FamilyLife Today®

Justin Davis: Trisha and I celebrate our 10-year anniversary. The church is turning three years old as well. We had just raised a million dollars to buy the building that we were meeting in. There was just so much momentum and so much belief that God was in this vision.

We go on this cruise to celebrate our 10-year anniversary, and we're just in a really dark place. We had become really good ministry partners and really toxic marriage partners.

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. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: We have Justin and Trisha Davis back on FamilyLife Today. I didn’t know you were on FamilyLife Today before we were the hosts. You guys must be really old.

Justin Davis: That’s true. We claim that now.

Trisha Davis: No, you’re not. Do you remember what year it was?

Justin Davis: It was 2013. We were actually with Dennis Rainey in Arkansas. It’s great to be with you guys in Florida.

Ann Wilson: We think Florida’s pretty nice. We were just talking before we started recording that when we’ve heard your story, we feel like you are us.

Dave Wilson: I literally was watching you on YouTube, and I didn’t know the rest of your story. I just turned the first part on and said to Ann, "This is like our story. We thought marriage would be great, it was terrible, we hated each other, we’re trying to change each other." I’m like, "This is us." And then there are layers that we didn’t know.

Ann Wilson: We feel so much better about ourselves now because you fell down the cliff. So we’re like, they have more stuff than we do, how is this even possible?

Justin Davis: We say that once you get to know the Davises, if you’re not inspired, you’ll just feel better about yourself. That is something we know will happen.

Dave Wilson: We thought we’d start with a fun little question to see if you know each other very well. Justin, you have to tell us what Trisha’s shampoo is, and Trisha, you have to tell us what Justin’s favorite restaurant is.

Justin Davis: Her shampoo is Aveda.

Dave Wilson: Hey, I think that’s yours!

Justin Davis: I was trying to come up with a name driving in. It’s a fancy shampoo that she earns points with.

Trisha Davis: I get really excited when I get my shampoo. That’s why he knows. I’m like, "Shampoo day!"

Ann Wilson: It’s very impressive because you don’t have hair, which means you don’t use that shampoo and you still know what it is.

Dave Wilson: What she’s saying is you’re a better man than me. I have no idea. What’s yours?

Ann Wilson: I use a whole bunch of different stuff.

Dave Wilson: That’s what I thought. They’re all over the shower, everywhere. There’s more than eight bottles. There’s all kinds of stuff.

Ann Wilson: Options open. But you knew, that’s pretty good. Do you know his restaurant?

Trisha Davis: That is hard. I’m going to go with his recent one.

Ann Wilson: Let's do two. What’s his go-to if you’re going to go out and do some good eating, like something good, and then what’s his fast food, something quick?

Trisha Davis: Fast food is definitely Raising Cane’s.

Justin Davis: I may have DoorDashed that to the hotel last night.

Ann Wilson: I feel like I haven’t had much of that. It’s chicken.

Justin Davis: It is chicken. It’s only chicken. I don’t want to be blasphemous against Chick-fil-A. I don’t consider them in the same. Chick-fil-A would be probably better fries, I like the Chick-fil-A fries and better tea, but the chicken strips from Raising Cane’s are a whole other level.

Dave Wilson: Maybe we can get them to sponsor us.

Trisha Davis: Do you want me to share the real your real favorite place that may be slightly embarrassing? He is obsessed with Texas Roadhouse.

Dave Wilson: I love that place too. You want to go tonight?

Justin Davis: My kids make fun of me because I have the app, you can order to go, it's right by our house, I go pick it up. You took Baby Zeke there on Sunday. Our first grandchild went to Texas Roadhouse for the first time. He’s two months old.

Dave Wilson: Isn't that the one with the peanuts?

Justin Davis: Yeah, he’s two months old.

Ann Wilson: Somebody that’s really a foodie, they just go, "He’s not a foodie if it’s Texas Roadhouse," but I’m telling you, that’s one of our favorites.

Justin Davis: It’s not the best place for a steak, but it’s consistent. I can't go to Costco and get a steak. I get a whole meal for $14.99, cooked for me.

Trisha Davis: Something that has been true about our whole entire marriage, it will never change. People have tried to change me as my kids have gotten older, but I am a horrible cook. You put me in a hoarder’s house and I can make it beautiful. I open up the pantry and it’s like crickets.

