Focus on the Family

Taylor: Taylor loves listening every day because we give him ideas, tips, and resources to improve his marriage. I like giving back to Focus on the Family because Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. Focus has served me tremendously. I just felt it on my heart that I needed to give back.

Jim Daly: I'm Jim Daly. Let's transform our nation one family at a time with your monthly pledge at focusonthefamily.com/families.

John Fuller: The following program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is made possible by the heartfelt support of listeners like you. This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

Jason Benham: God transformed my heart, and He can do that to anybody. There are probably some people listening right now that think they can never do that for their husband or wife. Do it. When the essential element of love is sacrifice and you sacrifice, God, your Father, who is also your father-in-law, will bring the transformation that's needed in your heart, your mind, and your life. He'll transform your relationship.

John Fuller: Jason and Tori Benham are back with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. We're so glad you've joined us.

Jim Daly: John, so often the fun, kind of what seems to be lighthearted conversations end up being the most powerful. I felt like that last time. It was fun. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it through the app or the website. You can get that program. It just had so many nuggets in it. They were crisp and right to the point and wrapped in humor, which I think helps it to stick in our heads. At least for me, that helps.

John Fuller: Well, I've been married 40-plus years. You're approaching 40 years, and we can still drink in this wisdom because it's applicable to anybody in marriage.

Jim Daly: If anything, I felt like I'm halfway there. But that's the point. We want to help you have the best marriage you can have in Christ. That's the goal. So often, people will write to us and say we make an idol out of family. Well, we are a family ministry. We know that there are other ways to express your love to the Lord and live this life.

We're speaking to won-to-be married couples and married couples and all the seasons of that expression, whether it's death of a spouse or divorce or whatever may happen, and then all the parenting along the way. This is our mission. We're going to talk about this in that context. Our guests did such a great job bringing the right things to think about in marriage.

John Fuller: Right. While this is a lighter show, there are people with serious issues, and just this quick reminder that we've got so many resources for you if you're struggling. Just give us a call at 800-A-FAMILY. Jason and Tori do a lot. They're podcasters, authors, and speakers. They've written a terrific book called *Marriage A to Z: 30 Days to Relational Transformation*. Jason and Tori, welcome back.

Jason Benham: It's good to be with you guys again.

Tori Benham: It was fun last time. I don't know if you enjoyed it. You were sharing all your raw stories of how you failed.

Jim Daly: I felt like what we were sharing is really going to help you with Jean. I think that came through loud and clear. I made lots of notes, which I hope you are as well. Let's go to the other easy letter of the alphabet: Q. So we've covered X and Z and Q.

Jason Benham: I don't even remember what Q is.

Tori Benham: What is Q? Quilting. Oh, don't quit. Right?

Jason Benham: Quilting. I thought it was quilting. No, I'm kidding. I was going to say, Jason, what a good husband you are. You're into quilting with Tori. But it's quitting. Quit quitting.

Tori Benham: Quit quitting.

Jason Benham: It is very obvious, but I think that it says a lot about your commitment. There does come a point where your emotions aren't lining up with what you want them to. Maybe you said the wrong thing and your spouse, and it is just there's nothing that you can do in that moment to make things better except refuse to quit.

I'm not going to use the D-word. We're just not going to quit. That's it. I'm just going to continue moving forward. Yeah, we might need some space. We might need some of that, but I'm not quitting on you, and I know you're not quitting on me. Once you get to that point, I'm telling you, just that brings security in a relationship.

Jim Daly: Let me back the truck up a little bit though because I think it's important for people listening and viewing where they may be. The well is dry. That's where they're at. They can't imagine that this well will ever fill with fresh water again, meaning the love in their relationship.

Speak to that person in that moment where they're just realizing I don't know that we have enough together to continue. Now, as Christians, I know you guys would jump out and go, "What are you talking about?" I'm just trying to position this to say that couples, both in the church and outside the church, will feel like the well is dry.

Jason Benham: I've come to the end of my rope, and there's nothing there incentivizing me to stick with it. How do we need to look at that differently in that moment? I love that question because I see it all through scripture where one of the first things that they would do when they went into a new place was to dig a well. You have to have a well.

