Blended Families, “Usness,” and the Power of Humility w/ Ron Deal

Aaron Smith (00:00)

Ron, welcome to the show, man. I’m so happy to have you.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (00:12)
Thank you. I’m honored to be here.

Aaron Smith (00:14)
So I’ve been digging in. feel like I don’t know how, but I’ve seen you somewhere or I’ve heard you speak somewhere. Because when I heard your name and I saw your face and was like, and then hearing you speak also, when I was doing some background research on you, I feel like I’ve heard you somewhere. cannot put my finger on where, but that’s OK. Probably from family life. You work with family life. I know that. Why don’t for my audience who may not know you, would you just dig in? Give me some of your background, who you are, how long you’ve been married.

wife’s name, kids, just biographical background stuff, and then we’ll move forward from there.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (00:44)
Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Here’s the quick sketch. Nan and I have been married for 39 years. I saw her in seventh grade down the hall opening her locker and thought, huh, I need to get to know her. We actually went through junior high and high school together. We were friends long before we were ever romantically involved. wouldn’t tell our senior year in high school that we started dating. Ended up she

came to Christ through the course of that relationship and my family. We went away to college, got married halfway through, finished college, went on the mission field for a while, went into youth ministry full-time, figured out I didn’t know enough about families to help teenagers. So I went back to school, got a degree in marriage and family therapy. And the whole time I was there, I was thinking, I don’t want to just be a therapist. I want to be a marriage and family ministry ⁓ educator preventive.

a medicine guy rather than just a fix-it guy. And so immediately went back into local church work and spent another 15, 17 years in the local churches doing marriage and family ministry. While I was there, I stumbled into this area of ministry, blended family ministry. My clinical training had helped me to understand step families, but I looked around and said, nobody’s doing anything for these folks. And so in 1993, 32 years ago,

I started doing a little bit of step family ministry, single parent ministry, as well as marriage, family, sexuality, you know, kind of across the board. ⁓ Turns out what people really wanted to know more about was the blended family thing. And so for the last 30 years, I’ve sort of specialized in that. ⁓ family life finally said, we don’t do blended ministry and still today nobody does. And so they said, we’d like to have you come on board and help us start a ministry. And so

That’s how family life blended was born 13 years ago. The whole time I’ve been doing step family ministry, I tell people, if you’re going to do step family ministry, you better know something about marriage. You better know something about parenting. You better know about loss. You better understand a little bit about a transition. You understand kids. You got to understand adults. You got to understand extended family and the spiritual dimensions. So I’ve had I’ve had to buckle down in all of those domains. And ⁓ the whole time I’ve been learning and growing

In my own marriage, we faced our own crisis in 2007, a marital crisis. Then two years later, we faced a family crisis. Our middle son, Connor, died at the age of 12. I have been in the valley of the shadow of death now for 16 years. All of that has informed my life, my ministry, my journey, what Nan and I do together. And it culminated in a book that came out here in January of 25 called The Mindful Marriage, which

is our testimony of how our counselor helped us. And it turns out our counselor was innovating some stuff that is radically changing the way everybody does counseling and ministry and how they think about marriage. And so we were guinea pigs in the early phases of that for him. And ⁓ now we get to partner with him and his wife and bring all these incredible principles to the world. I will brag on the Mindful Marriage book.

Aaron Smith (03:53)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (04:09)
I’ve written nine other books for blended families. This one is for all couples. It’s actually for all people, whether you’re married or not. I will brag on it more than anything I’ve ever done in my 37 years of ministry, and it’s not mine. It is not my work. It is Dr. Terry Hargrave and Sharon Hargraves. Life’s work. We just get to help communicate it. I know what it does for people because I know what it did for me and for Nan and our usness. And so thanks for having me on.

Aaron Smith (04:21)
and

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (04:39)
Because as you can tell, I’m passionate about this message.

Aaron Smith (04:39)
Yeah.

Well, I’m excited to get into the book in a little bit because you have some really, it’s funny, it’s it’s innovative, but it’s not. Like I think about Jesus is like, I give you a new commandment. It’s not a new commandment. It’s an old commandment. Paul says the same thing, but powerful stuff. just, something that is interesting is I’ve had so many interviews now and the stories of how you and others have met their spouse is very similar to mine. And there’s like this

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (04:51)
Yes.

Hmm. Hmm.

Aaron Smith (05:11)
these

threads and I think it’d be really interesting if one day someone did a ⁓ study on Christian marriages and the ones that have lasted and how they met and that kind of pattern because ⁓ for young people these days, and I’m sure you know this, there’s such a confusion about how to find a mate, how to find a spouse, like where to look and what that looks like. I didn’t have the luxury of meeting my wife earlier, you know, said seventh grade. I met her after

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (05:23)
Interesting.

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (05:41)
high school, but we were in the same high school together, just a knower then. But we had a very similar story, friends first, then dated, then marriage, ⁓ very truncated time. We also, very similar to your story, ⁓ did mission work, and then youth group, youth ministry, all those things. So I love that. I think it’d be interesting to see the similar threads of ⁓ Christian marriages and how they came together would be really interesting anyways.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (05:50)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (06:10)
I digress. ⁓ Yeah, I know love your passion. I love that ⁓ you work with step families and marriages that are non-traditional in many cases. ⁓ Because that, was listening to one of your videos on YouTube and you were talking about the high percentage of families nowadays that are blended families. not, they either have been widowed and remarried or ⁓ they’ve divorced, which is very, very common these days.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (06:30)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (06:40)
equally in the church as it is anywhere else, unfortunately, but I love your position on how you love them and that you aren’t an advocate for more blended families, but you’re an advocate for healthy families. so blessing them and loving them in that way is so powerful. And what’s interesting, you didn’t, you’re not from a blended family. You’ve, right?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (07:01)
Right, right.

So my professional interest became stepfamilies ⁓ early on. And it was in part because of my time as a youth pastor, my first job. I was working with kids from complex family environments, and I just didn’t quite get them. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t put myself in their shoes. ⁓ so graduate school taught me how to think stepfamily. I just had to translate that into prevention, enrichment, local church settings, that kind of thing.

And so that’s been the journey for me. But yeah, my parents were married 61 years, Nan’s parents from over 50. I ⁓ have three siblings, they’re all in first marriages. Now I’m a step uncle, I’m a step uncle in law, but they’re distant relationships really to me. And so it’s not been my journey, it’s just been the journey the Lord has sort of brought me on to be around.

Aaron Smith (07:35)
Wow.

