March 22, 2024
Nancy Houston; Unveiling the Layers of Intimacy and Personal Growth (Part 2)
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When Nancy Houston and I sat down to record this podcast, little did we know that our conversation would travel such depths of the human heart, exploring the rhythms of building healthy relationships. This is part two of a remarkable and healing conversation.
Enriched by personal stories and a shared history with our spouses, we discuss the vital shift from self-centered desires to a nurturing, selfless love. What it means to live a strong, honest, authentic life as a man following Jesus. This shift is not just a theological or philosophical idea; it's the bedrock of deep connection and an enduring marriage. As we peel back the layers, we uncover the importance of supportive communities within local churches, and the transformative role that personal and leadership health play in our lives and the lives of those we touch.
Our journey takes us through the often-treacherous terrain of vulnerability and intimacy and masculinity. With Nancy's insights as a licensed professional counselor guiding the way we confront the heavy issues of guilt and shame that can stifle relationships and stop our growth as a man.
We walk boldly down the path to forgiveness—a journey that can change family dynamics and lead to profound healing. It's a candid look at the challenges all men face in showing vulnerability, the pressures of societal masculinity, and how being real with our emotions and emotional health can lead to stronger, more intimate relationships. The conversation is as much about personal growth as it is about changing perceptions of what it means to be a Christian man in today's world.
We hit the power of fatherhood and masculinity, from roughhousing with our kids to setting the stage for their future security and self-worth. We wrap up with a spotlight on the Christian Men's Network's global initiative, inspiring men to live with passion and faith. Our dialogue is an invitation—join us in this profound discussion and be part of a movement towards God honoring relationships and becoming a better man.
Brave Men is a production of the Christian Men’s Network. The host is Paul Louis Cole. Resources for discipling men whether it’s your sons, or the men in your church at CMN.men
(00:00) Healthy Relationships
(13:46) Journey to Vulnerability and Intimacy
(22:22) Marriage, Maturity, and Continuous Growth
(35:28) The Importance of Fatherhood and Masculinity
(42:46) Global Movement for Men
00:00 - Healthy Relationships
13:46:00 - Journey to Vulnerability and Intimacy
22:22:00 - Marriage, Maturity, and Continuous Growth
35:28:00 - The Importance of Fatherhood and Masculinity
42:46:00 - Global Movement for Men
00:00 - Speaker 1
Hey, this is Paul Louis Cole and you're listening to the Brave Men Podcast. I'm fired up here. In fact, I'm glad you're here for this conversation with Nancy Houston. This is part two, in which we get into some of the deeper things in terms of relationships, couples, marriage, sex and all of those issues that you and I face every single day.
00:24
We live in a highly sexualized culture because it's basically because it's selfish. So we live in a lustful culture, and lust isn't just about sex. Lust is about the desire to benefit self. It's selfish. So lust in its purest form, right in its center point, is about arriving at what I want, what I want. So in sexuality, in marriage relationships, in intimacy of marriage, you have to move to a place. If it's going to be good, if it's going to be healthy, you have to move to a place of love, not lust. Lust is the desire to benefit self, even at the expense of others. Love is the desire to benefit others, even at the expense of self. Love and lust and that's what we talk about today with Nancy Houston is I asked her when we first started and if you heard the first part, and if you haven't, you need to go back and listen to that because it describes a lot of her own personal story, and she and her husband, ron Houston, are great friends of my wife, judy and I.
01:34
We absolutely love getting together because there are those friends that you can just kind of just relax with, you don't have to be on, and both of us particularly Nancy and I, our public speakers. We're always doing something that people look at. Ron's in construction, so people look at that. My wife Judy is an artist and also is helping design or is designing this residence outside our communication center that we're building, repurposing an old house, which might even be more difficult. But we have such a great time because we can just relax, don't have to be on as couples that are sitting at a marriage retreat, teaching that kind of thing, and in that relax, there's a lot of laugh, there's a lot of enjoyment, camaraderie, but I don't think we've ever gotten together once where I haven't learned something from Ron or Nancy, and so those are the kinds of people you want to surround yourself with, and in fact, if you don't have relationships like that this is a little sidebar right now then that's why we're connected to a local church, because it's within that local church that we find those types of relationships Because one of the things that we don't have to discuss is how much we love Jesus Christ, how much we love our wife or husband. We don't have that's just a given. It's part of the relationship. We love Jesus, we want to live righteous, we have great times together, a lot of fun, but it's always within the boundaries of common sense right living, healthy relationships. So that's what you find in a local church.
03:24
If you can't find that in the local church you're in and I'm a local church guy my son Pastor is a church that my wife and I helped begin, and all my sons are in ministry. Niles is a pastor on staff with Robert and Debbie Morris at Gateway. My son Bryce is a music minister, speaks and travels and does stuff, does gigs, writes music, also produces this podcast. And my daughter, lindsay, has been in ministry apartment life. Now she's a teacher. That's a ministry, and so every single one of us and then Meredith Brandon's wife, who's a pastor there at the church C-3-4 Worth. So we're involved in this all the time ministry, and so I'm coming back to this. I'm coming back.
04:16
If you can't find healthy relationships where you're at, you need to find a place where you can find healthy relationships. And health always starts at the top and that's why, as a pastor or leader and you're listening right now you need to be healthy. If you're not healthy, then your church won't be healthy. If you're not healthy as a father, your family won't be healthy. I mean emotionally and spiritually, and I don't mean you have to be perfect. It's never been about that. Abraham, who's the father of faith, didn't live a perfect life. There was, there was that little Hagar thing, right. So it's not about living perfect. What it says in the word is that he trusted God. So when we turn ourselves, you may have an anger issue and it may just pop up. You turn yourself towards Christ. Father, help me with this.
05:06
It might be in a relationship with somebody you meet that that that thing that comes up begins to be pushed back down, begins to be healed. Let me put it that way not pushed back down, that's something we talk about, nancy, in this conversation. Don't push it down, but it begins to begin to be healed. And so in relationships, men, you've got to be in a men's group, some sort of gathering of men, where you get together on a regular basis, talk about things, get life healed, get healthy, and that's why I so appreciate Nancy Houston, this conversation today. This has absolutely been a brilliant time, these two sessions with her. And again, as I mentioned, subscribe to the podcast. Put it on there, click on the thing. Whatever platform you're on, the more subscribers we have, the more the algorithm puts us in front of people. So thrilled today to have Nancy Houston, who's a licensed professional counselor, certified sex therapist, and she is on today. Brave men, here is Nancy Houston. Where did that thing tip? Where it was like I'm going to help people come out of.
06:23 - Speaker 2
Oh, not for a long time, like I had a lot of agonizing work I had to do first. You know that grief work is agonizing. That's why Jesus agonized so hard in the garden and wanted his friends there with him, because it was a moment of complete loneliness and even isolation, right Like my God, my God, right Like he was even feeling that separation from his father. The beautiful thing about, about allowing myself to grieve so profoundly, paul, is then, after I got out my sadness because I was better at that got up my sadness and then I had to get out my anger on my own rage.
07:02
And then I could say okay, god, I think I'm ready to forgive. Now what? And God says well, nancy, now you would have to stop being your father's judge, jury and executioner. And I'm like well, what do you mean? He says, well, do you judge him for all the things he did? And I said, well, yeah, they were really bad. And God said, well, nancy, are you capable of doing everything your dad did? I'm like, no, I never do those things to my children. And I just felt like God said to me but wait, are you capable of every sin under the sun?
07:37 - Speaker 4
And I was just humbled.
07:39 - Speaker 2
And I'm like yes. I am. We are all capable of every darkness. And so God just said to me okay, well, if you're done being the judge, jury and executioner, and now you can forgive him and I'm like you're right, and then it was just like it was done.
07:59 - Speaker 1
You know, for me, that also gives me the empathy. Is that the right word? Okay, so one of the things that's really interesting to do with this for you and I to have this conversation is I'm really parsing my words, I'm really trying to be careful because you're the expert at this stuff, but empathy would be, I think, the right word. I have a great empathy for people caught in the dark side. I mean, who went? Who, as an example, a terrorist who went through such great trauma as a young person and through great darkness. They have great anger and rage in them and so what they? So they pick up a weapon and shoot people, or they, they, they build an IED and blow up people. And I, I am a man of law, I believe, you know, in sovereignty and so forth, but I just have a great empathy for the fact that there's not one man on the face of the earth beyond the reach of grace.
09:00 - Speaker 2
Not the truth.
09:02 - Speaker 1
I mean Pharaoh, but even Putin, you know. If he's still alive. When you hear this thing, I don't know. I'm just saying that I believe we can pray for somebody to come across every single man's path who knows Jesus, and somehow that word set that person free. It's just that we've seen it. We've seen some of the worst people. And so here's this man who came out with this complex. What is it Complex? I didn't write it. I wrote down some other stuff Complex trauma.
