New Life LIVE

New Life: Welcome to the New Life LIVE podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's Word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.

Have you guys noticed nobody likes it when things end? Unless it's a weekend, and then people are all over that. Hi, it's your friend Brian. Welcome to New Life LIVE. We have made it to the weekend. We've got some great questions coming up on today's show. First, let me introduce the panel. We've got Sherrie Denham-Keffer. She's a doctor of marriage and family therapy. And also here is licensed marriage and family therapist Dr. Jackie McHarris. Dr. Jackie, what's on your mind to start us off?

Jackie McHarris: Prayer. There is the Lord's Prayer in Matthew that gives us a template for how to pray. But growing up, I was taught the Lord's Prayer as the prayer. So for the majority of my life, I would have said I don't know how to pray. I can't pray out loud. I certainly wouldn't want to pray in public.

Then we had a situation in our family where my husband was away. He was gone at war. We were in a battle and he was overseas. I was devastated and my sister-in-law called me. I was really upset by what we were seeing on the news. She said you need to pray for your husband. I said I don't know how to pray. She said it's just talking to God. I will be praying for my brother, but you need to pray for your husband.

So I began to talk to God. That night, I was in the shower, and to this day it's still my favorite place to pray. It's almost instinct. If I'm showering, I'm praying. But that was the first memory that I have of really talking to God and pouring out my soul and asking for him to come back whole and safe and use him here. You might need him, but can you keep him on the planet?

When he came home, that solidified something for me. Every time he left after that, I didn't have any trepidation or fear because God had protected him. I had confidence that God would continue. It was like that prayer covered his entire Marine Corps career.

I want people to know how important prayer is because too often people are getting their information from others. We're educated and that's important and we need good counsel, but go to God. Relationship with God is the most important thing. Your relationship with Jesus matters, and you don't have a relationship with someone you never talk to. How are you going to be in relationship with someone and then you speak to them through the pastor all the time?

I just want to encourage people to look at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter five. Walk through that and see those steps. We reverence God and we give honor to who he is and we talk about our sins and that he's forgiven us, that we will forgive others and make our request and then honor God, all in the name of Jesus. It's a template to help you communicate with God and then wait to hear back because he will speak. For all of us, he speaks differently. If you don't know how God speaks to you, that's your first prayer. God, show me how to hear your voice. You had something, I saw it.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Well, you know what, you just took me back and let me tell you the thing that I love about what you said is you just talked to God like you would talk to any other person. You didn't know how to do that. Blast from the past, I remember my dad praying, "Bless us O Lord for these thy gifts which you're about to receive by thy bounty in Jesus Christ's name, Amen," around the dinner table.

I didn't grow up knowing that I could just talk to God, and I forgot that. So honestly, what Dr. Jackie just said, it's so big and so powerful and actually, it's not hard to just talk, to bring your heart real conversation. Thank you for sharing that.

New Life: This is New Life LIVE. Thanks so much for joining us today on the radio, or on Facebook, or on YouTube. We will be right back.

To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, back to New Life LIVE. Dr. Jackie McHarris would like to come to your house to talk about depression. Well, not literally of course, just figuratively, technologically more like. She's presenting a webinar called Breaking Free From Depression: Tools to Reclaim Your Life. It is happening next week on Thursday, January 15th. You can sign up or get more information right now by texting the word WEBINAR to 28950. That'll also land you a free tip sheet on depression. Again, text the word WEBINAR to 28950. It's happening next Thursday, January 15th with Dr. Jackie McHarris. Be there.

All right, we'll get to some calls in just a moment. First, let me read a question that was submitted online. We love hearing from you guys when you call into the show here, but we know that you can't always call in during this time frame. So we've got a couple of ways that you can reach out to us. You can send us an email or leave us a voicemail and you can find out how to do that at newlife.com/radio. That'll show you all the phone numbers, all the email addresses that you need.