Then when we see Jesus before when He announced essentially that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, the first person it's to a woman that He meets at a well. It's like the well is so incredibly important. That's why I harken back to an analogy we used earlier about being a fountain and not a drain. You have to tap into that well. You have to tap into the source.

You have to give God the credit that He is powerful enough to transform anything. He brings dead things to life. You need to claim that over yourself, and you need to claim that over your spouse and over your relationship. You bring God, the author of life, in. Even look in the book of Ezekiel where God told him to prophesy to the bones. These were dead bones.

They were completely dried, which means they'd been dead for a long time. He prophesied to them and they woke up and they started rattling. Then He's like, "Now prophesy to the breath." He breathes life into those bones, and then they arose a great army. A great army, they're on mission. An army has a mission.

I think oftentimes when you're at the bottom of your rope and you feel like the well is dry, oftentimes it is because you guys have lost your sense of mission as a couple. It's like, "Why did God put us together in the first place?" It's certainly not to sit here and argue back and forth. The more you focus on trying to get along, the more you're probably going to start arguing. What you need to do is stop focusing on you, stop focusing on your relationship, and get out there and start focusing on helping other people. You embrace each other's strengths and even your weaknesses to be able to do that. Watch how the Lord comes in and rewards you. Now of a sudden that well's not dry; it's overflowing.

Jim Daly: Tori, in that regard, you mention in this section of not quitting the marital vows and the importance of that. What do you want to remind us about that?

Tori Benham: I think that hopelessness is such a killer in marriage. I think that's something that I recognized probably midway into our marriage. I remember there being a season where I was feeling just kind of low. I think it was during the winter season and I just was feeling not myself and some anxiety. I was just going to the Lord and I was like, "What's going on inside of me that I am struggling so much?"

The Lord gave me a dream and in the dream, it was the most hopeless situation. It wouldn't even make sense to you if I told you the dream, but it was very hopeless and I woke up and I looked at the clock and I still thought that this thing had happened. Then I realized it was a dream and that it wasn't real. In that moment, this overwhelming sense of hopelessness dropped because it was just a dream. It was just a nightmare.

I felt hope come over my body and I just felt this breath of fresh air. I felt like the Lord said, "This is what's happening in your life. You are living in hopelessness. You are seeing everything through this lens of hopelessness even in the most silly ways." That day, I remember three different people asked me to do something and I had to say no.

I'm a people pleaser and I had plans that day and I couldn't help these three people that I love so much, but I had other plans and other commitments so I had to say no to them, which is the worst thing for a people pleaser to have to say. I felt that weight of hopelessness. The Lord said, "Do you see? This is how you're operating. You're operating in this weight of hopelessness and it's infiltrating into every area of your life, including your marriage."

I began to just really focus in on that. How am I living a life of hopelessness? Some of those ways were the ways I was thinking about Jason. Some of the ways were the ways I was even thinking about my own kids. Some of the conversations we'd have about our kids, they were hopeless. It was like, "They don't do this, and did you know he did this again and she talked..." It's just this doomsday attitude.

I remember the Lord just really speaking to my heart in that season that I am operating out of a spirit of hopelessness. I began to really turn that around and I began to breathe life into my relationship. I began to look for good in everybody. I began to look for the good in Jason. I began to talk about the good I was seeing in my kids to Jason and the people around me. I began to just kind of have that victory mindset. We talk about a victory mindset in our book *Beauty and Battle*. If we are one with Christ, we're on the winning team. In the end, we win. Let's live like we win. Let's not live like we're victims of hopelessness.

Jason Benham: Can I put a bow on that real quick because trust is a choice? Hope is a feeling. Trust is the choice we make when we're going to trust God no matter what. Hope is the feeling that follows. I think a lot of people don't have hope because they've never truly made the choice to trust. Make the choice. Where you are in your relationship, wherever it is, make that choice that you're going to stick with it, that you're going to trust God as your Father and God as your father-in-law. In time, that feeling's going to follow, the feeling of hope.

Jim Daly: You know, in mentioning that "quit" in this part of the book, you also talk about perhaps it's not going to be divorce, it's going to be apathy. I know committed Christian couples, they may land there, but the marriage is nearly dead. That's what you mean by the apathy. How do we avoid that not to just be business partners and apathetic?

