FamilyLife Today®

Dave Wilson: I was preaching a couple weeks ago at my church. I made this comment, life change doesn't happen in rows, it happens in circles.

Ann Wilson: Mhm.

Dave Wilson: I said when you sit around a circle and look in the eyes of other people and they share their story and you share your story and you open the word together, that's going to change your life cuz now you're going to walk with them after that.

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

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. What we're going to talk about today has literally, I wrote it down, has shaped who we are as people.

Ann Wilson: Yep.

Dave Wilson: It shaped who we are as a couple and especially our legacy.

Ann Wilson: I think this is such an important conversation because if we live out what we're going to talk about today, it will change our families, our marriages, our community, and the world because we're going to hit some things that every single believer needs to hear and if they apply it, this will change your life.

Dave Wilson: You cannot miss today's conversation. And by the way, guess who we got in the studio?

Ann Wilson: This is a treat.

Dave Wilson: We got the president of Family Life in the studio, Luke Mittendorf and Christina Mittendorf. Welcome back.

Kristina Middendorf: Thanks, guys.

Luke Middendorf: Thanks for having us back. We're glad to be here again.

Dave Wilson: So even as you hear us set up where we're going today, what would you add to that? Cuz our listener still doesn't know. They're like, okay, what is this? Is this oneness in marriage?

Ann Wilson: Because I think you guys resonate with what we said at the beginning cuz you were shaking your heads. If you're watching on YouTube, you're like, oh yeah, they're agreeing.

Kristina Middendorf: Well, I think you set it up like this is so important and you know, has power to change the family, the community, the world but it's really simple. So they're they're probably thinking what are they going to say? I've something I've never heard. Tell me the formula and you're going to hear it and be like, that's it? That's it? So hopefully we're going to unpack why the why and how it has been such a gift to us.

Luke Middendorf: And I would say this is a hidden secret for health and marriages.

Ann Wilson: Yes.

Luke Middendorf: It's not only important for the way we operate in the world, but it actually is a secret that we've experienced for health and growth in our own marriage.

Ann Wilson: And it's something you wouldn't suspect or say, oh here's something to help your marriage. You would never say this right off the top of your head.

Dave Wilson: Okay, if I'm watching or listening, I'm the guy right now going, what is it? Would you guys stop teasing us and tell us what it is? How would you say it in in a word or two? What are we talking about today?

Luke Middendorf: Your marriage is not meant to be alone.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, and and in a word, discipleship.

Kristina Middendorf: Yeah.

Dave Wilson: You know, which by the way, we all know Jesus command, the great commission is go make

Luke Middendorf: disciples.

Dave Wilson: Not just converts, which often we uh that's part of it, but we make disciples. So what do you mean your marriage is not meant to be lived alone?

Luke Middendorf: And we love that. I think there's a misconception, especially for young people when they enter marriage to say, okay, we finally made it. I've worked so hard, prayed so hard to find the right person and I found them and now here we go. We find an apartment or a house, we get our life together and now it's just the two of us. And ultimately that can set up a marriage for disaster

Kristina Middendorf: Mhm.

Luke Middendorf: if you are oriented and you put so much pressure relationally just on the spouse that God has given you whereas biblically he's created us for community. Of course, our relationship with Christ, relationship with our spouse is most important and then with our children but God's made us for more.

Kristina Middendorf: Well, take

Luke Middendorf: Not just for us to impact people but also to receive from people.

Kristina Middendorf: Take us back to the beginning of you guys first getting married. You're alone, you're like this is going to be amazing. What did your lives look like because you did have people in your lives

Luke Middendorf: By the way, how many years?

Kristina Middendorf: 17 this May. Our first place we lived newly married was uh senior housing. We lived in an apartment for

Luke Middendorf: Not like seniors in college.

Kristina Middendorf: Seniors in nursing home.

Luke Middendorf: Senior citizens.

Kristina Middendorf: It was it was attached to a nursing home and it's where a lot of spouses would live of their their spouses at the nursing home. They would live in the senior apartments. We live there for free.

Luke Middendorf: Why? Why? Why?

