When Anna McLaughlin humorously tossed her suitcase in frustration, little did she know it would unpack a journey of introspection and faith within her marriage. And when Rick and Nancy Kay Grace realized that they didn't want their marriage to be like that of their parents, they knew that they needed to invite Jesus to be at the head of their marriage. In this special episode of The Vision-Driven Marriage, we celebrate the month of Love with testimonies to God's redemptive love and restoration that only He can provide in marriage.
This episode is a heartfelt testament to the transformative power of seeing marriage through a divine lens. Our guests peel back the layers of their relationships, sharing the raw and enlightening moments where spirituality and personal growth converge in their sacred unions. Expect to discover how self-reflection and honoring one another can lead to a robust, vision-driven marriage as our stories weave through the trials and triumphs of letting faith guide the marital course.
Rick & Nancy Kay illuminates the episode with a revelation of how treating a spouse with the dignity they deserve can revolutionize a partnership. Rick and Nancy reveal the game-changing impact of recognizing one's wife as a daughter of the King, a narrative that reshaped their approach to marriage and invites listeners to reconsider their own. It's not just about love; it's about honor, respect, and the willingness to invite Jesus to preside over the relationship. Whether you're navigating early marital struggles or seeking to deepen an already strong bond, prepare to be inspired by the authentic experiences and divine wisdom that can turn the ordinary into something truly extraordinary.
INTRO/OUTRO MUSIC CREDITS Theme music: Dead Winter ASLC-1BEF9A9E-9E9D609662 Artists: White Bones Composers: White Bones Audio source: Epidemic Sound
When Anna McLaughlin humorously tossed her suitcase in frustration, little did she know it would unpack a journey of introspection and faith within her marriage. And when Rick and Nancy Kay Grace realized that they didn't want their marriage to be like that of their parents, they knew that they needed to invite Jesus to be at the head of their marriage. In this special episode of The Vision-Driven Marriage, we celebrate the month of Love with testimonies to God's redemptive love and restoration that only He can provide in marriage.
This episode is a heartfelt testament to the transformative power of seeing marriage through a divine lens. Our guests peel back the layers of their relationships, sharing the raw and enlightening moments where spirituality and personal growth converge in their sacred unions. Expect to discover how self-reflection and honoring one another can lead to a robust, vision-driven marriage as our stories weave through the trials and triumphs of letting faith guide the marital course.
Rick & Nancy Kay illuminates the episode with a revelation of how treating a spouse with the dignity they deserve can revolutionize a partnership. Rick and Nancy reveal the game-changing impact of recognizing one's wife as a daughter of the King, a narrative that reshaped their approach to marriage and invites listeners to reconsider their own. It's not just about love; it's about honor, respect, and the willingness to invite Jesus to preside over the relationship. Whether you're navigating early marital struggles or seeking to deepen an already strong bond, prepare to be inspired by the authentic experiences and divine wisdom that can turn the ordinary into something truly extraordinary.
INTRO/OUTRO MUSIC CREDITS Theme music: Dead Winter ASLC-1BEF9A9E-9E9D609662 Artists: White Bones Composers: White Bones Audio source: Epidemic Sound
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 episode of the Vision Driven Marriage Podcast, where love, faith and restoration converge in the beautiful narratives of the couples whose journeys exemplify the transformative power of God within marriage. As we celebrate the month of February and the approach of Valentine's Day, we delve into the profound testimonies of the couples who will join us for the next three episodes. Joining us today is Anna McLaughlin and Rick and Nancy K Grace, who graciously shared their experiences of God's miraculous restoration within their marriages. In a world often fraught with challenges and uncertainties, the institution of marriage can face its own trials. Yet amidst the storms, there exists a beacon of hope, a testament to the enduring power of love guided by divine purpose. Through the heartfelt stories of Anna McLaughlin and Rick and Nancy K Grace, we witness how God's grace and intervention not only mend brokenness but also elevate relationships to new heights of fulfillment and purpose. Join us as we embark on a journey of love, redemption and renewal.