But think that’s good. A lot of times ministry comes out of experience, but that’s not how it has to be. And I think there’s beauty in that.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (07:58)
Uh-huh. Yeah, well, ⁓

I have a contrast. Like, Nan and I’s journey into losing a child has led us into a space where we are now actively volunteering, working with parents who have lost children. That I get. That is a deeply personal journey for me. But it’s brought about the same motivation to try to help others. But I have this, you I just want to help couples and families because I just believe, as I know you do, that

It’s God’s plan A for changing the world, for bringing the new creation into the world. It’s through the home. And I don’t care what kind of family structure you have, you can be a godly family. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control has nothing to do with family structure. It’s not limited if you’re a single parent. It’s not unavailable to you if you’re in a third marriage because of some bad choices that have taken place. Like none of that is limited to us. It’s the Spirit of God working in us.

Aaron Smith (08:38)
Yep.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (08:57)
that brings us the growing ability to love God and love others.

Aaron Smith (09:03)
And that, 100%. And you actually hit that super heavy in your book, this idea of walking in the fruits of the spirit and that’s regardless of your structure. Something that it’s a sad thing, but it’s just a reality of the brokenness of our world. You said you were in youth ministry and you saw all these children coming from either broken homes or blended families and the complexity of that. And you’re like, I don’t know how to handle this. Why do you think

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (09:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (09:31)
the church in many senses. Like you said, there’s like no ministries supporting blended families. Why? Why is that?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (09:37)
Yeah.

Well, a number of reasons, but let’s just start with this. Aaron, churches don’t do marriage ministry, by and large. Let’s start with that. Like, if we don’t even buy into that idea and think there’s something here that the church should be about, then we’re never going to do single parent ministry or blended family ministry, foster family ministry. Like, we’re never going to really work with smaller groupings if we won’t work with the big one.

Aaron Smith (09:46)
That is also true.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (10:07)
And by the way, if you want me to preach, I can preach on why I don’t think we’re doing marriage ministry, but…

Aaron Smith (10:12)
I would love to know that because I

helped ⁓ my wife and I were a part of a marriage ministry back at our church decades ago and it was monumental in saving our marriage, this marriage ministry.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (10:19)
Yeah.

Yes. Well,

here it is in short. We don’t have a theology of relationships. We don’t understand that relationships are one of God’s greatest tools for discipling us into the image of Jesus. It was His first tool. It is going to be His last tool. ⁓ Jesus has come to marry us. Like, let’s just get to this. Love God, love others. Those are relational commands. And yet, we don’t think that the act of trying to love somebody

Aaron Smith (10:36)
There was this first tool.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (10:52)
has a process in it that grows me into Jesus. mean, stop and think about this for a minute. Like if I were to ask the average group of pastors, know, hey, what are the spiritual disciplines? Well, they could rattle them off, know, meditation, spending time fasting, know, prayer, silence and solitude, yada yada yada. Yeah, those are the classic spiritual disciplines that are aimed at what? Trying to help us to grow up spiritually and be more mature.

Aaron Smith (11:09)
Yep.

or something.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (11:20)
Why isn’t relationships on the list? Hello? You know, I’m a dad. Anybody listening or watching right now who’s a parent knows that your most aggravating moments, your most frustrating moments, when you get discombobulated and completely lose yourself, are moments when your kids come to you with a problem or an issue or a behavior that frightens you, scares you, worries you. Those are the moments where we are like, we completely lose ourselves. Why?

Aaron Smith (11:25)
Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (11:50)
And because we don’t have the maturity to know how to trust God and to bring Jesus into that moment, He’s inviting us through that parenting moment to become more like His Son and find a way through. Marriage, nothing’s more intimate, nothing requires more of us, nothing requires more self-sacrifice. I had no idea. I always say God’s little joke on us is that we take our vows at the beginning of our wedding and then life teaches us what we committed ourselves to.

Aaron Smith (11:56)
Mm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (12:15)
We had no idea what was required when I said for better or for worse. I didn’t know what I would have to become to bring about better.

Aaron Smith (12:15)
Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Yep.

Well, and just to add to that, as Timothy Keller says in The Meaning of Marriage, it’s like you’re not even the person you’re going to be until you’re married and neither is your spouse. Like they don’t exist.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (12:28)
Exactly, exactly. So here’s the

point. God’s using marriage, parenting, sexuality, singleness. He is using all of those relational contexts to help us grow up into the image of Jesus. It requires us to become. It is spiritual discipleship 101 and the church does not understand. I hate to say it, but the average pastor does not have that theology connected in their head.

If they did, they would say, look, we need to be about Bible study in this church, we need to be about community in this church, and we need to be about relationship enhancement in this church, because it’s in the relationship grind day in and day out, where we learn how to be love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And if we can learn it there, then we can do it anywhere. My goodness, those are the most intimate, challenging, difficult places of our life. They bring out the worst of me.

Aaron Smith (13:04)
Family, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (13:26)
And they bring out the best of me. And if I can bring Jesus to the worst of me, I’m going to mature. I’m going to grow up. I’m going to be more godly. And that changes the world. If pastors got it, we would make marriage ministry and parent training and family ministry a number one task. But I don’t think we understand that. And so it gets relegated to, you want to do a small group in your home with three couples? Great. You guys go and do that. We’re not going to promote it. We’re not going to tell anybody.

Aaron Smith (13:39)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (13:55)
or once a year we do one sermon, or once a year we do a marriage retreat and that’s it. Wow. Wow. I mean, I really think that’s it. Now add to it, most pastors have a challenging marriage themselves and they don’t want anybody to know that and they’re hiding. And so they’re hiding their personal story and because somehow they think that affects their ministry. And as you can tell from the mindful marriage, Nan and I have come out of the closet and even though we’re

people who spend a lot of time in ministry and talking about this stuff, we readily admit we can’t get it all right. And we’re working on it, we’re growing on it.

Aaron Smith (14:31)
You’re not perfect. mean, you’re supposed to have it figured out

before you share with anyone, right?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (14:37)
Yes. And so, yeah, it’s like all of life. Again, relationships are discipling. It’s like all of life is discipling us if we’ll let it. And in the meantime, we need to talk about that journey, whether it’s good, bad, or ugly.

Aaron Smith (14:44)
Yeah.

It’s exactly why we started this ministry, Marriage After God, in the first place. The point of Marriage After God is, in our book, Marriage After God, is that your marriage is your first ministry and all ministry flows from that. The orderliness of the home, the way you love each other, the way you raise your children, being in the Word of God. think, just to add on what you were saying about the struggle, and it’s easy to generalize, and I know you don’t believe every church doesn’t have a marriage ministry because we

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (14:52)
Hmm.

