S5:E1 Grace Grenades: Choose to Pull the Pin

After a season-long pause, Danny and Kimberly return with fresh energy for Season 5 of We Do Whatever It Takes—and they’re bringing something explosive: Grace Grenades. In this kickoff episode, they unpack the idea of grace as an intentional, disruptive, and powerful choice that diffuses resentment and resets the atmosphere in marriage.

With plenty of laughs (including the  “pants don’t shrink” story and Danny’s impromptu hit song), heartfelt honesty about family struggles, and a grounding in Scripture (John 1:16, John 8:11), they show how grace is both abundant and transformative when paired with truth.

You’ll hear practical ways to stop destructive patterns, stories of real-life slip-ups, and a challenge to surprise your spouse this week with one unexpected act of grace. Because grace doesn’t change anything until you choose to pull the pin and drop it into your marriage.

Transcript

Music 0:21

Welcome

Danny Ray 0:24

back to We Do Whatever It Takes. I say that slowly, dramatically with feeling, yes, it has been a while. It's

Kimberly 0:34

been a while. And I'm so excited to be back, though. We want to, we have new ideas and thoughts for marriage. And I'm just so excited to share that with season five, right?

Danny Ray 0:47

Season five. So this has been a fun project for us. And we've just said all along, you know what, if this isn't fun, if this isn't where we want to be, we want to make sure that we just pause. And so there were some rough seasons as a family navigating some things, not necessarily in our marriage personally, but just family, some health issues with Kim's mom, some other stuff going on. And we just...

Kimberly 1:21

for you. That definitely, when you're not here, I can't really do a podcast for the two of us. And then another odd thing is that I'm sure nobody's ever thought of. Do you know that it makes it really hard to do a marriage podcast when we're in a fight?

Danny Ray 1:37

What?

Kimberly 1:38

Imagine that. Imagine that. I really, I know for a fact that happened at least a couple times that we tried to come out here to the little studio and try and get give some advice and found ourselves probably under attack and found ourselves just not able to really talk about marriage in that moment.

Danny Ray 2:01

Yeah. So we, all excuses out there, John, who knows the reality as we are back. We're really excited about season five. And so this is what we're going to be talking about is Grace Grenades is going to be like the overall thing is-

Kimberly 2:20

Sounds explosive.

Danny Ray 2:22

It is explosive. And this specific episode is going to be called Pull the Pin Together. So this idea of a grace grenade, it's an intentional act of love or forgiveness that blows off the walls on resentment, diffuses conflict, and just resets the atmosphere.

Kimberly 2:45

Oh, I just love this idea so much. We're talking about choosing to throw grace into your marriage in a way that's disruptive, surprising, and powerful. Now, I'm not usually a fan of the word disruptive necessarily. Understandable. But we're talking about grace not being quiet or weak, but we're talking about something, it is explosive and transformative.

Danny Ray 3:16

Yeah, it is powerful. It has to be intentional. And And it will just take away the resentment, the bitterness, and the pride that can happen. But here's the thing, is we have to choose to pull that pin, right? The moment we just, you know, we could talk about grace all day long, but at some point in our marriage, we could be holding a grenade that has all the potential in the world to impact our marriage. But until we pull that pin and drop grace into the situations we find ourselves in, it's not going to have the power to transform our marriage.

Kimberly 3:56

So it's almost like having... So maybe an argument is starting between us, and maybe we're both holding grenades, and there's a moment where you have to decide, am I going to throw the typical grenade of...

Danny Ray 4:12

Of pain and destruction and hurt and...

Kimberly 4:15

Yeah, mean words and really keep

Danny Ray 4:18

this

Kimberly 4:19

conflict... I don't know. Do we

Danny Ray 4:24

need

Kimberly 4:33

to talk about it later? And boy, I'll bet it will really kind of take some people by surprise, right? If you're expecting, like we're talking about blowing up a pattern too. Yeah,

Danny Ray 5:03

so it's how we respond, right? It's easy to get into patterns where we respond. Immediately, somebody says something that, well, I'll give you an example. Last week, I was at the Magic Castle.

Kimberly 5:17

Yes, you were performing all

Danny Ray 5:19

week. Performing in the parlor of Prestidigitation. Say

Kimberly 5:22

that three times

Danny Ray 5:24

fast. Yeah. It was pretty fantastic. Loved it. And I had a brand new suit for my son's

Kimberly 5:29

wedding. Oh, no. We're going to talk about this? Oh, come on. It's not my finest moment. I'm

Danny Ray 5:35

sorry. So brand new suit for my son's wedding. He got married in June. It's now August. And so, you know, a couple months have passed. And the first night at the Magic Castle, I'm like, whoo, these pants are tight. and so you know i call up kim after um after the show and i'm like hey babe these um these pants are like really tight and she says

Kimberly 6:02

wait in all fairness what are you supposed to say to that but she says

Danny Ray 6:09

well pants don't shrink

Kimberly 6:15

oh not the best i was trying so hard to say this kind thing and it did not come out so great

