FamilyLife Today®

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Nan Deal: I would look at myself in the mirror and say, "You're a mess." I would just think about what's happened to you. Who are you? I know my heart is as black as coal. I know it's as hard as a stone, God. I don't even know if You would take me back at this point or if You could even create a clean heart in me. I have no clue.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: I think every marriage carries quiet, silent hurts.

Ann Wilson: And disappointment.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, we don't always talk about them, but I know I was disappointed and I carried around hurt that I never verbalized. I had no idea. I actually thought you were good because I'm such an amazing husband that you're carrying around for decades hurts.

Ann Wilson: Just wounds from the past, not feeling worthy and not realizing because we get so busy in our marriages and our lives, and many of us are parents or we have blended families and we're just trying to get through the day, not realizing some of those disappointments, pain, and hurt are being hidden or pushed down and they're affecting every part of us.

Dave Wilson: And when they come out, it can go one of two ways. It can split the marriage up or it can bring a bond that's deeper than it ever would have gotten to if it was always hidden and kept.

Ann Wilson: But it's hard to get there.

Dave Wilson: And today we get to walk through a pretty remarkable story that we got to hear at a dinner table one night in Little Rock with Ron and Nan Deal, who are in the studio with FamilyLife. It feels weird saying welcome to FamilyLife Today because you're such a part of FamilyLife. But welcome to FamilyLife Today, guys.

Ron Deal: Thank you.

Ann Wilson: You guys, we love your honesty. Thank you for sharing this. I think we all need to hear it because we're all living in places that it hasn't been easy and in the church, sometimes we don't always say that.

Dave Wilson: And in FamilyLife, Ron, you're known as the director of FamilyLife Blended.

Ron Deal: That means I'm perfect.

Dave Wilson: It means you're perfect. We all have you on a pedestal. In some ways, that's what people think even though you never said that. As I pastored, I would be amazed. People would come up to me and say, "We want your marriage." I'm like, "Do you not listen to what we say?" Because all we do is tell you the problems. But because there's a mic or because you're on stage or you wrote a book, people think your marriage has struggles but nothing like ours.

No, yours was really struggling. So here we are. I'm guessing you're married I don't know how many years. You've got three boys. You're living sort of separate lives. Ron's killing it in ministry. Nan, you're at home stuffing away and feeling unseen. And yet you still love one another.

Ann Wilson: But you are angry, Nan.

Nan Deal: And I think there were seasons where Ron would really try. I would go to some conference or I would be in some Bible study. I think I tried to break free at least six times. Doing a Bible study called *Breaking Free* or *Finding Freedom*, Neil Anderson's stuff. Just trying so hard and leading in some ministries myself in children's ministry or VBS or what have you.

I would really think, "Okay, I want to do better. I want to be better for him." And I'd always get back into that same rut. Like I said, we had this ugly dance.

Ron Deal: Likewise, I felt convicted doing the work that I was doing, constantly looking at myself going, "Okay, I need to alter this, change that." I would say for the first 10 years, I was really blind to me. The next five years, I was recognizing some things that I'd come out of my family with and wondering why I think that and where that's coming from, doing a lot of self-analysis.

But we never really put all the pieces together. I don't think I ever really owned my pride and just how much I was driven and how that became the other woman, so to speak, was my work and my drive.

Nan Deal: We moved to Amarillo and same thing, going and blowing even harder.

Ron Deal: Then we had financial demands so I felt like I had to travel and work harder.

Nan Deal: And the boys are on the cusp of pre-teen and I remember going to another one of those conferences, a ladies' conference, and feeling convicted to say something to him again. And maybe he'll hear me this time. "Ron, this is too much. This is off the chain. We're here." And I'd always get that, "I'm doing this for God. What do you mean?"

But this weekend was different. I had packed a bag and I waited until the boys were asleep and I said, "It's you or me, buddy, it's you or me. I'm not doing this anymore." And he fell to his knees and said, "I'll do whatever it takes."

Ann Wilson: How old were your kids at that point?

Nan Deal: Eight, 10, and 12. So he calls a friend, Terry, in town, but he's got a two-year waiting list and I said, "I don't care, you or me." So he calls him and the next day we're in his office. That is God's grace and mercy. We are evidences of God's grace over and over and that was one of those moments. Because this is two years before our son passes away.