09:36 - Speaker 2
It's not PTSD, it's complex trauma.
09:39 - Speaker 1
So it comes out of the war with this complex trauma, and here's this man who became a follower of Christ. Right, like all this stuff happened, it was so negative, and yet that guy who looked all good on the outside but was decayed on the inside, becomes a follower of Christ. And so that same thing that happened to each one of us who are followers of Christ made a new person. So then God speaks to you and says yeah, he's not the same person.
10:16 - Speaker 2
Well, I mean my dad's transformation process was a long process.
10:22 - Speaker 1
Right, we're all in process.
10:24 - Speaker 2
Yeah, he was 50 years old around 50 when he received Christ, and he received Christ for sure, and it was radical. Yeah, but he was still an awful father for a long time and he was still a boundary violator. And he still could be mean and hateful and evil and it just took. You know we all liked the magic wand.
10:49 - Speaker 1
Yeah Well, god's not a magician, he works miracles.
10:52 - Speaker 2
And that's why scripture says you know, we walk we work out our salvation.
10:58 - Speaker 1
Absolutely.
10:59 - Speaker 2
And it's kind of like, you know, I think our souls could save, but there's a whole lot of other saving that needs to be happening as we want this out Right, yeah, and so you know I was able to forgive my dad, but still letting him back in was had to be a slow process because he still wasn't a very safe man, even though he's a believer.
11:18 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
11:18 - Speaker 2
You know, not all believers are safe people.
11:20 - Speaker 1
So how did you end up? So now back in the conversation with God and he says to you you've forgiven him, but you're still judging him.
11:30 - Speaker 2
Well, no, that's how forgiveness, genuine forgiveness happened.
11:34 - Speaker 1
That's where genuine forgiveness happened.
11:35 - Speaker 2
That's when genuine forgiveness Previous was fake forgiveness. Yeah.
11:38 - Speaker 1
Okay.
11:38 - Speaker 2
Yeah, because I didn't want to grieve.
11:40 - Speaker 1
I didn't want to face a pain.
11:41 - Speaker 2
I didn't want to do any of the hard work. Yeah, I think forgiveness requires a lot of hard work, just like it did for Jesus. He went to that. He went to that, he went and grieved deeply and then he you know wreck could say Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
11:57 - Speaker 1
Could we? And then, of course, my God. My God, why have you forsaken?
12:01 - Speaker 2
me. He felt the loneliness, the forsakenness.
12:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, but he started the song song 22, which ends up being triumphant. Yeah, it does. So can we forgive people and speak words that help them begin to shift our heart.
12:16 - Speaker 2
I think we can because you know I just really in that season I would think deeply about what's loosed on heaven will be loosed you know, and vice versa. And I just thought well, you know, as I think, as I release all of these feelings, and then I can genuinely love him, doesn't mean I open up the floodgates and just let him back in Right Right.
12:39
But I really saw, after that process, my dad started entering into his own transformation process and started becoming healthier, and then he and I could have some really sweet conversations. Wow, and I'll never forget the day, paul, I was diagnosed with lupus in 2005. And I had shingles all over. I had no immune system. My doctor thought I was probably going to die because I had no system.
13:06 - Speaker 1
No, you went through a deadly situation.
13:09 - Speaker 2
So one of the big things that happened during that season for me is I'm like Lord, what is this? And I felt like the Lord just said Nancy, this is about rejection, it's intergenerational rejection. And call and ask your dad about it. So I called dad and I said dad, do you think I have a lot of rejection? He goes oh my gosh, nancy, it's like my mother had so much rejection and he goes well, I'm going to pray a prayer over you. So he prayed a prayer over me and within a week the shingles were gone and then my body could actually start healing. It was still about a two year process and then and so my dad was a part of that and my dad felt tremendous guilt.
13:52
He had told my son your mother is so sick because I was such a horrible father to her.
13:58
And so he felt a lot of guilt and shame. And then another thing that happened between the two of us was I'm like, oh my gosh, my dad needs to forgive himself. So I called him and I said, hey, dad, I've completely forgiven you and like I even have all this love for you and I feel like you and I are establishing a healthy relationship. And like you're 80, dude, I don't know how long you're going to live. So I think, as long as you haven't forgiven you, we're really only going to be able to talk about the grandkids, the weather and your garden, and I would like something more than that. I like to talk about real things. But until you forgive yourself, I don't think we'll be able to do, because guilt and shame are walls to intimacy. And so I said, dad, would you forgive yourself? And he goes oh God, oh God, I can't. You know, just fumbling, mumbling, and he's like he probably just said no, I just can't, I was horrible.
15:01
And I'm like, yeah, you were, you were a really horrible father and I want you to forgive yourself, because God has provided a way for me to forgive you and I want to. I actually want a dad before you die. And I'm like, and I want you to get your wife on the phone. It wasn't my mother, she had died when I was young, and so I got his wife, bonnie, on the phone and I'm like Bonnie, I want you to hear this, because I think he's going to need your help. And so I said, dad, so we stay on the phone for two hours, wrestling with his own shame and guilt and forgiveness towards himself, and finally he's like okay, fine, I will forgive myself. And he did. And after that, for three years, I had the most amazing dad.
15:50 - Speaker 1
Wow, wow, this is. It's hard for us, as men, to be vulnerable, isn't it, as we're taught not to be?
15:59 - Speaker 2
We are you, not, we you are. I mean, from the time boys are little, the vulnerability is virtually sucked out of them like a vacuum cleaner, and the sweetest thing I want from my husband is his sweet vulnerability. That is the sexiest thing he can give me you know, that is the most tender thing when he, when he, trusts me with his vulnerable heart, I just melt. That's that's when I fall the deepest in love with him and I realized I have to make it safe for him to do that. Yeah.
16:40
Because if he can't risk his vulnerability with me, like the other day he said to me I'd had a really busy week and my husband has some deep feelings of abandonment from his own mother, and so he kind of lashed out at me. He said you never listen to me, and I kind of my first instinct was to lash back and say, oh my gosh, that's all I do, right. Yeah, but I paused. Yeah.
17:08
And I'm like okay, let's go to your adult brain, nancy, right, yeah? And so I just paused. I finished blowing my hair dry and I said to him hey, I can't hear you, give me a minute. But I had heard him, but I wanted to just be with that for a second, and so I said hey, babe, what is it that you need? What are you needing? What are you needing from me? And he just paused and he said well, I can get to feeling kind of abandoned when you're busy. And so I could just go over and put my hands on his face and look him in the eyes and say honey, you're the most important human in this whole world to me and I love you more than anything and you are precious to me and I love it when you tell me that you are missing me.
18:05
It works so much better than lashing out at me. So I love to teach couples like hey, turn your complaints into requests. What is it that you need Like instead of like you never want to have sex? It'd be so vulnerable for men to say I miss being close to you, I miss the closeness of your body. I feel so warm and connected to you when we are together physically. It means more to you me than you will ever know.
18:38
A woman can melt to that. But when it's like it's your duty to give me sex or you never want sex, or you, those words you're talking about right now.
18:46 - Speaker 1
it's hard for us to, as men, sometimes to come up with those words.
18:51 - Speaker 2
It is, isn't it?
18:53 - Speaker 1
And perhaps that's where we do need to read things that help us with that.
19:00 - Speaker 2
Well, it's like learning a foreign language, paul, because by the time you were six years old, you'd already learned the message as a male don't be a moron and be super vulnerable. You armor up buddy, or you're stupid. And so men have this very awkward relationship with vulnerability and with the language of vulnerability.
19:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think part of the, if you will, the progress of where we are in the church is that there is some of this teaching in your book on trauma, love and sex and God made a woman in your podcast and the things you're doing and others that speak to this. I think our setting some men free and I think it's helping a lot.
19:46
frankly, I want to a guy. We were working out in the gym and we were on a trip and we were in England working out in the gym and this guy's buff, and he's showing me some different moves with the weights and I'm like, okay, and of course I'm using the lesser weight, but anyway. And then so the next day we were in a class together, we were working on our doctorate together, and the next day we're in this thing and we're talking about some things. We're at CS Lewis's house in England and he said I forget what we were sharing, I forget what it was. But he said came up with what have people been writing? What have you been writing lately? Because we're in CS Lewis's house with Lunar Suite and I think Lynn said something about what have you been writing the last couple of days? What's come up the last couple of days in your mind notes, whatever.
