S3: E1- Making 2024 Your Best Marriage Year Ever

Embark on a transformative journey with us as we tackle the enchanting quest of creating magic in our marriages. Imagine a year where every day begins with a shared laugh, a prayer, or a moment that binds; that's the heart of our third season, guiding couples to turn the everyday into extraordinary. We're pulling back the curtain to reveal how intentional goal-setting can lead to profound intimacy and a thriving partnership. By applying the timeless wisdom of 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,' we're mapping a course for couples to start with their happily ever after in mind and work backward, ensuring the steps they take today leave a legacy of love and connection.

This season promises laughter, heartfelt stories, and the kind of advice that sticks with you like your favorite melody. From our own "year of the gift" celebration to the daily rituals that keep the spark alive, we're sharing personal anecdotes and strategies that work. Whether you're looking to deepen your faith together, serve your community, or simply keep the flame of romance burning, join us for a series of conversations that are as enriching as they are entertaining. Don't miss our grand finale, where we'll unveil how to craft an intentional, magical marital journey—a true grand finale for your relationship.

Transcript

Danny Ray 0:22

Welcome to 2024. I cannot believe we are in season three of we do whatever it takes.

Kimberly 0:28

We do whatever it takes.

Danny Ray 0:30

And, as you know, that is our mantra, that is our theme. It has been from year one, when we just made decisions to do whatever it takes to create a great marriage, to have a thriving marriage, to put that magic in the marriage. In this year, we want to help you to make 2024 the most magic marriage thing. Hmm that's not coming out, right, babe, put that together for me. Put it together. What do you?

Kimberly 0:56

have. We want it to be a marriage that thrives, not just survives, right. Oh it's good. Yeah, I like it.

Danny Ray 1:04

So, yeah, I want to look at how can we make this year our best, most mad. It's not coming out yet. It's going to come out at some point.

Kimberly 1:14

Magical is fine. You know, here's the thing I think, when we, when we first got married, and certainly before that, I had no idea that, like I just thought, okay, the goal is to stay married, like that, that was as far as my goals went, I didn't understand that.

Danny Ray 1:32

You were just like if we're married tomorrow, it's a good day, All right yeah.

Kimberly 1:37

Yeah, I knew the importance of that, coming from a home of divorce.

Danny Ray 1:42

Yeah, we both came from families of divorce.

Kimberly 1:44

Yeah, so we knew that much that it had to be a goal to stay together but that it could have that biblically were to have like a vision for our marriage, that is, that there's a purpose for marriage. All of that was really new to me at the beginning and we've had different resources and different people along the way.

Danny Ray 2:09

kind of devotionals and different books were reading early on to try to navigate this thing. I think I have it. Yeah, 2024, a year of marriage magic. Does that sure your marriage magic, magic. I feel like it was working.

Kimberly 2:26

A year of marriage magic.

Danny Ray 2:28

All right, all right. So we have in this season. We want to take you through eight episodes. The first is going to be on having the end in mind. This is not a principle that is unique to us, right? I believe it comes out of seven habits of highly effective people. And it's something that we started at least 20 some years ago.

Kimberly 2:51

Yeah.

Danny Ray 2:52

I'm thinking like how do we want to end our marriage? Like down the road? What do we want people to say about our marriage?

Kimberly 2:58

Ending it meaning death, not divorce, just to clarify. Thank you for clarifying.

Danny Ray 3:04

Yeah, but having the end in mind is this idea of like, how you know, as we get older, how are we going to give more? How are we going to enjoy the time that we have more? How are we going to invest in our families? Well, in our kids, well, and so today we want to look at this from. So, each one of these episodes I'm going to try to break down. As you know, I'm a magician. I've created numerous shows over the years, but how I end the show is always how I start with my thinking of like okay, if I'm going to create a great show, how am I going to end it? Yeah, and so there was a season where I was doing underwater escapes and I would think through you know how, how am I going to end that? And I remember coming up with like, this phrase of like when you take your last breath where do you want to be?

Kimberly 3:56

And?

Danny Ray 3:57

and that was like, okay, I could work with that. And then I had to back into how am I going to open in next week? We want to talk about how do you open every single day, because how you open changes the trajectory of that that particular day and keeps to Kim's goal of hey, stay married.

Kimberly 4:18

If you're married today, stay married.

Danny Ray 4:21

So well in it then we're going to end with like how do we create this grand finale?

