Episode 349 - Dr. Dan Allender, "The Deep-Rooted Marriage"

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today’s honest and insightful conversation, Michael sits down with Dr. Dan Allender—a renowned therapist, author, and longtime mentor—to discuss Dan’s latest book, The Deep-Rooted Marriage, co-authored with Dr. Steve Call and enriched by the wisdom and vulnerability of their wives, Becky Allender and Lisa Call.

This episode isn’t just a discussion about techniques for a better marriage—it’s a candid exploration of the real, raw journey through conflict, trauma, shame, and, ultimately, transformation inside marriage. Dan and Michael reflect on how our histories, wounds, and unmet needs shape our relationships; why true change can’t happen without naming the truth; and how attunement, humility, and honest confession become the very soil in which a marriage can deeply root and flourish.

You’ll hear moving stories from Dan’s own marriage, laughter about old cars and TV shows, and wisdom about the tension between safety and danger in vulnerability. It’s a heartfelt look at how marriages are shaped not only by their joys but also by their hardest moments—and why learning to bless, be curious, and face the deep roots beneath our conflicts is the path to lasting intimacy and hope.

Transcript

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Doctor Dan Allender, welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. Michael, it is an absolute pleasure to be with you. I would prefer joining you in your lovely home in Colorado, but we'll just, we'll embrace the reality of zoom, the distance. Well, and I wish I was up in your neck of the woods because my son lives on San Juan island. So I did not know that. Well, then even more reason that you would come join and have, shall we say, a lovely drink with me. Yes. We'll be there in July and we're going to ride the ferry over. As you well know, that's the only way to get there. So. Yeah. So you have just released a new book with your co author, Dr. Steve Call, and Steve's wife Lisa was involved and your Bride, Becky, of 46 years going on 47 now. Right. Actually, this has been an issue of debate because we kept saying for three years now they've been married 48. But now I can officially say we've been married 48 years, but we're not good at math, but we're stumbling toward 50. Well, if you were good at math, you'd be a trauma surgeon or an astrophysicist, not a therapist. That's really true. Yeah, I always say that. I think I'd be one of those emergency room trauma surgeons or something like that. Just somewhere where I can keep getting shots of adrenaline. Oh, again, I know I want to talk about the book, but I would say if you've not seen the Pit, which is about an ER room, it is one of the best shows I've seen to give a sense not only of what those warriors do, but frankly, it's a good picture of the work that you and I do and others who are engaging the human heart as well. Yeah, there's so many. You know, I used to, when I was a student of yours back 92 through 97, I used to work in the emergency rooms for mental health nearby, and I would do all the assessments. And I've often thought about, especially with the intensive counseling we do, the analogy of triage and then, you know, deep care in the emergency room and then kind of getting you to the next step. But why don't we not talk about the book? Let's just talk about movies and pop culture the whole time. Look, it is fun to be with you. I'll go wherever you wish. Yeah, well, back in the Mars Hill days, we'll just talk about movies and music and things like that. Well, here's where I want to start. The book is called the Deeply Rooted marriage. And here's the interesting thing. You've written many other books on marriage. You were my marriage and family therapy professor 34 years ago this summer. And my question is, what was inside of you that inspired you to write another book on marriage? Well, I think there's no topic that I find more compelling, particularly because my work, your work, has to do with trauma, has to do with addiction, has to do with some sense of the war against the human heart. And I don't think there's any relationship that shows more this interplay of heaven and hell. Like I would say, I've never had a taste of. Of heaven more than I have known in the context of my relationship with Becky. And I would say, and she would say, probably no taste of what we'll never taste, and that is hell. So marriage is a relationship of extremity that's really meant to reveal something about the nature of your heart and the heart of your spouse, but for the purpose of transformation. So I think that's part of the context. But I have so much fun, so much delight in thinking about my wife. So in one sense, like, if my option is to write about abuse and trauma or about my wife, then why not combine the two? Because I think in so many ways, what this book is attempting to do is to say, look, you bring the heartache and harm of what you have known as the reality of small T and capital T trauma into your marriage, and it's going to show itself in every form of conflict you have with your spouse. So if we can deal with the deep roots, well, so often the fruit on the tree will change because of the nature of the work you do below the surface. And one of the things that your whole career in ministry has really been about is helping people to see the deep roots and training counselors to kindly expose those deep roots. And I appreciate it in the book. All of your writing has had a fair amount of vulnerability. And over the decades, I've seen you go from talking about your own abuse in very vague terms. And I remember one point you saying, you know, I didn't really experience much, but here's this one thing. And then over the decades, God has revealed to you through community, in other ways, profound