Kristina Middendorf: Oh, for free. That's wonderful. We were raising support to come on staff. Luke's dad was the COO of the company and he said we need some more chaplaincy, spiritual care help. If you guys could work 10 hours a week each to help us, we could do it at the same time. You can live in our apartment for free, corner apartment. We had a it was spacious. We had pull cords at the bathroom just in case we fell.

Luke Middendorf: Morning announcements would come on for the 4:00 supper would be.

Kristina Middendorf: Oh, that was the best. Seriously? Yes.

Luke Middendorf: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: How old were you guys?

Kristina Middendorf: We were I was 23 years old, yeah.

Luke Middendorf: The unique thing was we were coming out of a campus ministry context so we had really four or 500 people that we knew and were in this ministry and yet it was clear as I was ending college, Christina had ended the year before, that God was bringing us together, that we'd be better together for the next season of our lives. And so we spent so much time preparing for the wedding, doing premarital counseling, thinking about what's our calling, decided to do ministry and all this effort was on us, really us and Jesus in a lot of ways.

We get married, join staff, move into the senior housing and I just remember sitting there in this little apartment. It was a corner but it was small and thinking where did everyone go? We had all these people, life-giving relationships and then it was us. All this we we worked towards it being just us and then ultimately it felt lonely. We're enjoying our relationship but there's got to be more as a married couple for us to thrive and grow into who God's called us to be.

Kristina Middendorf: This senior housing put us in a different part of the Twin Cities than all of our friends and our community we'd built in college so we were a little geographically isolated so we found a church pretty quickly and we saw that they had a marriage small group and we're like, well, we're married so we we should go. So we show up at this small group in someone's home and all of the couples, the youngest couples have high schoolers, okay. We thought we hit the jackpot because here are these people 15 20 years down the road from us.

Some of them had kids our age who we get to learn from and it was we probably spend 9 months to a year in that small group before we moved and it was so sweet so that was the beginning of our realization we can't do this alone. We need people around us.

Ann Wilson: Well, Luke, you had said something about it puts pressure. When you don't have people, you put pressure on each other in the relationship. What do you mean by that? And what would it look like had you not had people?

Luke Middendorf: The pressure we felt that first year of marriage is really the same pressure that we can feel today. You know, all of us as individuals, we go into our day, we are in a ministry context or a business context or if you're a teacher, you're experiencing a lot in a given day, a lot of emotions, a lot of situations and you might be driving home thinking like I need to talk to someone about this or sometimes even vent about it and over time if your spouse is the only person who's hearing about your stresses, your emotions, your complaints, your pressures at work, that can be a heavy weight for that one person to carry.

Honestly at the beginning that was kind of how we oriented our lives was again we worked so hard on finding the right person and I'm sharing everything with Christina because we didn't really know how to bring other people into our lives now that we weren't single anymore and it it just became too much for one person to bear.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, it is is interesting. I 'm guessing you've had the same experience that a lot of couples I don't think have had but I hope they even after this broadcast will have. And you know, it could be any situation but if you walk in a what we would call a small group, Bible study, whatever you want to call it. At our church we call it a small group. If you decide as a couple to say I'm going to join this small group, whether it's married couples or not but let's say it 's a married couple small group, the thing that almost always happens you walk in there and 10 15 20 minutes in you go and you may not say anything until you get in the car later but you're like they struggle like we do.

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Dave Wilson: Right away you're like we're not alone.

Luke Middendorf: Yeah.

Dave Wilson: And then hopefully if there's an older couple that's married 10 years more or you think there's somebody over there that they've been through this 10 years ahead of us. They got three year olds. We just had a baby. There's somebody that's in the same year we are. I want to hang out with them and go have meal but I need a Paul, a Timothy, a Barnabas, somebody in front of you, somebody beside you, somebody behind you. I mean you go to the New Testament you see the Apostle Paul was planning these churches. He's sort of ahead of you on the track.

I just came to Christ. I need somebody ahead of me that can teach me. You need a Paul. That's what it means. Somebody more mature, maybe older, maybe ahead of you, whatever way it looks, that's your Paul. Timothy is like who's behind me that I'm going to pour in what I'm learning. I'm going to give it to somebody else and then a Barnabas is somebody right about the same place and we're walking beside each other. Just again we didn't really say you know, what those different roles are but we all need those three things in our life.

