Healing & Transformation In Marriage w/ Roy Wooten

Roy Wooten (00:00)
And so the first 20 years, her wanting to help me felt like she was telling me, you’re not good enough. You’re not a good husband. You’re not…

Aaron Smith (00:08)
and

Roy Wooten (00:08)
Christian

enough, you’re not a leader enough, you’re doing it wrong, was a big message I heard. And somewhere in there, my interpretation was that you’re not worthy of love or you’re not lovable, kind of message in her criticism.

made me really take a hard look at what is it that I need to do to be the kind of man that my wife adores me, seeks out, wants to be around me, wants to give her heart to me and wants to trust me with her heart.

Aaron Smith (00:38)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. I’m your host, Aaron Smith. And today I’m thrilled to introduce to you Roy Wooten, executive director of The Crucible Project, a Christ-centered ministry that’s transformed over 8,200 men’s lives through retreats focused on radical honesty and God’s grace. Roy is a licensed counselor with over 25 years in family ministry, married to his wife Debra for 37 years, a dad to two adult kids, and a proud grandpa who’s all about stewarding God’s call on men’s hearts.

In our conversation, Roy opens up about his own journey from a pivotal 2009 retreat where God’s grace moved from his head to every cell of his body to navigating marriages ups and downs, like turning criticism into connection and creating safe spaces for vulnerability. We talk about breaking free from emotional minefields. This was a really awesome part of the conversation, by the way, and how confession is one of God’s greatest gifts to bring true freedom. My prayer is that this conversation will encourage and equip you to embrace honesty, grace,

and community for deeper intimacy. Please enjoy my conversation with Roy Wooten.

Aaron Smith (01:42)
Mr. Roy Wooten, welcome to the Marriage After God podcast. I’m super happy to have you.

Roy Wooten (01:46)
Yeah, super great to be here. Aaron, thank you so much for having me on.

Aaron Smith (01:51)
I love getting reached out to by different agencies and different PR companies and I get to meet a lot of cool people and you’re one of them and I’m excited to get to know you and I think my audience would like to get to know you a bit more as well. Why don’t you start with some biographical information about who are you? Who’s Roy Wooten? What do you do? How long you’ve been married? What’s your story?

Roy Wooten (02:13)
Yeah, sure. I’ll just take off. I’ve been married 37 years, by the way. I’ve got two adult children. Yeah, two adult children and their spouses live within 15 minutes of us at either direction. And I got to spend some time with my two and a half year old grandson this morning at the zoo. Being a granddad is one of the greatest joys in my life right now. So I really enjoy it. God has me stewarding.

Aaron Smith (02:19)
Holy moly, that’s great.

Roy Wooten (02:43)
a ministry that’s doing some pretty incredible things with men and women. And I’ll get to more of that later. But, you know, I grew up out in West Texas. I was a son of an oil field worker. They call them roughnecks. And so my dad was a roughneck out on the rigs. ⁓ Whenever I finished high school, I had the opportunity to go to college. ⁓ Thankfully,

Aaron Smith (02:59)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (03:10)
Um, had support from my parents and encouragement. They didn’t have a lot of money to send. think I got $25 at Christmas one year and the 35, the next, and that, was the support we had financially, but I had incredible, uh, folks around me who championed me. And I went to school because I had a calling to be a pastor. So I went to school to be a pastor about two years in decided to shift to counseling.

I was sitting in an intro to psych class with a licensed clinical psychologist who was also a pastor at a church. And he made a statement, he said, just because you’re called in the ministry doesn’t mean you have to be the pastor. And I hadn’t thought about it that way. So was very thankful and shifted gears in counseling. did a bachelor’s and master’s in clinical counseling, did a couple of years at a psychiatric hospital to get my license. Some people ask, yes, I was…

in employment there, not on the other side. And then I spent the rest of my career as a counselor with a pastor’s heart or a pastor who had been trained in counseling. I’ve run ministries since I was 26 years old. And now God has me steward in the Crucible Project.

Aaron Smith (04:28)
Why you don’t look old enough to be a grandpa and you don’t look old enough to do it. I’ve done all the things you just said. Hell do you.

Roy Wooten (04:35)
I am 57 years old. Yeah. And well, thank you.

Aaron Smith (04:37)
Okay, 57 years young, looks good on you.

Yeah. I noticed some cowboy hats in the back. Where are you located?

Roy Wooten (04:45)
Yeah,

I’m in San Antonio, Texas. So I’ve never lived outside of Texas, although I get to work all over the US and in other countries now. But Texas is home and I couldn’t imagine raising my children anywhere else but here. And so we’ve made our home in Texas the entire, you know, my entire life. So married a married up, I married a Midland girl, a lady of strong faith.

Aaron Smith (04:49)
Texas.

Okay.

Roy Wooten (05:13)
And ⁓ that’s the town that competes with Odessa out in West Texas. And so, ⁓ yeah, we’ve had a rich and fun ⁓ life. She’s joined me in ministry many, many times over the years. And we live near her work where she’s near retirement. So ⁓ really looking forward to those days.

Aaron Smith (05:34)
Wow.

37 years, you guys are getting close to your golden anniversary. Yeah, that’s not quite there, but you’re getting close. That’s awesome. So.

Roy Wooten (05:42)
Hmm.

A lot

of times, Aaron, it doesn’t feel like we’ve been married that long. know, what’s good is we have all these like rich stories and history and, we’ve done life through the ups and downs of, of marriage and the ups and downs of life. It’s, it’s been an enjoyment to, go through. We’ve, we’ve gotten through the tough ⁓ periods where, you know, you’re so busy raising your family that you forget to do the things that keep you connected to each other. And we’ve been through.