20:38
And this guy I've been working out with strong guy, very well-known pastor, says let me read you a poem I wrote last night to my wife oh how sweet. And he had sent her a poem that morning. Of course all the rest of us guys were like dude, come on, man, don't do that, but it was awesome and he wrote this poem. And in Bryce, who's here, who's our producer, we're working with a man the other day on a podcast that we were doing and get ready to do a broadcast, and I think it was right after we had done it, the guy sent you a poem that the day before, the day before we get on the podcast together, this guy is like a big time business guy. I love it and strong, and I do think there's that place where we're beginning to learn to speak.
21:24 - Speaker 2
I do too, paul. You know a more vulnerable language.
21:28 - Speaker 1
And I do think we're in a place in the church where, because of you and we're talking with Nancy Houston, as in the city, nancy Houston, you can find her online Because of you speaking in the people's lives, because if you're doing a podcast that is vulnerable, because of you talking and Ron allowing you, in that sense, to speak about some of these things. You know, judy and I have just over time and we've been married a long time, we've been married 52 years but we're continuing to learn things. We're continuing to learn how to say things to each other in a way that brings life, more and more life, into our marriage. It's really been interesting, even like texting each other Like I'll be taken off. I travel a lot with the ministry and I'll text her as the plane's taken off. I already miss you. Well, I don't know if I guess I've said that before, but it has become more prominent lately. I don't know, maybe you go through stages Well and well don't you think?
22:31 - Speaker 2
Yes, I think, the older we get, the more precious our marriages can become.
22:36 - Speaker 1
There's no question. Yeah, very tender.
22:39 - Speaker 2
And I think you know, as we age too, we just stop caring about some of the dumb things that we used to care about.
22:46 - Speaker 1
I don't know, I still care about a lot of stupid things. I mean just the furniture right now that's behind me on this video tape and if you're watching it by video will be different the next time you see this video, because she put some new shelves in. I was doing an event out in the West Coast and she put some new shelves in. I don't like them and so it was like, why do I care?
23:12
But I walked in and I cared, you care yeah it was like and then later I go well, that was kind of dumb, I really cared about it and I texted her. I go I hate these. I don't know, maybe that was a strong word, but I do anyway and we're getting some different shelves. So she and I, in a very civil manner now over the last couple of days, looked online at some different shelves. Now what a stupid thing. You know what I mean. Like I walked in the other day. I'd just come off a flight and a lot of travel and stuff and I walked in and I go I'm like, ah, I hate these. And then I'm like I don't even know if we see them in the shot. You know what I mean.
23:53 - Speaker 2
I don't even know if we see them in the shot, and don't you think that's a typical response when we are tired, when we've just gotten off a lot of flight?
23:59 - Speaker 1
Well, there's that. So okay, I give myself some grace.
24:02 - Speaker 2
There you go.
24:03 - Speaker 1
But the fact is later I thought because I yelled. I hate these.
24:07 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
24:08 - Speaker 1
And then later I thought, God, like a five year old, you know, you know, at least I didn't throw anything.
24:16 - Speaker 2
That's good, but isn't it good when we can go? Oh, there is that part of me.
24:21 - Speaker 1
I did. I did. I did give it some space after I texted her I hate these. And then she gave me some space, like, oh yeah, buddy, she didn't text that back. She gave it some space, I gave it some space. She goes what do you hate? I go I don't like their wimpy, their glass water and in Bryce walks in today, goes oh, I don't think it looks so bad. I'm not a good dude, this is my anyway.
24:47 - Speaker 2
My space, my space, it's my cave yeah it's my cave.
24:50 - Speaker 1
It is my cave. My cave right. So I know and you know, but I want to fix up Ron's cave too, but I've learned not to.
24:59 - Speaker 2
It's his cave leaving alone.
25:01 - Speaker 1
Okay so, but I do think and it's part of learning right and learning each other's rhythms and Isn't it Matthew 19 that says that marriage requires maturity?
25:16 - Speaker 2
And you know none of us, when we get married, have it. We've got to grow up into it.
25:20 - Speaker 1
I just wanted legal sex.
25:22 - Speaker 2
Right, exactly, and it's so mature, isn't it when we look back and go well, that was mature, but you know, we, we marry at the stage we're at and then we have to grow up into it, and it's continual. I hope that you guys never stop. I hope we never stop. No, right, cause a marriage. A marriage dies. People die when they aren't working on adult development.
25:42 - Speaker 1
Wow.
25:43 - Speaker 2
Adult development is one of my favorite topics and I think it should be every adult's favorite topic, not that, no, it should be.
25:49 - Speaker 1
I love it.
25:49 - Speaker 2
Nothing I need to be right, but but it's just like two Harvard professors have given their whole career to the, to studying adult development, and what they have found is, you know, we can think we can have these attitudes that, well, I'm 21, I'm fully grown now, and it's like, or I'm 25. So I finally have my prefrontal cortex and it's like but that's the beginning of adulthood, we haven't arrived anywhere and we're meant to go from the socialized mind, where we learn how to get along with others, and then we're meant to move into self-transformation, where it's like wait a minute, how am I going to own my life? How am I going to own all of my own behaviors, my own attitudes, my own emotions? And then what am I going to do with that?
26:38 - Speaker 1
This is why I get so fired up about what we do with the Christian Women's Network is because I want there to be an adventure in our lives. And there's an old phrase I don't remember it's been ascribed to a number of different people, but it's essentially this that most men die at 50. We just don't bury them till they're 70.
26:57 - Speaker 2
Isn't that true?
26:59 - Speaker 1
I think, people.
27:00 - Speaker 2
we could say people right, yeah, people, A lot of death.
27:03 - Speaker 1
I remember talking well, people, men and women, and I remember my friend, dave, and Dave went to our 50th or 55th, I don't know, high school reunion and I go, how was it? He goes, dude. It was terrible. He said he's talked about this guy, jim, who actually just passed away, but he talked about Jim. He goes. Jim showed up, he's been living in Hawaii working out doing stuff. Man, the guy was great. He's great to be with Clint doing fantastic, going out, fishing, doing all this stuff, he says. But there were a bunch of old guys there and so what do you mean? He said a lot of old people and I said, well, when we talked about it, he said a lot of the girls didn't show up because they didn't want to show up, looking old, like old grandmas, because they've just and I don't, you know, it's not the looks. In one sense, what he was talking about was the attitude of I just I stopped and I don't. I don't know how you stay married without growing and doing stuff.
28:01 - Speaker 2
I think that's why there's so much emotion. Emotion, so much emotional and physical divorces. They're not divorced, but they're divorced.
28:09 - Speaker 1
You know what? That is the biggest, the largest percentage wise, of divorce, and you can correct me, you study all these things, but my last reading on this was somewhere between the ages for men between 54 and 64, 50 to 64 right in there was the highest percentage of men getting divorced right now. And because it just kind of like and I call it the Viagra syndrome is and my friend Dwayne Pickett, he said, yeah, it's just because that guy still thinks he's a player and it's all chemically induced, if you will, and so he's doing all this stuff, and then and then because we haven't aged, you know, together, if you will.
28:51 - Speaker 2
Stayed alive together. Stayed alive together, Stay alive together. Do stuff be vibrant.
28:55 - Speaker 1
Have fun, you know.
28:57 - Speaker 2
That's what I love about you and Judy. You guys are a few years ahead of us. It's going to be our 50th this summer. Is it really?
29:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's going to be our 50th. Oh my gosh, I didn't know you guys were that old.
29:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we are, and so.
29:09 - Speaker 1
Oronias yeah, anyway, yeah.
29:12 - Speaker 2
But we look at you guys and we're like, oh, we love them. They're still reinventing themselves doing new things, you know, building new projects and I'm like, isn't that awesome? But I like that.
29:23 - Speaker 1
It's fantastic.
29:24 - Speaker 2
You haven't packed it all up and just like I'm going to get my recliner until I die. No, we got no.
29:30 - Speaker 1
I think of. I think of. John Maxwell was talking about his dad having lunch with his dad one day and his dad was, I think, 94th at the time and John's like dad, you know you should be getting with some of your friends. He goes dude, my friends are all gone. Yeah, I know. And then, but then he pulls out this piece of paper and John goes, what's that? And his dad goes these are all the projects I have for this year. Oh, how cool is that? That's great, you know. And John was sharing that because I know he's done that in his own life.
29:58
And now he's got another new project because he just you know, changed some of the ones he was doing, but that's, for me, is that's a vibrancy of life. You know, judy and I have talked about this and it's not just travel, because things do change and you can't travel as much or whatever. So I would advise if you're a younger couple and you're in your thirties or forties and you've always wanted to go to Italy, don't wait till you're 68 or 70, because you won't be able to walk up some of those stairs.
30:25 - Speaker 2
That's right.
30:25 - Speaker 1
Or it's not going to feel as good. Now you guys will be able to do that because you guys work out all the time you got. You know you do all these stuff but the fact is is that you know so when you're 35, go take one of those trips, do one of those things, have a blast, make a memory. Your folks did that when they went to Europe for a month. You know, just do that deal and make that thing happen.