But this one here is from Barbara who writes, "As a grandmother, which parent of my grandsons should I comply with? I have two grandsons. Their mother is my daughter. She has the boys Sunday to Thursday and then the father has them Thursday to Sunday. My daughter has asked me not to interact with my grandsons when they are with their father. I am complying, but it does become difficult when she feels like she wants to withhold the boys from me. A situation happened a while back and even though things are good right now, I am cautious to cross a boundary innocently. When they're with their father, do I need to comply with my daughter's wishes? I would just like your take on it. And would my seeing them affect the custody order?" What do you guys say?

Jackie McHarris: Yes, it would, I think. If you don't comply with your daughter's request, that is going to cause some issue. There's going to need to be a conversation about that. She will most likely feel like you betrayed her and went behind her back. I don't know what the relationship is with the ex-husband, the father of the children. He may be reaching out to grandma and asking her to babysit or things like that and I don't know what the effects of the custody would be for grandma to see or not see. She can only see the kids when the parent who has the kids allows it.

It feels like it's very limiting for the children and maybe even some control tactics. However, we don't know what else has gone on. The daughter may have very good reasons for why she doesn't want mom to interact with the father. So if I'm her, I'm going to respect my daughter's wishes and I'm not going to interfere. But I'm also the type of mom that we're going to need to have a conversation because it doesn't actually make sense to me.

I can agree to do what you've asked me to do and we can still have a conversation so that it makes sense to me because I want to be there and be available and see my grandkids as much as possible. So if their dad is calling and asking me to hang out with them, I want to do that. So tell me why I can't. Tell me how that would hurt you if I did see them, what would that put in jeopardy, just to be curious and to get an understanding and to be able to validate where the daughter is coming from. I want to know, I want to hear you, so I would be curious with the daughter and I would honor her wishes. But I would be encouraging her to make some shifts if there's a problem. If the dad can't be with the kids the entire time, sometimes it's because I don't want him to have the help. I don't want you to watch the kids for him, he needs to figure out how to do this on his own. When that's the case, then there's other things at play and that might not be in the kids' best interest.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Yeah, I just have one line that I want to add simply. I was curious about when you said, "What happens if I innocently cross the line?" And I'm wondering, how could you innocently cross the line unless you cross the line when she's said not to about you contacting your grandsons when they're with their dad? That wouldn't be innocent. That would be like you knowingly did it but wanted it to be innocent.

I know there's sounds like there's a lot of power and control issues going on. Your daughter loves you. She's grown up with you. There's a reason your daughter is saying, "Mom, no-fly zone." I would honor that. I wouldn't push the boundary. I would respect her and her wishes and I would do that. I'd say I want you to get a calendar out and I want you to mark the calendar and I want you to say I'm going to honor her boundary.

In six months, I'm going to reevaluate if I can live with her boundary. Then I would add another three months and say, okay, I did it. I did it for nine months. Wow, I guess I haven't died yet. I'm seeing the boys and I'm honoring my daughter and she seems to be more relaxed with me because I'm respecting her. Sometimes there's family of origin issues too that are coming up. So I vote to respect and practice doing what she's asking you to do.

Jackie McHarris: I agree. I think that the daughter needs you to trust her with this and do as she's asked. If there's been anything in the history where the daughter has felt like she wasn't seen, she wasn't heard, or you didn't respect her boundaries in the past, this would reopen that. This could also be a good time of repair if that is how she felt in her childhood. Your honoring her request now can do a lot to mend some of her hurt from the past and give her a corrective experience.

New Life: Barbara, thanks for submitting your question online at newlife.com/radio, which has the instructions on how you can send us an email or leave us a voicemail. That's if you can't call in when we are here in the studio. But look, we are here in the studio right now. So call in like Michelle who listens to us in Anaheim, I should say watches us in Anaheim on YouTube. Hi, Michelle. Welcome to New Life LIVE.

Michelle: Hi there. I have three adult children, two sons and a daughter. My oldest son is 27, my daughter is the middle child, she's 23, and my youngest is my youngest son, he's 20. Myself and my husband have recently found out through my daughter that she was abused by my oldest son physically and sexually from the age of five to about 15. As a parent, I don't even know where to begin with this. I really don't.

