S3: E4- Planning, Executing and Learning Forgiveness (and other stuff) in Our Marriages

Have you ever been captivated by the seamless execution of a magic trick, wondering how such a perfect performance came to be? That's the magic of practice and refinement, and my wife Kimberly and I, Danny Ray, are here to reveal how these principles are just as essential in the world of marriage. Join us on a journey through the artistry of trust and forgiveness, as we compare the meticulous practice of a magician to the deliberate work required to strengthen the bonds of matrimony. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's an intimate sharing of our own experiences, offering you the tools to turn your marriage into a masterpiece of love and resilience.

As a magician and pastor, alongside my better half, an associate marriage and family therapist, we bring to the table a unique blend of perspectives on the importance of communication, setting boundaries, and the profound impact of forgiveness. We explore the delicate balance between performance and practice, and how, much like a carefully crafted illusion, a strong marriage is built on a foundation of constant improvement and adaptation. From personal anecdotes to practical advice, we guide you through the transformative process of nurturing your marriage, inviting you to embrace the rituals that cultivate growth and harmony within your relationship.

Transcript

Practicing Trust and Forgiveness in Marriage

Danny Ray 0:21

Well, this is Danny Ray.

Kimberly 0:22

I'm a magician and a pastor, and this is my incredible, amazing, wonderful wife Kimberly, you know, and yeah, I'm Kimberly and I am an associate marriage and family therapist.

Danny Ray 0:37

Love that and love that we get to speak into the life of marriages.

Kimberly 0:43

Today We've not because we have it all together, but because we've been working hard, learning stuff.

Danny Ray 0:49

You still have a lot of problems.

Kimberly 0:52

Oh nice, nice, Me too OK so.

Danny Ray 0:56

So, yeah, this isn't about us having it all together. It's about giving you some tips and tricks to do whatever it takes to create a great marriage and we've been.

Kimberly 1:05

I mean, it doesn't just happen by itself.

Danny Ray 1:07

Well, you know, you got to put some work into it, yeah, and so I want to look at this idea from the perspective of a magician and the process a magician has to do to create moments in a show. You have to start with practice, yeah, and then you go into the performance, ok, but just like in a marriage where it's not like you only have one opportunity to forgive or one opportunity to get, right, yeah, lots.

Danny Ray 1:38

So you have to, I do a performance and I'm like oh wow, let me write this down. This went wrong. Let me talk to this person. And so then there becomes a refinement of like what can I do even better next time? And then I go and practice those things and then back into performance.

Kimberly 1:55

And so yeah.

Danny Ray 1:56

Yeah, repeat those things. And so we want to look at kind of that concept in the context of our marriage of what are the things that we need to practice. And this isn't like going to be an exhaustive list, but I think it's, like you know, jesus wrapping up the entire Old Testament hey, love God, love others. It's like until you get that right, let's, you know, let's just keep to the big stuff. And so we're going to keep to the big stuff of of mercy and forgiveness and communication, and trust and commitment and so, looking at those things, how does that apply?

Danny Ray 2:33

So I'll just start by asking you, like what? What's that look like in the context of our marriage?

Kimberly 2:40

Well to practice these things. So we're choosing a few of these specifically right To practice ideas, Not again.

Danny Ray 2:47

this isn't an exhaustive list. But to say let's put these things into practice.

Kimberly 2:51

So obviously trust sometimes it takes practice right, especially if trust is broken in any form. Any way, we have to learn to trust again with each other and we have to be honest so that the other person can trust us and you know. So every time that gets broken we have to build that backup.

Danny Ray 3:18

So, to use this on the the practice, performance refinement, repeat, what's, what's the difference between practicing something in our marriage, in performing? So what's the difference between like practicing forgiveness, but actually performing or giving?

Kimberly 3:36

forgiveness.

Danny Ray 3:37

What's that look like?

Kimberly 3:38

So the practice part might have more to do with the mindset and just an awareness that OK, I need to look for this when it comes up in our marriage that there's. It feels like a trust issue has been or trust has been broken. So it's something we're aware of and going even with the smallest thing you have an opportunity to to build trust to practice, like you said.

Danny Ray 4:06

So it's part of like the research, of, like you know, reading a book together or you know, you read a verse you know, like Colossians 3, 13, where it says bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. So practicing might mean like what's it mean to forgive as the Lord has forgiven you? What's that look like in our marriage? Well, how did God forgive us? He forgave us before we ever asked.