abuse right within your own family. And so you and Becky and Steve and Lisa and I, and I don't know them, so I kind of emphasize the stories that you shared and Becky shared. But there are some very, very vulnerable moments. No other way to say it than of ugliness and cruelty to one another. And I write vulnerably about my own story, but I read yours, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I'd write that. So thank you. A. Because there's an immediate sense of trust, as you do, that it wasn't exhibitionistic, but it was so honest. And then the very next paragraph is, I feel ashamed even as I write those words or remind myself of that story. And here's how that then launched me into growing and looking at the woundedness and the trauma that's there. So what was that like to go through that process of being so vulnerable? Well, let me just say, frankly, I want one day to be so mature that these particular struggles don't show up. But I'm reminded of that passage in 1 John 3, when you see him, then you will be as he is, so there will be a day. But until then, I've been very stuck on the reality that the labor of engaging brokenness in all human relationships, you've got to deal with what Jesus talks about as lust and anger and lust, as you have written and talked about, it's not just sexual, but it bears this kind of consumption, an eating, a devouring, an attempt to fill one's core emptiness. And then when it's not satisfied, I'm going to make somebody pay. Maybe me, but I'm going to make the people closest to me pay. So when Jesus talks about lust and anger as adultery and murder, it's kind of like, wait a minute, do you guys believe the Bible? If so, why are we shocked that we struggle with adultery and murder, consumption and exploitation, but also violence and degradation? And if that's true in some aesthetic, abstract form, is really going to be true in the core relationship. So at one level, and I'll just put it this bluntly, if I had not told the truth, I would have paid a price with my wife. That would have been unfortunate. She would have just said, you're just full of bullshit. And she would have said it kindly and wisely and playfully. But I think there were moments where she upped the ante by saying, no, you need to talk about how I failed you. And I'm like, but you really don't fail the way I do. It's like we both are adulterers and murderers. So I think, in part, having a spouse who joined you. And again, I don't want to say that other people don't, but who actually believe the Bible when it says you're a sinner. And therefore the whole notion of extremity being Revealed, you can't transform, be transformed by what you refuse to name or feel with regard to the reality of the presence of your harm, but also the presence of the goodness of God. And I don't want to go too far because I get to interview you sometime this coming fall. But in your new book on sacred attachment, the material about mysticism, of that sensitivity to the spirit's engagement. If you're sensitive to. Sensitive to the unseen world, then you're going to be more sensitive to the seen world and vice versa. The more you're aware of the dynamics happening between you and another person, it allows you to be more aware of the dynamics. So in part, it's attunement sensitivity. And thank God I have a wife who loves me desperately, deeply, but also calls me to be the man that I write that I wish to be. As is often the case, as I've sat under your teaching or had conversations with you, there's 10 different questions I want to ask just based on what you said. So the first one, and this is. So there's. We could just bypass this. But you said you can't experience transformation with something you haven't named. Talk more about that and give me an example, either from your marriage with you and Becky or in some of your clinical work. Well, I begin with the word confession, but we think of confession as sort of like, oh, Jesus, forgive me. It's like, no, no, no. Confession. Homologa is the Greek word that just says the same thing. Say the same thing. So you know when Becky says something like, you're being cruel. I need to confess. And that means to go, oh, those words were cruel. So coming to confess is naming. That's the core word name. What's true. We were doing a talk on marriage in a church in Dallas not long ago, and at one point, Becky's talking about my brokenness but my beauty. And she said, I've watched this man give thousands of dollars away to people he knows and some people he doesn't know yet. This was over Easter yet when one of his grandchildren asked for some kombucha, it was like they were asking for his last dollar. And I'm sitting with her in front of a group of a couple hundred people going, oh, yeah, I did do that. And don't you mess with my kombucha. Like, take my money. Just don't mess with my kombucha. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's really weird. I mean, she's naming that we hadn't planned for her to say it, but I'm like, I'm actually somewhat troubled by that. How can I give away, like, money means something, but not that much. But my stash of kombucha. Don't touch my M&Ms. Don't touch my M and M. Exactly. You can have the brown ones, but nothing else. So, yeah, this is where you go. We ponder with others their life, their movement, particularly in their marriages. But there are just so many things that should shock you about yourself which don't have a quick resolve, but at least have a framework to be able to go. Yeah. Becky's essentially saying, I need you to ponder where you're cheap. I'm grateful for where you're a generous man, but you can be really cheap, and it's not lovely. So that's where the process of naming often comes into realms that we really. I don't have an answer for that other than, like, that's weird. Yeah. And so the barrier to that so often