Jackie McHarris: Did the daughter come to you?

Michelle: Yes. She's going through some therapy for some prior issues with a boyfriend and this has recently come to light, like the memories have recently come back to her.

Jackie McHarris: I would start with therapy for you.

Michelle: As a family?

Jackie McHarris: No, for you. I would start with individual therapy for you. Yes, the family is going to need care, but you just found out something devastating and you have to walk through how you're experiencing that, make meaning of this, how you want to talk to your sons, how you want to talk to your daughter about this. Having the support of a counselor to move through this with you, as your daughter is having the support of a counselor, I think is important.

Michelle: Okay.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: How are you doing?

Michelle: Not good. I'm torn between how dare you hurt my child and what did I do to mess up the other child?

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Our hearts are breaking with you, Michelle, because it's just devastating to find out two out of your three kids, there's some sexual violation and sexual acting out that's going on. My first question, and I'm sure you're floating back trying to wonder what was going on. Where were you? What was happening? What was happening in the marriage? Was this a single parent? Was there pornography in the home? Just I'm there's so many questions that I have. But are you married currently with the husband? Okay.

Michelle: Yes. And I believe that me and my husband have been married for 29 years. We got married in our twenties. We were very young parents and we made a lot of mistakes and I would be the first to admit that throughout our relationship it's always been like we've always been about each other versus I don't know how to explain it. It's not that we put our relationship above our kids. I feel that we were there for our kids, but it was always like, what are we fighting about now? And what's going on now? The kids witnessed a lot, a lot of fighting between us.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Okay. So in families, and again, this is why Dr. Jackie said it would be great for you to go in and embark in your own therapy, right? As you're trying to just figure out the landscape. In houses where there's a lot of fear, anger, aggression, scariness, it's not uncommon for kids to seek comfort somewhere. And sometimes that comfort happens in between a sibling set.

Now I'm just know that your daughter from five to 15, that's 10 years, that's such a huge developmental place for her to be sexually violated, sexually acted out upon. He was five years older, right?

Michelle: Three years. Three years apart. She also mentioned he would back in the early days of the internet and stuff you could put your little DVD and play your game. And my son would apparently make her watch porn in order for her to use the computer or her game.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Okay. So do you remember when I asked if there was porn in the house? Did that seem like a weird question for me to ask you?

Michelle: No, not at all because it definitely was. Definitely.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Well, the reason I ask that is there's other situations that have come my way in writing my book *Intimate Deception: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Betrayal*, where I've talked to families where things like this have happened and one child has found pornography at a young age. As a means of trying to find comfort, it's crazy to think that an eight-year-old, your boy, could be titillated by pornography, but they are. And so then what happens is they start seeing these adult behaviors through porn. I hate porn, but they start watching it and then that gets reenacted with someone around. It could be a little girl at school, it could be a sister. Again, he is a victim of pornography and she is a victim of him enacting that out with her. You may have two victims here, one of pornography and one of sexual violation because of her brother, because of the pornography. Does that make sense?

Michelle: Yes, absolutely.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: So and all that can happen right under your nose, right under your nose. So again, I agree with Dr. Jackie, Michelle. Get in with someone who understands it and begin to unpack this as the mom. I hope your husband will enter into the work as well.

Jackie McHarris: Yeah, he's got to be devastated as well.

New Life: Michelle, just another quick thought when we come back here on New Life LIVE. So stay on the phone and we'll talk to you when we come back. Thanks for watching, thanks for listening.

To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, back to New Life LIVE. Let's talk to Michelle for a few more minutes. Are you still with us, Michelle?

Michelle: Yes, I am.

New Life: Okay, so I was just wondering about your oldest son who's now 27. Does he have a family of his own or anything?

Michelle: Yes, he does. He just had a daughter.

Jackie McHarris: Have you had a conversation with him about this yet?