That’s right.

That’s right.

Aaron Smith (15:19)
we could point them out. So there are churches that are.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (15:20)
Oh yeah, well the facts are

85 % of churches don’t spend a dime on marriage ministry. I mean, you know the Communio study. 74 % of churches do not do more than two activities a year related to marriage. In other words, they may offer one class and do one retreat. That’s two. They don’t do more. 75 % don’t do more than that in a calendar year. It’s very uncommon.

Aaron Smith (15:24)
Exactly. Yeah.

And I would even take it a step further and say that if we churches, the general church, if pastors and the the eldership and the focus was on family, but then even on a micro chasm of of equipping fathers, men to be to understand their role in the home and also feel confident. I feel like so many men, there’s been ⁓ this

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (16:07)
Hmm.

Aaron Smith (16:16)
this fear of, can’t teach my kids the Bible. I can’t lead my home in the Word of God. I don’t, I’m not prepared. I’m not equipped. I’m not, I don’t have the degree. And teaching them to realize like that they are the pastors first. And then the pastors that they go and see are to supplement what’s happening in the home and to encourage and to strengthen what’s happening in the home, not to replace. And go ahead.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (16:42)
Aaron, you

nailed it, man. And if I could, I’m going to make a little connection here to the mindful marriage. I want you to hear the fear, right? I can’t. I don’t know how. So I don’t. Well, OK. So what do we do when we get dysregulated? We do one of four things, blame, shame, control, or escape, as we flesh out in this book. And everybody has a coping style, whether you know it or not. We do one or more of those four things. So for average guy,

Aaron Smith (16:50)
Do it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I do a few of

them for sure.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (17:11)
When he’s feeling

inadequate, the average guy retreats into ⁓ escape. That is, well, I’m just not going there. I’m not going to do it. I’m not stepping into that space. I’m going to pull back. I’m going let my wife take over. And so guess what? His lack of initiative, his lack of stepping in is related to the pain that he feels. Pain’s a big word, but really his concern that he’s not equipped, not enough. He’s inadequate.

Aaron Smith (17:36)
inadequate. Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (17:39)
And so out of that fear, out of that pain, he gets paralyzed into escape and therefore he’s not doing the role that he could play in the role of his family in marriage. That multiplied out over a thousand different moments in all of our lives is what we do over and over and over and over and over again. And the reason I’m so high on this material is because it drives to the heart of nearly everything that keeps us from really walking in the footsteps of

Aaron Smith (17:47)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (18:08)
of Jesus.

Aaron Smith (18:10)
And the role of the church, the role of other believers in our lives is to, so I may be difficult at self-regulating. Like many people do, me and my wife, you know, reading through your book, I’m like, oh, I need to read this whole book because I struggle with dysregulation. She struggles with dysregulation. I can see the patterns. But one of the tools, one of the gifts God’s given to his church is the church.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (18:19)
Mm-hmm.

We will.

Join the club, by the way. It’s nice to have you.

Aaron Smith (18:39)
And what I mean by that is we are to be building each other up in love. And so the words that come out of my mouth to you or the words that come out of my mouth to my wife or to someone else who’s struggling in this area of shame, retreat, control, like dysregulation and how they deal with it is to remind them of the truth, not to encourage those things. And I feel like that’s been one of the issues.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (19:01)
Yeah, that’s right.

Aaron Smith (19:08)
just generally, again, I hate to generalize, but I kind of have to. In the royal we, in the larger scale of things. And this started generations ago, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, with this idea that we are the clear G, we are the leaders, we are the special people with the special trainings, you are the lay, you don’t have the capability. what that’s doing is tearing down, not building up. Not saying you’re capable, not saying you can, not saying…

You are able not saying you were responsible, not saying you have the Holy Spirit as Paul says over and over and over again. You know, he says, you know, you’ve been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. One of my favorite verses. If that’s true, then you can. And I shouldn’t be telling you you can’t. I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be encouraging those doubts and those fears and those lies. I should be dispelling them. ⁓ And so what you talk about in your book is how we can self-regulate, but something that we can do to help each other.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (19:47)
Yes. Yes.

Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Aaron Smith (20:06)
is to help regulate. know, we remind people of the truth and not feed the lies, actually shine light on them.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (20:08)
Yes.

Yeah, Dallas Willard talked about, somebody asked him one time, can I actually become like Jesus this side of heaven? And he said, that’s the whole point of the New Testament. The answer is yes. You have the Holy Spirit living in you. Now, can you do it right today? Well, that would be a miracle of God. ⁓ But we’re working towards that. But the idea of yes, we can mature as people, that old habits and old difficulties and old ways of harsh reaction to

moments where we feel unloved in our relationship, for example, you can learn how to respond differently in those things. We now connect it to the neuroplasticity of what we know the brain is able to do, how it’s able to adapt and change over time. So you may have old ruts in your brain, but you can change those by the power of the spirit. But you gotta work at it. I have to work at it in the power of the spirit, but I have something to do.

I don’t just sit around and wait for Jesus to come back. There’s nothing in the New Testament that implies that I can just go lazy once I’ve come Christ. Nope. I got work to do. Right?

Aaron Smith (21:24)
Quite the opposite actually.

Yeah. So you talk about the ruts in our brain. And it’s really good. I read a book years ago called Wired for Intimacy. It’s specifically about how pornography rewires our brains. I do not believe it was written by a believer, but a neuroscientist. All the point is how our brains work. And those

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (21:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. It’s fascinating.

Aaron Smith (21:50)
He talks about those neuro pathways that we make when we do things over and over again and we repeat a pattern and it creates a pathway that is easier to go on. Just like when you walk through a field and it’s all overgrown, but you walk a path and it’s kind of fallen over a little bit. Years of walking over the path, eventually it’s rocks and nothing grows there and it’s a super easy path and it’s visible and it doesn’t matter how many years go by. That thing is, takes a lot of work to get that path to go away. You talk about in your book,

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (21:53)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Aaron Smith (22:20)
⁓ not just about the biblical understanding of it, but you tie it to the science of it, the neuroscience of it, which can get sticky for some people. A lot of believers have a hard time digging into science. There’s also some Christian circles that have, ⁓ I would say, over highlighted certain things in the biological or science world and saying, this is going to be more holy if we do these things. But you dig in in a way that

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (22:47)
shows like, God designed us a certain way. Here’s how our biology works. Here’s how our brains work. But here’s how the Word of God addresses that. And so I’d love for you to dig into what the Word of God says about the neuroscience, those neuro pathways that we’ve built and how God intends us to rewrite them, rewire them.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (23:08)
You know, one of the cool things about scripture is every time you read it, you see something new. You’ve heard a sermon on the Prodigal Son or something. You’ve heard that a thousand times. But the next time you hear it, you go, wait a minute, never thought about that little. And that’s what’s so amazing about it is that there are a multitude of layers to it. And often it’s the discoveries of, you know, science and just as society advances, we have new insights that sort of

Aaron Smith (23:26)
alive.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (23:38)
shed a new light on the truth of scripture that was always there. We just didn’t fully understand it. You know, you’re talking about the earth is round and you know, all those kinds of things like, ⁓ yeah, well, the Bible does give some indications of that, you know, but we just didn’t know to look for it the way we know to look for it now. I think that’s what we’re in this new era of what we are coming to learn and understand. It’s just been the last 30 years that neuropsychology and brain science has advanced tremendously.

