S5:E3 Forgiveness On the FrontLines

In this episode of We Do Whatever It Takes, Danny and Kimberly  unpack what it means to practice forgiveness right in the middle of conflict.

Last week we explored how Grace Grenades can disarm fights before they explode. This week, we’re looking at what happens when the hurt runs deeper—and how forgiveness can break the cycle of anger. Using Colossians 3:13 and the Cycle of Anger model, Danny and Kimberly walk through practical ways to pause, disrupt negative thoughts, and choose grace instead of reaction.

You’ll hear real-life examples, a counseling perspective, and a challenge to build your own “anger pause” practice so you can turn moments of tension into moments of connection.

Grace begins when you choose to interrupt the cycle—not after you explode.

Transcript

Danny 0:21

Welcome back to We Do Whatever It Takes. This is a weekly marriage podcast packed with tips and tricks to help you increase connection in your relationship with your spouse.

Kimberly 0:35

We're here to help you break down the walls, laugh through the mess, and give you practical ways to make your marriage stronger every single week.

Danny 0:45

I'm Danny Ray. I'm a magician and a pastor.

Kimberly 0:48

I'm Kimberly, and I am a mom a wife uh non-hobbyist no i am an associate marriage and family therapist and you are tuning into season five episode three which we are calling forgiveness on the front lines we're still talking about grace yep still talking about grace and uh a reminder is that a grace grenade that we've been talking about right is an intentional act of love or forgiveness that blows up walls of resentment, diffuses conflict, and resets the atmosphere.

Danny 1:27

So last week, we were looking at this idea of grace grenades and how it diffuses battles, diffuses fights. And this week, when we get hurt, whether that's just with an unkind word or with something that's deeper that involves maybe action of how somebody might have hurt us, or maybe it's just being unseen, any number of ways we could be hurt in our marriage. We want to show you how do you break through the cycle of anger, which is often our first response as we get angry and frustrated. And that comes out in ways that don't glorify God, don't connect us deeper to each other, and don't involve grace. And we want to show how can we bring grace in those moments of frustration and anger.

Kimberly 2:23

Yeah. So essentially with the cycle of anger, it's kind of the how, how to, because listeners and including us, we want to know how do you do this grace grenade? And it really has to do with stopping the cycle of anger when you're starting to feel angry and knowing when you feel triggered. And so we'll go into that today, but we want to root this in scripture. So today's scripture is Colossians 3.13, which is, bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. Oh, like even as I read that again, I'm just like, it's so good. It is so good. And it's there for a reason, right?

Danny 3:12

Yeah. And forgiveness is this powerful thing that God has done for us, and we get to experience that forgiveness in our relationships as we learn to forgive. did one another. For me, so I became a believer at 17 years old and really started to follow Christ and read his word and really tried to like apply what is God saying. But as a child, I was very angry. Like I was dealing with anger all the time, anger at siblings, angry at myself, angry at parents, angry at friends at times, not as much at friends, but it did happen. But I I would definitely say it defined a lot of my early life.

Kimberly 3:54

That's so hard to picture, but I get it. I think I forget that, to be honest.

Danny 4:01

When I was 19, the day I was asking my lovely bride here to marry me, that was the last time that I would say I was fully enraged, just so frustrated with a family member. I was so excited about asking you that day to marry me, and And I was up, I tried to get to bed early, but ended up driving somebody around in the middle of the night, trying to find something, but ultimately I was being lied to and manipulated and super frustrating. And then I had to go, that's not a reflection of that person. That's a reflection of me. That person can't make me angry. That person can't make me do anything. I had to really go before God and go, I never ever ever want to get that angry again and God started to change my heart and to reveal like that's what's going on inside of me other people you know it's like you get cut off on the road and you could blame somebody for cutting you off but you look at the road rage and people that you know get out of their cars and beat the snot out of somebody or worse kill somebody that's not a reflection of oh that person got cut off if you live in LA it's a Daily occurrence, right? And so we have to figure out how do we deal with our own emotions and our own anger. So for me, that drew me to my knees going, God, this isn't the person I want to be. And literally by His grace, I think He has changed that in my heart. And it's been a lot of years of putting that into practice of not allowing myself to get angry at things that just Yeah, perspective

Kimberly 5:54

is a good thing to keep in mind, right? Yeah. If you told me that I would struggle with anger when I first became a mom, I never would have believed that. I wouldn't have either. It's choosing a different path mid-conflict.