Michelle: No. That's where I just don't even know where to start with this. I just have had conversations about his porn addiction since he was a teenager. We took him to counseling, we took him to pastors, and he would gaslight them all and lie to them and say he was doing great. We've suspected that he's bipolar and we've begged and pleaded for him to get medication and go to a psychiatrist, but with a 27-year-old adult, you can't force them to do anything.

Jackie McHarris: And as Dr. Sherrie said, the porn has harmed him. So even what you're seeing and maybe thinking of as bipolar may be related to his porn addiction.

Michelle: He does have depression. He has depressive episodes where he's just he can't get out of bed for days on end.

Jackie McHarris: Well, and he's got this memory inside of him too and so it's quite possible that it burdens him and now is maybe going to get some freedom. But I definitely believe you guys are going to need some therapy to walk through it. So grateful that your daughter's therapist is walking through it with her and she was able to come and share with you and your husband. What are your thoughts about getting yourself into counseling and maybe your husband, recommending it for him as well?

Michelle: Yes, that's my question. Do I take this all on this therapy myself or with my husband and my daughter, or by myself first and then I just...

Jackie McHarris: So I would recommend individual therapy for you, as well as family therapy and couples therapy. You might not be able to do all of those things at the same time. So I would start with individual therapy and as you get going and you get to where you can start to see your therapist maybe every other week or so, then maybe we can bring in couples therapy and then you and him get on the same page and now maybe we can bring everybody together and do family therapy.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Because the truth is, Michelle, too, we have a daughter-in-law.

Michelle: Oh gosh, yes. I am terrified. She deals with his porn addiction but I have not told her about the recent finding. At the same time, I want to protect my granddaughter.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: But do you know, and all those things are good, you want to protect your granddaughter. I want to applaud that. That's so good because not only is he a porn addict, he has a 10-year history of sexually acting out on his sister, a little girl, right? And all that needs to be unpacked. But that granddaughter is vulnerable. The marriage is vulnerable, their marriage, right? And so maybe here's this couple, right, your son and his wife. She's been trying to deal with the porn addiction as best she can, yet we've got a baby that just came into the world and maybe that marriage needs to be lanced, meaning that daughter-in-law needs some support and help.

We've got here at New Life, we've got the Restore conference. She may really need to have information and hope and help around not just allowing this to continue, right? Especially with this new news. And he needs to get into his own treatment, right, and starting to address his pornography addiction.

Michelle: As far as that's concerned, I believe he needs to go to a treatment center and not just for a weekend or a week. I mean he needs 30 days.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: I agree. Inpatient. Yeah, so there's lots of those out there. There's lots of places that are out there that can begin to address that because I do think, especially because of him acting out with his sister, right? This is deep. And so my mind is blank, I'm trying to think of the place that I would recommend for a longer stay.

Jackie McHarris: Well, I'm sure if we keep you on the line we can help you find a place and some recommendations and a counselor in your area as well.

New Life: So I understand how individual therapy works and couples therapy but like family therapy in this situation, I mean people listening right now might be wondering wait, so the little girl, the 20-year-old, is going to be in the same room with the perpetrator?

Jackie McHarris: Well, my guess is she's been in the same room with him all these years. She's just never told the story and maybe hadn't remembered the story until the trauma she's unpacking revealed it. And so yeah, everybody in the same room with a therapist that can navigate holding space for each member of the family and the family as a whole.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: And you know what, Michelle, many times these inpatients that are sex addiction specific, I want you to go someplace where they've got CSAT, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. It's called a CSAT. In the part of their inpatient, they actually do family therapy as well. And so but don't wait for the inpatient to start your therapy, but there's lots of resources for you.

New Life: Thank you for calling in today to New Life LIVE. Everybody listening and watching, please keep Michelle and her prayers and her little granddaughter in your prayers.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Club New Life supporters who give a monthly donation because they want to continue to offer help and hope in these very, very difficult places. To find out more about Club New Life, you can go to our website newlife.com or call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now if you're new to us, we drop an episode every weekday. We would love it if you would rate or write a review, which helps more people discover help and hope and helps us share wisdom with as many people as possible. Now let's listen to our counselors as they help people walk through life's hardest places.