Danny Ray 4:27

But let's start with this with ending right, and I'll just take it from a show perspective and then I'm going to let you take it and talk about more of a how we get there, but B from the psychological, from a therapist's point of view, of how do you really do that intentionally. So again with ending shows, the current way I'm ending a show is I'm tying all these loose ends in the show together. But that came, you know, through years of like bringing pieces together. And then I'm like what if I created a whole show where everything seems like haphazard and chaotic and you know I'm stumbling and fumbling through things and dropping cards, and then all of a sudden you realize every drop, every seemingly you know failure mistake is all meant to be, and it's really for me a beautiful picture of how life works is we don't

Danny Ray 5:31

understand all the heartache and the pain and the struggle, but as we look back, we can see how those things have impacted our lives and have helped us to become the people who are designed to be today, or, for marriage, how it's helped create that great marriage. So I could go through countless other examples of me doing Russian roulette and being buried alive and currently gouging my eye out with or trying not to gouge my eye out, but created a device to do that.

Danny Ray 6:04

You can see that clip on Penn and Teller. But yeah, there's this idea of we have to be intentional about getting there. If you're counseling somebody and they're like, hey, we're struggling to make it through today, right, how do you help set that vision and how does that vision give us hope?

Kimberly 6:28

Yeah, having. I think that you know, hitting the nail on the head, is that just having that vision?

Kimberly 6:34

and not just floating around on a ship in the middle of the ocean and hoping that you'll get somewhere or hoping that it's a great time. There has to be preparation, there has to be vision casting and decision making and all of those things. So I think that could be new information for some of our listeners right there, and in that we don't want to overwhelm anybody with oh wow, we have to have this vision now for our marriage and we have to do all these things, and that's not the point of this or the purpose.

Danny Ray 7:14

For the guys out there. I remember I had a men's conference one time. The speaker and I don't remember who it was offhand, but he's like you know, we hear these vision statements for marriage, for our own life, for our business, and he's like I just try to keep it simple and this is stuck with me, so maybe this could be a little bit of your vision for 2024, for your marriage is he's all my vision's, this, don't screw up. And he's like don't screw up on my marriage, don't screw up at work don't screw up with my friendships, don't screw up with my kids.

Danny Ray 7:49

You know, I'm like I like it.

Kimberly 7:51

I will adopt that.

Danny Ray 7:53

So it doesn't have to be this complicated vision, but continue. I just wanted to throw that out of people like, oh, vision it. You know it's this complicated. Sometimes it could be as simple as like one phrase that becomes in for us. We do whatever it takes. Right has been part of our vision for our entire marriage is like let's do whatever it takes to create that great marriage.

Kimberly 8:15

Yeah, which starts with the kind of on the daily, right, so at the beginning of the day. We're going to talk about this later, but but how you start the day matters, the connection that you have with each other, but also the end of the day. How are you connecting? Everybody's tired at the end of the day, or most people and, and they've had a lot of interactions throughout the day, maybe at work and how we come back together, how we end, it makes a huge difference. Kind of like you're saying with the, with a magic show, when you have the end in mind, then the show has a lot, it has a destination, it has a purpose, right?

Danny Ray 8:58

Yeah, you know where you're going.

Kimberly 9:00

So, talking about that and being on the same page we talk about that a lot If you're both on the same page. This is our vision for our marriage and just realizing from the beginning that marriage has a purpose and I as believers. The purpose is to reflect Christ through our marriage and that means reflecting Christ through, through the marriage to to one another. Right that I reflect Christ to you and vice versa, that we reflect Christ to our children, if you have children, that you reflect Christ to anybody and everybody that you come in contact with. And that's not always easy, but it's still is the purpose and the game plan right and the goal.

Build Strong Marriage, Set Goals

Danny Ray 9:51

Yeah, I think along those lines with like what specific purposes do you have in your marriage? So yeah reflecting Christ is definitely like. As a follower of Christ, we wanna show his love, show his grace, show his forgiveness, show the hope that he has.

Danny Ray 10:09

We wanna be training up our children to love him with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. But if you're to fast forward a year, five years, 10 years, you know, pick a number for a moment. Where do you want your marriage to be? How do you see yourself, as the husband or as a wife? How do you see the connection that you have? Have you increased your prayer time together? Are you increasing your giving together? Are you increasing your time of doing things for the community or doing events at your church? What are ways that you're impacting the world with your marriage? Because your marriage.