Danny Ray 4:37

Yeah, he forgave us completely. It's not like this partial forgiveness. It was a sacrificial forgiveness. He went to the cross for you know. So all these different things when we think about like forgiveness, we could have that conversation right, and that's practicing and talking about it, but it's very different to talk about those things. And then, when you've hurt me or I've hurt you, to actually forgive that person.

Kimberly 5:05

Yeah, that's a great way to put it to yeah, yeah. So forgiveness, trust, mercy, commitment are all things we have to practice really every moment of every day. But you're right, it's those, the reading the books, the being intentional, realizing okay, this is what God calls me to do, and then kind of having those things at the forefront.

Danny Ray 5:27

Yeah, so we have a plan of action when this comes up, because it will come up.

Kimberly 5:33

Yeah, you know.

Danny Ray 5:34

I love that. You know the Bible doesn't say you know you're not going to have to bear with each other. It's not really going to be that difficult. No like bear with each. You know, like that's a in. This is, you know, talking about, like the community on the body of Christ as well. You know it's right.

Kimberly 5:53

Not just in the context of marriage, that that verse. But yeah, for these purposes. We are talking about the marriage and there's a lot to bear with each other, right? We, every couple, I think they would say we do it so differently, we're so opposite, we, you know, one puts the toothpaste lid on and the other doesn't.

Danny Ray 6:13

And who doesn't put the toothpaste lid on? Is that a thing?

Kimberly 6:17

You know, I think in our first year it was. I actually do kind of remember that.

Danny Ray 6:21

So were you not doing that, oh please, oh please. That's cute that you don't even remember that's awesome, I don't remember that, but you've changed, we've changed, that's okay, we're good. We've changed for the better, but there's.

Kimberly 6:35

There are things like that, as small as the toothpaste cap, that that couples can get really frustrated with Trash, you know, taking out of the trash the all sorts of chores and things.

Danny Ray 6:50

I want to talk about this too, Because I think the the silliness of that is like it's. It really isn't like, in the grand scheme of things, that big of a deal. But I'll take your word for it that I wasn't doing that and I could see how that could be frustrating, like leaving the toilet seat up or forgetting to take the trash out, things that aren't the end of the world, but somehow they feel like it sometimes in the moment.

Danny Ray 7:19

Yeah, because you've had that conversation of like, hey, I really want you to take the trash out, oh, I'll take the trash out, and then you don't take the trash out, and now trust is broken, yeah, so so much is happening with that example right.

Kimberly 7:30

So, yes, trust is broken. Some people feel that even more than others that?

Danny Ray 7:35

what do you mean by?

Kimberly 7:35

that, just that sometimes we take it a little too extreme and go, oh well, now I can't trust that person and anything with anything, so that there are extreme examples of that. But for the most part it's a small rupture interest right.

Kimberly 7:54

And going okay, now I don't know that he or she's gonna do what I asked because. So the other part of that that's painful, even though it's silly because it's about trash the other part that's painful is that I don't feel listened to or you don't feel listened to, so we're not seen, we're not heard. They didn't hear me when we had this conversation about the trash and that I need that taken out once a week or whatever. The conversation was. Right, they don't. Then they're hurt. Right, we're hurt when somebody doesn't hear us. We have this conversation about it. Why isn't it like? Why didn't you change? Why aren't you doing the things? And yet sometimes we think that this goes to the press, speaks to practice, because it's not that. We can. Just you and I can have a fight, we can talk about it, we can go okay, here's the plan, I won't do that again. And then it can. We're human. So easily it comes up again and we go oh, that you know I was gonna do better on that.

Danny Ray 8:57

Yeah, so there's two things going on here for both parties. One, the person that left the trash out or left the toothpaste and have had the conversation right is to build that trust. They need to be dependable and reliable right and they need to work on the consistency of that will help to build trust, but then on the other side, the other person needs to work on letting it go forgiving like looking at the having grace and mercy trust this person in all areas because they're gonna put the toothpaste lid on.

Danny Ray 9:32

But that's where, like, we get crazy in our heads and that's. This is, I think, like the whole thing of marriage. It's like we want to experience, like that grace and that love and that forgiveness for ourselves from our spouse. Yeah, but we have to be willing to give that as well.