Aaron Smith (06:15)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Wooten (06:16)
the worst moments in my married life and the worst moments in her married life. And so it’s a pretty rich time in our marriage that we’ve got all that history behind us. We still ⁓ find ⁓ deep attraction in each other and companionship as we do life. And I know there are people who tell me that they find happiness in their single life, but

I just can’t imagine it being any better for me.

Aaron Smith (06:50)
Amen to that. Question for you. 37 years married, granddad now. I’ve seen this in my own, I’ve been married 18 years going in 19, which to me that feels like a long time. at the same time, I don’t even know how we got this far. doesn’t feel like it’s been 19 years at all. Like it went by way too fast. So I get what you’re saying about, doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. It’s like a very short time, but over the years, I think it’s…

Timothy Keller in his book, Meaning of Marriage, believe he talks about who we are before we’re married and who we are after we’re married are different people. And like we don’t exist yet. Like your wife doesn’t exist yet. You as a husband doesn’t exist yet until you’re married and then you become this you’re a new thing. ⁓ How many times over last 37 years have you and your wife – ⁓ I don’t want to use the word evolved because I don’t like that but transformed. Like you were one Roy –

37 years ago and then 27 years ago you were a different Roy and 17 years ago you were a different Roy. What is those transitions for you and your wife been like over the years? Seeing different versions of yourselves. I’m imagining growing, right? Probably seasons where it didn’t feel like it but.

Roy Wooten (08:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I can look back and see some definite like shift periods, know, our ⁓ married before children years were that was a different time than our married with kids years and all the struggles that go along with how do we how do we make sure that the house, you know, bills are paid and both I’m trying to develop my career and also pay attention to the needs of the home and.

Aaron Smith (08:20)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Wooten (08:37)
the busy schedule years of having them as teens where they’re going every direction and you know, my schedule was ⁓ somewhat, I had somewhat control of it while I was at work, but outside of work, was really wherever we needed to get the kids next, you know, was a big part of how we were doing.

Aaron Smith (08:56)
You’re at ⁓ the whim of

the family schedule.

Roy Wooten (09:00)
Yeah, the family schedule. And so I think there are periods where, you know, I was going through shifts and she was going through shifts. One of the really huge shifts was a crisis point, ⁓ maybe around the time that you you’ve been married somewhere around 20 years, where I realized that in order for me to have the wife that I really want, I need to be doing things that draws her to me, draws her near me and

⁓ The way that God slapped me in the face around this was ⁓ watching a friend go through a divorce that I thought who had a really great marriage. And listening to him report how he didn’t see where there were really any problems in the marriage, and listening to her complain about all the challenges in the marriage.

It was like they weren’t on the same page at all. So it made me start, number one, looking at myself and listening to my wife in a bigger way, in a better way. ⁓ Sometimes, well, my wife will tell you that what I hear is criticism frequently is her just wanting to help me. And so the first 20 years, her wanting to help me felt like she was telling me, you’re not good enough. You’re not a good husband. You’re not…

Aaron Smith (10:24)
and

Roy Wooten (10:24)
Christian

enough, you’re not a leader enough, you’re doing it wrong, was a big message I heard. And somewhere in there, my interpretation was that you’re not worthy of love or you’re not lovable, kind of message in her criticism. But from her perspective, she was just like, hey, I know you can do better. Here’s what’s not going well. And all I heard was the criticism of it. And so the combination of

Aaron Smith (10:38)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (10:52)
you know, feeling those things at home and the things that were going on with my friend made me really take a hard look at what is it that I need to do to be the kind of man that my wife adores me, seeks out, wants to be around me, wants to give her heart to me and wants to trust me with her heart.

Some of the research from like Gottman Institute and other places reading as many books as I could were the ah-has that had me going I don’t do that. Yeah, I don’t like whenever I schedule a date Everything else is on her to schedule the child care to handle to rearrange her schedule so that we can make it work, you know and You know, we disconnected some things from our dating lives that made

our dating life more enjoyable where we got to know each other all over again, right? I also think about the time that I went, a friend of mine called me and said, you’re not going to believe this, they’re doing some incredible things with men. ⁓ know, Promise Keepers was a mile wide and an inch deep, but, pardon?

Aaron Smith (12:13)
I went to that with my dad a few times. Yeah. I went to Promise Keepers with my dad a few times in

Southern California.

Roy Wooten (12:17)
Yeah,

it was a great experience for me. I don’t know that I left necessarily a changed man, but it was a great experience. And he said, you got to come check this out. And so I signed up to go check it out. And I went to the first Crucible Project retreat in Texas back in January 2009. And by the first break, God began to deal with me on some things about how I was doing life that I was unaware of, like

God brought up some things that were tied to a past in my childhood that I had no idea were still affecting me. In fact, I had gone to a counselor during my college years and thought I had put that stuff to bed and things were taken care of. ⁓ A couple of weeks after the retreat, my wife looked at me and said, it feels like I got the husband that I married.

And what I was interpreting from that statement was what had happened on the weekend to me in how I was able to wrestle with God about the core things in my soul that were keeping me from being all God wanted me to be, had loosened up my heart in a way that I was listening to her better, that I was connecting with her beyond her words to her emotions.

where I was more in tune with myself, with God and with her. And even though I didn’t know I needed it, that’s one of the outcomes that happened. Another crazy thing leaving the weekend was I had always known that I was going to heaven. Like I could teach it and I could preach it and I could tell you that I know I’m a saved man, but in my cells of my body, I still felt like I was unsure.

Like the shame from sin in my life was keeping me from really feeling the grace in my inner being, if that makes sense. And Sunday afternoon when we were pulling away from the retreat, not only did I know I was going to heaven, but every soul in my body knew it. In other words, I received grace in such an embodied way there.