of being able to name it or be able to receive it when someone else names it is shame. And, you know, I don't think I've ever read a book of yours, over 20 books, that doesn't deal with the topic of shame substantively, and as should be the case. But. So how does shame then play a role in that inability to have others name things for us? Yeah. Whenever we talk about shame, I always like to begin with contempt, because that's where the work of the Gottmans and their brilliant work, it comes to the reality that the number one killer of marriage is contempt. And that judgment against the other of, you're stupid, or, how could you do that? Why do you do that? And it isn't just word content, but it's also tonality. It's the raised eyebrow. It's my adolescent grandsons when I say, hey, you want to spend the afternoon with your grandfather? Like, eye roll. Like, do I have to? And the answer is, yeah, you want to go to college? You want any inheritance whatsoever? Yeah, you need to. So we know the presence of contempt, but contempt is always our effort to resolve shame without the vulnerability of engaging why we feel so exposed. So shame in that sense is exposure that brings something of the expected judgment of our own or others, or simultaneously both. And when we begin to go, look, in every marriage, there is shame. When Becky basically goes, do you want to make love? And I'm like, I should say yes. No, but okay. And like, oh, my gosh, I'm feeling so ashamed because I'm a man. And the offer Ought to be the accolade of life. And it's like there's just sometimes. No, I'm 73. No shame sexually shame financially. We were at a lovely home on the island we live in, and my wife said, wouldn't it be wonderful if we were living near the water? How do I feel? Oh, okay. So I should have bought Amazon in 94. Absolutely. And I made a really bad decision. Do you want to underline that? And she's not saying that it's 3 trillion miles from her mind, but I take it in as you have not provided. And yeah, I did fail in 94. I made the choice to put my, at that point, huge amount of money, $10,000, into another investment. Do you know what $10,000 in 1994 would mean today in the year of our Lord 2025? Hopefully you didn't invest it in Radio Shack. Or Petco. Yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully that's doing well for you. So all of what we're talking about is really how I would sum up the book. And I took the sentence right out of the book. And you said that dealing with the present issues in marriage must mean dealing with the past. Yeah. So say a couple of big ideas about that, because there's a lot of approaches about marriage, and they're not ineffective always, but they don't bring about the deeply rooted marriage. Why must we deal with the past? Well, every conflict, at least I want to claim every conflict that goes less well than you'd wish has a history. It has dirt that indeed the roots are in. And to the degree, if you think of it as the obvious metaphor of cut the weed off at the top. As a gardener, you know only too well the roots are going to get stronger. And that's what most couples fail to do, is to ask the question, what else might be going on? Again, Gottmans have indicated by their research 70% of what we have conflict over has no right or wrong answer. So you have to then say, why are we having a conflict over a dish rag that she asks, why are you afraid of it? Because you never wring it out. And I'm like, what? You want to fight? And here's part of the issue. I grew up with a borderline personality disordered mother, and my way of engaging my mom required incredible sensitivity. In part, that's why I'm a good therapist. On the other hand, the issue of her neediness, her craziness, the ups and downs, the cruelty at one level, the desperation on the other, the keenest way I could keep her, from me, was by creating conflict. And so I learned and she learned to scream at one another. Long, violent, verbal interactions. And the crazier I was, the more trouble I got into, the more she would leave me alone for, like, a day. And, you know, if I stole a car and got caught, she wouldn't talk to me for a week. That's like being sent to the Bahamas. That was a good thing for you in light of craziness? Oh, it was. And so you can say as a juvenile, a delinquent, you were a bad kid. And the answer is yes. But there's a context. I wasn't just a bad kid. I was a kid who was trying to survive a crazy world. And I found a way by being troubled and troubling, it kept my mother from consuming me. Now, just the opposite. Becky grew up in a home where there was incredible cruelty. And in that, she learned to hide. She learned to literally play in closets, keep her mouth shut. Well, I learned to be highly verbal. She shut her mouth. We were a lovely couple in the beginning of our marriage. She learned to be radically independent and need no one. And I hated anyone who depended upon me. So we were a lovely couple until we began to grow. And in that growth, it exposed the structure that we both utilize to survive, became what attracted us to one another in part, but also is what offended and drove us apart. So oftentimes, the war that's within you is what drew the other to you, yet it also repels. So when we begin to deal with that root, we have a chance to actually change the nature of the fruit. And that's the deep conviction. Just knowing the past does not immediately make a radical difference, but it gives you understanding, but also gives you compassion and, I think, a deepened sense of curiosity with regard to the other. You had a great line in the book regarding this idea that the war within drives us to a partner. And you said every marriage is built on an unconscious attempt to find redemption. And so we would all probably agree to. Yeah, my issues from the past affect me, and opposites attract or those