Danny 6:24

How do you do that? Like mid-conflict? What do you call it? Your hippocampus, your hippothoma, your hippojoma?

Kimberly 6:32

You've blown your top is the basic information we need there. But to help us, we want to look at the cycle of anger, right? So we basically have four stages of that. And if If we can, I will put this on our podcast as a visual, but you could certainly just Google cycle of anger PDF and you would find it. So, but essentially we have a triggering event. So maybe your spouse forgets something or says something careless. Okay. Okay. And then do you

Danny 7:07

want me to give you something? I'll trigger you,

Kimberly 7:11

right? Wow. So willing and ready to do that. As much as I appreciate that. Let's just, let's just go with a generic. Can you

Danny 7:20

Give me a generic. What might a triggering event be for someone, not necessarily you?

Kimberly 7:28

So maybe the forgetting. I kind of like the forgetting something. So spouse forgets what?

Danny 7:37

Fill up the car with gas.

Kimberly 7:39

Okay. Okay. There we go. To fill up the car with gas. And what happens next to me is just fascinating. There's a negative thought that happens. There's a belief. So let's say you're the one that didn't fill up the car with gas and that, that that was your responsibility or you had said that you would do it. Right. So let's

Danny 8:00

go with gas. Okay.

Kimberly 8:02

And let's say you forgot. I have a negative thought. This is what happens to all of us. And the negative thought could be, he doesn't care. He just doesn't care about me. Doesn't care about my safety. Doesn't care about my time. He didn't fill it up. That equals he does. care about me. So when we can look at the negative thought and be aware of it, that is the ideal point in the anger cycle, in the cycle of anger to go, oh, is that true? Right? And test that. Where's the evidence of that? Is that true? My thought that he doesn't care about me? No, there's a ton of evidence in our marriage that he does care about me. So that's just a negative thought. And isn't helpful. So that's an opportunity for us to change it. But continuing in this cycle of anger, so let's say I didn't change that negative thought. I'm just believing, oh, he doesn't care about me. Next stage is my body goes into an automatic response. Maybe my heart's racing, my face goes flush, and fists clench, and I'm just angry, but my body is going, just having this auto response.

Danny 9:19

So, Something happens that triggers that event.

Kimberly 9:22

Yep.

Danny 9:23

You have all these negative thoughts.

Kimberly 9:26

Or even one negative thought.

Danny 9:29

Okay. And then that has a physical reaction. So it goes from a thought to the physical.

Kimberly 9:35

Yes. Yes. And that's kind of like where the anger is happening. So now it's in my body. And then that causes a reaction, a behavioral response. This is what I do. So maybe I snap or I argue or I shut down. These are all responses, behavioral responses that we do. But these are choices. So really, we can break the cycle anywhere within those things. So like the three steps that happen after the triggering event. So I can change my negative thoughts. Maybe I don't catch it there, though. Maybe I go, oh, I'm so, you know, he doesn't care about me. And then I feel it in my body and my heart's racing. And like I said, my face is flying. And fists are going, like, I'm clenching my fists and that kind of stuff. So I go, oh, but if I'm more aware of my body, then I could go, oh, this is like a flag waving. This is like a smoke detector going off and going, hmm, something's happening here, Kimberly, and you need to pay attention. And so that's another opportunity that if I'm paying attention to that, I can still choose to have a better behavioral response. I don't have to. And yeah, I

Danny 10:52

think this might be a good one for you to, if you're listening with your spouse, you're going to have a conversation with your spouse about this, is to figure out what's more like you to do the whole fight or flight. Or, you know, in this wording that you said, I think you said you snap.

Kimberly 11:11

Yeah, argue or shut down. Yeah,

Danny 11:13

yeah. Right, is, is I know my tendency is just to shut down and just, I'm not saying I'm going to shut down. saying anything and just kind of stew on that and be frustrated. But when we're able to identify what is the behavioral response, if we could back it up and go, wait, my body's responding. Wait, I had this thought. Wait, they said something. How do I reframe this triggering moment to not go into the negative thoughts, the body response, the behavioral response?