Aaron Smith (14:18)
Okay.

and

Roy Wooten (14:43)
that ⁓ it changed the way that I think about how I received grace in my life and allowed me to be more graceful to others. I also think about the time that we dropped my daughter off to college. She’s our youngest and we pulled away and I’ve got some tears and she’s got some tears and we’re driving down the road and there was a thought in my mind for…

couple of minutes was like, God, do not bless me with a surprise child to start this all over again. But the main thing was that here we are, just the two of us again, no kids, you know, in the house, they were still on the payroll, but yeah. And so what is this going to be like? And it was an opportunity for us to move toward each other instead of a way for us to start.

Aaron Smith (15:27)
Yeah, right back to the beginning.

Roy Wooten (15:39)
reconnecting in new ways. We come back to the house the weeks that followed instead of having lots of friends of my daughters in the house and lots of noise and activity and people showing up for dinner that you weren’t expecting. So you always cooked a little bit extra because you never knew who might swing by the house for a meal to just be in her and I and a lot of crickets. And so it was another time to kind of

evolve, as you would say. Yeah, relearn. ⁓ Yeah. And one other way, I think that I’m convinced that God has spoken through my wife, that the Holy Spirit has spoken through my wife many times in my life over our married life. That she says things, sometimes it’s hard for me to hear because it comes

Aaron Smith (16:11)
and relearn.

yeah.

Roy Wooten (16:36)
in a critical voice sometimes, but she’ll say something and maybe something that I’d been praying for an answer on that I circled back to her a little later. like, hey, tell me what you’re thinking about this again. She said, I don’t know why I’m thinking this, but this is what I’m thinking. And I feel like, yeah, this is confirming what I’m feeling in my spirit from the Holy Spirit. I think part of the reason that I am the man that I am has large…

amount to do with her and her interactions with me over the years and helping grow me into, excuse me, the husband, the father, the grandfather, the man that I am today. I don’t know if I’d be the same man had I married someone else or had I not married.

Aaron Smith (17:23)
You never know, but it sounds like she’s had such a massive influence on you ⁓ in your marriage and everything you’re saying, I’m thinking about my relationship with my wife and God’s done the same thing, you know, and continues to. ⁓ I was laughing in my head when you said she says something to you and she’s trying to help you, but you hear it critically. I’m the exact same way. She’ll say something and I’m like, it’s not what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it. That’s how I feel in my heart.

Roy Wooten (17:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron Smith (17:53)
And also sometimes it’s what she’s saying but but the Holy Spirit uses my wife and I just did an interview with another gentleman he was saying He said in another podcast not on mine when I was doing my research on him He’s talking about when they speak in emotions respond in emotions if they speak in fact speak in facts and it’s it’s I was laughing because we hear them trying to help we hear criticism and then when they are

sharing their heart and feelings with us. often as men share facts and they hear it as, you’re not listening. You don’t hear me. Yeah.

Roy Wooten (18:25)
Right. Yeah, we stay in our head about it and we’re

trying to fix it in some way. Those are early husband mistakes. I’ve been there. I’ve done those things.

Aaron Smith (18:34)
Yeah.

I still make

them. I’m 20 years early. But it’s something that God’s teaching me right now for sure on how to walk with my wife. But I love what you were talking about with over the years, just the transformations that you had of actually seeing your marriage in a new light and seeing your wife in a new light and realizing that if I need to be a husband, the kind of husband that’s going to attract my wife in a certain way, not that we’re trying to

Roy Wooten (18:41)
Yeah.

Aaron Smith (19:07)
regain them but it’s kind of like how are going to draw them into us and I always think of the golden rule in the Bible is, you know, how would we want them to treat us? We’d want them to do the same exact thing, to evaluate their own hearts and like how do they – what kind of wife do they want to be that’s going to draw us in and make us feel like we’re, you know, want to be there and so it’s – when you have both of those happening, it’s a pretty unbeatable thing in marriage.

⁓ I just appreciate that you were sharing that. You brought up about 20 years into your marriage. You had that experience with a friend getting a divorce. ⁓ It’s an amazing thing to see something in your mind. You’re like, they have it all put together and they have all this stuff. And then you’re just shocked when it just falls apart. ⁓ And those things can be very eye-opening for us. ⁓

What were some of the things that you began to ask yourself when you saw this happening? Because it’s probably very self-reflective like, oh, wait a minute. I think everything’s going okay. Is everything okay? Am I in the same spot this guy is, but maybe a few months early? What’s going on? What were some of the questions you started asking your own self when you saw this happening in your friend?

Roy Wooten (20:16)
Right.

Well, I could have, I could have bumped it with her and just said like, Hey babe, you know, she says things are really horrible. He thinks there’s not a problem. And, ⁓ so we good and just gone on, but I didn’t, I, I stayed with it and asked her questions. And finally, ⁓ she didn’t tell me all the challenges that she felt in our marriage right off the bat. So it’s like, she let a few things out and then.

Aaron Smith (20:39)
Hmm

She was testing the waters.

Roy Wooten (20:55)
how I dealt with

it allowed her to feel safe enough to tell me more. And so, you know, just how she felt about ⁓ me bringing people home from work for dinner meeting with like two hours notice. For instance, dumb husband things, know, not helping with, you know, I was on the chore list with the kids, like me and the kids all had chores, but my end.

Aaron Smith (21:14)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (21:24)
my chore list was hardly anything compared to hers. And some things about, you know, her dad was in some bad health at the time and my lack of, I think she didn’t feel my empathy and my, you know, that I was supporting her enough in that there were a number of things. But the big thing is, I mean, it was just listening. It was giving her space. So one of the things that I’ve worked with couples of many, many

couples over the years who are on the brink of divorce. So did a marriage intensive that I developed about 20 years ago, trained pastors and counselors how to use the marriage intensive. And this is a couple in my office with me and my wife or me and a coach or me and a counselor. And they’re on the brink of divorce. And over and over again, you know, they’re pointing fingers at each other. They’re not listening to each other.

and creating a space with safety for them each to be able to tell their story and being able to feel heard in their story is healing in and of itself. It’s a very healing thing. And one of the most important ways that we as men can ⁓ show love to our wife is to help her feel heard, period. Help her feel heard, which means creating safety so that she’ll talk.