Aaron Smith (23:45)
Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (24:08)
and it’s helping us understand trauma. It’s helping us understand child development. It’s helping us understand relationships and how ⁓ the brain reacts to somebody else’s brain, you know, how emotions in the room affect the biology of how we respond to one another. And without surprise, all of that can be integrated fully into truths that we’ve sort of always talked about, if I could say it that way, about Scripture.

Romans chapter 12. Be transformed how? By the renewing of your brain. Well, ⁓ no, it doesn’t say that. It says by the renewing by your mind. Huh. Well, now we know your mind can tell your brain to do something different and that when you do something different, obedience, that actually has then this effect of, like you said, creating a new rut, a new pathway that makes the new behavior more likely.

Aaron Smith (24:41)
the radio.

Yep. This is mine. Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (25:07)
going forward, it becomes the new habit. So literally, you are transformed when you take off your old and put in the new, and it changes you. That’s the language Paul uses over and over again. Take off the old, put on the new.

Aaron Smith (25:17)
I got

to stop you for a second because you said the mind can tell the brain. And so I think about how the scriptures use certain organs. It uses the word heart. And they didn’t have a concept of heart like we have. You love and the concept of heart in the Bible meant will. what comes, how you make choices.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (25:26)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes, they didn’t.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (25:44)
You know, with all your heart, with all your will, you’re going to choose, God, what is mind?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (25:50)
Yeah, think so. Mind is that collective idea of I think it applies to will. It applies to the thinking part of you that is considering knowing it has a trusting element to it that this is where I am choosing to go. So you’re applying your will. If I could use the word agency, that’s the word we’ll use in the Mindful Marriage book is I have agency. I don’t have to just sit around and be a victim.

Aaron Smith (25:56)
Art of it.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (26:18)
of who I’ve always been and how I’ve always reacted. I can take agency over that part of me and say, what does the Lord want me to do to become? And when I apply that agency, I’m now telling my brain to do something different. Now, listen, we do this every single day of our lives. A great example is you mentioned walking through a field. The cool thing about your brain is that it’s designed by God to get better at stuff. It gets efficient.

So if you walk from your bed, right. Everybody learning to drive knows how much you had to think about. Turn signal, my, I’m supposed to be looking in the rear of your mirror. What’s happening with my speed? There’s 80 things going on and you have to think about all of them simultaneously and it is arduous and challenging and it is not easy. And the more you do it, now you get in the car after a few years and what? You just do it automatically. That’s your brain’s efficiency. It has learned.

Aaron Smith (26:47)
Which is bad too. You get good at certain things.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (27:14)
You don’t know it, but you developed a lot of neurological ruts in your brain that tells you exactly how to drive. All those little things are now on automatic, and you do them without much thought at all. That is the efficiency of your brain. What’s beautiful about that is also a bit of a problem about that, because when I feel like I’m not enough and therefore I get defensive and blame others for my inadequacy, that’s me by the way, ⁓

than when I blame my wife for something that I feel inadequate about. That is also a neurological rut. And somewhere that developed for me early in childhood, and I can’t even pinpoint when because most of this happens before we’re three, to be honest. But it definitely happens. It solidifies throughout childhood. And there it is. I carry it right into adulthood. And this is how I act in those moments in my marriage after 39 years. I still do it, Erin. But that’s my brain.

Aaron Smith (28:09)
Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (28:11)
being efficient. Guess what? I do not have to be a victim of that for the rest of my life because that’s part of my old flesh now. I mean, you look at the flesh conversations in Romans 7, Paul says, why do I keep on doing the stuff I don’t want to do anymore? Well, there’s a flesh element to what’s going on here, and that is brain, body, soul is all sort of doing what it knows how to do. Well, guess what? I need to take that off and put on something new in Christ. That’s the call of Scripture in the New Testament. And I can tell

Aaron Smith (28:13)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (28:41)
my mind can tell my brain to do something different. And the more I do it, guess what? I’m creating new ruts of love, joy, and peace, and peacefulness comes out of me rather than bitterness and angry and anger.

Aaron Smith (28:56)
Yeah, I think about when the Bible uses the word carnal, like it’s kind of a strange word. It’s always tied to like sin, like, that’s so carnal and fleshly. But essentially what it means like carnal or fleshly, it’s talking about your biology, your flesh. So like you have a craving, right? That is a biological chemical response. Like I’m craving sugar. Okay. Your body knows it needs something. The ruts that your brain makes.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (29:01)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (29:26)
and how you associate that craving, like, with donuts, you know, and I, and how often I get that. And then even beyond that, the emotional side that then gets tied to that then turns it into an addiction or like, when I feel this way, I’m going to cope or I’m going to escape with pornography or with eating or with, and all of those things, the things themselves are the sinful responses to natural functions in our bodies. And that’s what God

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (29:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That’s right.

Aaron Smith (29:55)
all throughout scripture is like, is no longer just being a carnal thing like an animal. Like, ant like a dog is a carnal thing. It’s going to do what a dog does. It’s going to… It’s all off of its neurological, biological responses. It has no conscious of what you’re talking about, the mind. It is kind of hovering next to us. so there’s the carnal and there’s the spiritual. So I look at what you’re talking about, the biblical mind and the biblical heart.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (30:01)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (30:24)
Are part of our of who we are as a soul because in in genesis says they became a living soul. That’s what we became We’re a soul Yeah with with flesh like we’re in this shell as paul calls it a tent a temporary dwelling place this body ⁓ and it’s got natural cravings and desires and and ⁓ Ways that it desires to be and out of control and not under the power of holy spirit. That’s when you we sin we have but that sin is

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (30:30)
That’s right, we are a soul. We don’t have a soul, we are a soul. That’s right. That’s right.