30:51
We're always meeting people and so we were sitting at having I don't know, it was a pizza place the other day and it was kind of like where you sit together, sort of thing. So we started talking with a couple of exos and started to find out a little bit about them. They're a younger couple and kind of a blended marriage and all this sort of stuff, and it was really fascinating A couple of things. They started talking about this. They had decided to do a couple of things that most people would have waited till later and they went ahead and did them and I just told them I said, well done, man, well done. You know, he's got an older daughter and then two younger ones by the second marriage and you know, because it's going to keep them alive and vibrant and healthy. And there's some of these things we need to do, and then doing this work of grief. You know we have to do these things.
31:40 - Speaker 2
You know why I think a lot of people give up, paul, is because they're carrying around so much sadness and grief and it's heavy, even a lot of our Alzheimer's, dementia, things like that they're now finding for some of it not all of it, but for some of it it's just repressed depression. People haven't dealt with their depression and they've carried around their whole lives and it's like lugging around a thousand pounds. So you feel tired, you feel exhausted, you lose your vibrancy, you lose your energy.
32:10 - Speaker 1
So your life closes in it's smaller.
32:13 - Speaker 2
We have to remember that our emotions are like two sides of the same coin and if you're going to, if you well, it means that there's joy and happiness on one side and on the other side, or some of your sad or heavier emotions, and if you aren't dealing with both of those, you'll lose both, because they're attached to each other. Wow. So if you want joy and energy and vitality.
32:36
you've got to be dealing with your sadness, your anger, your rage, your depression, your anxiety, and you know my big concern for men is the amount of a low grade depression that they carry around with them. But they have no vocabulary or permission to talk about it. So they just drink a little too much, or they work a little too much, or they play too hard, or they make too much they, they, they think the next conquest or more money dealing with pain and they're dealing with unresolved depression, and so it breaks my heart because we haven't helped men have a vocabulary for their emotions.
33:15 - Speaker 1
I think most of us, as men, we deal with disappointment at such a level. Yeah, disappointment is not based on where you are, but where you expected to be, and that gap between where you are and where you expected to be is the level of disappointment most men live with. And you can take men who have, who have put companies on Dow Jones. Yeah, they've won huge stock offerings, they've made a hundred million dollars and they're still living with this gap.
33:41 - Speaker 2
Totally. Money doesn't buy happiness.
33:43 - Speaker 1
No, I remember Clint shoot. I just lost Clint Gresham and Clint was in the in the ice bath after they won the Super Bowl and he would was played on the Seahawks and he's in the ice bath and there's a guy next to him, a whirlpool. There's a guy next to him. It's a month after the Super Bowl, they've won the Super Bowl, the world champions and the guy looked at him and he said, man, I thought it would feel different. Yeah.
34:12
And what he was really saying was I thought it would define me, that's right. I thought I would find my identity, that's right and it hasn't done that for me.
34:21 - Speaker 2
No, and it won't. And men can give their whole lives to seeking things that will. So can women and. But into the day it doesn't. And then we get older and it's like it starts coming out when we're another and, like a lot of people who've used alcohol to cover, will suddenly, in their sixties, become allergic to alcohol. They can't tolerate it anymore. You know, or they can't make the same amount of money, or they can't keep conquering females, or whatever. It is Right. And I'm like gosh, you guys You've got to have permission to stop and get the help you deserve for any unresolved depression, for any unresolved trauma, for any like for the father who can't hug his sons. He's a really good man, but there's something there, there's something there.
35:06
And for the men I've worked with not every man, so I never want to say something that this is this is the way it always is because it never is the way it always is, and we love to reduce humanity to its simplest terms. We want formulas, yeah so this is not a formula, but I just know a lot of men I've worked with who struggle with same sex porn. I will ask them hey, did like your daddy roughhouse with you, did he kind of manhandle? You.
35:36
Was he there at a wrestle when he came in from work with you? And consistently they say no and I'm like do you suppose you've sexualized some need that you might have? Yeah. Do you suppose you just have a need for masculinity? Yeah.
35:54
I mean, the studies are an astronomical that children who have daddies who wrestle with them when they're little walk down high school hallways with more confidence. There's no question. It's crazy. You daddies have no idea how much you're needed. I remember a few months ago maybe it's a couple of years ago I was in an Uber in New York with an Uber driver.
36:17
He's taken me there for a young man, young block man, and he's a baby daddy. He's not married, you know, and he's kind of debating what to do. And I said, hey, buddy, has anybody ever told you how you are going to impact your little girl and your presence will change her life? That when children have a daddy in the home they can sleep more soundly at night because daddy's home and just that masculine presence. You know, the story of the beauty and the beast is true. It's not just a fun fairy tale. Females want a trainable beast, and what I mean by that is.
37:03
I think that's why Taylor Swift is with Travis right, because you know she lives in a very unsafe world. No matter how much security she puts around her. But if she has a man who honestly can roar like a beast and looks like a beast, she's safe. But now he's got to be a trainable beast. He's got to be able to be kind and vulnerable and tender and loving and soft with her.
37:29 - Speaker 1
I've always said that the bad guys always get the best looking girls.
37:34 - Speaker 2
Well, you know a woman. She wants to know that he's going to be able to protect her, because it's security and she will do whatever it takes to get security for her children Absolutely.
37:44
Well, females know that we are at least you know we're 50, we don't have the upper body strength that a man does, and so you know, we know that when we give birth, that not only are we as females vulnerable, but our babies are vulnerable. And so when you have a man around you who's going to keep you, who, when necessary, he will rise to the occasion and say, oh no, you won't. Yeah.
38:12
Right, oh no, you won't, and even will sometimes know when to push against her Because she really doesn't want to seven dwarfs as her, you know she wasn't attracted to them. Right, Because, right, you know a woman wants to know, like Ron will push against me. He'll say, no, Nancy, you're being difficult and I'm like you know he's right, or I'm being a little bratty right now. And so he knows when to push for me and with me and when to push against me and I him, and I call that an empowered relationship and I'm telling you, if you want passion in your marriage, then you need to have an empowered relationship.
38:50 - Speaker 1
I want to do a podcast sometime for Dad Academy. And when we talk about father, talk about fathering, because Warren Farrell in his book the talk about the boy crisis Boy crisis he talked about. One of the most important things you can do with your sons is wrestle.
39:10 - Speaker 2
Yeah.
39:11 - Speaker 1
Because it teaches them boundaries Like no, you can't kick dad there. No, I can't do that. Can't wrestle with your sister like that. They learn boundaries, intimacy, there's all sorts of things.
39:19 - Speaker 2
That's one thing. My dad did great with me. My daddy would wrestle with me and I'm like, oh, that blessed me.
39:25 - Speaker 1
And I'm sure Ron did that with your boy.
39:27 - Speaker 2
Oh, like four sons nonstop, nonstop. Sometimes I'm like hey guys, could we just not wrestle for three minutes?
39:33 - Speaker 1
I remember with my sons. Judy would yell upstairs, she'd go stop, somebody's going to get hurt, oh yeah, and I'd be like, well, that's the point.
39:42 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah, oh wait, oh wait.
39:45 - Speaker 1
Well, there was that. Oh wait, there was that I got in trouble.
39:50 - Speaker 2
Oh wait, I'm trying to get them calm. That time routines and they're all coming around.
39:53 - Speaker 1
I'm going to start wrestling right as we start to go.
39:55 - Speaker 2
I'm like OK, buddy, you wrestled with them, you get to put them to bed.
39:58 - Speaker 1
Talk to Nancy Houston. It's been great having you on Brave Men, we could talk forever.
40:02 - Speaker 2
We could.
40:02 - Speaker 1
You're just a fascinating person. Oh, thank you, and you've given your life, you and Ron, really to help people heal and that comes out, and so thank you for walking it out. You know that thing from that Saturday where you cried all day and then walking forward and walking through the grief, doing the work, as you say it, because that work was day by day. We looked back and it was like this oh yeah, we did that, but it was day by day.
40:35 - Speaker 2
I still do some of it. I continue to, Well, yeah we all have to yeah right.
40:40 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I love the way you guys talk about it, josh Spurlock and others hey, so you're doing some work, so it's like a thing, it's like a normal, like normative, that's right.
40:50
Yeah, of course we do some work and but thank you for doing that, nancy, for you and Ron, and thank you for the Lord bringing you guys together and I don't think that I knew all the way before that you guys came to Christ, so that's really fascinating. This has been a great conversation. I want to do more of these to help people and I think for some of us as men, as we listen to all these things, it helps. My whole goal is to just click the dial, one click to help a guy. It's eight, the Ingram scale, how many times we're touched before we come to Christ. I think that's true after all. So I think there's these little clicks on a dial and I look at it that way Can I just help somebody click, just one click towards that place that helps them become more fully them, and so thank you for going through what you've done In order to help us.
