came up repeatedly
25:48
S4: as we talked to Robert Lewis about biblical manhood. We
25:53
S4: had lots and lots of input from women, from wives
25:57
S4: who really, really wanted to help. And I'm going to
26:01
S4: use that in air quotes help their husbands. What was.
26:05
S3: Robert Lewis's.
26:06
S4: Message? And I'm.
26:07
S3: Wondering the way.
26:08
S1: You're.
26:08
S3: Doing it.
26:09
S4: I want Jill's take on it coming up.
26:13
S6: Get to know the team behind the scenes. Follow Carl
26:16
S6: and crew on Facebook and Instagram.
26:19
S4: Ask the expert week here on Carl and crew. Jill
26:21
S4: Savidge with us this morning. If you want more on
26:23
S4: her resources, just text perfect to (800) 555-7898. Earlier this week,
26:30
S4: we had Doctor Robert Lewis, who spent an hour talking
26:33
S4: about biblical manhood, chivalry. We had lots of questions come
26:37
S4: in from women. I would say about half of our
26:39
S4: questions that hour were from women. How do I help
26:42
S4: my husband who is struggling with passivity? How do I
26:45
S4: help my husband who is not discipling our sons? And
26:48
S4: the theme that kept coming back with Doctor Robert Lewis
26:52
S4: is you can't. You can't. Carl, anything you want to add.
26:56
S3: Before I ask.
26:57
S4: Jill to.
26:57
S3: Weigh in?
26:58
S1: I mean, it's it's a hard one to hear, and
27:00
S1: it was even hard for me to hear live on air,
27:02
S1: even though I've worked with Robert for many years because
27:05
S1: it flies in the face of our culture today. But
27:08
S1: his bottom line, Jill, is, ladies, don't be your husband's coach.
27:14
S1: God's got to be that coach. You can't get him
27:17
S1: to do what you want him to do. You're better
27:19
S1: off praying for him.
27:20
S3: So he's getting.
27:22
S4: Him to a community of men. He was big on that.
27:24
S1: You've got to get him. Yeah. Help pray him into
27:26
S1: a community of men. But you can't even take that
27:29
S1: horse to a group of men that's not on you.
27:32
S1: What do you say, Jill?
27:33
S7: I agree with that. But what I'd like to look
27:36
S7: at is a slightly different angle of that. And that
27:39
S7: is oftentimes or sometimes when that dynamic happens, it can
27:47
S7: also happen when he does try to lead in his
27:52
S7: own way and she says, no, not that way. It
27:56
S7: needs to be this way.
27:58
S3: Oh, you're.
28:00
S1: So you're doubling down on Robert. You're doing. Yeah that's true.
28:04
S7: I agree with Robert. I really do that. You have
28:07
S7: to pray him into that men's group and those kind
28:10
S7: of things. But what often happens, and we see this
28:14
S7: in the couples that we work with in our marriage
28:17
S7: intensives and our coaching. And honestly, in my own life,
28:21
S7: you know, Mark and I talk about the fact that
28:23
S7: people think of broken trust as being big things, like infidelity.
28:28
S7: But broken trust happens when you don't let your partner
28:31
S7: be who they are, and you demand that they be
28:33
S7: someone other than who they are. And broken trust happens
28:37
S7: when you try to parent your husband. And that happened
28:40
S7: in our relationship. I mean, Mark would do some leadership
28:46
S7: of our family spiritually, but I had in my mind
28:49
S7: it looked like devotion sitting in the living room. Well,
28:52
S7: that's not true to who he is. He's a sit
28:55
S7: on the edge of the bed guy and talk to
28:58
S7: the kids as they have questions. And when I was saying, hey,
29:02
S7: it needs to look like this over here, I was
29:04
S7: completely missing when it looked like this, sitting on the
29:09
S7: edge of the bed and shepherding their hearts. So I
29:13
S7: would say, we've got to stop this assumption that it
29:16
S7: has to look a certain way, and we have to
29:19
S7: allow it to happen, that in a way that's true
29:22
S7: to your partner's temperament, to their personality, to the way
29:28
S7: in which they interact with people. It may look very different.
29:33
S7: And so can you embrace that and can you celebrate
29:36
S7: that instead of criticize that?
29:38
S3: Yeah.
29:38
S1: And the reason that's so important, and I'm going to
29:40
S1: speak here as a man, a man's attempt to do
29:43
S1: what God's called him to do that is throttled, because
29:48
S1: that's what it feels like when it's offered up, that
29:51
S1: we could do it a little bit better, a little
29:52
S1: bit different. It just sucks the life out of you,
29:55
S1: just sucks the life out of you. It just makes
29:58
S1: you feel like, well, what in the heck then?
30:01
S7: Yep, throw up your hands and say, I can't make
30:04
S7: you happy. Anyway, I'm just going to go passive because
30:07
S7: I can't win. Yeah, and we see that dynamic playing
30:12
S7: out again. We saw it in our own marriage and
30:15
S7: that doesn't mean I didn't cause Mark's passivity. I fed
30:18
S7: into it.
30:19
S1: That's so bold.
30:20
S7: So I fed into it. And really, the enemy used
30:24
S7: my critical spirit then to build that hopelessness in him.
30:29
S7: And so we see this a lot and it is
30:32
S7: a place. And sometimes it's not even men. I mean,
30:34
S7: not even women doing it to men. Sometimes men do
30:37
S7: it to women. Their wife does so many things, but
30:40
S7: she doesn't do these five things. And so, I mean,
30:44
S7: we can do that to each other on both sides.
30:47
S7: We have to start celebrating who our partner is instead
30:51
S7: of tearing down who they aren't, because we have this
30:55
S7: preconceived notion in our mind of what they should be doing.
31:00
S4: Jill Savage, our guest this morning. You got to where
31:02
S4: I was going. What are some things that men think
31:06
S4: that they are doing, that they want to help their
31:09
S4: wives that actually have the opposite effect?
31:13
S3: I want to be fair here.
31:16
S7: Um, you know, sometimes, um, I would say, uh, with
31:21
S7: physical intimacy, they will be, you know, like, make grand
31:25
S7: gestures of romance, but they forget that one of the
31:29
S7: most beautiful things they could do is help with the
31:31
S7: dishes and help with the kids. And so oftentimes, you know,
31:37
S7: they're they're missing the little opportunities of connection that ultimately
31:45
S7: help things out with that physical connection in marriage. So
31:49
S7: that would probably be the first one that immediately comes
31:52
S7: to my mind.
31:53
S1: Well, there's a lot more where that came from. You
31:56
S1: just text the word perfect to 805 five, five, 78, 98,
32:03
S1: and you will get linked up with Jill Savage and
32:06
S1: her hubs, and they're doing a great work, man.
32:08
S4: You're going to get the her website. But also I
32:11
S4: linked in there that specific podcast episode she mentioned on
32:14
S4: estrangement with adult children. I know we're going to get
32:16
S4: a lot of requests for that one, so that one's
32:18
S4: in the keyword as well. Just text perfect to (800) 555-7898.
32:24
S4: Everything you need. Just text perfect to 800 555 7898.