kind of ideas. But, like, really, I'm looking for redemption in my spouse in an unconscious way of the needs that were not met or the trauma that was there. Well, again, I believe God has made you with this ravenous hunger for delight and honor. That sense of somebody knows you and just sees how glorious you are, and in that, honors the reality of the cost that it has taken for you to be who you are. And so, in that, I don't. I mean, Becky laughed at my stories, but she also didn't seem to need much from me. Now, did I have the wisdom as a 24 year old man to go, you know, your borderline mother has required of you, living in this web where she could devour you at any one moment. So you're going to marry somebody who in one sense, independently, requires almost nothing of you? No, I mean, I just loved her legs. I thought she was beautiful and she was funny and like, that's the level of maturity I had. I would assume you and Julianne had more maturity, but the bottom line is I wasn't mature at all. And in that, do you see, I didn't marry my wife for transformation. I didn't marry my wife for redemption, but I did. I did. And it was so helpful to be able to say, oh, no wonder I'm so disappointed in because you're not the God I thought you could be or should be to be able to bring me what indeed I don't seem to want from Jesus. So it's so easy to be disappointed, move to resentment, or just to learn like, oh, well, you're not going to get much in this area from your spouse and you love them and things are overall good, so just learn to temper your expectations. That's a lot of marriage counseling. And I just think it's absolute contrary to how God has made us. So when we begin to do this work and to begin to say, yeah, she married me in some sense to heal cruelty, I married my wife to heal the deep sense of exhaustion I felt and having to be for someone what I was never meant to be, then we can be so much kinder, so much more like, oh, this problem with your computer that's triggering both of us, we have a better understanding of the triggers now. Again, I don't want to say it's magic. It still requires that choice to go, oh, now how am I going to tend to my own heartache but also to yours? And so in that process, knowing the landscape gives me a much clearer sense of how to move through the terrain. So there's a naming that's required of our own individual brokenness, wounds and trauma, but also a naming of the dance or the cycle that's there. So you told the story about the laptop and Becky had an issue with the email and you were writing and she asked you a question and then it set off all these eruptions, which weren't about the email or her question, it was about other kinds of things. So you talk about trauma in the book, which is Obviously, the impact of the past on all of our lives. But I appreciated how it broke out. Attunement, trauma. Because I always think of a coin with two sides, and I think absence and presence. That trauma is most often the presence of things that shouldn't have ever happened. And attunement is the. Or the lack of it. Those attachment wounds are the absence, the things that didn't happen. So because the word attunement is thrown around so much and people often don't actually stop to define it or understand it, will you define attunement and then talk a bit about attunement, trauma? Yeah. Well, again, I know we'll eventually talk about your book, but look what you've done in underscoring that whole issue of how we actually hear and feel in a right hemisphere on behalf of another. Like, I know my wife's story, but if I'm not allowing it to affect me, to trouble me, to anger me, to grieve me, there's a sense in which my presence is not being offered. So when we use the word presence, it really rises from a Greek word, prosopon, which means face. We're not giving our face to one another. So the idea of attunement is, I give you my face. I give you the most vulnerable part of my body, the most core to our identity, but also the most naked part of my being in any interaction is my face. Well, when you add that, 70% of the muscles in your face you don't have direct control over. So when we read one another's faces, we're reading not necessarily infallibly, but we get a sense of, you're not interested. You're hearing me, but you're just planning your next response. Well, that's different than when you've got somebody like, just being with you. Michael, you obviously had a plan, but you are engaging me in what you're hearing. That's what a good therapist, that's what a good friend, that's what a good spouse does, is you might have some things you want to discover, but you're going to be in this sync, this dance with the other, where there's resonance of grief to grief, anger to anger, heartache to heartache. So you've got that beautiful passage in Romans 12, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. That's, to me, what attunement is. I love that because you didn't give a standard definition, which I wouldn't expect, but it's the presence, and I love how the Greek is the face. Of course, I think you're making up half those Greek words, like, yeah, it's presupposiaso. Just throw an eye over it. The next meal, you check out and see whether or not we'll put the bet on it. If it's not prosopon, I'll buy. No, I believe you, but I have a friend that does that. He'll just make up words and say, the Greek is well. And I do that with English. Yeah. Okay, good, good. So it's through attunement that we create safety. And having safety between spouses is absolutely essential for all the good stuff like love, joy, peace, patience, etc. So how do you and Becky create safety? And how did you talk about that in the book? Well, I love this phrase from the lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you probably already know where I'm going. That whole question that one of the girls asked, is Aslan safe? And Mr. Beaver laughing with, is he safe? Oh, no, child, he's good. So I think in any marriage, the question is, is it safe enough? Is it safe enough because we're meant for danger? That's in part what awe is. If we're meant for gratitude, that's a level of connection, of intimacy, a sense of safety. But we're meant for awe, and awe is meant to take your breath away. It's like standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon and looking down and going, oh, that's a long way down there. So a marriage is meant to have this intersection of safe enough gratitude for one another. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yet kind of like nobody invites me into a level of personal, relational danger like my wife does. And that danger of you're asking me to be what, at the moment I don't want to be, or I don't think I can be. And yet you see who I can become. So you have to have both. You have to have sufficient safety to be able to enter the danger. But the danger is always going to create this sense of, I didn't plan for this discussion. Oh, my gosh. I mean, how many times have people come to see you as a therapist, and all of a sudden one of them kind of has that look like, well, I didn't think we were going to go there. Yes, yes. And that's where, you know, oh, good, we're right on the border. And again, I don't know where it's going to go, but you got to go there. You got to let us go. But not precipitously. Not throwing yourself off the cliff, but where you choose with kindness and care to enter into the realms where the old, old phrase, where angels fear to tread, that's what a good marriage holds. Sufficient safety to enter the realms of one's own life, current, past, and future, in a way in which we get to dream. And like, Becky and I are in our 70s, and we just had a dear friend of ours. We just got noticed today that he died. And when you've got people you went to high school or college or you've known in ministry, and they're your age and they die, it's another reminder of how will we love one another in these final days, weeks, months, years, decades of our life in a way in which

we're doing what Psalm 90: 31:13

12 says, Count the days. Count the days so that you may grow in wisdom. And you're a younger man. I wouldn't imagine that you and your wife are talking much about death at this point, but as you age, it becomes more reality. And years ago, something. Oh, and actually, not years ago, it was this year. Well, eight months ago, we were taking a walk, and Becky said, you think you're going to depart before me? And I'm like, yeah, actuarial tables would tend to indicate that that's a higher probability. And then she said something that, again, one of those points of danger, you don't ever know in a marriage when it's going to occur. And she said, have you prayed for the privilege of seeing me home first? And I looked at her. I won't say on your podcast all the words that I spoke, but the answer was essentially no. And I'm like, what? She said, if someone came into our home, I know you would defend me and protect me, even if it cost you your life. And I'm like, absolutely. Then why don't you do that for one of the most important events in my life, and that's passing from this earth to the next. Wow. And it was, oh, Michael, I'm telling you, I could weep. I cannot imagine a day on this earth without my wife. And yet what she was inviting me to at that moment is this. You may pass before me, but I want to know that in one of the most heroic acts of your life, that you would see me home first. And it has been my prayer. I think it actually changed some of my eating, helped me focus a little more on it. I mean, what can I do beyond prayer to actually be on her behalf what she's asking me to be? So, again, this is a walk, a Lovely morning. And can't we just enjoy the flowers? Yeah. And all of a sudden she has turned my life upside down. I adore her. Yeah. And what an invitation to love her like Christ loved the church, to bear that pain of ushering her home. You know, I have a lump in my throat. And you said that, you know, Julianne and I don't think as much about it. We've lost three dear friends and a next door neighbor who's just 10 years older than us, who's one of the fittest people that we knew. And it's got me basically asking the question and basically like one of us is going to bury the other and we don't think about that. And there's something about that that requires brutal honesty, grief. And then I would say courage. That I feel like you're calling me to that. Like there's a tremendous honor in that. And I've never articulated it, but I love those actuarial statistics. Right. That I would go first because, you know. But then there's something deeper that goes, what a sacred honor. So thank you for sharing that. And that's an example of the danger that you're speaking of and that you wrote about that our spouse who is awake and alive and who has done their work, they invite us into that, a place of our own suffering. Part of me just wants to again say the cost of living well is always dying to self. But the way we trivialize that in many ways, like I gave up X or Y because I'm dying to self. And it's like, that's not what Jesus is talking about. It's dying to. What is keeping you from being fully human, fully alive and fully capable of receiving and offering what you were meant for. Delight and honor, love. So, you know, to think, you know, there are moments where I go, oh, what might I been able to be? Might have been able to teach in my 30s or 40s if I had known what I know now? And in that there is a certain susceptibility or seduction to regret. But I think, in fact what it does is facing death and loss instead of regret. Grief opens the door to say, and I get today. I get today. And it may be my last day on the earth. And I get