41:46
Just do one click, because Judy and I in our relationship has been so enlarged and blessed by being friends of you and Ron, because every so often it'll be a little something, a little click, the little 22 minute thing that way. We didn't even talk about that, but I guess it's become a thing now for us and then getting out of the shower thing. That was a moment for me, a discovery moment, a few years ago. But just all those things and thank you for writing the books and the stuff you are writing the podcast, the new website, the stuff you're working on with your sons that's really cool and just all the things that are going on. We pray for you that what your hands touch will prosper. Every place you put your feet will be holy ground and the Lord continues to give you favor and success in all that you do. Thanks for being on Brave Men.
42:38 - Speaker 2
It's been awesome, Paul. Thank you, my dear friend, you and Judy bless us. We love you guys and your family, yeah awesome.
42:46 - Speaker 4
Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmn.men. That's cmn.men. Your host has been Paul Lewis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast, wherever your fine podcast, or download it. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.
Hey, this is Paul Louis Cole and you're listening to the Brave Men Podcast. I'm fired up here. In fact, I'm glad you're here for this conversation with Nancy Houston. This is part two, in which we get into some of the deeper things in terms of relationships, couples, marriage, sex and all of those issues that you and I face every single day.
00:24
We live in a highly sexualized culture because it's basically because it's selfish. So we live in a lustful culture, and lust isn't just about sex. Lust is about the desire to benefit self. It's selfish. So lust in its purest form, right in its center point, is about arriving at what I want, what I want. So in sexuality, in marriage relationships, in intimacy of marriage, you have to move to a place. If it's going to be good, if it's going to be healthy, you have to move to a place of love, not lust. Lust is the desire to benefit self, even at the expense of others. Love is the desire to benefit others, even at the expense of self. Love and lust and that's what we talk about today with Nancy Houston is I asked her when we first started and if you heard the first part, and if you haven't, you need to go back and listen to that because it describes a lot of her own personal story, and she and her husband, ron Houston, are great friends of my wife, judy and I.
01:34
We absolutely love getting together because there are those friends that you can just kind of just relax with, you don't have to be on, and both of us particularly Nancy and I, our public speakers. We're always doing something that people look at. Ron's in construction, so people look at that. My wife Judy is an artist and also is helping design or is designing this residence outside our communication center that we're building, repurposing an old house, which might even be more difficult. But we have such a great time because we can just relax, don't have to be on as couples that are sitting at a marriage retreat, teaching that kind of thing, and in that relax, there's a lot of laugh, there's a lot of enjoyment, camaraderie, but I don't think we've ever gotten together once where I haven't learned something from Ron or Nancy, and so those are the kinds of people you want to surround yourself with, and in fact, if you don't have relationships like that this is a little sidebar right now then that's why we're connected to a local church, because it's within that local church that we find those types of relationships Because one of the things that we don't have to discuss is how much we love Jesus Christ, how much we love our wife or husband. We don't have that's just a given. It's part of the relationship. We love Jesus, we want to live righteous, we have great times together, a lot of fun, but it's always within the boundaries of common sense right living, healthy relationships. So that's what you find in a local church.
03:24
If you can't find that in the local church you're in and I'm a local church guy my son Pastor is a church that my wife and I helped begin, and all my sons are in ministry. Niles is a pastor on staff with Robert and Debbie Morris at Gateway. My son Bryce is a music minister, speaks and travels and does stuff, does gigs, writes music, also produces this podcast. And my daughter, lindsay, has been in ministry apartment life. Now she's a teacher. That's a ministry, and so every single one of us and then Meredith Brandon's wife, who's a pastor there at the church C-3-4 Worth. So we're involved in this all the time ministry, and so I'm coming back to this. I'm coming back.
04:16
If you can't find healthy relationships where you're at, you need to find a place where you can find healthy relationships. And health always starts at the top and that's why, as a pastor or leader and you're listening right now you need to be healthy. If you're not healthy, then your church won't be healthy. If you're not healthy as a father, your family won't be healthy. I mean emotionally and spiritually, and I don't mean you have to be perfect. It's never been about that. Abraham, who's the father of faith, didn't live a perfect life. There was, there was that little Hagar thing, right. So it's not about living perfect. What it says in the word is that he trusted God. So when we turn ourselves, you may have an anger issue and it may just pop up. You turn yourself towards Christ. Father, help me with this.
05:06
It might be in a relationship with somebody you meet that that that thing that comes up begins to be pushed back down, begins to be healed. Let me put it that way not pushed back down, that's something we talk about, nancy, in this conversation. Don't push it down, but it begins to begin to be healed. And so in relationships, men, you've got to be in a men's group, some sort of gathering of men, where you get together on a regular basis, talk about things, get life healed, get healthy, and that's why I so appreciate Nancy Houston, this conversation today. This has absolutely been a brilliant time, these two sessions with her. And again, as I mentioned, subscribe to the podcast. Put it on there, click on the thing. Whatever platform you're on, the more subscribers we have, the more the algorithm puts us in front of people. So thrilled today to have Nancy Houston, who's a licensed professional counselor, certified sex therapist, and she is on today. Brave men, here is Nancy Houston. Where did that thing tip? Where it was like I'm going to help people come out of.
06:23 - Speaker 2
Oh, not for a long time, like I had a lot of agonizing work I had to do first. You know that grief work is agonizing. That's why Jesus agonized so hard in the garden and wanted his friends there with him, because it was a moment of complete loneliness and even isolation, right Like my God, my God, right Like he was even feeling that separation from his father. The beautiful thing about, about allowing myself to grieve so profoundly, paul, is then, after I got out my sadness because I was better at that got up my sadness and then I had to get out my anger on my own rage.
07:02
And then I could say okay, god, I think I'm ready to forgive. Now what? And God says well, nancy, now you would have to stop being your father's judge, jury and executioner. And I'm like well, what do you mean? He says, well, do you judge him for all the things he did? And I said, well, yeah, they were really bad. And God said, well, nancy, are you capable of doing everything your dad did? I'm like, no, I never do those things to my children. And I just felt like God said to me but wait, are you capable of every sin under the sun?
07:37 - Speaker 4
And I was just humbled.
07:39 - Speaker 2
And I'm like yes. I am. We are all capable of every darkness. And so God just said to me okay, well, if you're done being the judge, jury and executioner, and now you can forgive him and I'm like you're right, and then it was just like it was done.
07:59 - Speaker 1
You know, for me, that also gives me the empathy. Is that the right word? Okay, so one of the things that's really interesting to do with this for you and I to have this conversation is I'm really parsing my words, I'm really trying to be careful because you're the expert at this stuff, but empathy would be, I think, the right word. I have a great empathy for people caught in the dark side. I mean, who went? Who, as an example, a terrorist who went through such great trauma as a young person and through great darkness. They have great anger and rage in them and so what they? So they pick up a weapon and shoot people, or they, they, they build an IED and blow up people. And I, I am a man of law, I believe, you know, in sovereignty and so forth, but I just have a great empathy for the fact that there's not one man on the face of the earth beyond the reach of grace.
09:00 - Speaker 2
Not the truth.
09:02 - Speaker 1
I mean Pharaoh, but even Putin, you know. If he's still alive. When you hear this thing, I don't know. I'm just saying that I believe we can pray for somebody to come across every single man's path who knows Jesus, and somehow that word set that person free. It's just that we've seen it. We've seen some of the worst people. And so here's this man who came out with this complex. What is it Complex? I didn't write it. I wrote down some other stuff Complex trauma.
09:36 - Speaker 2
It's not PTSD, it's complex trauma.
09:39 - Speaker 1
So it comes out of the war with this complex trauma, and here's this man who became a follower of Christ. Right, like all this stuff happened, it was so negative, and yet that guy who looked all good on the outside but was decayed on the inside, becomes a follower of Christ. And so that same thing that happened to each one of us who are followers of Christ made a new person. So then God speaks to you and says yeah, he's not the same person.
10:16 - Speaker 2
Well, I mean my dad's transformation process was a long process.
10:22 - Speaker 1
Right, we're all in process.
10:24 - Speaker 2
Yeah, he was 50 years old around 50 when he received Christ, and he received Christ for sure, and it was radical. Yeah, but he was still an awful father for a long time and he was still a boundary violator. And he still could be mean and hateful and evil and it just took. You know we all liked the magic wand.
10:49 - Speaker 1
Yeah Well, god's not a magician, he works miracles.
10:52 - Speaker 2
And that's why scripture says you know, we walk we work out our salvation.