Danny Ray 10:55

people will see it and it'll be so. When it's seen, do they see God's love working in and through you? And this is through struggle, through pain. Nobody gets to be exempt from fighting or from going through struggles or pain or suffering, and so we don't get to say, hey, when I'm not suffering, our marriage is gonna look like this.

Danny Ray 11:23

No it's in the center of our mess that we get to shine. It's not when we have it all together. It's today. What's it look like to shine? And when we fast forward a year, two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, what's our marriage going to look like? And that's, if you could get a vision that you want, then you could start to implement that today.

Kimberly 11:50

Yeah, with baby steps. And how do we? Okay, if we want to grow in your intimacy with each other and caring for each other more and just at the end, I wanna be closer to you. Right, we wanna feel closer to each other. I have an idea that way.

Danny Ray 12:08

My 50th birthday is coming up.

Kimberly 12:09

Yeah, it is.

Danny Ray 12:11

Yeah, and I was reading this morning. This is you have no idea.

Kimberly 12:15

I have no idea where this is going now. I'm scared, Okay.

Danny Ray 12:19

And they were talking about the benefits of recalibrating, and then she said I decided for his birthday.

Kimberly 12:29

Oh boy.

Danny Ray 12:30

Yes, to do the year of sex. What, yeah, she called it the year of the gift.

Kimberly 12:38

What book are you reading? That's enough of that.

Danny Ray 12:40

I think the book it was an article, but I think she wrote a book.

Kimberly 12:43

No, that's enough.

Danny Ray 12:45

So I don't know.

Kimberly 12:46

I'm thinking it could be the year of the gift you know, that's what you're asking for for your 50th birthday is a whole year of sex.

Danny Ray 12:53

Hey, I don't even know how that's possible, but that's a different discussion.

Kimberly 12:58

Yeah, let's not go there, but interesting, interesting.

Danny Ray 13:02

I'm looking forward to the year of the gift for my birthday.

Kimberly 13:04

thank you, All right, we'll be talking about that off air in a little bit, so we'll have to figure that one out.

Danny Ray 13:12

If you see it, pop up on my social the year of the gift. You know what's happening. Oh my goodness.

Kimberly 13:17

All right, then you're hilarious.

Danny Ray 13:20

We digress. I could hope.

Kimberly 13:22

You can hope? Yes, you can. We will have to get on the same page about that then, Wow all right, I thought we were on the same page.

Danny Ray 13:31

the year of the gift, I mean. What can be better?

Kimberly 13:34

This is just brand new information I am processing.

Danny Ray 13:38

I'll let you process it. Have you done it?

Kimberly 13:40

Thank you, okay, we'll discuss later.

Danny Ray 13:43

All right, so here we go. So, On that note.

Kimberly 13:47

On that note, if our goal is to get to know each other more, you know, so often this is very, very common that couples, if we don't have that goal in mind to get to know each other more, we just function at a basic level day to day. We get up, we do the things, we go to work, and if they're children this is what I was saying is it happens very often where the focus just becomes them, because they are needy, tiny little humans and so the focus has to be on them a lot of the time. But it does get easier at some point, most of the time, and it means we have to be intentional about still spending time together and knowing each other more, even during that difficult time. And then, because if we don't, that's when the couples look at each other. When the children move out, they're 18, they move out and they look at each other and they go huh, who are you?

Kimberly 14:49

I don't even know who you are. I don't know who I am because I only know myself as a mom, or I only know myself in this area. So it is keeping the end in mind. That was something we knew we didn't want and we wanted to make sure that we knew each other throughout, right? So, yeah, that's connecting daily.

Danny Ray 15:12

That's creating date time. I mean, we had date time where we just, you know, stay at home, grab a meal, go into the bedroom, watch a show together, hang out. Maybe there's a little intimate time in there, but we call that alone time with the children. Huh, we need alone time. So, right, it's being intentional about the intimacy, about communication, and I think, when I think about the end in mind, you know, as a counselor, one of the number one things that people come in to your office and they're just like our communication. It's horrible, right. And so how do you intentionally say you know what, in a year, in five years, ten years, In the end, we want to be communicating, great. So how do we start that today? How do I learn to really see the other person?

Kimberly 16:05

How do?