I was preaching a couple weeks ago at my church. I made this comment, your life will not change coming to Sunday mornings at our church. Hopefully it's great. Hopefully the sermon, I hope you walk out and go that was good and powerful. It's not going to change your life. One hour a week will not do it and my comment was life change doesn't happen in rows, it happens in circles. I said when you sit around a circle and look in the eyes of other people and they share their story and you share your story and you open the word together, that's going to change your life cuz now you're going to walk with them after that circle, that that small group.

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Ann Wilson: And we'd be so honored to have you on the journey with us. We really would. So here's the question, will you join us today?

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Ann Wilson: This is Family Life Today and you're listening to Luke and Christina Mittendorf who are the presidents of Family Life. I remember one of our sons was we were doing a series of church on discipleship, this whole idea and he named it. Do you remember this? The color of your dishes.

Dave Wilson: Oh yeah.

Ann Wilson: And I'm like, what's that about? He goes

Dave Wilson: He brought this idea to a uh teaching team planning like, hey, let's do a series and he called it uh something like I want to know the color of your dishes or you should know the color of my dishes. We're all like what are you talking about? He goes discipleship means you're in somebody's home and you know the color of the dishes.

Ann Wilson: Cuz you've eaten there. You've been with them.

Dave Wilson: Who's in your home? Who's in your home? I'm like that's good.

Ann Wilson: But I will say you guys the same thing. I feel like David and I were so fortunate. The crew is an amazing ministry so when we're in college, we are both being discipled. I would meet with Kathy. She'd go through an hour with me of like, here's your stuff and now I want you to give it away. So then I'd meet with my person that week and I'd just do the exact same thing that Kathy walked me through and then we get married, then we're in ministry. It's so fun and then we have children. And suddenly Dave is out doing all his things and I'm by myself in my home.

Dave Wilson: And I get home, she's mad at me.

Ann Wilson: And I'm like, what am I what am I

Luke Middendorf: Yeah, cuz I've been out. We've never been there. So sorry sorry about that.

Dave Wilson: I know, I heard uh

Ann Wilson: I don't even know who I am at this point and then I start putting the pressure on Dave like you're not making me happy. You're not home enough. You're not talking to me. Not even thinking of like he can't meet all of my needs. Jesus can but I also need people.

Dave Wilson: Okay, so you've been there.

Ann Wilson: Maybe perhaps.

Dave Wilson: Let's let's hear about it.

Ann Wilson: Did you experience that too?

Kristina Middendorf: Oh, 100 I had so much resentment and bitterness towards him in our early years of having kids.

Luke Middendorf: When we had our first and then our second kid, in a lot of ways our professional life and ministry was taking off. There was more opportunities, more time to be spent working. We were working with athletes and coaches and it was the time of my life. Our team was growing. There was just a lot of fruitfulness and yet at home it was very chaotic and we didn't really know what to do because we weren't giving people access to our life. It was so busy. Our second kid was dealing with some health issues and it was difficult for us just to go day to day in a lot of ways and our marriage was suffering.

Kristina Middendorf: Mhm.

Luke Middendorf: One good thing we did going off of what you said Dave is we started to build a circle of people through our church. We joined a small group with some other married couples. A couple of them were in ministry as well and that was a good first step where things really started to change was when one of those couples began to spend time in our home and we began to spend time in their home. We learned so much from them, not just by the things they taught us but their willingness to speak truth and grace into our lives.

Kristina Middendorf: Our small group was going out to this like small theater to see this show and we'd had dinner all together at a restaurant and we were driving from the restaurant to the theater and I was about to get in the car with Luke and my friend Sam said, no, no, no, you're coming with me. Luke can go with her husband and I was like, oh fun, girl time, you know. She just cut right through it in the car and she said, Christina, I love you and this is in love but you are bitter and resentful towards your husband and I it is a pattern but we've seen it for some time.

I'd never never in my life had someone be that direct with me before.

Ann Wilson: Did you cry? What did you

Kristina Middendorf: My initial response was I was mad and then defensive. Like you

Luke Middendorf: Like I'm not bitter and defensive.

