How God Used a Car Accident to Solidify Our Marriage
Dec 22, 2023Episode 52
Doug & Leslie Davis
Feeling like your marriage could use a divine intervention? You're not alone. My wife, Leslie and I, Doug, will take you on a journey of faith, revealing how God working in our lives not only transformed us as individuals, but also solidified our marriage. Leslie bravely shares her struggles with self-worth, a battle intensified by her family background, while I chime in on how my faith played a pivotal role in helping her see her true worth. It's a real, raw testament to God's love and the fortitude of a marriage rooted in faith.
We're not just sharing our story, but also giving you a fresh perspective on the power of transformation through God in a marriage. Reflecting on our experiences, we emphasize the significance of understanding personal values and their influence on our actions. We delve into the critical aspect of self-worth, and how it should be anchored in God’s unconditional love rather than external factors. We invite you to surrender to God's will and watch as His transformation blesses your spouse and marriage. As we share this special Christmas testimony, remember the blessings of a God-centered marriage and let our journey inspire yours.
CLICK HERE to receive The Vision-Driven Marriage Christmas special podcast series right in your inbox.
Feeling like your marriage could use a divine intervention? You're not alone. My wife, Leslie and I, Doug, will take you on a journey of faith, revealing how God working in our lives not only transformed us as individuals, but also solidified our marriage. Leslie bravely shares her struggles with self-worth, a battle intensified by her family background, while I chime in on how my faith played a pivotal role in helping her see her true worth. It's a real, raw testament to God's love and the fortitude of a marriage rooted in faith.
We're not just sharing our story, but also giving you a fresh perspective on the power of transformation through God in a marriage. Reflecting on our experiences, we emphasize the significance of understanding personal values and their influence on our actions. We delve into the critical aspect of self-worth, and how it should be anchored in God’s unconditional love rather than external factors. We invite you to surrender to God's will and watch as His transformation blesses your spouse and marriage. As we share this special Christmas testimony, remember the blessings of a God-centered marriage and let our journey inspire yours.
CLICK HERE to receive The Vision-Driven Marriage Christmas special podcast series right in your inbox.
Welcome to the Vision Driven Marriage Podcast. If you're struggling in your marriage, or maybe you're wondering if it's even salvageable, before you give up or before you let things get too hard, let us come alongside you and help you solidify your marriage. We offer biblical encouragement and insight to help you strengthen your marriage.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to a special Christmas testimony on the Vision Driven Marriage Podcast. Tis the season of joy and love and togetherness, and what a better way to celebrate the spirit of Christmas than by sharing heartwarming stories that resonate with the magic of the season. We're thrilled to bring you a special episode of the Vision Driven Marriage Podcast, where love and commitment take center stage. In this episode, doug and I share one of our transformational stories. God is always at work around us and in us, and Christmas isn't just a time for exchanging gifts and singing carols. It's also a moment to reflect on the power of shared dreams and strength that comes from navigating life's journey hand in hand. This recording is the seventh installment of a special Christmas series where Doug and I, and six other couples, share heartwarming and extraordinary stories of God working in and through our marriages. Stay tuned to find out more about how to get the seven podcasts delivered right to your inbox. Thanks, doug.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the final installment of our special Christmas episode of the Vision Driven Marriage Podcast. We're Doug and Leslie Davis and today I want to introduce you to the couple who are going to be giving their testimony. It's us.
Speaker 2:
It's us, it's us and we don't have an interviewer, so we kind of get to interview ourselves.
Speaker 1:
I'll interview you. Okay, what has God done to transform or restore your marriage?
Speaker 2:
Well, let me tell you, growing up I felt disconnected from, disconnected in my family of origin, and it was very critical at times. And so I grew up with a lot of baggage. That baggage kind of makes it hard to understand the fullness of the love of Christ. And I didn't start understanding the fullness of that love until after we started dating and we got married. You were following Jesus quite well as a matter of fact for such a young man at the time, and that allowed me to feel valued and loved in a way that I don't think I have well, I don't think, I know I had never experienced before. And as we grew closer, I shifted the contribution of that feeling of worth and love from you to you following Jesus.