Jason Benham: I think first we have to recognize that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. If you're feeling indifferent toward your spouse, you need to go to your father-in-law. I'm going to keep bringing it back. You need to go to God and ask Him to reignite that passion in your heart.

He did it for me. I think I actually told the story on one of our broadcasts that we did on our first book *Beauty and Battle*, but I'll just give you the cliff notes. That happened to me five years into marriage where that love that was once on fire and just filled with fervency just began to dissipate. I was focusing on building a business and doing all sorts of stuff.

I was praying to the Lord about my business, and God was really blessing it. Then one morning I was up praying and I felt like the Lord said to me, "Why don't you pray as hard about your marriage as you do your business?" I was convicted about that. I started praying. "Okay, Lord, help me and Tori." I just felt a sense of deep conviction that I was not as fully in love with her as I once was.

I felt like the Lord was kind of showing me, "If I have the ability to get you to a ten in marriage on a scale of one to ten, why would you settle for a five or a six? Why even settle for an eight if you can get to a ten?" I felt like that was something that I needed to pray into. Every morning I got down on my knees about 5:30 in the morning beside our bed and I would lay my hands on Tori.

I made sure to leave it above the shoulders. I didn't want her to think I was making an early morning move. I would place my hands on her and pray that God would reignite my passion for her. He did it. I had a crazy dream and I had a dream that she was cheating on me and that I almost literally killed a guy. I woke up just before I punched the guy right in the face.

I looked over at her and she's snoozing over there. She has no idea that she's in love with another man. But in that moment, I was feeling it. I woke her up and was like, "Is somebody talking to you?" I started feeling the feeling of jealousy, which was very real. That's the beauty of a dream is that your body doesn't know if it really happened or not because your brain hasn't fully processed it.

I was feeling all those jealousy emotions. God really woke up my jealousy. After about 20 minutes, I finally calmed down and I got down on my knees next to our bed just like was my habit for the last two weeks, placed my hands on her, and no sooner did I do that than the Lord reminded me of Revelation 2. Remember how He was talking to the church in Ephesus about how you've lost your first love?

I felt like the Lord was like, "You stopped pursuing her. You're now pursuing a career." I'm like, "Well, what do I do?" It's funny how before you get married you know how to pursue your spouse, but then after you get married you kind of forget how. Revelation 2 had the answer. Remember He tells them: remember how far you've fallen, repent, and redo the things you did at first.

Remember, repent, redo. In that moment, I started to remember how much I loved Tori and all the times. Even that day and for the remaining few weeks, I started listening to our old songs that we used to listen to together. It started drumming up emotions in me. I repented for having a marriage that was hovering around a five or a six rather than a ten. I started to redo the things we did at first that caused us to fall in love: writing notes, dancing together to slow country music in the kitchen, maybe a little Garth Brooks, maybe a little George Strait. My heart started to go in that direction. I would say when it feels dead, you need to remember, you need to repent, you need to redo the things that you did at first, and then you watch how God will transform you.

Jim Daly: That is really good, and it's a good awakening when a husband can do that. I'll put it in that context. Tori, let me speak to you again. The woman that's going, "I've kind of done everything I can do." Is it time for the spiritual defibrillator because he's not responsive? He's the kind of guy that might say, "Well, I love you. I told you I loved you when we got married. Do I need to tell you again?" Speak to that woman and with that woman in our little dialogue here if she's in that spot. What can she do? She feels like it's not working. Help me.

Tori Benham: Well, I was that woman. I remember very much being that woman. Like Jason was telling with the story is that he had pursued me so much in our dating years, but then we got married and he started this business and he really, all of his attention went to the business. All of his focus went to that business.

I remember being in the bathroom on the floor crying many, many nights. Just, "God, please turn his heart back to me. Help him to cherish me again." I remember the Lord getting me to a place where He wanted me to have my full dependency on Him. I remember just asking the Lord, begging Him, just turn Jason's heart towards me.

Then He began to show me how to turn my face towards Him, towards God, because my expectations and my desires were all wrapped up in the way that Jason was treating me and the way that Jason was responding to me. The Lord had to do something inside of me to where my full reliance was on Him and that my needs were met through Him.