Aaron Smith (30:54)
the soul making the decision to allow it to do it. ⁓ And so when you say mind, that’s like our spiritual soulful, the part that does not need to be subject to the flesh. But it is because we allow the flesh to rule.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (31:09)
Yes.

Right, right. And it doesn’t have to be. That’s the thing. When we take agency. Now, we’re kind of getting into something here that we take on in a soft way in the book, but I think there’s a larger conversation that maybe we can engage in. And that’s this idea that

Aaron Smith (31:16)
May have to be,

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (31:32)
You know, when I’m upset, when I’m feeling unloved, like, mean, you know, let’s talk about fubbing for a minute. You know, that’s a common experience these days. Phone partner snubbing. Do you know there’s a word for that? It’s actually a thing. Yeah, fubbing, P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G. That’s when your partner is into their phone rather than in tune with you, right? And we actually have quite a bit of science around this. It’s a little mini affair. The more it happens, the more you feel isolated and distant. So…

Aaron Smith (31:42)
I didn’t. I was gonna ask you what you just said.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (31:59)
You just spent dinner together. You might be at dinner, on a date, having a wonderful time. And then you look across the table and they’re into their phone and they’re no longer engaged with you. And in a millisecond, somebody goes, wait a minute, is that phone more important than me? Guess what? You just felt pain, right? And what you desired, you don’t have and you feel pain. And all of a sudden you will get into a fight or flight reactivity. Your midbrain kicks in and says, ooh, danger well Robinson. And if you don’t.

Aaron Smith (32:13)
Yeah, it is. Yep.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (32:27)
listening, you don’t know who Will Robinson is, it’s because I’m old. Danger, Will Robinson, this person doesn’t care for you the way you want them to care for you. So you need to do something to get them to come back. This is what happens in nanoseconds in our brain. And so the midbrain kicks in and says, we’re under threat, do something, fight or flight. Fight or flight takes four main expressions, blame, shame, control, or escape. Blame the other person, you don’t care about me, you don’t want to…

⁓ Shame is, ⁓ I’m not important enough that you would, you make it about you. I’m not important enough for this person to want to be with me. Control is, I’m gonna tell you to put your phone down and you’re gonna pay attention to me whether you want to or not. I’m gonna take charge of either you, the circumstances, or myself in order to make this relationship connection happen again, or escape. Well, fine, if you’re on your phone, I’m gonna escape into my phone. Or I’m just gonna get up and walk out of here.

or I’m not gonna talk to you anymore, I’m gonna escape into distance in the relationship. These are the four main ways every person on the planet, every person on the planet responds to a moment where they feel unloved or unsafe in their relationship. We call that dysregulation, by the way. And it’s only because your brain knows how to do those four simple things to try to get back to a place where you feel loved, safe, and desired. Now, if you allow that reactivity to happen,

Aaron Smith (33:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (33:53)
you will spend the rest of your life doing blame, shame, control, and escape. And by the way, when you throw a little blame or a little control at the other person, how do you think they’re gonna respond? Are they gonna feel loved and safe in the relationship with you at that moment in time? Now they’re reacting, and so your dysregulation produces their dysregulation, and that’s what we call a pain cycle. And every couple listening or watching right now has one.

Aaron Smith (34:17)
Yeah,

I know my response.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (34:19)
And what we do in the mindful marriage is walk them through an exercise in about 15 minutes. If you did it, I’d love for you to come in. In 15 minutes, you will see yourself in black and white and go, ⁓ my word, that is me. This is what I do. You will know exactly how you react under those circumstances. And then we’re going to lead you, of course, to the new self, the person you’re trying to become. And how would I respond differently? But this brings us all back to this idea of agency. The question is, when I get dysregulated,

Whose job is it to get me back to a place where I’m not dysregulated, where I am more of the self Jesus wants me to be? Now, Erin, historically, we have made it the partner’s job. We have said, husbands, if your wife feels in love because you’re fubbing her, put your phone down. You need to tell her how beautiful she is. You need to reinforce how much she matters to you.

Aaron Smith (34:55)
Hmm.

Yeah, self.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (35:15)
Because if you don’t do that, she will forever feel insecure and unsafe. Now, there’s an element of how we minister to one another in our dysregulation. There’s an element of that. But to make it his responsibility means that he, think about this, we are asking him to parent her. She is like a little child in that moment, feeling unloved and feeling disconnected. So what you gotta do is pick up that child, pat it, hold it, kiss it, love it.

until it feels better. Parenting is not a good way to do partnering. We sort of inadvertently went a direction with all of this that left the hurting partner in a place where they don’t have agency. They got to sit around and wait for the other person to get this thing figured out and do it right. In the meantime, what are you doing? You’re feeling isolated, alone, sad, and helpless.

Aaron Smith (35:52)
Yeah, that’s not how marriage should be, right?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (36:15)
What if, what if it was my job to manage me in those moments such that I look at my own sense of disconnected and feeling alone and ask myself, what do I do with that? It’s my job to manage this moment well. Could I possibly not just go into blame or criticism or control of you? What if I said, what’s the truth about me?

And I rose above this moment and responded to it out of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, chillness, or self-control. There’s that self-control piece where I’m managing my dysregulation. And what we know is that when I do that, not only do I rise above this moment, but I end up telling myself my worth and my value, even though a minute ago you were fubbing me.

And I didn’t know my worth or value from you, but I know it from Jesus. I know it from the Father. I know that I have worth and value beyond what you seem to be showing me right now, and I can bring that worth back to this equation in this relationship. All of a sudden, ⁓ what could have been a disastrous sort of moment in the relationship gets transformed into a loving moment, and it was me who did it.

I didn’t have to wait on the other. I got to mature beyond my old self and become somebody new in this moment. And what do you think happens when partners experience somebody growing up and going, you know what, I used to just berate you when you would look at your phone and make you feel like a small child. And instead, I am bringing to you how I feel about this, but doing it in a way that shows you my worth and invites you

to join me in this moment in a way that’s respectful and decent and kind, what do you think the other partner will offer at that point? It’s more likely that they themselves will go, gosh, you’re right, how do I grow up in this moment? What do I need to manage in me? What was going on with me when I decided to look into the phone? Yeah, I guess that was my stress. felt like my boss was calling, and so I had to respond to that. And why am I so worried about that? I guess it’s because I’m afraid that they’re kind of upset with me.