Aaron Smith (22:49)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (22:52)
Most women, not all, this may not be your wife, but most women feel like some way and somehow their voice is muted or silenced or quiet, that they don’t have the courage or the power to actually say what they really need to say. And that’s why sometimes it comes out, it pops out in anger and tears. And then they’re not.

saying what they really needed to say, they’re just like, you know, vomiting up all of their challenges. So ⁓ as a husband, me creating space that’s safe for her, that I’m not going to be defensive in, that I’m going to really listen to what she’s saying, is so powerfully healing for her and feels like love. And I believe that’s true for all of us, that when we’re able to tell the truth,

about the challenge that we really have going on in our life. When we’re able to say it and not get judgment, but instead get empathy or grace from that telling, it is healing. It is such a gift of love for our lives.

Aaron Smith (24:08)
⁓ I, my wife is that way and it’s something that I’ve, I’ve fumbled many times in my, my marriage is something that it’s taken me 18 years to get a few feet forward in and often feeling like I’m going five feet back. but it was one of those things that’s really hard, ⁓ about that. And I would love for you to speak into it as, ⁓ it sounds great.

It sounds wonderful. Sounds beautiful. Sounds right, actually, to sit and like, how do you make a space that’s safe? They can feel heard. It’s really hard to do that when you’re also hurt. When you also are frustrated, when you also are. It’s one thing if like, hey, I’m great. Actually, how are you doing? And like you just come and you want to, you know, comfort them or, you know, do that. But that’s rarely the situation I would imagine. I’ve felt it myself when I’m trying to. I do want to. I want to. I want you to share your heart, but I’m also.

I’m also angry. I’m also frustrated. I’m also hurt for various reasons. And so it’s very difficult for me to listen. It’s very difficult for me to hear beyond the, like you were saying, the critique I’m experiencing or hearing rather than what’s behind it. What’s the purpose? What’s motivating it? And often ⁓ it leads to this feeling of like being unloved or

And then we respond the same way, which goes back to what you just had, the finger pointing thing. So how, how do I, how do we, we kind of stop that in its tracks to actually create that space.

Roy Wooten (25:36)
Right.

Yeah,

we can’t do it when we’re triggered. If I can use the word triggered emotionally, we can’t have the ring, the empathy and concern, the care and big listening ears when we’re triggered. So we have to give space for us to get untriggered. We have to go spin the energy of the trigger somewhere else and then come ⁓ to have that conversation after we’re hearing her.

Aaron Smith (25:50)
Yeah, use it.

Roy Wooten (26:13)
So once we’re like not triggered anymore and in a calm space through prayer connection, through connecting with another man or men in our lives and just saying, hey, this is what’s going on. I need to spend some energy right here. Getting out of exercising or ⁓ some way to complete that stress cycle, the trigger is really helpful. But I think about it like this. Debra and I got married and… ⁓

I had some wounds from my childhood that were buried in a minefield that she didn’t know anything about. And so did she. And so our marriage is accidentally, like each of us accidentally stepping on each other’s minds and how we interact with them when that happens, how we work to ⁓ reconcile after the effect of the stepping on the mine.

is really important for us being able to do life together. And once I’ve learned, once I learned that whenever I tell Debra I need to be home, that I’m going to be home at a certain time, I can’t be five minutes late because that triggers something in her life where she grew up with a dad who sometimes wouldn’t show up for days. they would be expecting him and he would just be absent. So when I was five minutes late in the first month of my marriage, ⁓ it was triggering, my goodness.

he’s going to be gone for three days in her. And so it was a little girl’s kind of wound inside of her that she was reacting out of. I was, I was, it was unknown to me after I learned that, then I got really good about making sure I told her when I was going to be home that I always got home at that time or pulled over back in the day and went to a pay phone and called her, you know, or whatever I needed to do to make sure she knew.

Aaron Smith (28:04)
Mm, yep.

Roy Wooten (28:07)
I’m still coming home, I’m gonna be 15 more minutes now, or whatever that is. And our challenges around these things is that in our humanity, we have some brokenness, and so we’re not bringing a perfect husband to the marriage, we’re bringing some of our brokenness in, and sometimes we don’t even know where our own minefields are.

Aaron Smith (28:10)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (28:36)
And getting triggered is a telltale sign that you’ve just got something out in your mind field. And so Debra and I, been us working through and reconciling through the different ways that we’ve stepped on each other, learning where the mind is so we don’t keep doing it, right? We step on each other’s minds and our mind fields so much less frequently now, you know, after 37 years of marriage than we did back then.

but also doing our own personal work in the minefield. That means me going back in the minefield, digging that stuff up. Like I mentioned that happened on the Crucible project, we’ll take in a look at it and wrestling with God around that wound so that not only am I not getting triggered by her anymore around those things, but I’m not getting triggered by my boss or by somebody at church or my neighbor or whatever.

Aaron Smith (29:16)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (29:33)
that the energy related to that that used to be so easily triggered just doesn’t happen anymore. And another thing that’s been helpful the last couple of decades for me around this has been

When my wife is really triggered and I’m not triggered, what I see is a little girl who’s really hurt. And the way that she’s showing up is like she’s firing ⁓ all cylinders at me or whoever she is, you know, is the target, if that makes sense. If I could see the little girl in her, and I do, and I can’t, then I can come with her, come to her.