So we go in and that first session, I looked at Ron and I looked at Terry because Ron picked him out and I said, "Okay, we're going to go in here but no funny business between the two of you. Layman's terms." And it was a beautiful thing because Terry nailed Ron's patootie to the wall during that first session. It was so beautiful to watch.

Ann Wilson: What did he say? What do you mean by that? What happened?

Ron Deal: We walked in the first session and Nan started talking. For 20 minutes she talked about how lonely she was.

Nan Deal: He allowed me to go first, which was so kind.

Ron Deal: She laid it out. I sat and listened and even then, in my head, I was doing the "yeah, but," the "yeah, but" defensiveness that I'm so good at. Terry just looked at her and did a simple little reflective statement. Number one, he pinpointed Nan's deepest bruise, abandonment, and number two, he showed me how arrogant I was.

He just simply said, "So Nan, what you're telling me is the reason Ron threw you under the bus—abandonment—is because God told him to." And instantly I was cut to the heart because I knew in that moment God would never tell me to do that. But that's what I've been claiming. That's what I've been falling back on and I am really wrong. I don't even know where to begin to wrestle with this whole thing. That led me down a road of studying pride and humility, which is something we still talk about every single day of our lives. I was deeply convicted and had no idea where to go at that moment.

Nan Deal: And you cried that session hard. I had been so hurt that you would think that would have melted my heart and I just sat there and in my pride thought, "Good, now you're getting yours. Finally." But that was the beginning of Ron's humbling.

Ann Wilson: Did you apologize, Ron?

Ron Deal: Oh yeah, over and over and over again. But even fast forward another 15, 20 years from that moment and I still apologize. I still am finding those parts of me that I'm like, "Oh man, there it is again." This journey's not over. God's still sanctifying us.

Dave Wilson: But the story isn't "that one session did it."

Ron Deal: Well, it was a healing moment and it began to turn a corner but we still had trust issues. We still had hurt and anger and resentment and a lot.

Nan Deal: For two years Terry worked with us and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Nan, this brokenness, this woundedness, this family of origin, these wounds that you have..." Because one day I said, "You know, I hate that passage in Psalm 139, 'For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You knit me together in my mother's womb.' I got the wrong womb. Why did God choose that one? I've been trying to scrape this whole deal off for my whole life."

Terry said, "If you would allow God to heal that, it will be the most beautiful part of you." And I sat there and I said, "What are you saying? I don't understand what you're saying." And then two years later our son Connor passes away. The bottom drops out and I've never felt more abandoned in my life by God.

So I've got a truckload—I really feel like it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me—and it was a truckload of abandonment on abandonment on abandonment. We did everything right. This is the son that I'm connected to. This is our life here. I'd never known such pain. I'd never known such anguish. I'd never known such heartbreak and I didn't know how to do it.

Ann Wilson: So you went from "My family's abandoned me, my husband's abandoned me," but now "God has abandoned me."

Nan Deal: And You've taken something so sacred, something that I was really good at and something that brought me so much joy. I would cry out to Him and I'd hear nothing. I'd feel nothing. There were times when I wanted to take my life. It's just one of those heartbreaks like none other. At the beginning, we grieved together. We were thrust together and for four years we were just together. It was like I felt like I had in some ways gotten my husband back.

Ron Deal: I want to add: think about the significance of that, again in hindsight. We were reeling from the loss of our 12-year-old son and the gap between us had been closing, but now out of pure survival, it had to close. It had to just completely close. Everything else in the world stopped mattering. We talk about how grief recalibrates you. All the things that we selfishly pursued in the world all of a sudden seemed stupid and dumb at that point in time.

Other people were dumb because they're worried about their little flat tire. That's not a problem. You want to talk about problems? Let's talk about problems. It sort of pushed everything in the world away from us and thrust us together. For four years we grieved together.

Nan Deal: We were saying the same things. We were feeling the same things. I would say something very angry and upset and he'd go, "Yeah, me too!" And I'm like, "Really? Oh my gosh, I didn't know you could feel that way." I just felt like I had a partner in this.