Speaker 1:
Right. And that made all the difference, because one of the things we've noticed is if you ever are trying to gain your self-worth through your spouse, you're looking to the wrong place. You'll find yourself worth in Christ, but when you, as a spouse, are following Christ, your spouse can see some self-worth through Christ's love in you and through you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. One of the story, part of the story, that really culminated that feeling of not being worthy was the night that I wrecked my car. I was 16 and I was coming home from work. This is going to date me. This is really going to age me. I worked at a music store, at the mall, because at the time, that was the only place you could buy music. That really, that really dates me, doesn't? There's another part of the story that really dates me you were alive when they had malls.
Speaker 2:
Oh, yes, yes, but I was coming home from work. It was about 9 30 at night, it was raining or misting and when I turned the corner out of the drive of the mall onto a four lane highway, I underestimated the amount of curve that I needed in the turn and I ran my car over the curb. And when I did, it sheared a hole in my car, it messed up the underside of it and it blew out the strut and it stopped. They had a little dots in 310 GX, a cutest little blue car. Ever. Look it up, google it, there's a nice little go card.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there's still pictures on the internet, but you don't actually see them on the road anymore, but anyway. So what does a 16 year old girl do when she wrecks her car and it's raining and dark and at night, I cry. So after I had a good cry about it, I walked over to the gas station and called my mom and dad and my dad came and drove me home. Probably should have ridden with my mom, but I rode with my dad and he literally chewed me out all the way home, which wasn't a problem. I did deserve probably the majority of that chewing out because, looking back on it, what happened in his mind is he felt like the provision that he had given me by providing me a car, because they had given me the car and it hadn't been honored because I didn't take care of it.
Speaker 2:
Today's episode is brought to you by our new podcast series, a Week of Stories to Fortify your Faith. This series brings you intimate and inspiring stories from people who've witnessed God's power and grace in their lives here, from Anna McLaughlin, angie and Matt Bauman and others who have guested on the Vision Driven Marriage podcast and get introduced to David and Tracy Sellers. Each episode is a testament to the transformative power of faith, offering a glimpse into the lives of our guests and how God used their relationship with their spouse to shape and inspire them. Join us for a week of stories that will strengthen your belief and inspire your faith journey. Click on the link in the show notes and get this exclusive podcast series only in your inbox.
Speaker 2:
But the part that really hurt and, like you know, still hurts today yet, even and this has been many years ago is the fact that he never asked me if I was okay, and so, you know, I internalized that, that that car was more important to him than I was and it made me feel very unloved and very unworthy and not worth anything to him, to you know, to you know, to the one person in my life that was, you know, the father figure who's my dad.
Speaker 2:
And so it really hurt and I brought that baggage into our marriage. I don't know if you saw any evidence of all of that coming in, but what I do, what I do remember feeling and I still feel this is that in our marriage you are my solid rock, you know, and that I feel very valued in that I can take anything or bring anything to you, any problem or whatever, and I know that you are gonna have my best interest at heart and that you are going to make decisions based on what's best not for you, but for us, you know. And so so, yeah, I have seen Christ In through him in our marriage and it really healed that hurt that was. You know, that was hurt so bad that night.
Speaker 1:
Well and unbeknownst to me, while I hadn't met my wife yet unbeknownst to you, I carried a lot of baggage into this relationship.
Speaker 1:
I hadn't hadn't met Leslie yet, and I think I've shared in previous episodes that God has wired me to be a fixer. He's wired me to be a problem-solver. Even as a as a child because I'm the oldest child I was the one who took care of things. I made sure everything was okay, I fixed things that weren't right, and so because of that it was really easy for me to care about what needed to be done. It was really important for me to know that things were done really well.