Aaron Smith (30:09)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (30:18)
with support, with care, instead of defensiveness. I can come to her with ⁓ a desire to hear what it is she needs in this moment and try to give that to her. And sometimes, I think about one of the last times she really got triggered, I just moved toward her real slow. I said, I’m so sorry that you’re going through this. I’m here for you. And I held my arms out.

And she said a few things that weren’t very kind. And then she just melted in my arms. We ended up in the kitchen floor holding each other. And she just bawled and bawled and bawled. That’s not the husband I was the first 20 years of our marriage. But it is today. it’s only been because I start to see that it’s a younger part of her that’s really triggered. And I need to care for that part of her in that moment.

Yes, I believe one of the most important things we can do that builds trust, that builds, ⁓ moves towards reconciliation and forgiveness in those moments is to find something that I can agree with, that I can take responsibility for whatever it is that has triggered her. Maybe she says, I didn’t do something or I did do something, but that’s the thing that triggered her. ⁓ Maybe she’s telling me all of the

Aaron Smith (31:18)
Thanks.

Roy Wooten (31:46)
motives that she’s dreamed up about why I did or didn’t do that thing. I may not be able to agree with those motives, but can I find a way to tell her, am so sorry, I did say that, or I didn’t do that, even though I told you I would do it, you know, or whatever it is. What can I agree with with her? Because that starts moving her toward me when I take full responsibility for my part in her being triggered.

Aaron Smith (31:52)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (32:15)
If that, does that make sense to you? Yeah. And it’s disarming. It helps in disarming some of the energy that she has. So I don’t have to take responsibility for everything. She’s thought and felt around this. But what I can take responsibility for, that’s what I want to make sure and communicate. And I can save the rest for when she’s not triggered. Yeah.

Aaron Smith (32:17)
It does, yeah. It sounds like a…

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I like the advice on getting out of the like spending the, the stress that’s going on. Cause like you both, you know, we’re both triggered. There’s cortisol, there’s all these hormones going through our bodies that make it feel, make you feel crazy. Going and burn that off, go spend it somewhere else, not on your spouse. I like that as a bit of advice for all of us, something I need to practice more. But I feel trapped by it sometimes.

Roy Wooten (32:52)
Right.

Aaron Smith (33:06)
You know, it feels like I can’t just walk away or I can’t. I don’t know. Something I need to to practice to get us out of that, you know, that cycle. Give that space so that we can have that conversation. I’ve seen this play out exactly what you’re talking about in my own marriage. And it does work as long as you get get out of that triggered mode. It sounds like the Crucible project. This is the retreat you went to that had the.

Roy Wooten (33:28)
Right.

Aaron Smith (33:35)
you went to it and you had this experience of finally understanding grace helped you start thinking differently. Your wife’s like, what’s going on? You’re different. ⁓ but it sounds like, cause while you’re talking about triggers, ⁓ the first question I had and you kind of tapped into it was, okay, that’s great that, or that it makes sense. We have these triggers that we get triggered on, step into the minefield. That’s such a good analogy for this whole situation, for this whole conversation.

about how we deal with conflict in our marriages. But then the question is, to go back to you said, also doing the work in our own minefield. Is that something that the Crucible Project does teaching you to do this? I would like to you to dig into that because that it’s one thing to learn how to avoid the minefields of your spouse. But that to me feels more like walking on eggshells rather than healing.

Roy Wooten (34:13)
Yes.

Yeah

Hmm.

Aaron Smith (34:35)
But that’s just the piece of it. It’s like in the beginning, let’s find out what they are so that we can love them around, love around them. But then the next step is, but let’s get rid of them so that we no longer are afraid to step on them, if that makes sense.

Roy Wooten (34:43)
Right.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s like this. We go through life and we have some bumps and bruises. You know, it might be from a parent or a coach, a teacher, whatever, a group of other boys, whatever it is. And then as we begin to develop into men, frequently we start buying into two lies that Satan really puts in our ear. Number one, you’re the only one who’s struggling with this.

Aaron Smith (35:03)
and

Roy Wooten (35:17)
You’re the only one who’s challenged with this in your life or experienced this as a child or whatever that is. Number two, ⁓ you have to figure it out on your own. Three in five American men report that they can’t name five friends. One in five can’t name one friend. We have an epidemic of isolation in masculinity here in the United States.

Aaron Smith (35:45)
.

Roy Wooten (35:47)
And part of it is our conditioning, right? We grow up and we show a little weakness. We might shed a tear. We fall off of something in our physical education class or in a sports event. We fell and other boys make fun of us. Our dad tells us, boy, don’t you cry, or whatever. And we start putting things that are like normal human things into an invisible backpack we have on Earth.

And we don’t want anyone to know. then we get a wound from this or that from a parent, from a teacher, a coach, and we throw it back there. And ⁓ we end up being young adults that ⁓ has a bunch of stuff that we hide, repress, and deny, walking around in an invisible backpack that’s very heavy. And while it’s back there, it starts getting ⁓ not only heavy, but powerful. In other words, secrets and things that we’ve

Aaron Smith (36:18)
Yes.

Roy Wooten (36:47)
we have shame about end up having some power. And while it’s back there, we think that it’s gone, that we’ve dealt with it. But in reality, it sneaks out and acts out. And usually the person that acts out through is us, right? It acts out through you. And most of the things that we do that are kind of like what Paul said, the things I want to do, I don’t do. The things that I don’t want to do, that’s what I end up doing. The things that we

the unwanted behaviors that we catch ourselves repeatedly in and some kind of pattern of them, I guarantee you the origins are all that stuff in the backpack and finding a place where we can find safety enough to take the backpack off and pull it around and take a look at those things is really hard in today’s world. Our relationships with other men are usually shallow. It’s around sports or weather and

you know, some affinity of some sort ⁓ to something that we’re doing. don’t, you know, at church we’ll pray for ⁓ health concerns, we’ll pray for sometimes a job thing, but we, you know, certainly never raise our hand and say, you know, my 12 year old came home smelling like pot the other day and I just don’t know what to do with it. And would you pray with me? Rarely do we say, you know, my wife and I are really in a struggle. It’s been challenging.