Danny Ray 6:24

she followed that statement

Kimberly 6:26

oh no it gets worse

Danny Ray 6:29

well you know our bodies are changing oh

Kimberly 6:33

yeah but you thought I was giving you the puberty talk or something I'm

Danny Ray 6:39

like our bodies are changing thank you I did not know that so I found out you know pants don't shrink I made a song for her called pants don't shrink

Kimberly 6:50

he did it hilarious it should be a top hit out there

Music 6:52

those pants they scream a different tune pants don't shrink it's just science and a little bit still you know our bodies are changing it's true But I love every curve, every inch of you. You tug, you stretch, you do a little hop. But

Kimberly 7:21

you digress.

Danny Ray 7:23

But it would be easy for me to get frustrated in that situation. I'm

Kimberly 7:29

very proud of you. You didn't. I think you knew my heart. My intentions were good.

Danny Ray 7:34

Yeah, of course. And I think that's the whole thing with Grace, especially with our spouses. We're with them 24-7. We have life together with them, and they could say something that you know can happen out of them being tired or them being hurt by something else, and it gets taken out on you. And to be able to throw grace into those situations is a game changer.

Kimberly 8:02

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So we, of course, want to ground this with Scripture. And John 1, 16 says, From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.

Danny Ray 8:18

This scripture, I feel like it's been in my head for about the last five months or so when I started to think about this idea of grace grenades. I was reading this passage and just this grace upon grace upon grace upon grace, like it's never ending. And so I actually took time to make a painting that just kind of came into my brain of like, what if I paint Side note, I started painting. That's just a random fact. In November, so less than a year, I started painting mainly watercolors. But this was my first acrylic painting. Maybe I'll throw that. Yeah, if we can throw a picture up somehow. We'll see if we can throw a picture up. If we can, it'll be in there. Check it out. But this is a painting called Grace Upon Grace. And the idea is that God just pours out his grace on us every day. It's fresh and new. But one of the opportunities that we have with that grace is not just to hold on to it, but to give it away.

Kimberly 9:19

That means God doesn't just give us enough grace to scrape by. He's giving it to us out of the overflow, right? Yeah.

Danny Ray 9:27

And so as it overflows, it overflows into the lives of those around us, especially in the context of our marriage. We want to just give grace upon grace to have that grace grenade that just is explosive and transcendent. because we choose to go above and beyond.

Kimberly 9:46

It also makes me think of John 8, 11, when Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery, neither do I condemn you. Now go and leave your life of sin.

Danny Ray 9:56

Yeah, so it's this both and. There's grace combined with truth, which Jesus perfectly embodies, right? It's not letting our spouse get away with uh with abusive behavior hurtful things that are constant or even take it out of there if we went into like the financial realm if your spouse um has amazon packages arriving two to three times a day

Kimberly 10:27

what are you

Danny Ray 10:27

saying oh wait that's my spouse uh she uses amazon like it's

Kimberly 10:34

the grocery store or the store it is the store

Danny Ray 10:37

oh my goodness okay so we might need to work this one out personally but the reality is uh if uh your spouse is overspending hmm that just jumped no uh right is is not just uh throwing a grace grenade into that and overlooking that in you know finances now you get into a place where you can't pay bills because yeah

Kimberly 11:04

the truth is that could be an abuse of finances yeah and

Danny Ray 11:08

so we don't want to just um give grace in situations to excuse the behavior. There's accountability, yet there's grace. There's neither do I condemn you, yet leave your life of sin. So there's a massive amount of grace in Jesus doing that for this woman, yet he calls her to action. And I think in our relationship, we want to throw as much grace into the situation that we can and have grace as our default. But at times, I think we need to back up and go, wait, what can we do so this doesn't happen again?

Kimberly 11:49

Yeah, yeah. To your point, grace is always paired with truth, right? So without truth, grace isn't grace. It's chaos. Right? If we're just going, well, here's a grace grenade, here's a grace grenade, and I'm just overlooking abusive behavior. That's not what God calls us to tolerate What

Danny Ray 12:07

about in counseling? Obviously, you're seeing

Kimberly 12:12

a

Danny Ray 12:17

lot of different—

Kimberly 12:36

But, yeah, we talk about that in therapy. Now I'm starting to use the actual words, grace grenade. We didn't have that before you came up with that more recently. But, yeah, we talk about throwing a different kind of grenade. And... But it's, there's also that caveat, though, that it has to always be with truth. So grace doesn't mean being a doormat. It doesn't mean tolerating abuse or destructive patterns. So I do feel like that needs to be absolutely clear.

Danny Ray 13:25

Mm-hmm.

Kimberly 13:55

It's you always do this or you never listen to me. Or I can throw the other grenade, the grace grenade and go, hey, I'm not feeling heard right now. I want to, I don't want to be in a fight. I don't want to start something. Can we pause? Can we try again? Can we start over?