10:58 - Speaker 1
Absolutely.
10:59 - Speaker 2
And it's kind of like, you know, I think our souls could save, but there's a whole lot of other saving that needs to be happening as we want this out Right, yeah, and so you know I was able to forgive my dad, but still letting him back in was had to be a slow process because he still wasn't a very safe man, even though he's a believer.
11:18 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
11:18 - Speaker 2
You know, not all believers are safe people.
11:20 - Speaker 1
So how did you end up? So now back in the conversation with God and he says to you you've forgiven him, but you're still judging him.
11:30 - Speaker 2
Well, no, that's how forgiveness, genuine forgiveness happened.
11:34 - Speaker 1
That's where genuine forgiveness happened.
11:35 - Speaker 2
That's when genuine forgiveness Previous was fake forgiveness. Yeah.
11:38 - Speaker 1
Okay.
11:38 - Speaker 2
Yeah, because I didn't want to grieve.
11:40 - Speaker 1
I didn't want to face a pain.
11:41 - Speaker 2
I didn't want to do any of the hard work. Yeah, I think forgiveness requires a lot of hard work, just like it did for Jesus. He went to that. He went to that, he went and grieved deeply and then he you know wreck could say Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
11:57 - Speaker 1
Could we? And then, of course, my God. My God, why have you forsaken?
12:01 - Speaker 2
me. He felt the loneliness, the forsakenness.
12:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, but he started the song song 22, which ends up being triumphant. Yeah, it does. So can we forgive people and speak words that help them begin to shift our heart.
12:16 - Speaker 2
I think we can because you know I just really in that season I would think deeply about what's loosed on heaven will be loosed you know, and vice versa. And I just thought well, you know, as I think, as I release all of these feelings, and then I can genuinely love him, doesn't mean I open up the floodgates and just let him back in Right Right.
12:39
But I really saw, after that process, my dad started entering into his own transformation process and started becoming healthier, and then he and I could have some really sweet conversations. Wow, and I'll never forget the day, paul, I was diagnosed with lupus in 2005. And I had shingles all over. I had no immune system. My doctor thought I was probably going to die because I had no system.
13:06 - Speaker 1
No, you went through a deadly situation.
13:09 - Speaker 2
So one of the big things that happened during that season for me is I'm like Lord, what is this? And I felt like the Lord just said Nancy, this is about rejection, it's intergenerational rejection. And call and ask your dad about it. So I called dad and I said dad, do you think I have a lot of rejection? He goes oh my gosh, nancy, it's like my mother had so much rejection and he goes well, I'm going to pray a prayer over you. So he prayed a prayer over me and within a week the shingles were gone and then my body could actually start healing. It was still about a two year process and then and so my dad was a part of that and my dad felt tremendous guilt.
13:52
He had told my son your mother is so sick because I was such a horrible father to her.
13:58
And so he felt a lot of guilt and shame. And then another thing that happened between the two of us was I'm like, oh my gosh, my dad needs to forgive himself. So I called him and I said, hey, dad, I've completely forgiven you and like I even have all this love for you and I feel like you and I are establishing a healthy relationship. And like you're 80, dude, I don't know how long you're going to live. So I think, as long as you haven't forgiven you, we're really only going to be able to talk about the grandkids, the weather and your garden, and I would like something more than that. I like to talk about real things. But until you forgive yourself, I don't think we'll be able to do, because guilt and shame are walls to intimacy. And so I said, dad, would you forgive yourself? And he goes oh God, oh God, I can't. You know, just fumbling, mumbling, and he's like he probably just said no, I just can't, I was horrible.
15:01
And I'm like, yeah, you were, you were a really horrible father and I want you to forgive yourself, because God has provided a way for me to forgive you and I want to. I actually want a dad before you die. And I'm like, and I want you to get your wife on the phone. It wasn't my mother, she had died when I was young, and so I got his wife, bonnie, on the phone and I'm like Bonnie, I want you to hear this, because I think he's going to need your help. And so I said, dad, so we stay on the phone for two hours, wrestling with his own shame and guilt and forgiveness towards himself, and finally he's like okay, fine, I will forgive myself. And he did. And after that, for three years, I had the most amazing dad.
15:50 - Speaker 1
Wow, wow, this is. It's hard for us, as men, to be vulnerable, isn't it, as we're taught not to be?
15:59 - Speaker 2
We are you, not, we you are. I mean, from the time boys are little, the vulnerability is virtually sucked out of them like a vacuum cleaner, and the sweetest thing I want from my husband is his sweet vulnerability. That is the sexiest thing he can give me you know, that is the most tender thing when he, when he, trusts me with his vulnerable heart, I just melt. That's that's when I fall the deepest in love with him and I realized I have to make it safe for him to do that. Yeah.
16:40
Because if he can't risk his vulnerability with me, like the other day he said to me I'd had a really busy week and my husband has some deep feelings of abandonment from his own mother, and so he kind of lashed out at me. He said you never listen to me, and I kind of my first instinct was to lash back and say, oh my gosh, that's all I do, right. Yeah, but I paused. Yeah.
17:08
And I'm like okay, let's go to your adult brain, nancy, right, yeah? And so I just paused. I finished blowing my hair dry and I said to him hey, I can't hear you, give me a minute. But I had heard him, but I wanted to just be with that for a second, and so I said hey, babe, what is it that you need? What are you needing? What are you needing from me? And he just paused and he said well, I can get to feeling kind of abandoned when you're busy. And so I could just go over and put my hands on his face and look him in the eyes and say honey, you're the most important human in this whole world to me and I love you more than anything and you are precious to me and I love it when you tell me that you are missing me.
18:05
It works so much better than lashing out at me. So I love to teach couples like hey, turn your complaints into requests. What is it that you need Like instead of like you never want to have sex? It'd be so vulnerable for men to say I miss being close to you, I miss the closeness of your body. I feel so warm and connected to you when we are together physically. It means more to you me than you will ever know.
18:38
A woman can melt to that. But when it's like it's your duty to give me sex or you never want sex, or you, those words you're talking about right now.
18:46 - Speaker 1
it's hard for us to, as men, sometimes to come up with those words.
18:51 - Speaker 2
It is, isn't it?
18:53 - Speaker 1
And perhaps that's where we do need to read things that help us with that.
19:00 - Speaker 2
Well, it's like learning a foreign language, paul, because by the time you were six years old, you'd already learned the message as a male don't be a moron and be super vulnerable. You armor up buddy, or you're stupid. And so men have this very awkward relationship with vulnerability and with the language of vulnerability.
19:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think part of the, if you will, the progress of where we are in the church is that there is some of this teaching in your book on trauma, love and sex and God made a woman in your podcast and the things you're doing and others that speak to this. I think our setting some men free and I think it's helping a lot.
19:46
frankly, I want to a guy. We were working out in the gym and we were on a trip and we were in England working out in the gym and this guy's buff, and he's showing me some different moves with the weights and I'm like, okay, and of course I'm using the lesser weight, but anyway. And then so the next day we were in a class together, we were working on our doctorate together, and the next day we're in this thing and we're talking about some things. We're at CS Lewis's house in England and he said I forget what we were sharing, I forget what it was. But he said came up with what have people been writing? What have you been writing lately? Because we're in CS Lewis's house with Lunar Suite and I think Lynn said something about what have you been writing the last couple of days? What's come up the last couple of days in your mind notes, whatever.
20:38
And this guy I've been working out with strong guy, very well-known pastor, says let me read you a poem I wrote last night to my wife oh how sweet. And he had sent her a poem that morning. Of course all the rest of us guys were like dude, come on, man, don't do that, but it was awesome and he wrote this poem. And in Bryce, who's here, who's our producer, we're working with a man the other day on a podcast that we were doing and get ready to do a broadcast, and I think it was right after we had done it, the guy sent you a poem that the day before, the day before we get on the podcast together, this guy is like a big time business guy. I love it and strong, and I do think there's that place where we're beginning to learn to speak.
21:24 - Speaker 2
I do too, paul. You know a more vulnerable language.
21:28 - Speaker 1
And I do think we're in a place in the church where, because of you and we're talking with Nancy Houston, as in the city, nancy Houston, you can find her online Because of you speaking in the people's lives, because if you're doing a podcast that is vulnerable, because of you talking and Ron allowing you, in that sense, to speak about some of these things. You know, judy and I have just over time and we've been married a long time, we've been married 52 years but we're continuing to learn things. We're continuing to learn how to say things to each other in a way that brings life, more and more life, into our marriage. It's really been interesting, even like texting each other Like I'll be taken off. I travel a lot with the ministry and I'll text her as the plane's taken off. I already miss you. Well, I don't know if I guess I've said that before, but it has become more prominent lately. I don't know, maybe you go through stages Well and well don't you think?