Danny Ray 16:05

I learn to hear the other person, and those are things we've talked a lot about, but it's in doing those things daily. Yeah, you know, these are the habits that you create today. The actions that you do today impact a year down the road, ten years down the road. Absolutely so. Another huge one that I would say, as you're looking at setting these goals for 2024 and making it the 2024, a year of marriage magic.

Kimberly 16:38

Okay, okay.

Danny Ray 16:39

Right Is changing the way you think about yourself. Right One of the things that I feel like we're constantly encouraging people with is the way we think about ourselves changes how we communicate with others, so if I constantly tell you I'm a horrible communicator.

Kimberly 17:02

I'm the worst communicator.

Danny Ray 17:03

I've gone to counseling, but there's nothing that helps. All I'm going to do is continue to fulfill that belief that I'm a horrible communicator Instead of learning to change that language. To say I struggle with communicating effectively, but I'm in process and I'm working on being a better communicator.

Kimberly 17:23

Today.

Danny Ray 17:24

I'm a little bit better than I was yesterday. I'm going to keep working on that. Well, you know those incremental changes can change huge that. And so take an airplane. Right If you take an airplane from New York to San Diego, if it's off by just one degree it'll end up about 100 miles off course in Los Angeles. Let's say right.

Danny Ray 17:47

So that one degree of change in a positive way. So if you're heading in the wrong direction, even if it's slight, that one degree change, yeah, putting your marriage back on track and being a hundred miles closer to your spouse a hundred miles closer to creating better communication. But that takes being intentional today and knowing where you're going. Yep.

Kimberly 18:13

Yep, every step of yeah, of every day. And yes, we make missteps and yes, there are ruptures, and yes, there are difficulties and things that get in the way, but it's how we repair those ruptures, it's how we go. Oh, I messed up there. Can we try again? Which can we reset, can we? Those are the things that get us back on track each moment of every day.

Danny Ray 18:44

Yeah, and that's one of those ones with, as you're thinking through, maybe you'll end up talking to your spouse today about creating this relationship where you have a goal, a purpose, something you're going after, maybe creating that mantra, that vision statement together as a couple and going like, no matter what happens, we're going to repair those ruptures no matter what happens. We're going to reset, no matter what happens. We're not going to bring up the past and drag that into the present.

Danny Ray 19:14

Yeah, and that's not to ignore the past. If there's something you need to address, but once things have been addressed they've been forgiven. There's reconciliation. There's a point where you have to go like, okay, that's part of our history, but our present is moving forward toward this end that we both agree like we want this in our lives.

Kimberly 19:35

Yeah, it's going to be a good year and we've got eight of these episodes in this season. Yeah.

Danny Ray 19:42

Yeah, so eight episodes. This is the first. Next one we're going to look at how do we open and I'm going to give you ideas from like a magic point of view of like how crucial the opening is as a performer and how that connection piece really changes the entire show.

Danny Ray 20:00

But in our marriages we're going to look at that too is that opening of how you start every day, especially over time, we'll begin to change your marriage and through these episodes we're going to be going all the way to this grand finale of how do we celebrate together daily and have a marriage. That is about celebration. You know, when you think of, you know a show and you have that standing ovation and there's that moment where there's the payoff for all the work you've done.

Kimberly 20:31

You talk as if I know I have never done a show and there's never been a payoff, there's never been a standing ovation.

Season 3

Danny Ray 20:38

But in our marriage we're almost 28 years in and there is payoff for the work that we've done for the last 27 years. You know that we get there's times of celebration that we didn't have that first year where we're navigating things and we're trying to figure out who we are outside of courtship and with jobs and with I was doing my grad work at the time. You know, and so you know about it from the marriage and the therapy and you're working with people where you get to see these celebrations, and so there's there's moments daily where we could celebrate, but there's also, I think, a season of celebration where the hard work that you've put in output for us, with the hard work we put in to our marriage while our kids were in the house.

Danny Ray 21:28

Now that they're out of the house, there's not this getting know each other, because we put the work in so that when that time came and we go back, listen to some episodes.

Danny Ray 21:38

You could see how we kind of fumbled through and we're stumbling into some of those things and at the same time it was like but we love each other deeply and we want to be with each other and now we're enjoying that time, I would say, more than more than ever. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that's a little bit about where we're going. Thank you for joining us for season three, episode one. Super thankful that you're joining us and hope you enjoy and join us for the rest of this season.