Kimberly 9:53

Absolutely, absolutely.

Danny Ray 9:55

Yeah, so I want to talk about because I get crazy with practice. I'm not saying this is healthy. At times We've really had to work on like the health before when I was single, practicing like six to 10 hours a day.

Kimberly 10:11

Of magic, of the illusions. Yeah, it was beautiful.

Danny Ray 10:14

I loved it.

Kimberly 10:14

But when?

Danny Ray 10:18

when I got married I I can remember like I get into like a focus mode when I'm practicing that I could literally tune out the entire world. Dogs could be barking, you could be talking, music be glaring, the sirens going off and I don't hear a thing. I'm just like zeroed in.

Kimberly 10:40

That's a gift. That's pretty awesome on most levels but, as your wife, very frustrating in the beginning.

Danny Ray 10:47

Yeah, so I had to learn to dial that back, and now we have conversations like when I did a pen and teller you know I had 70 days before going to that of you know the taping of it taping of it and actually, you know, attempting to fool these guys which you did very well, well, spoiler alert. Wow, I did. It is a crazy deal to me, but for 70 days I was practicing nonstop, trying to create you know a piece.

Practice, Perform, and Refine Marriage Skills

Danny Ray 11:24

That would actually fool them. And I I think the similarities in terms of us going into like this deep, like how you know if if you're really struggling in some area of your marriage, is how do you go deep to really work towards forgiveness and better communication is maybe you're doing like a two week intensive marriage thing. Maybe you've decided to get into counseling, maybe you go to a conference, maybe there's something at your church where it's like hey, there's this weekend event where we're going to talk about marriages. There are ways, things out there, that you go a little bit more in depth, depending on where you are in your marriage, either to just make it stronger, because it's healthy and you want to make it stronger, or because there's some division between the two and it's like you know what. We're not going to let another day go by.

Danny Ray 12:18

We're going to make a commitment right now to work these things out.

Kimberly 12:23

To do whatever it takes.

Danny Ray 12:25

Do whatever it takes A way to bring that back in. I like that. Uh so but yeah, I think those are. When I think about practicing, there's all kinds of things that we could learn so that when those things come up in our marriage, we're not, we're ready, we're prepared.

Kimberly 12:44

Yeah because we've been deliberate and consistently rehearsing that skill, right? Yeah, so we've talked about practicing. Performing, meaning just taking those practice skills and actually using them in a conflict within the marriage or to maybe even prevent a conflict in the marriage, right? And then we were talking refinement. Yes, and you do that in terms of magic. What does that look like?

Danny Ray 13:16

Yeah, so wow.

Kimberly 13:20

When you're analyzing it right.

Danny Ray 13:22

Yeah, there's so many things. I don't believe in this concept of a perfect show. I write every show and we'll talk about like I give it a 9, I give it an 8, I give it. It's not that I've never had a show that I would give a 10, but even that I would still say there were like it was a 10,. Everything went great, but I could still work on this or still develop this or what if I had?

Danny Ray 13:48

this, but there's so many variables in a show that you can't control. The audience is new, the people you're bringing up maybe somebody in the audience looks like they'd be great on stage but then they brings up on stage Sure. And same thing in our marriages. It's like we go to this conference, we get fired up, we're all excited. We read this book. We're going to put these new ideas. We've read a passage in the Bible today we're going to forgive, we're going to give grace.

Danny Ray 14:18

10 minutes later we're like ah, what is the matter with you? Why can't you use this?

Kimberly 14:22

It's like okay let's back up.

Danny Ray 14:27

I blew my biscuit. What do you?

Kimberly 14:29

call that your Limbic system. Yeah, I blew your biscuits, yeah same thing Right?

Danny Ray 14:38

Do you want to explain that? For a moment, I won't attempt to explain that.

Kimberly 14:43

Yeah, I mean, it's just more the scientific term. Your limbic system is so we would say. You blow your top right when you get really upset. But once that's triggered and you're not just upset but angry and you feel that in your body that's somewhere, then at that point you need to stop in the conflict or whatever it is that you're driving and you're upset with somebody. If you've actually blown your top, if you are no longer processing it in a calm and healthy way, then there's no point. At that point we can't even hear each other. So as far as conflict and in the marriage, that's a cue to take a break, like for a few minutes everybody go to their corners, anger. Okay, we need to calm down because the yelling at each other totally ineffective. Nobody hears anybody and, yeah, that's because of the limbic system.