22:31 - Speaker 2
Yes, I think, the older we get, the more precious our marriages can become.
22:36 - Speaker 1
There's no question. Yeah, very tender.
22:39 - Speaker 2
And I think you know, as we age too, we just stop caring about some of the dumb things that we used to care about.
22:46 - Speaker 1
I don't know, I still care about a lot of stupid things. I mean just the furniture right now that's behind me on this video tape and if you're watching it by video will be different the next time you see this video, because she put some new shelves in. I was doing an event out in the West Coast and she put some new shelves in. I don't like them and so it was like, why do I care?
23:12
But I walked in and I cared, you care yeah it was like and then later I go well, that was kind of dumb, I really cared about it and I texted her. I go I hate these. I don't know, maybe that was a strong word, but I do anyway and we're getting some different shelves. So she and I, in a very civil manner now over the last couple of days, looked online at some different shelves. Now what a stupid thing. You know what I mean. Like I walked in the other day. I'd just come off a flight and a lot of travel and stuff and I walked in and I go I'm like, ah, I hate these. And then I'm like I don't even know if we see them in the shot. You know what I mean.
23:53 - Speaker 2
I don't even know if we see them in the shot, and don't you think that's a typical response when we are tired, when we've just gotten off a lot of flight?
23:59 - Speaker 1
Well, there's that. So okay, I give myself some grace.
24:02 - Speaker 2
There you go.
24:03 - Speaker 1
But the fact is later I thought because I yelled. I hate these.
24:07 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
24:08 - Speaker 1
And then later I thought, God, like a five year old, you know, you know, at least I didn't throw anything.
24:16 - Speaker 2
That's good, but isn't it good when we can go? Oh, there is that part of me.
24:21 - Speaker 1
I did. I did. I did give it some space after I texted her I hate these. And then she gave me some space, like, oh yeah, buddy, she didn't text that back. She gave it some space, I gave it some space. She goes what do you hate? I go I don't like their wimpy, their glass water and in Bryce walks in today, goes oh, I don't think it looks so bad. I'm not a good dude, this is my anyway.
24:47 - Speaker 2
My space, my space, it's my cave yeah it's my cave.
24:50 - Speaker 1
It is my cave. My cave right. So I know and you know, but I want to fix up Ron's cave too, but I've learned not to.
24:59 - Speaker 2
It's his cave leaving alone.
25:01 - Speaker 1
Okay so, but I do think and it's part of learning right and learning each other's rhythms and Isn't it Matthew 19 that says that marriage requires maturity?
25:16 - Speaker 2
And you know none of us, when we get married, have it. We've got to grow up into it.
25:20 - Speaker 1
I just wanted legal sex.
25:22 - Speaker 2
Right, exactly, and it's so mature, isn't it when we look back and go well, that was mature, but you know, we, we marry at the stage we're at and then we have to grow up into it, and it's continual. I hope that you guys never stop. I hope we never stop. No, right, cause a marriage. A marriage dies. People die when they aren't working on adult development.
25:42 - Speaker 1
Wow.
25:43 - Speaker 2
Adult development is one of my favorite topics and I think it should be every adult's favorite topic, not that, no, it should be.
25:49 - Speaker 1
I love it.
25:49 - Speaker 2
Nothing I need to be right, but but it's just like two Harvard professors have given their whole career to the, to studying adult development, and what they have found is, you know, we can think we can have these attitudes that, well, I'm 21, I'm fully grown now, and it's like, or I'm 25. So I finally have my prefrontal cortex and it's like but that's the beginning of adulthood, we haven't arrived anywhere and we're meant to go from the socialized mind, where we learn how to get along with others, and then we're meant to move into self-transformation, where it's like wait a minute, how am I going to own my life? How am I going to own all of my own behaviors, my own attitudes, my own emotions? And then what am I going to do with that?
26:38 - Speaker 1
This is why I get so fired up about what we do with the Christian Women's Network is because I want there to be an adventure in our lives. And there's an old phrase I don't remember it's been ascribed to a number of different people, but it's essentially this that most men die at 50. We just don't bury them till they're 70.
26:57 - Speaker 2
Isn't that true?
26:59 - Speaker 1
I think, people.
27:00 - Speaker 2
we could say people right, yeah, people, A lot of death.
27:03 - Speaker 1
I remember talking well, people, men and women, and I remember my friend, dave, and Dave went to our 50th or 55th, I don't know, high school reunion and I go, how was it? He goes, dude. It was terrible. He said he's talked about this guy, jim, who actually just passed away, but he talked about Jim. He goes. Jim showed up, he's been living in Hawaii working out doing stuff. Man, the guy was great. He's great to be with Clint doing fantastic, going out, fishing, doing all this stuff, he says. But there were a bunch of old guys there and so what do you mean? He said a lot of old people and I said, well, when we talked about it, he said a lot of the girls didn't show up because they didn't want to show up, looking old, like old grandmas, because they've just and I don't, you know, it's not the looks. In one sense, what he was talking about was the attitude of I just I stopped and I don't. I don't know how you stay married without growing and doing stuff.
28:01 - Speaker 2
I think that's why there's so much emotion. Emotion, so much emotional and physical divorces. They're not divorced, but they're divorced.
28:09 - Speaker 1
You know what? That is the biggest, the largest percentage wise, of divorce, and you can correct me, you study all these things, but my last reading on this was somewhere between the ages for men between 54 and 64, 50 to 64 right in there was the highest percentage of men getting divorced right now. And because it just kind of like and I call it the Viagra syndrome is and my friend Dwayne Pickett, he said, yeah, it's just because that guy still thinks he's a player and it's all chemically induced, if you will, and so he's doing all this stuff, and then and then because we haven't aged, you know, together, if you will.
28:51 - Speaker 2
Stayed alive together. Stayed alive together, Stay alive together. Do stuff be vibrant.
28:55 - Speaker 1
Have fun, you know.
28:57 - Speaker 2
That's what I love about you and Judy. You guys are a few years ahead of us. It's going to be our 50th this summer. Is it really?
29:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's going to be our 50th. Oh my gosh, I didn't know you guys were that old.
29:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we are, and so.
29:09 - Speaker 1
Oronias yeah, anyway, yeah.
29:12 - Speaker 2
But we look at you guys and we're like, oh, we love them. They're still reinventing themselves doing new things, you know, building new projects and I'm like, isn't that awesome? But I like that.
29:23 - Speaker 1
It's fantastic.
29:24 - Speaker 2
You haven't packed it all up and just like I'm going to get my recliner until I die. No, we got no.
29:30 - Speaker 1
I think of. I think of. John Maxwell was talking about his dad having lunch with his dad one day and his dad was, I think, 94th at the time and John's like dad, you know you should be getting with some of your friends. He goes dude, my friends are all gone. Yeah, I know. And then, but then he pulls out this piece of paper and John goes, what's that? And his dad goes these are all the projects I have for this year. Oh, how cool is that? That's great, you know. And John was sharing that because I know he's done that in his own life.
29:58
And now he's got another new project because he just you know, changed some of the ones he was doing, but that's, for me, is that's a vibrancy of life. You know, judy and I have talked about this and it's not just travel, because things do change and you can't travel as much or whatever. So I would advise if you're a younger couple and you're in your thirties or forties and you've always wanted to go to Italy, don't wait till you're 68 or 70, because you won't be able to walk up some of those stairs.
30:25 - Speaker 2
That's right.
30:25 - Speaker 1
Or it's not going to feel as good. Now you guys will be able to do that because you guys work out all the time you got. You know you do all these stuff but the fact is is that you know so when you're 35, go take one of those trips, do one of those things, have a blast, make a memory. Your folks did that when they went to Europe for a month. You know, just do that deal and make that thing happen.
30:51
We're always meeting people and so we were sitting at having I don't know, it was a pizza place the other day and it was kind of like where you sit together, sort of thing. So we started talking with a couple of exos and started to find out a little bit about them. They're a younger couple and kind of a blended marriage and all this sort of stuff, and it was really fascinating A couple of things. They started talking about this. They had decided to do a couple of things that most people would have waited till later and they went ahead and did them and I just told them I said, well done, man, well done. You know, he's got an older daughter and then two younger ones by the second marriage and you know, because it's going to keep them alive and vibrant and healthy. And there's some of these things we need to do, and then doing this work of grief. You know we have to do these things.
31:40 - Speaker 2
You know why I think a lot of people give up, paul, is because they're carrying around so much sadness and grief and it's heavy, even a lot of our Alzheimer's, dementia, things like that they're now finding for some of it not all of it, but for some of it it's just repressed depression. People haven't dealt with their depression and they've carried around their whole lives and it's like lugging around a thousand pounds. So you feel tired, you feel exhausted, you lose your vibrancy, you lose your energy.