Dave Wilson: Do you guys eat out a lot?

Justin Davis: We do.

Ann Wilson: Who’s the one who’s the first to say, "Let’s go here," when you say, "Hey, we’re going out tonight," who usually picks?

Justin Davis: That’s only because you say, "I don’t care, just pick something."

Trisha Davis: I’ll say, "Do you want to go—nah, I’m not feeling that. What about—nah, I’m not feeling that." I’m like, "Why don’t you just—where do you want to go?"

I’m a human garbage disposal, I’ll eat anything, so I don’t really. But I do have this weird quirk about me that I don’t like sitting next to the kitchen. It’s a noise thing. Justin and I grew up very low income, so we didn’t grow up even going to fast food. So I don’t know what has happened to me, but I don’t like sitting next to the kitchen. It’s not even about the food, it’s about where I’m sitting.

Dave Wilson: Somehow we transitioned from that to marriage. How did we end up here?

Trisha Davis: Marriage gets weird everybody.

Dave Wilson: You do have this story. Tell our listeners and people watching on YouTube what the story is. Take us through your journey. It’s pretty epic.

Justin Davis: We met in 1993. Trisha and I went to the same Bible college in central Illinois.

Dave Wilson: Were you allowed to date and hold hands at that Bible college?

Justin Davis: It was conservative, but not that conservative. She could wear pants, she didn't have to wear skirts, which was nice. She was a freshman, I was a junior, and I tell people all the time, I loved me, I wanted her to love me.

Dave Wilson: See, that’s why you’re like us, I was the same way.

Justin Davis: It was love at first sight for me. I don’t know why she took so long to catch on. We met and after we fell in love, we fell in love with not just this idea that God would use us in our marriage, but God would use us to change the world through the local church.

Ann Wilson: So you’re both believers. Did you grow up in homes that were Christian homes?

Trisha Davis: The only thing that was the same growing up is we grew up lower income, but I grew up just south of Chicago in a city called Joliet, Illinois. Super diverse. I grew up with crime and gang membership was normal in my high school. It’s very multicultural.

I was in my own bubble and how I grew up in the way that the world works. My parents didn't know Jesus growing up and they had their own really hard story. My mom lost her dad when she was in eighth grade and then her mom died two years later. She was separated from family.

My dad is Hispanic and grew up in a family that was split regionally. His dad left the country and I'm not really sure when he went back. There was a lot of struggle to stay in our homes. There were a lot of things that my family struggled with, but I had no idea.

I felt very loved and secure in my family. I have an older sister, younger brother. All of that was going on, but I grew up very loved and there was a confidence in that love. My dad didn't make it past the eighth grade, so going to college wasn't like, "Yay you." It was like, "What are you doing? Why are you leaving?"

When I met Justin, there was such a cultural shift. I was at this small little Bible college in the middle of nowhere and then I met Justin, who in my mind represented this new culture. I was very defensive because I was so fearful of not knowing how this new world worked. When we fall in love with Jesus, we start a new beginning in our entire life to say we could literally change the world by telling people about Jesus.

Ann Wilson: I love that you both were on that same page.

Justin Davis: When Trisha and I actually started dating, before we started dating, I was doing a weekend youth ministry. I would drive two hours to this little country church and I would go in on Saturday and then we'd do children’s church on Sunday morning and then Sunday school. I would stay and do youth group on Sunday night and then drive back to school.

I would go in and do the lesson and Trisha would do special music. She was a vocalist and so I'm like, we’re a power couple. You can sing, I can preach. That was really how our ministry relationship started to build, just allowing our giftedness and how God had wired us to complement one another.

When we got married in 1995, going on our honeymoon was the second vacation that either of us had ever been on. That’s how poor we were. Just talking about restaurants, the only time I ever remember sitting down at a restaurant growing up was after a funeral.

Trisha Davis: Sizzler! I only remember Sizzler.

Justin Davis: It was one of those things where having a college degree and getting a full-time salary was new. My dad was a machinist, he worked on an hourly basis my whole life, and so we always struggled financially. We were always borrowing money from my grandma. We moved 17 times from the time I was in kindergarten until I graduated high school.