it for the sake of the kingdom of God. And the kingdom I get to live most intimately with is in the presence of my wife. And if one wants to become more like Jesus, your marriage will mess you up and offer an opportunity, not for it to merely get better. That's great. I'm all for better marriages. But I want a deeply transformed heart that doesn't make mere behavior change, actually makes more a sense of gratitude. Oh my gosh, I get to be married to a woman like this who I married just because I loved her legs and she laughed a lot and she didn't need me. And all of a sudden I'm having my life turned upside down because she's asking me to deal with death in a very different way. Yep, that's danger in a safe relationship. So you're 73 and I just turned 60 and you talked about gratitude and I think, and I don't mean to be cute with words, but I always took gratitude for granted. And in the last year, as I head into this next decade and you know, the normal aches and pains, I've started to be grateful for gratitude that it seems to have an energy of its own and it seems to. There's a life and a vitality in it. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts or comments are about that. Oh, I think it makes you childlike, you know, it just gives you a kind of new innocence. There are philosophers and particular psychologists that I won't mention. But talk about secondary innocence. Like, you know, I've known too much harm to myself and others, I've seen too much harm in the context of the work we do. I can't have an innocence as my 6 year old grandson Gus has. On the other hand, there's a second secondary innocence that comes not by the denial of the harm, the cruelty about us, but in one sense to be able to take in something of the beauty and the compelling presence of just sitting outside and watching a bird feed its young and to be able to go, oh, it's stunning. So when you're captured by beauty in any form, my guess is it's a return to a kind of innocence that allows you that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And that's where that innocence is the grounding to be able to go. I need to get wiser in order to make these next level of risks and the interplay of awe. So gratitude and awe are just. They're the nature of all worship, therefore they're always connected. Let's do. If I was a game show host right now, I'd say it's time for the lightning round. So I'm going to. I'm just gonna ding, ding, ding you. So the part of the book that it starts to shift into solutions or the path or the healing, it's the conversation about change agents. And I love that because it wasn't. Here are the steps or the techniques, but I'm going to read them out loud for our listeners and then the lightning round will be that you can say up to three sentences for each one. Okay. All right. Remember, Faulkner had sentences that lasted like 180 words. So I'm going to be. The question is more like Faulkner. Or anyway, you go ahead. You can use commas, but no semicolons. Okay, so they are. These change agents for how the transformation takes place are humility, honesty, kindness, curiosity, the curious one of defiance. Then an intention to bless. I think that's six rather than seven. But humility, honesty, kindness, curiosity, defiance and an intention to bless. How does humility launch transformation in a marriage? Humility is humus. It's humor. It's where you are in the dirt enough to be able to. To desire and ask for something more. Bingo. Honesty. Honesty is the telling of the truth in order to know more truth. Because we're all biased. We all have a log in our own eye. And therefore in telling the truth we get to see where we're wrong, but also where we're right. Next is one of my favorite words, kindness. Romans 2, 4. It is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. And why do you treat the kindness of God with contempt? Kindness opens the door to the reception of all the goodness of God. Curiosity. If you ain't curious, you are a full fledged narcissist and therefore you are bringing great harm to the universe. Curiosity is the acknowledgement. You don't know defiance. You can have four sentences for this one. Where's your sting, O death? Defiance stands with the deep conviction there's an unseen world that is not only better, but actually meant to be brought to this earth. So defiance is, I will not be bound by the reality I see. I will be bound by the reality that will one day be seen. And an intention to bless. Nothing sweeter in life than being able to bring another a taste of the glory that God has imbued them and written them to reveal. I just want to. First of all, thank you for the lightning round. That was fascinating. I feel like we should take a commercial break and then come back. Well, do I. Do I get a prize? You get a prize. Yes. You get a free copy of my book. I already have it. I was so grateful. It's one of those things where you go, I love it that publishers well treat a few of us with that level of care. I would have bought it if I had not been given the copy. Yeah, I was jealous when I read in the book that I won't try to guess which publisher and which book, but how they gave you a ski pass to four Colorado resorts when your family was young and you guys took up skiing. Because I remember you driving your Saab 900 up to the mountain every week. Thank you. Yes. Oh, my gosh. We won't mention the publisher, but I promise you, ain't no publisher going to do that. It was a wild day back in the Wild West. You let me drive your Saab 900 once, and that was the first time I drove a turbo car. We were driving down Bellevue and I punched it and it took off like a rocket. That was really cool. It was my favorite. It's so important to have had a favorite car. Like nothing has compared since. You know, I've had some nice cars, but, you know, it's like you got a taste of what