And all of that, all of a sudden become, but I can set that aside. I need to set that aside. And you’re right. Let me bring the best me back to you. When you get two partners working on growing up, you get an incredible usness. And both of them have stopped acting like children and started acting like adults.

Aaron Smith (39:01)
I love that. So you use the word usness and I know no one’s read the book yet. ⁓ And so would you explain usness because in the book it’s something I had never even considered before. ⁓ That it’s very similar to how the church would be seen. Like the church is an entity but it’s individuals. And so

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (39:06)
Uh-huh.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yes. Mm-hmm. You know,

if we could do weddings, you we did a unity candle. A lot of people do that. I don’t think they do it much anymore. you know, what’s the idea? Two mothers walk down and light their son’s candle, their daughter’s candle. And then when the wedding starts, the bride and groom take their candles and they light a center candle. And historically, what happens is then you

Aaron Smith (39:34)
I think we did.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (39:48)
They each blow out their individual candles, which I think is a little Chris because you haven’t gone anywhere You’re not a non entity at this point. You’re still a person believe it or not, but you have created an usness That’s the center candle you have created something between you that did not exist before it is a living breathing organism it’s called your marriage and It’s a little bit like a child when you have a child you now have this thing that you both are deeply invested in

You both love it dearly. You will make sacrifices for it. You will make decisions based on it. It is a living, breathing thing that’s your usness. And when you seek to supply that, to nurture it, to grow it, to be sensitive to it, it will invite you to make certain sacrifices and grow up in certain ways because your usness is good for it. Now let me just make this all theoretical stuff really practical.

Aaron Smith (40:18)
It’s yours.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (40:45)
My wife is a walker. She used to be a runner. She had an injury. Now she’s got to walk. She is good, man. I’m taller than her and I’m more athletic. Naturally, I cannot keep up with a woman. Okay, are you with me? She walks an hour every day and she hustles. We live in Hills in the West Little Rock area and she can go up and down and all around and most people cannot hang with her more than 30 minutes, including me. I don’t really like walking. She loves it.

She gets a lot out of it, talks to God the whole time. There is something spiritual about it for her. I don’t like walking, but our usness likes me walking with my wife. There is something that happens for us when I show up. But if you’re saying, Ron, do you want to go on a walk today? Nope. Ron doesn’t want to do that. There’s nothing in me individually that needs that, wants that, desires that, seeks that out. But I will do it because I know what it does for us. It feeds.

us. Not just I’m doing that for her, it’s even bigger than that. It’s not just for her, it’s for our us. That’s our point of connection. That’s a moment where the endorphins get rolling whether I like it or not and I get something but we get something out of it. That’s the idea of of usness. It’s covenantal and it’s important.

Aaron Smith (41:58)
Yeah.

Well, the distinction that you just made, I think is incredibly powerful. It was for me just now that you’re not just doing it for her. And I feel like that I’m just thinking of an infinite number of situations in marriage. Um, you know, when you have a spouse that has a lower, you know, sex drive and the other person’s like, well, I’m going to do this for you because I have to versus no, I’m going to do this for us, you know, or

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (42:26)
Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yeah. See, I

love our us. You’re right. It is very different to say, I’m doing it for you, sort of feels like obligatory and sort of feels like I…

Aaron Smith (42:35)
Mm-hmm.

Well, and like,

it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s not the same thing as what you just said. It’s like, no, I’m doing this for us because us. Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (42:45)
No.

Now there’s a power dynamic like you’re

making me do. I don’t want you to feel like you have to. No, I’m doing this for us. That thing that I love that is bigger than you and me. ⁓ It’s a very, here’s another way to think about it. ⁓ The original idea came to Dr. Hargrave who communicates about this in his book from a colleague of his that they were having a conversation one day.

Aaron Smith (42:57)
Mmm.

That’s That’s huge.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (43:16)
And this colleague, his wife had passed away and Terry was asking him, how are you doing? And he said, you know, I miss her like crazy. He said, but more importantly, I miss who we were together. I miss our us. And it’s like, if you jump to the end, when life takes one partner, that is part of this thing. Like who you were together can never be replicated by two other individuals.

Aaron Smith (43:26)
Yeah, wow. It’s a different thing.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (43:43)
If you marry again, that will have a completely different us. It will have a different expression. It’ll have a different life to it. It will look differently, a different complexion. It’ll have a different color to it, if I could say it that way. Your us is some amazing, like a child. Everyone of them’s unique and different. It is the thing you create and are together.

Aaron Smith (43:54)
Yeah.

Hmm.

That I just hope all my listeners are if any one point they’re getting out of this whole conversation Is that it’s the thing i’m walk away with this thing i’m going talk to my wife about is Is what is our us? Not that we don’t know what it is, but like thinking about it in that sense defining it It’s possible that many times our dysregulation comes from that us being hindered I know for my I could I i’m just looking back and I know for my wife for sure

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (44:32)
Yes.

Aaron Smith (44:36)
when she feels like she wasn’t communicated to, when she feels like I, ⁓ even if I was innocent in my thinking, it still hurt us because I wasn’t thoughtful of us. what, well, was she invited into this decision or situation? That that matters. And so I just hope everyone listening would walk away with considering that in their own marriages.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (44:45)
huh. Yes.

Aaron Smith (45:01)
is what are they doing things for them or for themselves or for us? What does us look like? I did have a question about when it comes to walking through the process of… You were describing dysregulation. I get triggered, I’m hurt. Yeah, it’s pain, something frustrated me. Often on my side,

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (45:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s a big word.

Aaron Smith (45:31)
I became dysregulated when my wife is already dysregulated and she’s responding to me. And then I respond back and I dysregulate back. I said when you were smiling and you said that because I’m that’s exactly what I do. ⁓

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (45:37)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah. One rate

dysregulation often, if not always, sets off the other. Correct.

Aaron Smith (45:46)
Which is not, not that it’s her fault. I’m,

I don’t need to be dysregulated. I could have self control. ⁓ but the.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (45:52)
Dude, you got it, by the way. I mean,

I don’t want our listeners to miss what you just said. You have agency. And even in those moments where it tapped into whatever she just did or said or however she was, the look on her face, whatever it was, sent a message to you that tapped into something very deep about feeling loved or feeling emotionally safe in the relationship. And when we don’t feel loved, don’t feel safe.

it taps into the worst part of us because it activates this whole neurological system that says, ⁓ fight or flight, I got to do something, here’s a threat, I got to make it something other than what it is. And you don’t have to be a victim of that.