There was such an insecurity and such a feeling of scarcity that I just constantly had. Going into youth ministry, making the big bucks really helped solve that. We had this vision that God was going to use us to change the world. I think we had a belief that if we just love God and love each other, life's going to go up and to the right.

We spent the first seven years of our marriage in youth ministry and then felt like God had laid on our heart this vision to plant a church for people who didn't go to church. I was 28 at the time, we had two kids at the time, and Trisha just found out that she was pregnant with our third child.

We had no idea how to start a church, and so we just sold everything that we owned. We had a family that had paid our deposit and our first three months' rent at this apartment complex. We had $5,000 to our name, which means we didn't own a lot of stuff.

Trisha Davis: It sounds kind of sad, but what our kids remember about us moving into this apartment is we put them in the master bedroom and it had a garden tub. They had never seen a garden tub before, so they thought that we had moved to this magical place because it had a pool in the bathroom. They thought they were the richest kids.

Even our kids in this process that seems like we were giving up so much in our minds, and I think for you guys as well, this season when we were planting, culturally it was completely different. We didn't have social media. Our friends who were planting a church in another city or state could have 500 people and you had no idea.

When you had 50 people and you had 25 last week, it was easy to find wins within your community and feel whole in it. Back then, 80% of church plants failed. The fact that our church was thriving was an amazing experience. It was hard work, but it was probably the happiest we had ever been in ministry. But that didn't equate into a healthy marriage. That threw us. It didn't make sense to the formula that Bible college taught us that if you love God and you have a good ministry, then having good ministry will give you everything else relationally, and that wasn't true.

Justin Davis: Just the pressure of church planting and pastoring, my character was not as developed as my giftedness. I spent a lot of time reading leadership books and trying to grow in my skills and abilities, but I never really took the time to develop a deeper character. As the ministry grew and the pressure grew, there began to be cracks in the foundation of my faith and then cracks in our relationship that began to rise to the surface.

Ann Wilson: That right there, that's a big deal. Not only in ministry but in life, because you get married a lot of times, you're struggling, you have kids, you're exhausted, you're trying to make money for your families. That whole thing of your character, who thinks about that? You're going to church, whether you're in ministry or not. I don't think we even had that thought about character back in the day. We love Jesus, we're going to serve Him. I don't know about my character or my past trauma or any of that.

Dave Wilson: What you described is even the current church. You get a gifted leader or two, you have a good band, good vocalist, and you can grow a church. I hate to say that, but I saw it happen. Character, obviously, is really important, but to the average church attender, if they like the sermon and they feel like it was a good day, they're not asking too many questions about the character of the leader. It's so sad, which is true in marriage as well.

Justin Davis: It was little things, exaggeration or just a feeling of inadequacy that I would project confidence or project that things were better than they really were. It wasn't malicious deception. It was little things that were either kept from Trish or from the board or from the elders.

There was a belief that if Trish really knew me, she wouldn't love me. So I can't really share the real parts or the real struggles that I'm going through because I'm trying to protect her. There was a belief that I was actually helping our relationship by not being fully honest or fully known.

The word intimacy means to be fully known and anytime we compromise truth in a relationship, we place a lid on the amount of intimacy that relationship is capable of experiencing. I did the same thing in my relationship with God. I would compartmentalize my life even as a pastor and I would think I just need to read the Bible more, I just need to pray more.

I used spiritual disciplines almost as Tylenol to treat the symptoms of the issues that I had rather than allowing God to say, "Search my heart and know me." I was looking at the fruit rather than the root of some of the things that I was struggling with.

Trish and I celebrate our 10-year anniversary. The church is turning three years old as well. We had just gone through a capital campaign, this is 2005. We had just raised a million dollars to buy the building that we were meeting in. The church was running about 700 people at the time, average age was about 28.

Just so much momentum and so much belief that God was in this vision. We go on this cruise to celebrate our 10-year anniversary, and we’re just in a really dark place. We had become really good ministry partners and really toxic marriage partners.

Trisha Davis: What we've come to recognize even in American culture, we kind of look to the next thing. Back then it was success here and success here. We were tired and we just needed a break. So we just looked to the next milestone or the next achievement, and that was, "Okay, we just need to achieve some rest."

We go on this cruise, we have a great time, and then when we step off the cruise, we step right back into the dysfunctional relational ship cycle.