heaven will be and you need to hold that with all the Ford, Chevys and Toyotas that I've purchased since. And I don't know if you remember this, but you used to describe that car, the Saab 900, as a pregnant guppy. Yes. It's the ugly. If anybody even remotely cares and wants to look it up, it's really an ugly car. But it's in that sense of, you know, there are certain things that bear a kind of cultural ugliness that actually bears stunning beauty to it. Yeah. It was the car at that time that everybody wanted to have because it was the Jerry Seinfeld car. Car on Seinfeld. I did not know that to this day. Indeed. Serious. Yes. You and Jerry had the same car. But if I recall, we were driving to a lunch meeting with a couple who I came across that were part of the false memory movement, and they wanted to meet you for some of the work in rewriting the Wounded Heart. Yes. Oh, my gosh, that was a long time ago. Yeah. But also an unpleasant experience. But it was also one of those where, again, the surprise, like I'd written the Wounded Heart, and the publisher at that point got pressure from a very well to do donor to a particular ministry, threatening that my book was going to get pulled. And they finally gave me the opportunity to write, I think, about 60 pages more on memory. So in one sense, it was disastrous because it ruined a Christmas. But it was also one of those sweet gifts to be able to go, okay, I get to think a little bit more about this topic than what I had done. But, yeah, that was crazy. Yeah. And if you remember, Kathy Helmers who went by another name at that time. I was the one that did the review of the book. And then you had rewritten it, so that was a deep dive into all of that. On a more pleasant note, I would like. Oh, not unpleasant at all. That's a relief. Thank you. I had forgotten that we were together on that. Well, and thank the Lord that the book was not pulled from the shelves, because even. Even since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been touched by that book. And then your follow up to that, that was the Wounded Heart. And then your follow up was Healing the Wounded Heart, which went more into trauma and the impact of it neurobiologically. And I highly commend both of those books. You told a beautiful story that made me wish that I was this creative. Your 25th anniversary, and you asked your kids, who I think one was probably as young as 14, to write a letter about what they had witnessed and learned by watching their parents, marriage, their parents being you and Becky. And then you all went out to dinner and you shared and wrote these letters at the restaurant. And the waiter thought, you know, you were all having a nervous breakdown. Tell that story. And. And what inspired you to do that? Well, gifts. It's a really awkward category because a specific gift, like our children buying us something for our 25th that sounds tedious and boring as humanly possible. Buy me a tie. I don't wear ties. Never have hardly ever done. So I just knew that there was this anticipation even on their part, like, what do we get you guys? And I kept thinking words, but more than just words, I want to hear what you've learned. And I said to them, I know there are things you've seen that, you know, aren't right, aren't good, and some probably that are good. So I want you to write honestly about what you see as. And I didn't use the words, but I would use them now. What did you see that was broken? What did you see that was beautiful? And it was, I would say, you know, maybe one of the top five nights or meals of our life, because our kids really put time into it. And even our youngest son, who at that time would never have thought of himself as being able to write said words that were incredible. So they read them to us at the meal, and we were both weeping. And poor waiter, at one point he came up with kind of like, is everything okay? And we're. Yeah, we're good. And is it the food? Is there anything? And I'm like, oh, no, no. And I had to Explain to him I said, it's our 25th. Our kids are writing to us. And it was really a sweet remark. He goes, I've never seen anything like this before. And again, I think our marriages are meant to be that for people like, I've never seen this before. A level of honesty, a level of care, a level of delight, a level of ugliness, like, you guys are living broken, beautiful heaven, hell, and yet we see goodness. So our marriages are not, gee whiz, they're just not primarily for us. They are for our children. They are for our families, for our world. And again, you get a public world, I get a public world. And we are both incredibly blessed men that we get to talk about these matters with a larger audience. But every marriage is being watched by someone, especially your children. And do you have the ability to engage reality in a way that compels them to want to know Jesus? Not just because you're religious, not because you go to church every Sunday, not because you have devotions and prayer before you eat? Again, not in any way mitigating, minimizing, mocking any of that. I'm just saying, if that's it, if they don't see you being changed through the process of the engagement with your spouse, then why would they want to get married in a world like ours, where marriage is becoming less and less and later and later in life? I do think it's primarily because so many kids have seen divorce not just in their own life, but their friends, to a point of going, I don't think this works. Do you have time for one more story? I do. All right, you created the segue, so I'm going to blame you if you miss your taxi or something like that. Your Uber you talked about, there are people watching our marriage and the weeding the yard story. Oh, yeah. I got to tell you why I'm asking you to share this, because seven years ago, and I've talked about this on the