He began to do that as I began to surrender that to Him. I never stopped asking. I continued to ask God to change Jason's heart towards me, but I surrendered a part of my heart that just longed so much for Jason to meet my needs and I gave it to the Lord and I let Him start meeting those needs. Then in time, the Lord started using Jason to meet those needs, but I knew who it was. I knew who the source was. It wasn't Jason. I knew my source was God Himself and that He was now using Jason to meet those needs. I think that most women that I talk to go through this. This is something very common where there is a period in your relationship where it feels dead. It feels like it's gone somewhere and you remember and all you have is this distant memory of what it once was. It's so hard in those moments, but I think that the Lord can use all of it. I don't think any of it is ever wasted.

John Fuller: Some great insight today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We're talking with Tori and Jason Benham, and we're covering some of the content of their book, which is small but so dense and so full of great insight: *Marriage A to Z: 30 Days to Relational Transformation*. Get a copy of the book when you call us or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: You know, the two common themes I've heard from you during the time we've been talking these last couple of days is really giving it to the Lord, turning toward the Lord, but then adjusting your mindset. You've said that probably ten times. It's so powerful. It seems like it would be so easy and so rational and smart to do something like that. Why is it so hard? It is like a gutter we're in and we just can't emotionally get out of that. We feel like we're saying the right things, but we're not truly believing them deep down. You've got to make that effort. You've got to make that connection. Turn to the Lord and then ask Him to engage in the situation and begin to do the things that only you can control. One of them is not your husband. You can't control him, and us husbands can't control our wives.

Tori Benham: Our thoughts are so tricky. We talk about in *Beauty and Battle* the neuroscience behind our thoughts. The way that we think, the thoughts that we think over and over again, they create neural pathways in our minds and it gets us on a path that we continue on. If you have a thought and then you think it again the next day, that groove actually shows this. There's a groove in your head that gets deeper and deeper. It gets more easily accessible the next time.

Jim Daly: So when you say there's a hole in your head, it's true?

Tori Benham: It's actually true. It's actually true. Yes. But the really good news is that we can rewire our thoughts. We can rewire our brain. It takes effort. It takes recognizing at what foot of the path that we're at. It takes a lot of work, but it is 100% doable. For me, I had these thoughts of Jason that were not moving me towards him. They were actually moving me away from him.

They were making me mad at him. The thoughts that I was thinking of him were not leading me to a path that I wanted to be on. It ultimately was not leading to connection. It was ultimately leading to division in our marriage. When I began to recognize, wait a minute, these thoughts that I'm thinking, they're not leading me where I want to go, so I better start rethinking some of these things.

Jim Daly: Sounds simple but hard to do.

Tori Benham: So hard to do. When I would get to the foot of that path and I would recognize what's going on here, I am at the foot of this path and it's so easy to go down this path, but I know where it's going and that's not where I want to go. I'm not going to think that thought. I'm going to think about things that are good. Think about things that are good and true and lovely and of good report. You have to transform your thinking. You have to change your mind. You have to change your mindset, but you really have to start by knowing where you want to go. For me, it was like, it's so easy to get on this path, but now I know where it's going so I'm not going to go there.

Jim Daly: Let's end with P, which you say is practice presence. You have a powerful story about your mom who died of lung cancer in 2017, I believe. How did that intersect with presence?

Jason Benham: My mom was the most fully present woman that you would ever meet. What we tell couples is the greatest present that you can give to your spouse is your presence. It works with family too. My mom, she came down with pulmonary fibrosis, which is a scarring of the lungs. It's very difficult.

In her final days, they send in the palliative nurses and all of that, and basically they're just trying to give her comfort measures so that she can pass peacefully because there was nothing that we could do. She was only 68 years old. They came in and offered her morphine. At this point, she was really having a hard time breathing. Her oxygen levels were so low.

It was like she was walking on a treadmill trying to breathe through a straw, and we're watching her in pain. She was a nurse though and so she knew that once you start administering the morphine, then you can fall asleep and just pass away that way. We're all like, "Please do that. That's what we want you to do." She's like, "No, I want to be present. I want to be there with all of us."

We had her for another four days. We would all of us would gather around and sing worship, and then she would open her eyes every now and then. You'd see a little tear come out of her like she was experiencing, she was there with us. On the last night, it was my little daughter Allie who was our oldest daughter and she stayed with my mom that night.