Danny Ray 15:43

Yeah. So when we look at this idea of refining, Biscuit, as you call it.

Danny Ray 15:47

Blowing your limp biscuit. So when we look at this idea of refining, it's wow, I blew my top, I didn't handle myself well, and you're having that conversation to go like, hey, next time, what could I do better? I'm so sorry I did this, but I want to handle things better and having those conversations and sometimes that's a day later, two days later, where you guys are cooled off, you have a fresh perspective. But if you don't ever have conversations about how to refine it, how to make it better, you're just going to end up doing the same thing.

Kimberly 16:24

Yeah, yeah I think that's crucial in marriage, in repairing conflict. For us, I think, just by God's grace, that happened early on and I think that one might just be more my personality, that I wanted to know. So we'd have a fight, an argument, a rupture, however you want to call that, and I'm specifically thinking even in our first year of marriage in Colorado and go okay at the end after, like you said, we calm down, we talk to each other and go okay, this where I didn't like this, or you know, can you do better?

Kimberly 17:02

yell, do better. But what is the refinement part was how do we make this, make sure this doesn't happen again, right, and then one of our jokes that comes out of that is I'd say, well, let's make a rule, right, and now that we're up to rule 6823. Now we? The joke is that we just put number random numbers to those rules, because there must be a lot of them by now, but it's not that there's an actual Look at our marriage. Help us to create a marriage.

Danny Ray 17:35

Like we don't. We don't tear another person down. Like I could be super upset, but I'm never going to name call. Yeah, that's a boundary, happened early on in our marriage. We went there's never a time where calling for us somebody else's name is going to be beneficial, ever right.

Kimberly 17:55

So it's like and that was a refinement, that was yeah one. Now I will never do that again.

Danny Ray 18:01

Yeah, we don't use the word divorce. We never have, we never will like throw things we don't throw.

Danny Ray 18:11

Right, and so we've learned to put these boundaries on, but what it does is when. I'll take an example from from the show again. When I've done thousands of shows and I was doing a show at the magic castle, which is like the premier Magic club in the world, and magicians from all around the world, you know, come to see people perform there and I was performing in a new, certain people that were going to be in oh yeah, and I wanted this show to be epic.

Danny Ray 18:42

Well, what I didn't know is, before I went out there, some drunk guy knocked over all. Yeah, yeah, yeah everywhere, like my entire show when I walked out was all over the floor all. Had I not done thousands of shows before and put this stuff into practice? Performance refinement. I would have just completely freaked out. Now I don't want to say it was the best show I've, yeah but you were able to function.

Kimberly 19:19

I was able to do yeah.

Building Strong Marriages Through Communication

Danny Ray 19:20

I was able to create the best show given that context yeah, I could where I think if that would have been like the first show I've ever done this is the first time I'm ever, you know, or first time showing forgiveness or for like it, I would have been a rat, yeah, yeah, I think it's one of those things that the more we put this stuff into practice and have conversations about how we could do it better next time, and then we you know, read some more and we talk about it some more.

Danny Ray 19:51

You know like forgiveness and communication, and then we start communicating better. I'm do those things when we, when we need to show grace or show forgiveness or build trust. We're building those habits all the time and that will create a great marriage for you.

Kimberly 20:10

Absolutely yeah. We're building these characteristics, the you know, practicing these things to create a strong foundation for growth, resilience and and love right forever. So, yeah, great.

Danny Ray 20:28

So these are the things we'd encourage you to do is maybe talk to your spouse today about what this looks like to really practice. What are some things you can practice? Maybe a book you could read, a devotional you could read?

Danny Ray 20:42

A conversation you can have around how can we forgive each other better? And then next time you get into that situation like, wow, we did it, but what can we do even better next time? Yeah, this is what we believe. This kind of cycle Helps to create a great marriage of a practicing, performing and refining and that refining is crucial you know, we've talked about that. You know once a week of you know what's the plan for the week, how can we do?

Danny Ray 21:13

things better this week, you know, can we plan a date night? What things do you have going on? What things are going on, so that we're on the same page, on the same team so we can. Set ourselves up for the best possible week possible. But absolutely with that said on this is Danny, this is Kimberly with. We do whatever it takes.