I don’t even know if she loves me anymore. Sometimes I don’t feel like she loves me anymore. And we certainly would never say, my life is in such bad shape that I don’t know if I want to live anymore. And so you see men taken out because they’re living in isolation. They’re not truly connected to themselves, to God, to other men. And that means that they’re not connected to their wife. But more than anything, your wives want

Aaron Smith (38:34)
Hmm.

Roy Wooten (38:46)
to be fully seen and fully loved. She wants you to know her heart and everything about her and for you to still love her and want her and ⁓ be there for her. You want the same thing. You want the same thing in your marriage. You want the same thing in your relationships with life. But you live this unauthentically because it’s too risky.

to be honest, to be honest with yourself and to be honest with others. At The Crucible Project, we create an environment in a short period of time through a series of experiences and exercises, ⁓ activities, if we can call it that, ⁓ sequenced in such a way to let you take a hard look at what’s going on in your life and begin to do something about it and to be in a safe environment to…

Aaron Smith (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Wooten (39:45)
tell the truth about yourself. Jesus in John says, I believe John 1, 7, Jesus came full of grace and full of truth. And those two things are connected because it’s hard for me to believe somebody really loves me if they don’t know ⁓ the truth about me. So in my mind, even though I haven’t been fully honest and they say that they love everything about me,

Aaron Smith (39:54)
Mm.

Yeah.

Roy Wooten (40:13)
I know that I haven’t been fully honest, so I know they don’t truly love my true self. And part of it is getting to know yourself and getting to know the things that you’re putting in the way of your relationship with God, your spouse, and others in this world. So at Crucible, we’re able to do that. And part of the reason we’re able to do that is because James 5.16 says, confess your sins one to another.

Aaron Smith (40:19)
Yeah.

that you may be able to, yeah.

Roy Wooten (40:42)
and you will be healed, because

the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” So ⁓ the power in vulnerability is a feeling of being set free and healed. The evangelical church today, I would challenge you to tell me this is wrong, has really done away with the practice.

of confession. This spiritual practice that brings healing is so powerful. And at The Crucible Project, we believe in creating community where men live confessionally up to date with each other. They were always like up to date with what’s going on, not just about sin, but about anything that we’re putting in the way of us being the men that we feel like God’s called us to be. And so we’re after. One of the reasons it works is because

Aaron Smith (41:16)
Okay.

Roy Wooten (41:41)
People who’ve been through our weekends come back and volunteer and help. They help. And they go first. They model. This is how you do it. And they’re honest. And vulnerability and authenticity is so rare today that ⁓ people around you will start looking at you and going, I want some of that. I don’t know what’s different about you, but I want some of that. ⁓ It’s like a magnet that draws people to you.

Aaron Smith (41:47)
Yeah, and they bring the example.

.

Roy Wooten (42:08)
But somebody’s got to be brave enough to go first. Somebody’s got to be brave enough.

Aaron Smith (42:12)
Why do you think

⁓ I can imagine? I totally agree with this, idea of confession, not in the Catholic sense of going to confessing to one, but confessing to one another is what the word says, that we may be healed. ⁓ It’s the greatest gift that God’s ever given us, confession of voicing your ⁓ frailty, voicing your sin.

saying your weakness out loud and confessing also, it’s essentially agreeing with God. It’s like I’ve lived in a way in disagreement with God, but I’m now going to confess that I agree that what God says is right and what I’m doing and living and saying is wrong. It is incredibly healing. It breaks the… I just want all the men listening to this episode right now to hear this. Confession breaks the…

the stronghold that sin has. It is part of the healing process and you cannot heal without it. And if we, you know, we have these sin proclivities, we have these, you know, flesh, these things that are flesh desires, they come from within us, the Bible says, the temptations and the stronghold that that sin and that shame has on you is broken when we confess it before each other, before one another.

And so you guys practice that at the crucible. It’s one of the main things you guys do is getting to this place of being able to be vulnerable and confess. Why does that seem so un… It’s so funny. So my last interview was with Jobi Martin just an hour ago, and we were talking about manhood, true biblical manhood, not what the world says is a man right now, because it doesn’t know. ⁓

Roy Wooten (43:59)
Wow.

Right.

Aaron Smith (44:09)
What the Bible says, why does confession and vulnerability seem so antithesis to manhood? because I would imagine that’s one of the things that keeps us from desiring to do it. Like you said, I can’t go to my buddies and share how broken I am, how broken my marriage is. Like you said, your friend, you thought his marriage was all together. You know, it didn’t come to me like, hey, you know, I’m actually this isn’t working. I need help.

Roy Wooten (44:32)
Right.

Aaron Smith (44:38)
Why? Why does that seem so not manly?