To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, back to New Life LIVE. As we just heard with caller Michelle, we can't always control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. We've got an online course beginning at the end of this month. It's called Healing is a Choice, where people like Michelle and whoever could benefit from this will be guided step-by-step through 12 powerful weeks of insight, scripture, and support.

Whether your wounds come from loss, betrayal, trauma, disappointment, or all of the above, this course will help you begin again with God and with yourself. You can't change the past, but you can choose to heal. To quote Jesus, "Do you want to be made whole?" If your answer is yes, come to newlife.com to learn more about this course and two others that we're offering beginning January 29th. Now if someone answered no, I don't want to be made whole, what might happen, Jackie?

Jackie McHarris: I would probably laugh because I wouldn't be expecting that. But if someone answered no, they stay in their situation. Sometimes people answer no with their actions even though they say yes with their words. Oh yeah, I want to be well, and what does he say? "Pick up your mat and walk," right? That's what I think of that passage and that scene. I imagine Jesus going, it's in you. You have everything you need inside of you to be well. Are you going to choose it? And I think that sometimes even if people don't verbally say no, they are saying no while at the same time out of their mouth saying yes, I want to be well, I want to get better, I want to change, I want my circumstances to change. But often they aren't willing to do the work that that requires because it can be painful.

New Life: So we would recommend that you sign up for the Healing is a Choice course. It begins at the end of this month because you do want to be made whole. Call us at 1-800-NEW-LIFE or visit newlife.com. The other 12-week courses, by the way, that we're offering are called Lose It For Life and Take Your Life Back. Don't stay stuck. This is the year of unstuckness once and for all. Visit newlife.com for these details about these two courses that are coming up.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: I just want to touch on one thing. Michelle with her son, her gut instincts are you want to get well, pick up your mat and walk. Now when this family, when things start to open up, which they need to, if he's willing to get well, he's going to enter into a deep process. I was looking at online hopequestgroup.org is a it's a 90-day program, faith-based, CSATs on staff, where somebody can go in like him and begin to unpack what has happened and his addiction and not just doing a surface thing but going deeper.

That's important because someone like her son, if he doesn't agree to do that deeper work, I have seen men like him in their sixties continue to act out and minimize it and the damage that is done to their spouses, to kids, to other family members, it just gets bigger and bigger. It's like cancer in a family. So Michelle, you're on the right track about wanting to get him into someplace that is inpatient.

New Life: We often hear that phrase, the dirty old man or something. But in this case, I mean this guy's what, 27 years old. Got to put a stop to this now.

Jackie McHarris: Yeah, so he doesn't grow into that guy.

New Life: We've also got the Every Man's Battle intensive. That begins two weeks from today in Orange County, California. Today's the last day to sign up to get a discount on that. That's a three-day, it's a weekend thing. But like Sherrie mentioned right now, there's the one that she found that's 90 days you said?

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Yeah, faith-based. It's hopequestgroup.org. And then for her daughter-in-law, I mean she might want to attend as we mentioned the Restore conference would be so good for her. That's happening the weekend of March 6th in Dallas, Texas. You can find out about that at newlife.com. And we've also got a resource in the newlife.com store. It's a book that you wrote, you mentioned it right now, *Intimate Deception*. So talk about that book for how how it can benefit Michelle and her daughter-in-law.

Michelle, I think it would be a really good read for you if you want to get it through the New Life store because what that's going to do is unveil the impact of the pornography and the addiction and the sexual acting out on the partner. You as a mom could very much relate to the impact that this is having on you.

I think about your daughter-in-law and how she knows that there's a porn addiction. So often, especially in this younger age that's coming up, I think because porn was so accepted in the digital age, often I talk to gals around her age and they're like, I don't know a guy who's not looking at porn. I look at porn as a female, they'll say that was something that I grew up with. We just kind of looked at it on our phones.