Speaker 2:
Through candid conversations and shared experiences, anna, and then Rick and Nancy K, offer glimpses into the complexities of marriages and the unwavering faith that sustains them through every trial. Their stories serve as beacons of hope for couples navigating their own paths, inspiring them to seek God's guidance in the pursuit of a vision-driven marriage. So grab a cup of tea, settle in and allow the transformative narratives of Anna McLaughlin and Rick and Nancy K Grace to illuminate your hearts and minds. Welcome to the Vision-Driven Marriage Podcast, a celebration of love, restoration and the boundless grace of God. Welcome, anna, I am so glad that you are able to be with us today.
Speaker 3:
Oh, it's so great to be here. Thank you both so much for having me.
Speaker 2:
I wanted to ask how has God provided transformation or restoration in or through your marriage?
Speaker 3:
I love this question.
Speaker 3:
So my husband, Brian, and I have been married for 13 years and, just to paint the picture, when we got together I was pretty sure that I had it all together spiritually and I was just going to kill it, Like I was going to rock this marriage thing and it was going to be amazing. And I was pretty sure he had a lot more to learn than I did, because he didn't go to Bible studies all the time and he didn't quote scripture and when we were deep in discussion he would say things like well, I figured I should just trust God and that was all there was to it, where I had like an hour's worth of things to say. So I was very confident that this was going to go beautifully. And then, about a week after we got back from our honeymoon, I found myself launching a suitcase across a room because I was so mad that we weren't unpacked yet and we in the house wasn't tidy and I was sure it was all his fault. And I remember thinking, as I was launching that suitcase this is not good.
Speaker 1:
You're not the only one who's launched a suitcase.
Speaker 3:
It probably could be a marital sport, that's right, that's right, that's what I've come to learn. But at the time I was like, oh no, like what is in me. And you know, I think that's one of the things that was so eye opening to me is just realizing it was much easier to to look faithful and loving and calm and quiet when most of my time was spent by myself tucked up in my prayer chair or with some friends that I could kind of come and go in life with. But there was a lot to. You know, marriage, I heard. I heard once marriage is more like like open heart surgery, right, than it is like this kind of constant date night that we think it's supposed to be. And I remember telling my girlfriends I was like somehow I thought I'd just put on that white dress and just never take it off, like it would always be that moment, right. And then life gets really real when you share, you know, share every waking moment and you share a bed and you share every hard and difficult and embarrassing detail of your life with another person. So that was our beginning.
Speaker 3:
And I had been raised in a home. My parents were divorced through my during my childhood and then I had I had some mental health issues that I didn't really realize were mental health issues at the time. And so my husband became this very gracious mirror to just say, like it started, even when we were dating and engaged, he would say things like, oh, I feel sad because, like that relationship that you're in, I don't feel like they're very nice to you. And I was like, well, what do you mean? You know, you just, you just stick it out and you just like, let people treat you unkindly because it's your fault. And you know, he was just this, very, for all my pride, thinking that I was so righteous. Right, I thought I was so righteous because I had, when we got together, I was a corporate lawyer, so I was quick on my feet and I was well educated. But the things that mattered most, my husband really already had those, you know, just the sense of faith, the stability, and I did not.
Speaker 3:
And so I think one of the biggest things that I needed to learn to truly allow transformation in our marriage was I kept trying to make my husband over in my own image. Right, I was like here's how you should approach the Bible and here's what your prayer time should look like and here's what you know, here's how you should be leading us, which I think is now I'm like I can't believe. How do I know right, how do I know it's not my job? But I so desperately wanted and I think this is a big temptation for women we, when we're dating, we love the I loved the masculinity of my husband and then then, once we got married, I really wanted a girlfriend. You know, talk to me and hear me and nurture me and and understand me and let's just pow wow for hours. It's like that's not how he was created, and so the otherness of him is what drew me to him to begin with, but that's not what I wanted. Once we got together, because it challenged me and it made me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:
And the Lord used the way he was to bring out the best in you, right? Is that what I hear you say?