Kimberly 11:49

Exactly. Exactly. You got it. So we're talking about pausing, like just making that intentional, taking that intentional moment really to pause and kind of checking in with yourself going, what am I believing in this scenario? What am I telling myself? And trying to catch it early so that we can pull the pin on the grace grenade

Danny 12:20

Right. That I don't have to attack you. this in one of the chapters it says your marriage is more about grace than being right or wrong if you're going to create magic together you need to have a grace filled life together grace is undeserved grace is unshuffle unshuffling the chaos grace is contagious grace is the glue that holds marriages together grace is an ocean of yes that chooses to never give up grace is an uncontrolled Amen. Amen. giving that grace in the context of our marriage.

Kimberly 13:53

Yeah. I actually have a story of a time where you definitely dropped a grace grenade.

Danny 13:59

Oh, wow.

Kimberly 14:00

Okay. I like it.

Danny 14:01

I didn't know this was coming. Yeah, there's a positive one for you.

Kimberly 14:06

Points in my favor. And really, this is so memorable. It was early on in the first year or two of marriage. Okay. And it was... Was that

Danny 14:15

the last time for the record? Or was that

Kimberly 14:17

the last time? No, no. You have definitely shown grace. through the years for sure this was just so significant because it was the first time that you were breaking our normal pattern and our normal like oh you were late i'm mad and you don't care about me and just this whole kind of cycle that we were in and you you broke it by throwing a grace grenade and so i was running late for some reason this may have actually been pre cell phones. I'm not sure, but I, yeah, if we had them, it was very limited. The

Danny 14:57

like hundred minute plan where you would talk for 59 seconds. Cause if you went to a minute, it charged you for two. Yeah.

Kimberly 15:05

Back in those days.

Danny 15:06

And

Kimberly 15:06

we had nothing. Yeah. Very little money and, and all of that at that time for sure. So I'm not totally remembering that the circumstances, but for some reason I was running late and to come home to you and knew i would be um in trouble's not the right word but that's how it feels to me when i've done something wrong uh and i and i had like i i was legitimately late to coming home now i don't remember in all honesty whether that was something that you i know that now how much that bothers you i don't know if i knew that yet okay then um but i knew you'd be bothered by it like that was

Danny 15:49

You had

Kimberly 15:52

to be really late. I don't know. You're late, but I've already forgiven you. I've already worked through the process. I've already talked to God and you're already forgiven. I had no idea what to do with that, right? Like I had to put away my guns, my metaphoric guns, just to be clear, had to put like take off my armor and like there's nothing to defend against that. There was nothing that I could say or needed to say. I apologize. And and but you'd also kind of already forgiven it and and you were ready to move past it. It was a yeah, a life changing marriage changing moment for for us for sure,

Danny 17:03

which is what happens with with marriages is when we choose to forgive ahead of time. We don't need the other person to say sorry. We don't need the other person to, you know, go through all of the whatever steps at times we can. just choose to say, I forgive you because this is what God has done for me, right? Is that He's forgiven us much. Way before we ever asked, it says, why we are still sinners, Christ forgave us. Not when we got our act together, not when we figured it out, not when we came to Him and said, hey, I blew it. Way before that, He forgave us, so we learned to forgive each other in similar ways. And that's the ultimate, you know, when you look at God's love toward us, it's the ultimate example of of the grace grenade um that changed the world

Kimberly 17:53

amen what do i say after that so here's the truth anger follows a predictable path unless somebody chooses differently right so this week and we'll give you the challenge in a minute because you know danny loves a challenge um but we want to work on pausing when you're finding yourself in this cycle of anger

Danny 18:18

yeah

Kimberly 18:19

change Changing the thought and giving yourself permission to throw that grace grenade. And when you do that, forgiveness isn't one-sided. It becomes the culture of your marriage. You're changing the entire atmosphere of it.

Danny 18:34

Love that. Okay, so here's the weekly challenge, the grace grenade challenge, if you will. Here we go. I'm going to keep it as simple as possible. I want you to notice a trigger. That's it. You know, you could stop. You can name it if you need to. But if you notice it, that'll give you the possibility to reframe that moment. Look at what is really going on inside of you. Stop blaming your spouse and go, you know what? I notice I'm being triggered. I want to give my best to my wife or to my spouse. And I'm going to do that by choosing to give grace over the anger right in this moment. So So my challenge is to notice a trigger.

Kimberly 19:22

Yeah, love that. And practice it and tell us how it felt. Pausing might just be the most powerful button in your marriage to hit pause and notice that trigger.

Danny 19:34

So this is Danny Ray and Kimberly with We Do Whatever It Takes.