But I also need to say that we'd had some very well-intentioned friends that had left alcohol in our home after the funeral and said, "Hey, if you ever need to just take the edge off, we left you something." We weren't teetotalers but maybe an anniversary or a birthday, one glass, but it wasn't a regular thing for us. What started out as an "Okay, I think that might help, I want to try that because the pain was so intense," and prescription medication to help sleep, help the anxiety, help the depression, became a full-blown addiction for me and an abuse of all of those substances. So what started out very innocent was a 12-year numbing problem for me.

Ann Wilson: Ron, did you have any idea?

Ron Deal: Yes and no. Yes, I knew she would have a glass of wine before going to bed at night. No, I didn't know after I went to sleep she'd get up and have three more.

Nan Deal: He didn't know the extent of all the medication I was taking on top of that.

Ron Deal: We didn't know, neither one of us knew the drug interaction between the alcohol and the prescription meds and that was a really toxic sort of thing.

Nan Deal: If anybody that has dealt with substance abuse knows, once you do a certain amount, you have to up the ante because once you get to a certain level, the tolerance is there. Unbeknownst to me, I didn't know that alcohol and these prescription drugs and other things that I was trying to take to sleep was causing that vicious cycle of you can't sleep, your anxiety is worse, your depression is worse.

Honestly, after four years, our grief journeys took a turn and Ron went another way and I was still ruminating and circling in my grief and angry. There was a day one day when Ron just said, "Babe, I don't know what to do with this. You keep going, you've got to not keep doing that." And I heard, "You're doing it wrong."

Ron Deal: Which is what I said to her for years and years and years early in our marriage. So it sounded very much like the exact same thing. Let me run this by you. I think how our grief separated was I was trying to figure out how to move toward God after year five or so in the grief and sadness, and you were resentful and angry and felt abandoned by Him so He was unsafe. Why move toward Him? That inherently put us in very different places where we kept trying to close that gap and love on each other and serve each other well. There became antagonisms in the midst of that and challenges and the escalation of behavior.

Nan Deal: To be perfectly frank, he took the job here which was a huge platform, a big stage. Everybody loved him. He's the expert. My "don't wake that dragon" because Terry had kind of calmed that down, I started to see Ron change. Then he was at my side at a very heartbreaking time. Then it's, "You're not doing grief right," and "I've got a platform and everybody in this building loves me." Let me just tell you, it got ugly. The drinking got worse and the bitterness and the anger. I really had my hand up to God. I didn't want to hear scripture. I didn't want to hear songs. I closed myself off to everything that had any light in it. I believe that's the season when the enemy took a foothold, not just a foothold, he took up residency. Anything Ron said, anything that was done, inside of me I am just angry.

Ann Wilson: Tell me what was going on in your head. What were the thoughts that would come to your head?

Nan Deal: "If only you all knew what he had done, what he was capable of, how he's hurt me."

Ann Wilson: And what were the thoughts that you were feeling about yourself?

Nan Deal: "You're a mess." There were a couple of times that I tried to quit and I had so much withdrawal. I thought, "Okay, great, Nan. Your husband's got this huge platform, this big ministry, everyone loves him, and you're going to have to go to rehab. You'll ruin his career. You'll ruin his name."

Ron Deal: Ironically, earlier in our marriage, I would have been so angry and devastated about that because it would have reflected negatively on me. That's the way I graded myself. But ironically, at this season of our marriage, I could care less. I wasn't worried about any of that, and yet we couldn't come together around what was needed for us.

Dave Wilson: Did you know it didn't matter to him at that point?

Nan Deal: No, because he kept it quiet. My boys, I'm empty-nest. I've got one that's moved off and one that's at college. If he did travel and I'm at home with the dog, I can drink as much as I want or I can just numb. Totally hiding. I would look at myself in the mirror and say, "You're a mess. You either need a mental hospital, you need rehab." I would just think about what's happened to you. Who are you?