Roy Wooten (44:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, so two big reasons, and it’s those two lies. You know, I’m the only one that struggled with this, which is outright lie. And ⁓ I’ve got to fix it on my own. So we end up getting stuck. ⁓ we get stuck between the man we want to be and ⁓ we keep engaging in activities or lack of action that keeps us stuck. And there’s some comfort in the stuckness. Like one of the reasons why men stay stuck in their life, whether it’s about

the hard conversation I need to have with my wife that I’m shirking back from. The next step I need to take to start my business or have the career move. The challenge that I need to have with my neighbor that I’m just, you know, shrinking back from that I need to get help with my drinking, but I haven’t, I really don’t want to step out there and put myself out and get help. Whatever the, whatever the we’re stuck in is that

The reason we’re stuck is because if we get into the action, the move that direction, we’re afraid something really bad is going to happen. We’re afraid something bad is going to happen. So we don’t do it. And instead, we do things that usually are in the sense of running, hiding, numbing, ⁓ any way to feel differently than the fear of doing that thing. And in our stuck place,

almost all the time, we are creating the thing that we fear will happen if we get into action on it. In other words, I need to have this conversation with my wife about this big thing, but I’m scared that if I do, it’s going to make things worse, not better. And so I just sit stuck. instead of having the conversation, I’m taking extra duties at work. I’m volunteering more at church. I’m out working on another project in the garage.

you know, whatever it is, I’m playing golf with the guys, whatever, all good things, right? None of those are sin, but they’re, I’m avoiding over there. And in the way that I’m doing my life, I’m actually making my marriage worse, which is the thing that I fear might happen. Look, the thing that, the worst thing that might happen may actually happen. There’s, there’s a real risk in it. That’s why we have fear about it. And it’s not

Aaron Smith (46:41)
Yep.

Roy Wooten (47:08)
a sure thing is going to happen. In fact, the likelihood may be pretty low, but we’ll never know if we don’t get into action. And here’s what God’s done over and over again. Jesus in His ministry did. He said, get up, take up your mat and walk. He said, you know, go wipe the mud off of your eyes and go tell the priests. He told the, ⁓ you know, when we put our faith into action, when we get into action, God blesses us.

Aaron Smith (47:29)
you

Roy Wooten (47:36)
God doesn’t bless us in our stuckness. God blesses us when we get into action on the thing that we feel like God’s calling us to do. And so making the movement as scary as it is, is true manhood because I’m looking at the fear right in the face and I’m going anyway. I’m gonna go, yeah.

Aaron Smith (47:51)
Yep. I

want to add something to what you’re saying. ⁓ Me personally, ⁓ I do have a fear. So when I don’t want to confess sin or have that conversation that I need to have with my wife or anyone, often it’s because I fear being seen for who I really am rather than who I desire to be, who God desires me to be.

Because if I the moment I open my mouth the moment I bring these things to light then the lights on and then now now my wife’s gonna see who I really am who I am in the dark and now she has to see me in the light which is Exactly what we’re supposed to be is let’s walk in the light as people of the day Not as people of the night drunk in this sleep, but not you know, we’re to be people of the light and so when I when I am afraid to confess when I’m afraid to

have that conversation, do the hard thing. It’s because I’m afraid of being seen for who I really am. And then secondly, I just wanted everyone to – and you can add to this if you’d like. ⁓ It’s because we don’t fear God in the moment. The Proverbs tells us the beginning of all wisdom is with the fear of God. And I think it’s in Psalms. It the fear of God is clean. The fear of God is a good thing.

Roy Wooten (49:09)
Yeah.

Right.

Aaron Smith (49:17)
When we fear God, we’re told that we won’t fear anything else. There’s nothing… And I’ve had to get to this point many times in my marriage when it comes to confessing sin to my wife or confessing anything, any of my weaknesses. I have to fear God more than I fear the response I might get for confessing the response I might get. Whatever outcome may come from me sharing the truth, shining a light on myself.

Roy Wooten (49:35)
Right.

Aaron Smith (49:45)
I have to leave that with the Lord and I to say, well, I love you, God, more than I love my secrets and more than I love my marriage, more than I love my status. I need to fear you more than I fear these things. Otherwise, I’ll never fear you, God, and I’ll fear all these things. I’ll never respond. I’ll never act. I’ll never confess. And so for me in my life, what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen in a lot of people’s lives is

Roy Wooten (49:54)
Right. Right.

Aaron Smith (50:13)
when we fear the reaction, when we fear the response, when we fear being seen more than we fear God, we’re not going to. We’re gonna stay stuck. Because being stuck is better because I don’t have to respond to God and I don’t have respond to the situation and I don’t have to change. ⁓

Roy Wooten (50:29)
Yes,

and you’re just like not living, right? You’re a shell of a man that you could be and your head’s gonna get disconnected from your heart so you have no passion, no fire in your belly to do life. This is what leads to isolation, that leads to depression, that leads to suicide, that leads to high anxiety, that, you know, this is not where you wanna be. And I think…

Aaron Smith (50:32)
Nope. Yep.

Yeah.

Roy Wooten (50:57)
sometimes it takes a little hand holding to have the hard conversation. So yeah, I’m not encouraging men who are listening to just go home and tell their wives everything tonight or to automatically walk up to strangers and tell them everything. If you’re a pastor, don’t do it from the pulpit next week. But having somebody go with you to have a conversation and a safe circle for you.

Aaron Smith (51:20)
with

Roy Wooten (51:25)
Like making it safe for you to be able to tell the truth is important. I’ve sat with many a ⁓ husband or wife as they told their spouse about their affair or their, you know, ⁓ other financial and other big trust busters in their marriage. Sometimes you need somebody to be with you, your pastor, your counselor, your coach to help you with that. But not doing it is not living. It’s not really truly living. And

So I think you’ve got to, know, Adam and Eve were in the garden. They were naked and unashamed. They ⁓ sinned and automatically they started hiding behind trees and hiding fig leaves between them and each other. Automatically, they were not being found by God easily. They were hiding. And it takes a lot of courage to come out from behind the trees, to lower the fig leaf and to be fully authentic.

with others and it is worth all of the risk. I get to live that way. I’m in community with men in that way. Debra and I get to live that way and have hard conversations and I feel blessed. This is the freest time I’ve ever had in my marriage these last several years.

Aaron Smith (52:29)
This is what the.