32:10 - Speaker 1
So your life closes in it's smaller.
32:13 - Speaker 2
We have to remember that our emotions are like two sides of the same coin and if you're going to, if you well, it means that there's joy and happiness on one side and on the other side, or some of your sad or heavier emotions, and if you aren't dealing with both of those, you'll lose both, because they're attached to each other. Wow. So if you want joy and energy and vitality.
32:36
you've got to be dealing with your sadness, your anger, your rage, your depression, your anxiety, and you know my big concern for men is the amount of a low grade depression that they carry around with them. But they have no vocabulary or permission to talk about it. So they just drink a little too much, or they work a little too much, or they play too hard, or they make too much they, they, they think the next conquest or more money dealing with pain and they're dealing with unresolved depression, and so it breaks my heart because we haven't helped men have a vocabulary for their emotions.
33:15 - Speaker 1
I think most of us, as men, we deal with disappointment at such a level. Yeah, disappointment is not based on where you are, but where you expected to be, and that gap between where you are and where you expected to be is the level of disappointment most men live with. And you can take men who have, who have put companies on Dow Jones. Yeah, they've won huge stock offerings, they've made a hundred million dollars and they're still living with this gap.
33:41 - Speaker 2
Totally. Money doesn't buy happiness.
33:43 - Speaker 1
No, I remember Clint shoot. I just lost Clint Gresham and Clint was in the in the ice bath after they won the Super Bowl and he would was played on the Seahawks and he's in the ice bath and there's a guy next to him, a whirlpool. There's a guy next to him. It's a month after the Super Bowl, they've won the Super Bowl, the world champions and the guy looked at him and he said, man, I thought it would feel different. Yeah.
34:12
And what he was really saying was I thought it would define me, that's right. I thought I would find my identity, that's right and it hasn't done that for me.
34:21 - Speaker 2
No, and it won't. And men can give their whole lives to seeking things that will. So can women and. But into the day it doesn't. And then we get older and it's like it starts coming out when we're another and, like a lot of people who've used alcohol to cover, will suddenly, in their sixties, become allergic to alcohol. They can't tolerate it anymore. You know, or they can't make the same amount of money, or they can't keep conquering females, or whatever. It is Right. And I'm like gosh, you guys You've got to have permission to stop and get the help you deserve for any unresolved depression, for any unresolved trauma, for any like for the father who can't hug his sons. He's a really good man, but there's something there, there's something there.
35:06
And for the men I've worked with not every man, so I never want to say something that this is this is the way it always is because it never is the way it always is, and we love to reduce humanity to its simplest terms. We want formulas, yeah so this is not a formula, but I just know a lot of men I've worked with who struggle with same sex porn. I will ask them hey, did like your daddy roughhouse with you, did he kind of manhandle? You.
35:36
Was he there at a wrestle when he came in from work with you? And consistently they say no and I'm like do you suppose you've sexualized some need that you might have? Yeah. Do you suppose you just have a need for masculinity? Yeah.
35:54
I mean, the studies are an astronomical that children who have daddies who wrestle with them when they're little walk down high school hallways with more confidence. There's no question. It's crazy. You daddies have no idea how much you're needed. I remember a few months ago maybe it's a couple of years ago I was in an Uber in New York with an Uber driver.
36:17
He's taken me there for a young man, young block man, and he's a baby daddy. He's not married, you know, and he's kind of debating what to do. And I said, hey, buddy, has anybody ever told you how you are going to impact your little girl and your presence will change her life? That when children have a daddy in the home they can sleep more soundly at night because daddy's home and just that masculine presence. You know, the story of the beauty and the beast is true. It's not just a fun fairy tale. Females want a trainable beast, and what I mean by that is.
37:03
I think that's why Taylor Swift is with Travis right, because you know she lives in a very unsafe world. No matter how much security she puts around her. But if she has a man who honestly can roar like a beast and looks like a beast, she's safe. But now he's got to be a trainable beast. He's got to be able to be kind and vulnerable and tender and loving and soft with her.
37:29 - Speaker 1
I've always said that the bad guys always get the best looking girls.
37:34 - Speaker 2
Well, you know a woman. She wants to know that he's going to be able to protect her, because it's security and she will do whatever it takes to get security for her children Absolutely.
37:44
Well, females know that we are at least you know we're 50, we don't have the upper body strength that a man does, and so you know, we know that when we give birth, that not only are we as females vulnerable, but our babies are vulnerable. And so when you have a man around you who's going to keep you, who, when necessary, he will rise to the occasion and say, oh no, you won't. Yeah.
38:12
Right, oh no, you won't, and even will sometimes know when to push against her Because she really doesn't want to seven dwarfs as her, you know she wasn't attracted to them. Right, Because, right, you know a woman wants to know, like Ron will push against me. He'll say, no, Nancy, you're being difficult and I'm like you know he's right, or I'm being a little bratty right now. And so he knows when to push for me and with me and when to push against me and I him, and I call that an empowered relationship and I'm telling you, if you want passion in your marriage, then you need to have an empowered relationship.
38:50 - Speaker 1
I want to do a podcast sometime for Dad Academy. And when we talk about father, talk about fathering, because Warren Farrell in his book the talk about the boy crisis Boy crisis he talked about. One of the most important things you can do with your sons is wrestle.
39:10 - Speaker 2
Yeah.
39:11 - Speaker 1
Because it teaches them boundaries Like no, you can't kick dad there. No, I can't do that. Can't wrestle with your sister like that. They learn boundaries, intimacy, there's all sorts of things.
39:19 - Speaker 2
That's one thing. My dad did great with me. My daddy would wrestle with me and I'm like, oh, that blessed me.
39:25 - Speaker 1
And I'm sure Ron did that with your boy.
39:27 - Speaker 2
Oh, like four sons nonstop, nonstop. Sometimes I'm like hey guys, could we just not wrestle for three minutes?
39:33 - Speaker 1
I remember with my sons. Judy would yell upstairs, she'd go stop, somebody's going to get hurt, oh yeah, and I'd be like, well, that's the point.
39:42 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah, oh wait, oh wait.
39:45 - Speaker 1
Well, there was that. Oh wait, there was that I got in trouble.
39:50 - Speaker 2
Oh wait, I'm trying to get them calm. That time routines and they're all coming around.
39:53 - Speaker 1
I'm going to start wrestling right as we start to go.
39:55 - Speaker 2
I'm like OK, buddy, you wrestled with them, you get to put them to bed.
39:58 - Speaker 1
Talk to Nancy Houston. It's been great having you on Brave Men, we could talk forever.
40:02 - Speaker 2
We could.
40:02 - Speaker 1
You're just a fascinating person. Oh, thank you, and you've given your life, you and Ron, really to help people heal and that comes out, and so thank you for walking it out. You know that thing from that Saturday where you cried all day and then walking forward and walking through the grief, doing the work, as you say it, because that work was day by day. We looked back and it was like this oh yeah, we did that, but it was day by day.
40:35 - Speaker 2
I still do some of it. I continue to, Well, yeah we all have to yeah right.
40:40 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I love the way you guys talk about it, josh Spurlock and others hey, so you're doing some work, so it's like a thing, it's like a normal, like normative, that's right.
40:50
Yeah, of course we do some work and but thank you for doing that, nancy, for you and Ron, and thank you for the Lord bringing you guys together and I don't think that I knew all the way before that you guys came to Christ, so that's really fascinating. This has been a great conversation. I want to do more of these to help people and I think for some of us as men, as we listen to all these things, it helps. My whole goal is to just click the dial, one click to help a guy. It's eight, the Ingram scale, how many times we're touched before we come to Christ. I think that's true after all. So I think there's these little clicks on a dial and I look at it that way Can I just help somebody click, just one click towards that place that helps them become more fully them, and so thank you for going through what you've done In order to help us.
41:46
Just do one click, because Judy and I in our relationship has been so enlarged and blessed by being friends of you and Ron, because every so often it'll be a little something, a little click, the little 22 minute thing that way. We didn't even talk about that, but I guess it's become a thing now for us and then getting out of the shower thing. That was a moment for me, a discovery moment, a few years ago. But just all those things and thank you for writing the books and the stuff you are writing the podcast, the new website, the stuff you're working on with your sons that's really cool and just all the things that are going on. We pray for you that what your hands touch will prosper. Every place you put your feet will be holy ground and the Lord continues to give you favor and success in all that you do. Thanks for being on Brave Men.
42:38 - Speaker 2
It's been awesome, Paul. Thank you, my dear friend, you and Judy bless us. We love you guys and your family, yeah awesome.
42:46 - Speaker 4
Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmn.men. That's cmn.men. Your host has been Paul Lewis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast, wherever your fine podcast, or download it. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.