podcast, I was given the diagnosis of Asperger's autism spectrum. And it just put all the puzzle pieces into place for me. So I have this. I can be very easily overstimulated, and I get really neurotic, irritable when things are transitioned from how I planned. So I'm in the backyard and I'm weeding, and Julianne said, no, I want you to weed over here. And I had asked you to fill up these dirt containers. And she might be talking, let's say, at a three out of five, instead of what I think should be a one. Because, for God's sake, the neighbors could hear you. And so, you know, my greatest fear is that the neighbors are going to hear us having just above normal interactions. And then you tell this story. I laughed out loud. I am so honored. I'm so honored. Yeah, well, you've told a good portion already because it's so similar. I made this incredibly stupid move, and I said to Becky, it's Sunday. What would you love to do? What would be just honoring to you? She said, after church, I want to weed. And I'm like, oh, good Lord, can't we go look at antiques? Which would be the second worst thing in the universe. So I'm weeding, and I have hyperfocused add and so once I get into doing something, I'm pretty capable of just sort of, like, moving through it without much thought. She showed me what were the weeds and what were the plants. And I was thinking about something else, and I pulled a number of flowers, and she got ticked. And then she went through the whole process again. What's a weed? What's not? Two minutes in, I'm thinking about what I was thinking about, and then all of a sudden, I have pulled more flowers. At this point, she's not happy. And she starts in, and I push back, and we start going. And she's like, you have ruined this. You have ruined a Sabbath that you said you wanted to be with me doing something. And I'm like, well, the point being, we went on for a while, and it got hotter. This is the front yard. And after about maybe five minutes, That's a long time for intensity to grow over. And there were more words. All of a sudden, we heard clapping. Literally, like loud clapping. We look over just next door, three couples had gathered, and literally, one of them had called. The other said, islanders are having a fight again. Do you want to watch? And they came over. There'd been two couples there. The third came over, and they started clapping. But when did they clap? It's when I said, okay, I know I'm wrong. I'm sorry. I don't feel that sad right now, but I know I'm being. And I used a pretty strong word. And that's when they began clapping, and they invited us over, and the process began. Like, you know, just, you're laughing. Neighbors who know you a little, but not that much. And one of the women said, how did. To Becky, how did you get your husband to apologize? Because even if it wasn't terribly sincere or deeply felt, he clearly said he was wrong. How do you do that, obviously stating, I can't get my husband to do that. And so it opened a door, and it became clear, like, the men got very uncomfortable, and the women were curious but angry. And eventually what she said was, he's a difficult man. And you know that he's somewhat odd. You know that, Becky, speaking about you. Yes. And yet he also has a very tender part of his heart toward me. And one of the men wanted to make a joke about it, and somebody else asked another question, but the bottom line became, well, well, how does that grow in you? And it was such a sweet moment of going, all right, if you want me to answer. And I looked at the men's faces, and there was this look like, don't betray us. Don't take this into a direction that could implicate us. And I'm like, dude, you don't know me. That's not my way of being in the world. And I just said, if you'd like to hear the story of how this has come about, the question is, do you want the $2 $5 or the $10? And one of the women, and actually one of the men said, no, we want the real story, the whole $10. So it literally set up a context to say, look, I may be a very poor representative of what you might call Christianity, but I am a follower of Jesus, and there's a lot about him I don't love, and a lot I do. I trust him and I don't. So I'm no model, but I am a follower. And in that, there's places in my heart that are becoming more and more tender to the realities of the harm that I can do. So it was a lovely context where it didn't sound, as it shouldn't sound, religious, but relational. And in that, it was a sweet beginning for us, being asked many more questions over many more years about our relationship, but also about our relationship with Jesus. I love that story. I love how the humility, or the near humility, which became humility, how that opened the door to relationship, and how both of you could have folded your arms and clenched your jaw and allowed the shame to dominate, but you didn't. Well said. And again, the reality is that with your diagnosis, with mine, with our own sin, with our own brokenness, why not just tell the truth? Not cruelly and inappropriately, but there is something about how when truth gets told, it invites others to a truth that they may know or in many occasions, may not know. Dr. Dan Elder, former professor, mentor, person, who's profoundly influenced me thank you, friend, for taking the time to have this conversation. Thank you for writing the book. This is going to help so many people. Thank you, Michael. And I do look forward, even though I know the primary purpose is to visit and be with your son. I hope we have at least a few moments. That would be wonderful. Okay, everybody, we're wrapping up another episode of Restoring the Soul. This has been a fabulous conversation with Dr. Dan Allender. As we close, please remember this, that on your darkest day or your longest night, love has you, love has you, love has you. Till next time, all right?