And this is what the Crucible Project’s whole focus is to help men get to this place with themselves and with their loved ones,

Roy Wooten (52:54)
Yes, I go into more depth in the book Unstuck and I want to make sure that anyone who’s listening here who wants a copy of that, you can get it for free in an ebook at the crucible project.org. But you can also find it where book, you know, wherever you buy books.

Aaron Smith (53:12)
Awesome. put links to that in the show notes. I’d like to, if you want to spend a couple of minutes, I just want to close the conversation with, you mentioned you went to this conference originally and you left knowing in every cell of your body of the grace of God. And I think this is just a really encouraging concept. And it’s not a concept, it’s the truth. It’s really, what it is is the truth of salvation. It’s the gospel in its entirety is that it’s

We’re not kind of saved. I tell this people, I mean, not sort of saved. You weren’t saved so that you can flounder through life. We’re fully saved. And I believe it’s Paul who says that, you know, there is no second crucifixion. He is raised. He is at the right hand of the Father. He has sent his Holy Spirit. So tell him, just give me a little bit of insight into this idea of just knowing

Roy Wooten (53:43)
Right.

Right.

Aaron Smith (54:11)
be on a shadow of a doubt of the power of the salvation of God in your life.

Roy Wooten (54:16)
Yeah, I made Jesus Lord of my life at 10. I mean, I was baptized shortly after I’ve ⁓ preached and taught and told myself that I believe that I’m going to heaven. I know that I was saved, ⁓ but in my being, in my body, I just never felt it. There was something that happened on the weekend, it wasn’t a specific event. It wasn’t a specific activity that freed that up for me.

Aaron Smith (54:31)
Yeah.

Roy Wooten (54:45)
where I think part of it was, so I don’t know how long we have here, but I think part of it was, so at five years old, one of my earliest memories is I’m sitting in the back of a squad car, holding on to my little brother. And my dad is on the porch of our trailer park, a trailer house, and he’s talking to a lawman who has a big Texas hat on and taking notes.

Aaron Smith (54:51)
You’re okay.

Roy Wooten (55:12)
And my mom is screaming and yelling. She’s tied up and she’s in a gurney and she’s being put into an ambulance. And it was ⁓ the week, the end of a week of my loving and nurturing mom becoming dangerous and violent and, you know, what felt like evil to me. And as a little boy, I had spent the week trying to protect my little brother to

calm my dad and to calm my mom who was in… She had her first psychotic break that week. And in that moment, Satan had whispered in my ear that, you’re not valuable or worthy of love. That little wound in that moment was playing out in my life in a lot of different ways.

⁓ As an adult, even though I was saved, even though was active in church and taught and preached in our discipleship models in the various churches that I was a member of, I had within me some sense that I’m not truly lovable, that on our Crucible weekend got broken. And one of the things about that wound is that it served me really well.

And because I believed that if I, as a boy, performed well academically, athletically, at church, et cetera, that I would somehow earn the love that I wasn’t worthy of. And in my career and in my studies and in college and, you know, in my career, I just kept achieving because I’m always trying to earn it, earn love in some way. I thought that I had worked through those challenges, but I was still spending too much time

⁓ at work and not connecting as well as I could in other ways. was busy volunteering at church. ⁓ and this little thing is still, was still running in me at the time of, you’ve, you better perform or they’re going to reject you. You better achieve or not. So it served me well in my career. It’s made me, I think, be a pretty good guy. And it was the thing that I think was keeping me from really filling the love.

Aaron Smith (57:27)
and

Roy Wooten (57:37)
and grace that God had for me. On the weekend, I was able to take that little five-year-old and do some wrestling with God around all of that. And I got incredible amount of grace because I was really 100 % truthful in the whole thing. And the grace that I received, I received from God in such a way that in every cell in my body, I know I’m redeemed. I know that I’m loved. I know that I’m saved.

And so it matched my head now, my body, what I felt about it all. I have no doubt that I’m gonna be in eternity with Jesus. And I believe that my wife and my kids will be there with me and I’m ready to go whenever that is. But it is fun living free and…

Aaron Smith (58:05)
Hmm.

Roy Wooten (58:34)
and in a healthier way because of what I experienced on my Crucible weekend. I sat across from our founder, ⁓ Greg Houston, on Sunday of that weekend. And I told him, I want every man I know to experience this weekend. I want them to experience it at least one time. And now 8,200 have. We’re in 16 locations in the US, did 65 retreats last year. We’ll do over 70 this year. ⁓

Aaron Smith (58:50)
.

Roy Wooten (59:04)
We’re in four other countries in addition to the US, and we continue to grow. So ⁓ in my role as executive director, I’m trying to steward this and grow it. And I’m thankful for the opportunity to come and share so that somebody who’s ready to take the next big step in their ⁓ maturing of their faith, ⁓ that they might consider us as an option to help them get there.

Aaron Smith (59:24)
Mm.

Roy Wooten (59:32)
and a community of brothers on the other side, that they can do life confessionally up to date.

Aaron Smith (59:38)
Amen. Roy, thank you so much for your own example of vulnerability, sharing your heart today. And I just pray that all the men listening, all the wives as well, just felt incredibly encouraged by your testimony and your ministry. And really, at the end of the day, like this is what I desire for every person is just to know the grace of God, to know how good Jesus is and the salvation that we have and simply by believing in the work he did.

Not the work we do because you know how it feels. You’ve been alive longer than me. There is no amount of work that could pay for what Christ paid for on the cross. So, Roy, thank you so much for what you do and for giving me some time today. I appreciate it.

Roy Wooten (1:00:09)
That’s right.

You bet. Ditto’s and God bless you, Erin, your wife and what y’all are doing here.

Aaron Smith (1:00:27)
Thank you, I appreciate that.