Speaker 3:
Yes, that's exactly right, like when I allowed myself to say like okay, I want you to be like me, but in my flesh. But what the Lord's really inviting me to do is to celebrate how my husband has been made to look like him already. Yeah, he's been made in God's image, not in mine. And so when I released that control and said, let me seek to understand you instead of constantly fighting to be understood, that's when, all of a sudden, he really was able to be most fully himself, which is exactly what I needed to heal from my fears and my relational wounds. So we're 13 years in where you know we've reached a point of I know, I know, like and appreciate him most of the time, most of the time.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 2:
Yep. And love how you describe your marriage and as a healing place. Like the Lord used your marriage as a place of healing for your childhood hurts and your upbringing, and I think that's what God intended a marriage to look like that it can be a healing, redemptive place when both spouses are following the leading of the Lord Right.
Speaker 3:
That's right, that's exactly right and that's really, I think, for both of us. That's what we found in you know, just in each other, this place of safety and this place of you know, being complimentary towards one another, of just I'm better because of you and it just it started with being able to see him and appreciate him for who he actually was, rather than constantly wanting him to be otherwise.
Speaker 2:
Yes, very powerful. Annie, your testimony is very, very powerful and I so appreciate the willingness to share and I know that it's going to bless many, many listeners.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for all of our listeners that can identify with what Anna shared, know that that same hope that she has just communicated with you is available for you when you seek the Lord as well. He's got a plan for you. He's got a plan for your marriage, and it may not look exactly the way that it looked in the same steps that it looked in Anna's marriage, but the same God, with the same hope, will provide those things for your marriage as well. Thank you so much for sharing, anna.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful.
Speaker 2:
And joining us now are Rick and Nancy Kaye Grace. Today we're talking to Nancy Kaye and Rick Grace and they're going to give us a testimony of how the Lord has worked transformational or restorational in their marriage. Welcome, Nancy Kaye and Rick.
Speaker 5:
Thank you.
Speaker 4:
We're glad to be here and we're glad to talk about this, because we are excited to see, and that we've experienced the transformation of God's love in our marriage. When we got married we thought, well, we're both Christian, it should be easy, right Wrong. And so we had a journey to just begin to unpack that and see what all is involved in really inviting God into our relationship and letting him be the transforming person, the transforming power, as God works in each of our individual lives, but he also works in our marriage.
Speaker 5:
You know, honestly, when we got married, we didn't have a clue what to expect.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we didn't either.
Speaker 1:
I think it's a very, very popular club. We were all in.
Speaker 5:
We really didn't have what we would consider a healthy model of marriages that we could even imitate.
Speaker 4:
From our families of origin.
Speaker 5:
The one thing we did know is that we didn't want our marriage to look like either of our parents marriages for a variety of reasons, and I think the where God began to transform at least me, if not us in the early stages of our marriage is we learn quickly. Nothing reveals your self centered and selfishness the way marriage does.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, yeah where we came in with expectations but we had never articulated them to each other. So we had set each other up to fail Because we never did articulate the expectations. But it became very, Very clear pretty early after all, the rose colored glasses of the honeymoon wore off that I was. I was pretty selfish and I wanted things my way, when I wanted it, how I wanted it, so, and I want things my way.
Speaker 4:
I mean, don't interrupt me when I have to do something as mundane as making supper Come on. Yeah, I think we've experienced things like that too, I don't want to be interrupted, but oh, it is supper time, so something has to be done. Yeah, no expectations.
Speaker 5:
No, I remember coming home from from my church office. Early in our marriage, expecting, you know, maybe, like supper, to be ready or being prepared, and Nancy was happily sitting at her piano just worshiping the Lord. And when I suggested something about supper, well, I could either make it or we could go out and get it.
Speaker 2:
That's how I make supper to reservation I got that recipe.
Speaker 5:
Do you, yeah, and that that very quickly was interpreted by me as insensitivity to the demands of men oh yes, oh yes, I was so insensitive, but it was again, that was the interpretive thing.