Speaker 1:
Where I struggled was understanding why Some of the things that I did mattered the value and I knew the answer to that question. I understood that Somewhere within myself I would get so caught up in doing the work that needed to be done that I wouldn't Consciously think about why something mattered. When I was doing something that would help my younger siblings, it was because they mattered and they were of value. That's why I did it. But over time it had gotten to the place where the task had become what drove me, because, even though it was at a subconscious level, it was absolutely true that there was a value that was driving me. I was so task-oriented that sometimes I didn't consciously take the time to acknowledge that One of the things that God started to do in my life and again, this is before I had any idea about the things that Leslie had gone through when she was younger Was he started to show me that the work that he did for me on the cross wasn't the end all. It was why, you know, romans 5 8 started to become an important verse early on in my life, because God showed me that while I was still a sinner, christ died for me and that that was a demonstration of his love. And when I realized that God did the most incredible thing ever but why he did it was because I had value to him Started to make me remember to do the things that matter, and so it played out in different ways in my life.
Speaker 1:
I wouldn't get anxious about the things that didn't matter, so if something didn't quite work perfectly, oh well, no big deal. But I started to make sure that I was a little more aware. Even though I struggled for years to be able to say it out loud, I became a little more aware of why I did what I did. It was because the things that the were of value Mattered to me. So my education mattered, so I made sure that I did that with some excellence. You know, my family mattered, and so here I am as a college student. On spring break I came home, and then when I met Leslie, she mattered on spring break, when you came, when I came home but?
Speaker 1:
but she mattered, and so, even though I wasn't good early on at expressing what God had taught me, I was more aware of why I did what mattered, and let me show you how it played out in little subtle ways. One of the first ways prior to meeting my wife, I drove Really really fast. What's the? What's the statute of limitation on speeding? But I would drive fast all the time and I can't drive. I couldn't drive a hundred.
Speaker 2:
I like to go really fast.
Speaker 1:
And and because of that, you know, I had the unfortunate Stereotypical boys are gonna play with those things with engines and make them go way too fast. All the time Didn't matter if it was a motorcycle, if it was a car, I was gonna go really fast. And then I met her, and when I met her, something amazing happened. I started driving the speed limit Again, not because anything had changed, except she was riding with me and I valued her more than I valued me. And so it started to play out where I would demonstrate those things, even though I couldn't really say why. Now I saw the same thing happen then later, when my, when my daughter was born. For the first time in my life, and every single time I've been in a car since, I buckled up and wore a seatbelt where I'd never worn a seatbelt before that.
Speaker 1:
But again God started to show me that why you do things has to do with what you value, and so the transformation in my life was he started to let me know what you do matters, but what matters more is why you're doing it. What do you value? Focus on doing things that matter. And at the same time, he was showing Leslie that, you know, the her self-worth wasn't going to be based in what somebody else was showing to her, but in what God was showing her. But because of what God was doing to transform some things in my life, she got to see a little bit of his love that she might not have otherwise seen.
Speaker 2:
And it's not right, not just seen but not understood. You know, because I wasn't coming out of a background, that that unconditional love played out at you know, that just didn't play out in my household and so, seeing that with you, I was able to say, oh, you know. And hearing about it in the Bible, I was able to experience what that looked like, that unconditional love.
Speaker 1:
And I hadn't heard the story that was shared with you about the wrecked Datsun until, oh, probably a year into our marriage. We'd shared a lot of other things but that hadn't come up, and just prior to that we did have a small little incident. It wasn't a big, big, big deal, but it was something that could have ended up in a wreck and I'm very thankful it didn't. And the only thing that I cared about was are you okay? I had no idea that that was going to be something that was going to be so important to her, but God did.
Speaker 2:
But when he said those words it was like a balm to my heart, you know, just because it healed, it really solidified the fact that I was valuable to him and it didn't matter that we, you know, just about lost some of our stuff, you know.
Speaker 1:
So, even though you might not understand why God's doing some of the things that he's doing inside of you to transform you, as he makes you more and more and more into the image of his son, you can know with certainty that, as you surrender to God's will and let that transformative power of God take root in you, he's going to allow that to be something that will be a blessing to your spouse, and so we just want to encourage you as God transforms you, surrender to his will and allow that transformation to bless your spouse the way God intends for it to. We are so grateful to be able to share this Christmas testimony with you and to be able to share this time with you. Thank you for joining us here on the Vision Driven Marriage podcast and spending this time with us. We continue to pray that God will solidify your marriage.