Aaron Smith (46:33)
So, and I agree, and it sounds great. sounds easy. You make it sound wonderful. But these situations, they’re not as often as cut and dry as you’re saying, because in a situation where, like I said, I feel like I was completely innocent, and yet there was something that I did that was ⁓ hurtful to her, even though I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t intentional. wasn’t…

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (46:37)
but it’s super hard. Yes.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (47:01)
uh, directed at her. It wasn’t even thought about. was just, um, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t. It doesn’t mean that what I did didn’t hurt her. It means that I need to look at it differently. Um, with what you’re describing, I read a story in your book about a gentleman who is learning to regulate and see his own self-worth, see what the truth says about him, and then to respond differently to his wife. How do we avoid that self-control response of

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (47:06)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (47:30)
Well, I’m not, I have a, I’m going to set a boundary. I’m going to say I have, I have worth and I’m not going to necessarily ⁓ sit here and be, you know, receive what you’re saying. How do we do that? Well, instead of it sounding like a form of attack, does that make sense?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (47:49)
Yeah,

it does. It might help if you give us a practical example.

Aaron Smith (47:56)
geez. Why do I to specifics? ⁓ So if my wife is hurt by me because I did something, whether intentional or not, and it hurt her. And so she’s now talking to me a certain way and it makes me feel disrespected and it makes I feel it feels unjustified and I’m hurt and I’m angry. And now I’m going to respond in my dysregulation. But instead I say. And I’ve had people do this to me before, not my wife, but someone else.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (48:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Aaron Smith (48:25)
You know, I’m just not going to like the way you’re talking to me. I don’t like it and I’m not going to hear it. I’m not going to listen to it. And when you’re ready to change, I’m going to I’ll be over here.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (48:29)
Hmm.

Gotcha.

That’s a good example of escape, blame, shame, control, and escape. What you’re saying is, I’m out of here. And so I’m quote, bounding you, putting a boundary on you, which not what boundaries are meant to do by the way. ⁓ And so I’m gonna distance myself from you. It’s a combination of control, say I’m telling you what you can and cannot do, and escape. I’m gonna remove myself. Okay, so.

If you go through the exercises in the book, the book is amazing when you do the exercise, let me just tell your audience that it will change you, or least it’ll make you deal with yourself in a new way. You’ll see that in black and white and you’ll go, huh, that’s my pattern. That’s what I do. It takes on little different forms here and there, but it’s predictable at this point, the rest of my life. This is what I’m fighting. And you’re gonna learn the four steps that we’re gonna teach in the book of how to take off that old self, acknowledge it, see it.

What are you going to do with it? And how do you begin to move into a new self? So it might sound something like this. I’m imagining you’re your wife and I’m you. OK. And you just sort of came at me and blasted with something. And I’m feeling unjustly attacked. I’m feeling, ⁓ whoa, disrespected. All kinds of bells and whistles and alarms are going off inside me. And so you take a big, deep breath. And by the way, that whole physiological little piece is helpful. The calmer you are.

Let me tell you, neurologically what’s happening in this moment is that the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that thinks, that considers, that knows God’s will, shuts off, literally goes offline. And what kicks in is the midbrain. Some people focus it on the amygdala and it essentially goes into protective mode. I just saw a rattlesnake and it’s ugly and it’s you and I’m going to control you and get away from you as quickly as I can because that’s what I know to do.

Fight or flight, blame, shame, control or escape. That’s what’s happening neurologically in that moment. What you gotta do is turn back on your prefrontal cortex, start thinking again, say, what is the truth? What am I supposed to do? What would God have me to do in this moment? And turn off the reactivative part of you, the reactive part of you. So it sounds a little bit maybe like this. Deep breath. Okay, what I know about me is right now I’m feeling disrespected and unjustly.

attacked. That’s step one. And what I normally do with that, you’re saying this out loud in front of your wife, by the way, you’re saying it out loud in front of your wife. That’s important. I’ll come back to it. I’m feeling unjustly attacked and disrespected and ⁓ not safe in this moment. Number two, what I normally do with that is that I just rise up and yell and scream at you and make you the bad guy. Or what I normally do with that is try to control you and tell you to shut up. And I’m going to go away until you act nicer.

That’s step two. Number three, but the truth of this matter is God tells me I am worthy of respect. I am an okay person. And even when I make mistakes and do things that hurt you, I can be a person who brings my worth to us. And so step four, what I’m gonna do differently right here in this moment is instead of doing my old self control escape thing,

I’m going to keep doing some breathing. I’m going to sit here. I’m going to listen because I love you and I value what you’re saying and I want to hear it. So keep talking. Now what’s just happened as you walk through four steps, two major things have just happened. Number one, as you said all of those things out loud, you told your brain to turn on.

Aaron Smith (51:58)
Hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (52:17)
You literally talking, you cannot just think this. You have to say it out loud because it activates the prefrontal cortex. You literally told your mind to tell your body and your brain to stop reacting, start responding out of a different posture. And you were reminding yourself what it is you’re actually going to do. So you’re telling yourself your old self, knock it off. And you’re telling your new self, yeah, this is who I’m supposed to be now. This is what it looks like when I.

Aaron Smith (52:26)
Hmm.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (52:47)
listen and absorb and take it in for the sake of our usness, even when I feel unjustly accused. You’re telling yourself that, reminding yourself so that you can begin to put it on. The second thing you’re doing is you’re sending a signal to your wife, who, by the way, this is nothing new. She’s seen your old self for a really long time. She knows exactly what’s going to happen. Right. And both of you are in

Aaron Smith (52:51)
and

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (53:12)
pain cycle mode before you even realize you’re in pain cycle mode. But when you go through these four steps, you’re sort of taking this humble posture of wrestling with yourself. And she’s watching you do that on behalf of your usness. And I’m telling you, when you when she doesn’t get the old you and she watches you become the new you and she knows why you’re doing it, it softens her heart. Now, I can’t guarantee you that she’s going to get sweet and kind and

Everything’s going to be wonderful at that moment in time. But it’s more likely that she will go, whoa, he’s trying. He’s doing something different. Usually he’s coming right back at me and we’re arguing for the next two hours. He’s not doing it. What do I do? Maybe I should do some self-regulation. What are my four steps? And now you have humility inviting humility. That’s got to be a better equation.

Aaron Smith (54:04)
Thanks

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (54:11)
Say, Erin, this little moment does not necessarily mean all of a sudden you have complete understanding and she knows that you weren’t trying and she doesn’t feel unloved anymore. It just means that you are now in a better place, both of you, to figure out what you do with that hard thing that happened. You’re now positioned toward love rather than being positioned with your heels dug in toward reactivity.