Speaker 5:
But if there was one, if there was one verse that God began to use to transform our understanding of marriage, it was Romans 12, 10. And the first part of the verse is be devoted to one another and brotherly kindness. Okay, I get that, but the second half of the verse is to outdo one another in the giving of honor. So the transformative? I don't know that I could point to a specific Day or event where God began his transformational work. It was much more in the understanding that if we structure our marriage so that the only thing we compete with against each other Is to see who can honor the other more, which means laying down your Isaac, whatever, whatever expectation or promise that you thought you had. It meant laying it down and becoming a servant, a servant to your spouse, out, doing, out, doing her in the giving of honor. No, that was not that was not.
Speaker 4:
That was not a quick transformation.
Speaker 5:
That was very much of a learning, especially, I think more you know definitely learned for me.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, it was for me too. We had heard the teaching and then really it came from Gary Smalley. We heard him live, you know, speaking this in one of his conferences, and it really impressed on us that we need to honor one another. That means we're going to speak kindly to one another when we're present with each other and one were not so that we're not putting each other down and it's it's something that we can then cherish, that we do cherish each other and still, even today, after 48 years, that we can still manage, you know, still manage to cherish each other. It's hard to believe. No, you can.
Speaker 4:
But I would say, just grasping that principle of honor from the Bible and seeing that we see that we can apply it into the community, the church community, the faith community, to honor one another. But what about putting it in our homes and putting it in our marriages and honoring one another as God wants us to, and then that kind of makes it easier to work together towards something instead of having the little grumblings in your heads about it. I know we're not the only ones that might have brumblings in our head from time to time, but but it is like what is? How can I return to that concept of honor, that that God would have us do in our relationship.
Speaker 5:
And again we have learned that honor is a choice. Okay, it is not, it doesn't come naturally. It is again, it's a choice of laying down my agenda, my Isaac, or whatever metaphor you want to put on it. The, the Greek word honors. The word teammate means to value highly, to cherish deeply, to esteem greatly. So it's a very, it's a very powerful word and I think, once we began to to understand some of the ramifications of what it meant to honor each other, that that was a transformational concept in our marriage and some of the selfishness started to be put down, and now we can laugh at things that frustrated the ever loved we have to have a good sense of humor.
Speaker 2:
Yes, but I love how you explained that applying that biblical concept of honoring each other and being humble in the marriage but but outdoing each other and giving each other honor, has done such a transformative work in your marriage, basically putting a protection around it that keeps outside stuff from getting in, you know, and even outside stuff as little as as you know, the frustration of not having supper started when you get home, and so I you know that happens to Doug a lot.
Speaker 1:
Bless you my child and the amazingly wonderful part, the encouragement in everything that God has done in this, continuing to do, showing you in Romans 12, 10 about honor, as that follow up to Romans 12 to where he says don't be like the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And he renewed your mind, changing the way you thought so that you were able to outdo one another, giving honor. That's such a beautiful thing that God not only has done for you, but I know that God will do for others when they seek him and his word to transform their minds as well. Amen.
Speaker 5:
And there was another one of those kind of two by four moments that were God used to reinforce that we were. We were listening to a teaching by Gary Thomas, and I think this was an. It was in one of his video series is, but I can't I can't remember which one. This was the image he used that, speaking directly to the men, said men, if your wife is a believer, then she is a child of God, she is a child of the King. That makes God your father in law, and are you treating your wife the way she should be treated? If you would treat her that way in the presence of her earthly, of your earthly father in law, would you do that in the presence of your heavenly father in law? And I had never, I had never thought through that concept before that if my bride is a daughter of the King, then God's my father in law and I need to treat this child of the King as if the King is watching, because he is.
Speaker 2:
I love how you called it the two by four.
Speaker 4:
One of the two.
Speaker 5:
I don't know if you've ever, if you've ever, noticed this, leslie, but sometimes men can be a little dense.
Speaker 2:
No comment.
Speaker 5:
Sometimes the principal doesn't always hit the first time reminder, but the really the key, the key aspect that started, I think, our marriage from being an ordinary marriage to being much more of an extraordinary marriage was not only the night that we know by our bed and invited Jesus to be Lord of our marriage, but when we understood that concept of honor.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, oh, how powerful. What a very powerful testimony. Rick and Nancy, I'm so thankful that you joined us to share your testimony with our listeners. I absolutely know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they're going to be blessed.