Kristina Middendorf: You don't know what I'm living.

Luke Middendorf: You don't know what I'm living.

Dave Wilson: Yeah.

Kristina Middendorf: Why I'm bitter and defensive. You have no idea. So that's like the 10 minute drive to the show and we're sitting through the show and then my heart softens, right? And now I feel the the shame, the sadness, the conviction and so then the drive home we're separate again in cars and we both park on our street. We're in the car for hours parked on our street and I was weeping. I felt caught. I knew what she was saying was 100% true. There was also a part of me wanting to know what is he saying to my imperfect because he is not a saint in this, right?

He is not a saint but it it was my problem like I was the majority was my problem.

Dave Wilson: Guess what? We all want to know. A mirror was held up to you.

Luke Middendorf: Yes.

Kristina Middendorf: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: I don't like those mirrors.

Dave Wilson: They were what was he saying to you?

Luke Middendorf: He didn't say anything the first part of the drive which is very typical of guys. We probably caught up about the sports game or the show we were going to see but the second drive when we went from the theater back to our house is when he turned towards me. He showed up the mirror to me in the way I was prioritizing ministry

Dave Wilson: Mhm.

Luke Middendorf: and work over my spouse and seeing Christina has real needs and you need to shift your time, your attention and your emotion towards her in the season and really atone to where she is at and prioritize her as God's gift to you. Even more so, what could you do to set her up well to grow in this season?

Dave Wilson: Mhm.

Kristina Middendorf: And that was a hard choice for you to make because home was unpleasant. I'm negative. I'm cranky. I'm not sleeping well. The kids are little. I'm resentful and he could go on campus and he was the guy. He was beloved. He'd get the accolades and the attention. No one had issues with him there. I needed to soften my heart towards him but for him to move towards me when I am pokey and spiky and all my bitterness is out there. Like who wants to lean in and touch a cactus, right? Nobody nobody does.

Dave Wilson: So after that conversation, was there like some major change?

Kristina Middendorf: It wasn't just one conversation. They committed to showing up for us, walking with us, spending time the four of us together saying how's it going a week later? How's it going a month later?

Luke Middendorf: I think we had a choice to make though. We could have said thanks for what you shared but we're out. We don't we don't want that. Like we'll figure this out on our own because it's not always fun to look in the mirror when you haven't looked in a while

Dave Wilson: Yeah. Totally.

Luke Middendorf: and yet the commitment we made is we said we need to lean in actually with each of these people individually, her with her friend, my with this guy and also as a couple.

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Luke Middendorf: And we didn't know what that would look like because we had zero extra time so we have to get creative in this season while our kids are young. I don't think they were even school age yet or maybe.

Kristina Middendorf: They would come over during the day and Brooks was at preschool and our older ones are in school.

Luke Middendorf: During the day sometimes.

Ann Wilson: And if you're listening and if you have kids in preschool or haven't started school, I just want to remind you this is the hardest season of your life.

Kristina Middendorf: Yes.

Ann Wilson: And God didn't

Dave Wilson: It's going to get better.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, it will get better but he doesn't want you to do it alone. Proverbs 27:6 it says the wounds of a friend are trustworthy.

Kristina Middendorf: Yes.

Ann Wilson: But the kisses of an enemy are excessive.

Luke Middendorf: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: Those were wounds at the time. Like those were some hard truths but boy, those were trustworthy and they helped change you guys.

Kristina Middendorf: Yep.

Dave Wilson: And actually you know, I don't obviously don't know the couple but that took courage.

Ann Wilson: Oh.

Dave Wilson: Cuz sometimes you're afraid to say the hard thing and also on the other side took humility for you guys to hear it and say it's true. I need to own that and make changes cuz I've said things like that sometimes and it does not go well.

Ann Wilson: You you lose the relationship.

Dave Wilson: You lose they you know, they're done with you.