Ann Wilson: But when you were in the cruise, you got along okay? All of that was fine.

Trisha Davis: We started out, I kind of wanted my own room, but I think part of that too is because our kids were young. No, it was a rough go. This was in 2005, so the internet isn't what it was then. Nobody had access to us.

We were detoxing from ministry as well, but we didn't know it. So we didn't have any of that understanding, we just knew that we were having fun, that we were excited to sleep through the night, and we were excited that nobody needed us and we didn't need to be on a schedule.

Dave Wilson: But you didn't go deep. Did you ever go deep?

Justin Davis: About three months later when everything imploded. We came back from the cruise and stepped right back into the same dysfunctional communication, conflict resolution, all of the things that plagued us before. They were now just more intensified because fall is kicking off and we've got to get the thing going.

I came home from church in October of 2005 and Trisha was laying down for an afternoon nap and I said, "Hey, we need to have a conversation." She said, "Okay, about what?" I said, "About us." She said, "Well, what about us?" I just said, "I'm done." She said, "You're done with what?" I said, "I'm done with you. I don't want to be married to you anymore, I don't want to be in ministry anymore. I'm having an affair, it's with your best friend, I want to be with her."

Even 20 plus years later, I wish it was a confession of remorse and I wish it was a confession of repentance. It was just a confession of resignation. I think if you've had any relationship, you know how you can get in this pattern where you give and you give and you give to a relationship and what you think should be given in return isn't reciprocated.

A sense of entitlement begins to live in your heart and that person can never repay you all that you think they owe. That's where I was.

Dave Wilson: And you're blaming the other person.

Justin Davis: She's not going to be the wife I feel like I deserve, and so I'm done.

Dave Wilson: I mean, how did you get to—you just laid a bomb. Kaboom! Our listeners are still like, "Wait, did I hear that?" They're probably rewinding. You guys just were on the cruise, you guys had fun. And you just preached?

Justin Davis: I preached that day. "Healthy Relationships" was the title of the message.

Ann Wilson: Come on. What was it about that day that you said, "Today's the day I just have to say this"?

Justin Davis: This relationship had been going on for a few months and I wasn't going to cover it up anymore. I wasn't going to play the game or the charade anymore.

Trisha Davis: I can't explain it. It's like I knew but I didn't know.

Dave Wilson: You knew something was up.

Trisha Davis: I knew something was up.

Ann Wilson: Did you not want to know?

Trisha Davis: I think there's something on the psychology side of it of what your brain does to protect your heart. I do remember going the day before, I was leading worship and I went and got a brand-new outfit with money we didn't have.

It's weird for what I do for a living, but I'm actually really camera shy. So that's not like me to go, "I'm going to make myself stick out and I'm going to look beautiful." But when I walked in, people were like, "Trish, you look amazing." I was on a mission to make my husband see me. But he was the only one who didn't see me.

I remember going up, we were in the school at this time, and I came to go get on the stage and I saw them talking. Them meaning my best friend and Justin talking. It's like people who get upset with the woman who's been through an abusive relationship, and that wasn't our relationship at that moment, but it's like watching a scary movie and you're like, "Girl, run!" I couldn't put two and two together, but after the service, her husband had and he had confronted Justin. That's kind of when the rails went off.

Dave Wilson: We're ending this one on a cliffhanger, aren't we? There's a lot more to come. I'm excited for you guys to hear the rest. Justin and Trisha will be back with us tomorrow. Again, their book is called *One Choice Away from Change: Break the Cycles That Hurt Your Relationship and Hold You Back*. Justin and Trisha Davis. You can go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the link in the show notes there to get that book. Come back and hear the rest of their story.

Ann Wilson: Before we're done today, I just want to remind our listeners that our vision at FamilyLife is every home a godly home. We need your help to get there. When you become a FamilyLife partner, your monthly support makes that vision actually happen.

Dave Wilson: You'll get access to exclusive updates and events and the chance to join our partners-only online community. But more than that, you're helping change the future of families. So the question is, will you come alongside us and alongside families in need?

Ann Wilson: You can go to FamilyLifeToday.com and read more about it and become a partner. Just click the donate button at the top. Again, you can go to FamilyLifeToday.com. FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.