I was up there with her all night. I slept on the floor. Allie was sleeping right next to her, and my mom was having a hard time breathing and one of the little bells went off. Allie got up, and my mom had a mask on. Allie moved her mask just a little bit and my mom said, "Coke." She just wanted a Coke. She's in her dying days, she wants a Coke. Let's get her a Coke.

Allie got her some Coke. This is like 2:00 in the morning and I'm laying on the ground and I'm watching this. Allie gets her a Coke and she's drinking it out of a straw, and then Allie pulls it back. Then my mom reaches up and pulls her mask back and says, in broken English, "I love you, Allie." She put her mask right back on, and those were her last words. She died that morning, but not until my little daughter got a chance to be in the presence of her grandmother.

That was the greatest gift. When we were writing this book, I was like, man, my mom, she just was somebody who was fully present. Now, I mean, when you've got your phones and all this kind of stuff, it's really hard to be fully present. I'll never forget eight years ago when my mom was fully present and now my daughter Allie has a story to tell, and I'm telling people this story. I wish I could tell it without crying; it's just not going to happen.

Jim Daly: Better that you do. It does illustrate the connection. What a beautiful gift for your daughter to hear that from her grandmother. That does make me cry.

Tori Benham: And what she taught us was just that you have to fight for presence. Like what Nana taught us was the fight for it. For four days she didn't need to fight. She could have just taken the morphine and gone to sleep and been peaceful and not suffered at all. But she actually wrote on a dry erase board, "Pray that the Lord will give me increased strength to fight," because that was when she lost her voice and she couldn't even say. But she just, she fought for the presence of her family, and those moments were precious to her. They meant something to her, and she suffered through some of the pain so that we could have her presence and that she could have ours.

Jason Benham: And you know, that's exactly what Jesus did on the cross when He was offered that little mix on the sponge and He refused to drink it. It was just a little something that could have numbed the pain and Jesus was like, "I'm going to stay fully present." I got a chance to see that in real life, and it really makes me thankful that our Savior did that and He stayed fully present even in the midst of His pain. In marriage, yes, sometimes it is painful to give your spouse full presence, but when you do that, it's the greatest gift you can ever give to your spouse and when they open it, they're going to get a real treasure.

Jim Daly: You've said it so beautifully and what a story to land on that grabs everybody's emotions. Whether it's your marriage, your parenting, connections with people, this resource is really good. You can apply it in all kinds of ways, but ideally, certainly, in your marriage. *Marriage A to Z: 30 Days to Relational Transformation* is probably one of the easiest ways to start thinking differently and getting the benefit of thinking differently by loving each other and connecting with each other. Thank you both for being with us.

Jason Benham: Thanks for having us.

Tori Benham: Thank you.

Jim Daly: For the listeners, we certainly recommend to get a copy of the Benhams' book. Make a monthly pledge of any amount and we'll put this resource into your hands. What we really need right now are more friends of the family who are willing to become monthly partners with us in ministry. You can do ministry through your giving to Focus on the Family today.

John Fuller: When you do so, you're joining a team of people who are committed to helping marriages and families to thrive. We heard from a man named David who wrote us and told us this: "We're happy to continue supporting Focus on the Family. You are right on in providing practical Christian advice for people living in our world today. God's perspective on economics, marriage, raising a family, and dealing with problems in the world around us is desperately needed."

Jim Daly: Thank you, David, for that endorsement and for your generosity. I hope David's example inspires you to join our support team as well. Here's what your donations are paying for: a pledge of just $15 a month makes it possible for us to put practical biblical resources like books, videos, and more into the hands of six families every year. That's a powerful investment, and I invite you to prayerfully consider what the Lord is calling you to do to help families today.

John Fuller: Of course, while we appreciate monthly pledges, it may be that you're not able to afford one right now. We understand a generous one-time gift also helps and we'll also say thank you for that gift by sending the Benhams' book *Marriage A to Z*. Donate today when you call 800-A-FAMILY or online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Thanks for joining us for today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.

Jim Daly: Is your marriage struggling? Communication breaking down? Trust fading? Conflict that never seems to resolve? There's still hope. Hope Restored marriage intensives by Focus on the Family help couples step away from daily life and focus fully on rebuilding their relationship. Right now, through the marriage investment initiative, Hope Restored is investing $1,000 toward marriage intensives. Visit hoperestored.com/invest.