Kristina Middendorf: Yeah. They knew like and we all have our circles of influence, right? Our sphere of people we know. We have a responsibility as believers to steward that and so I I really believe they felt before the Lord like it was an obedience issue for them to notice a sin pattern in people they loved and say we need to point that out. It would have been disobedience for them to say we'll just let that go. We'll let it We'll pray for them. We'll just hope it gets okay because we don't want to lose the relationship and because they took the risk, it for sure has helped me have courage to lean in with other people because I saw them do it well.

She didn't beat around the bush but she was kind and gracious. She was willing to share their own story. It wasn't uh pointing the finger, shaming. It was uh a me too and I'm I'm really sad and we're nervous for you guys and but it was it it was serious. I just remember feeling the weight of like this is a a moment where either we lean in together or the separation just gets bigger.

Dave Wilson: So you've talked about a mentor or somebody speaking and pouring into you. What about cuz you just talked about you being a mentor to somebody else. So this is the Timothy part. The Apostle Paul poured into his disciple Timothy.

Luke Middendorf: Yeah. Right.

Dave Wilson: What's that look like for you guys? So you're that couple now that's speaking life or or correction into somebody else.

Luke Middendorf: We've had the privilege of mentoring and discipling a lot of different people over the years but as Christina said, it's very tempting to keep it in a box to say I'm going to meet with you at this coffee shop or in a locker room in sports ministry or wherever and it's you're you're just talking about the word or you're just talking about one part of their life and there's something that really shifts when you get access into that person's life or they get access into your life. And so even in our previous season before we moved to Florida and moved to Family Life, there were a couple of couples that were in our lives that we thought, what would it look like to actually invite them into our home on a more regular basis?

Ann Wilson: To see the color of your dishes.

Luke Middendorf: To see the color of the dishes and the good and the bad of our own parenting, our own like you know, we've seen growth in our marriage but it's nowhere near perfect. We still have those days where we go back to the patterns of overwork, overprioritizing ministry or resentment and to say actually that might be what they need to see.

Dave Wilson: Mhm.

Luke Middendorf: They don't necessarily need to see our perfection. They need to see us being an example and what we talk about all the time is we're not called to be perfect examples. We are called to be living examples with one of the couples I'm thinking about. We just took the initiative and say, hey, you guys have been asking for time with us. Here's what we can offer you in this next season. Why don't you come over to our house once a month, I think it was and the floor is yours. You can ask us questions that you have about parenting your young kids.

You can ask us about ministry or your professional life and we're committed in that hour and a half two hours for you, for your marriage. There wasn't even specific content we went through but for this couple that's exactly what they needed and they they right away took us up on it and for the next year or two, it wasn't every month too, sometimes we missed but that was so good for them, probably even better for us to say they're going to watch us putting our kids to bed, the the ups and the downs of that whole experience and actually learn from watching our lives, not just what we teach them.

Dave Wilson: How would you encourage somebody to find somebody ahead of them that they could reach out to and say, man, I I'd love it if you could pour into me. How would How would you encourage somebody to do that?

Luke Middendorf: There's probably people in your life already that you might not be aware of. The first step really is you have to get involved in your local church. There's a pool of people there and again as you said Ann, they're not perfect. They're probably not people you want to put on the pedestal but they might be just one stage of life ahead of you, one season of life, maybe a few years ahead or decades ahead. There's people that you know already who you could invite into your life or even say, hey, I'd like to see your life and watch how do you make decisions?

How do you think about finances or parenting or grandparenting, any of those things? And so start with the people you already know and be thinking about what's something that I need to grow in in this season or that we need to grow in as a couple that we could ask them to help us. So it's it starts with that posture of humility and saying we need help. Who's already in our life? You don't have to necessarily go online and do a Google search or who are mentors in my community that could be a route but my guess is God has already put some couples or individuals in your life that you could initiate with and say, hey, we need help.

Could you help us in this next season?

Ann Wilson: This is our passion, isn't it?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, discipleship. I hope it's every follower of Christ passion and Luke and Christina, man, I I this is their passion and for them to be leading Family Life, that is a real blessing that that is who we are and where we're going. We're doing the work of Jesus to make disciples through a thing called the family.

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Dave Wilson: Through marriage and family and guess what? They're going to be back with us tomorrow so you don't want to miss it. It gets even richer. See you tomorrow.

Ann Wilson: Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.