Danny Ray 14:14

Yeah. Side note on car fights is I feel like one of the things that I had the experience of taking my mom on a trip. This was years ago. And I just told her, Mom, I want to make you feel safe because she had been in a car accident recently. So if I'm going too fast, if I'm too close to other cars, just let me know. And when I did that for my mom and realized like, oh, wait a minute, what if I did that for you? Others? Ooh, yes. And I feel like that became a game changer for car rides is what would make you feel safe? What would make you feel best? Yeah. Instead of my, you know, I stopped. I'm fine. But you don't feel safe, even though I stopped in plenty of time, in my opinion.

Kimberly 15:04

Yes. Driving is always about making the other person feel safe.

Danny Ray 15:08

Well, I think it's also a height issue. I think you're three foot two. You can't see over the steering wheel. So you're like, oh,

Kimberly 15:16

they're coming. I might be challenged in that way. She's five

Danny Ray 15:22

foot two and a

Kimberly 15:23

quarter. Five foot three. Five

Danny Ray 15:26

foot three and a quarter. Let's recheck that.

Kimberly 15:29

Stop. All right. Moving on. Moving on. But it does require safety. So going back to that, we have to feel safe in the marriage, in the relationship, just like in the car, in the scenario you were talking about. So what else? Do you have like a magic principle for us? No. Since I'm giving a therapy one? No.

Danny Ray 15:50

All right. Let's talk about, we could talk about mystery misdirection right okay when you use misdirection you're focusing on the right things at the right time you have that ability to create that moment of surprise you know where people's perspective or that what they think was going to happen doesn't and now they're like whoa right

Kimberly 16:11

that's totally like the grace grenade

Danny Ray 16:13

they have that magic moment right and that's like a grace grenade is like they're yeah

Kimberly 16:18

you change it it's not what we were expecting

Danny Ray 16:20

right

Kimberly 16:21

oh

Danny Ray 16:22

yeah and that's that's a huge part is like flipping that Instead of doing the same script, the same scenario every time is like, how can I flip that in and add a grace grenade instead of all the other things that we could do to hurt

Kimberly 16:37

the marriage? It doesn't actually do anything on its own.

Danny Ray 17:25

into your daily conversations, breakfast, hanging out with each other at night, making a phone call, whatever the points of connection are, if you imagine that you have this grace grenade in your hand, like ready, no matter what she does, no matter what he does, I have the power to bring grace into this situation, that's going to be a game changer. So if they say something that offends, hurts, disappoints, takes the wind out of your sail. Is that the right expression? Yeah, you got it. Wow.

Music 18:00

I know.

Danny Ray 18:02

All right. Impressive. Is you're holding that grace grenade to go, you know what? I could give grace no matter what happens. I'm ready with this. And I think that becomes the game changer in not just holding that, but like ready to pull the pin if there's something that hurts you for whatever reason.

Kimberly 18:23

Yeah. I like that kind of visual for those of us who are visual and can do this but picturing the those two grenades and I'm not going to react with anger right if I'm going to I might feel hurt but it's a choice if I'm going to react out of anger and we'll talk about that in another another podcast about how anger we can break that cycle specifically but one pin or one grenade is basically labeled anger and and I could definitely throw that or I can stand there and pull the pin on grace and try the approach differently. Yeah,

Danny Ray 19:06

grace only changes things if you choose to pull that pin and release it into your marriage, into that conversation, into that moment.

Kimberly 19:14

Yeah, dropping it into the argument, drop it into the cold silence, drop it into that moment when you feel distant and don't even want to reach out, right? All those things that, boy, that would changed so many conversations for people. So, um, the, the climate, the atmosphere of the, the marriage, if, if we can just drop those grace.

Danny Ray 19:36

So here's, here's my challenge.

Kimberly 19:41

Oh, he loves to give a challenge.

Danny Ray 19:42

Yes. Surprise your spouse with one unexpected act of grace. Like be thinking about opportunities every day. There's opportunities to get grace. Uh, Don't announce it. Just pull the pin, drop it, bring forgiveness, show affection, give a back rub, a foot rub. I know you love a foot rub, right? It's just going, you know what? It's been a long day or hey, you said this, but instead of responding in a hurtful way, I'd like to massage your feet. I'd like to show you love. I'd like to remind you that no matter what you do, you say, what you do. It's never going to separate us. We're going to stay on the same page. We're going to make it through this. I want to hear you and know you and love you for who you are and where you are right now. Love that.

Kimberly 20:39

It will change your marriage. So that is your weekly or that's your this week's challenge, right? For a grace grenade. And then tell us how it goes. We'd love to hear the stories. So yeah, let us know. Well,

Danny Ray 20:55

that is it this is um danny ray

Kimberly 20:58

and kimberly

Danny Ray 20:59

with we do

Kimberly 21:00

whatever it takes