Aaron Smith (54:30)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, something I want to, by the way, what you just explained sounds much more ⁓ like practicing righteousness than practicing sin.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (54:50)
Dude, that’s it. This will grow you up. Like you do

this. Here’s our best research. You do this 50 times. Not only are you creating new neurological ruts that make it more likely you’ll be less reactive and more calm in future conflicts, but you are redefining how the two of you deal with conflict in such a way that it gets easier and easier and easier and softer and softer and softer.

Aaron Smith (55:16)
What you just said that the thing I was thinking about while you’re talking is because we were talking about this us that exists this third person of our marriage kind of like, you the Holy Spirit of the Trinity It’s interesting. It’s like when you think about the US rather than the me and the you In our book marriage of the God we call it oneness but we didn’t describe it as it as it’s a separate thing and I think there’s something powerful there. Do you is it possible that our us

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (55:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (55:46)
can have its own ruts in that we can, like what you’re talking about actually rewrites the yes and how, cause like you said, my wife’s seen my, how I react. And so there’s a preconceived, you know, idea of like, something’s going to be coming. therefore I’m going to kind of preemptively or, and I’m going to do the same thing. here it goes again. Like whatever it is, we kind of have this pattern that our us has experienced for.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (55:48)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

There are five exercises in the mindful mirrors. I think this is the third one where you’re gonna know your individual pain cycle. She’s gonna know her individual pain cycle and then you’re gonna put them together and you’re gonna see how they intersect with one another. And that’s what we call the couple pain cycle. Like when we are at our worst, this is what we do and who we are and why we get that way. It’s the why do I do that? All of us who are loving people who want to love well.

Aaron Smith (56:33)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (56:44)
find ourselves doing things where we go, my goodness, why do I do that? There’s a neurological reactivity that’s driving it and you can figure out what it is. It’s really not that difficult to understand. Once you get there, that is the pattern of your usness in your worst. The beautiful thing is there’s also good things about your usness that is healthy and good and strong. And when you’re at your best and she’s at her best, you guys naturally love, you naturally sacrifice, you naturally give. It’s only when we’re dysregulated that we don’t.

Aaron Smith (57:00)
Yes.

Yeah.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (57:15)
Getting a hold of ourselves when we’re dysregulated is the trick.

Aaron Smith (57:20)
Love it. ⁓ Before we go, I think this conversation, I have so many questions I would want to dig in with, but it’s going to go another hour, ⁓ which I would do if I could. But just for the couples listening right now that are on the edge, because they’ve been going these dysregulation cycles, these pain cycles for a long time. My wife and I were there years ago. Seasonally, periodically, we still fall into them. I’m going to read your book and we’re going to practice these.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (57:29)
the

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (57:49)
these, what’d you call them? I’m losing the word, exercise, it’s not so different. Because it sounds super helpful for me and my wife specifically because we have pain cycles. ⁓ But what’s the very first step that these couples that are, they just feel like crazy, they feel on the edge. And just what’s the first step that you would encourage them to take right now to put them on the right path?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (57:54)
The exercise is the, yeah.

Yeah, okay, so

because I’ve forgotten to say it, let me just say this. All this assessment about what’s my blame shame control, what’s that pattern like, we got a free assessment. I’m gonna give you a link. You can put it in the show notes for folks. They can go online, take it, and in about 10 or 15 minutes, you’re gonna go, wow, that’s me. Now what do I do about it? ⁓

First thing you gotta do. Pain, if we’ll let it, if we’ll let it humble us, will lead us to call out to God, to cry out, to say, I am not self-sufficient. Essentially, that’s what pride does to us. It says, I got this, I got this, we got this, we don’t need no, humility is, I don’t got this, Lord, I need you.

And as simple as that sounds, that’s not only a couple decision to then explore and reach out and find help, but it’s a personal decision where you say, and I’m putting on humility and I know I need to learn something about me that will help me be a better me. And that starts a process. And let me tell you, God rushes to the side of people who put on humility. This is the promise of scripture. We also teach this in the book. God opposes the proud.

Aaron Smith (59:31)
Yep, it raises up,

humble.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (59:34)
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Like, He is there with His grace to the humble. But keep pressing in with pride and self-reliance and God’s going to oppose you. He will not let you walk through life thinking you’re Him. He won’t let you do it. That’s every story of the Bible. I mean, that’s a pretty big statement on my part. But go back and you basically have one individual going, yeah, God, we don’t need you anymore. And he goes, OK, Babylon, come in here. Take him out. His opposition. You know, it’s story after story after story after story.

Aaron Smith (59:45)
Hmm.

Yep, from the front to the back. ⁓

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (1:00:05)
That principle is taught, I’ve stopped counting, 36 times I’m up to in scripture. It’s really clear that the first thing we always have to do is say, Lord, I need you. And then let him lead, and it will not be an easy journey. It will not be a fun journey. Been there, done that. The story of the mindful marriage is Nan and I telling our story of our mess and how we have been changed through it.

⁓ You can be too.

Aaron Smith (1:00:39)
love that humbly calling out to the Lord. The Bible tells us, promises us that we knock and we will, the door will be open to us. We seek and we will find him. He says, anyone who calls out to him, he hears them. And so I think that’s the, I’m glad you said that it’s what we need. mean, when even now I’ve been a believer for gosh, 20 something years. Um, I was 17 and a half and I’m 41. So I don’t even know how many years that is, but

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (1:00:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Smith (1:01:09)
I have to humbly call out to him. I need you. I can’t do this right now. amen. That’s what he wants. That’s what he loves, is a humble and contrite heart. You he will not despise. Ron, thank you so much for being on the show and for the ministry you have and families around the world. And I just pray that ⁓ everyone listening would check out your book and

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (1:01:11)
every day.

Yes. Yeah, this is the walk of the believer every day to posture humility. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (1:01:38)
we would be practicing maturity and self-regulation or as the Bible puts it, self-control. Yeah, and we would walk in those fruits that God’s given us through His Holy Spirit. So I really appreciate your time. I’ll make sure to put all the links in the show notes. And again, just where can people find you and where is the book at?

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (1:01:43)
Self control.

Yeah.

rondeal.org is where you can find me. D-E-A-L. Let’s make a deal. There you go. rondeal.org. You can find us. We’re doing conference events. Churches are bringing us in. The book’s available wherever books are sold. So wherever you get stuff, you’ll find it.

Aaron Smith (1:02:14)
Praise God, Randall. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Ron Deal, FamilyLife (1:02:17)
Thank you.