It was about 2019 when I was white-knuckling it to work and I was just like, "I know my heart is as black as coal. I know it's as hard as a stone, God. I don't even know if You would take me back at this point or if You could even create a clean heart in me. I have no clue." I was spiraling in 2019. It got ugly. The amount that I was drinking and taking was awful and I wasn't eating a whole lot. I just felt like I was just a toxic mess. There were times when I wanted to say something to Ron but I just didn't even know. I felt so ashamed. I hated myself. I hated myself for thinking those things, saying those things in my head, ruminating over those things, and it's like I couldn't unhook from the pain. I felt it 24/7, the grief and the loss, the abandonment. I felt like I'd made a mess of my life and I didn't know how to stop. I tried a couple of times and I didn't know how to stop and I didn't know who to turn to for help.

Ron Deal: On my side, I was wrestling constantly with "How do I love her? How do I serve her? What can I do?" And "I don't want to be near this person. I don't like her at all."

Nan Deal: I could feel that.

Ron Deal: I loved her. I never stopped loving her even in the worst of those moments, but I didn't like her and I didn't know what to do.

Ann Wilson: But you didn't know there was an addiction.

Ron Deal: No, I didn't know there was that drug interaction thing that was going on. I just knew she wasn't sleeping well and memory loss. There were things she was doing that she didn't have conscious awareness of because of the drug interaction. She was an angry person. So neither one of us were really keen to all that was going on below the surface in this period of time. And then something great happened. COVID.

Nan Deal: COVID. Ron goes on a five-day trip. He prefaced, which I took it wrong of course, "Hey, I'm going on this five-day trip, I've got this, this, and this. I'm not going to be very much available to you."

Ron Deal: And that was me trying to serve her and let her know what was coming.

Nan Deal: And all I hear is, "So hey, I'm not going to be available because I've got to serve all these other people and do my wonderful stuff and you're not as important." And that day he leaves, I get sent home from school. I'm good at what I do and I love teaching and I'm really good at what I do. And I get sent home. When Ron travels, I get all of my dinner set up and I get all of my people lined up so that I'm not alone because Nan can't be alone with herself because she can't trust herself.

And everybody's canceling on me because of this COVID thing. "Oh, I can't come to dinner. No, I can't come this weekend." My sister can't come, a friend can't come, and I am left alone. And he's unavailable and I go on the biggest bender. I am bottoming out. He calls me at one point on one night and we get about five minutes. "Well, I'm in between things so..." And I put a hole in the wall that night.

Like he alluded to earlier, there were things that I was taking and amounts that I was drinking that would cause me to not remember certain things that I would do. So I'm calling him multiple times, leaving messages, calling him over and over and over as he's trying—like 51 times at one point. I'm calling my boys, I'm threatening to hurt myself.

Ron Deal: I'm getting a call from one of our sons saying, "Mom's scaring me to death." My daughter-in-law's saying, "You need to go up there and take care of your mom."

Nan Deal: And I'm totally unaware of all of it. Then I wake up that Sunday morning and the boys are calling me and I realized I have totally tortured my family all weekend long. Ron comes home from that trip and the look he gave me was, "I don't know who you are." And I thought it was over. I knew within myself it was over. I just didn't know what to do. I had hit bottom. I was at bottom.

Ann Wilson: You're listening to FamilyLife Today and I know that we just ended on a cliffhanger and you want to know what happened. It's a powerful story and their book is called *The Mindful Marriage*, that really walks through their whole journey. The subtitle is *Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself*.

Dave Wilson: I would encourage you really just go right now and go to familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes and pick up their book. But also something that Ron and Nan lead is our Blended ministry here at FamilyLife and every year they do a Blended & Blessed conference that you can live stream from your home for free. You can watch it and experience that conference. You can actually go to it if you want. You can register at familylifetoday.com and click on the link in the show notes there. What an amazing thing to be able to sit in your own family room with your spouse and be a part of a conference. That's the world we live in, that God can impact your marriage right there in your home.

Ann Wilson: And I don't know if you have checked out the Blended ministry that we have here at FamilyLife. If you're in a blended family, we have so many tools for you that can help you with parenting, with your marriage, with so many things.

Dave Wilson: So again, you can get the link for the book in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link and also check out the conference there as well.

Ann Wilson: And we'll be back and finish Ron and Nan's story tomorrow. See you then.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.