What we don't realize is how that pornography can get infiltrated into our homes and it can begin to create damage. And so this daughter-in-law, I'm assuming the best of her, she probably just doesn't know what to do. And it sounds like her husband, you know her mom's tried. Mom just basically said, I've tried to get him in to help and he says no. And guess what, that's not uncommon.

It's often the wife is the lynchpin, is the one that has to develop healthy boundaries and begin to draw a line in the sand to say no, I am not okay with this. You need to get help. In my book, I have a chapter on boundaries called "No is a Complete Sentence." I think when wives, when there's a porn addiction going on, when we struggle with knowing how to put boundaries down because we're afraid they're going to get mad, we might feel like we need to be their sexualized acting out partner, we have to become more hypersexual to try to keep their attention focused in that direction. We do a lot of things to try to get them to stop. But all those behaviors in trying to get them to stop are not helping them get into their healing. And so boundaries are one of the things that we need to do to draw a line in to get help. And often partners need their I would say 100% of the time, I think betrayed partners need our own help to work through the traumatization that comes, the attachment traumas that come through pornography use or sexual acting out. It does a number on us and it disempowers us. I think 100% of us can do our own work to get empowered and begin to take the bull by the horns and say no more. We often need help to do that. We need a tribe, people that will believe us and support us.

Jackie McHarris: The tribe piece is important because as you said, there's a large community that doesn't see anything wrong with porn, otherwise it wouldn't be as popular as it is. And so if you don't have a tribe that is saying no, this isn't okay, look how this is damaging the family, look how this is affecting us, then you won't feel supported in that and you may not move forward with making the change.

In this day and age, sexual acting out is so minimized for men. The only way that changes is if we talk about it, we get the help and we call it out when we see it and we set those boundaries and say no, this isn't okay and no we're not going to make it easier for you to do that thing that's hurting you. People don't realize how much damage it actually does to the mind and to the way that we relate to one another in relationship. But for a lot of people, it's just a typical thing. It's not that big a deal, it's minimized. We've become so desensitized to that and acts of violence that people just do things willy-nilly and don't think about the consequences. Life is about choices. Choices have consequences and repercussions and we need people to choose healing and not choose stopping. Because stopping is just a stopgap. It's a stop sign. And as soon as the car goes past, you're going to go on and keep moving forward. But healing will change you and change your mind and change your desires and your beliefs.

New Life: And the thing about not just stopping it, but because a lot of guys, and I think we had a call recently from somebody who's thought, once I get married and maybe this is the case with Michelle's son, he's had this addiction, this battle for all these years, so he's going to get married and that's going to cure him. He's not going to have the need for pornography anymore, but that's obviously not the case.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: But I guarantee you, Brian, that his wife doesn't know he sexually acted out on his sister for 10 years. I guarantee you she doesn't know that.

Jackie McHarris: And I know wives who feel burdened by that idea. Oh well, you're my wife and so it's up to you to help me to get over this. Healing is your choice.

New Life: You're listening to New Life LIVE. We'll be right back.

To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, back to New Life LIVE. Your giving to New Life helps provide counseling, workshops, radio programs, and digital resources that meet people where they are, helping them take their next step toward healing and hope. By giving today, you join us in standing beside those who need a hand to hold and a guide to show the way. You can give online at newlife.com or by calling 1-800-NEW-LIFE or text NLM to 28950. You can even write us a check and put it in the mail if you want. We've got the mailing address on our website newlife.com.

So we mentioned earlier that there are several ways that you can get your questions to us, like leaving us a voicemail or sending us an email. Those are great if you can't call in when we're here in the studio. Because if you can call in and talk to either Jackie or Sherrie or whoever's on the panel that day, that's great because sometimes we have follow-up questions that we have for you. But we understand, and that's why we do have the email option, and here's one that we got from Ellen who asks, "What does one flesh mean in marriage? Is one flesh considered two individuals in marriage that work as a team working on the same purpose, or does one flesh mean we become one and then the husband makes all of the decisions? My husband thinks it's that one and that I have to be okay with that." Jackie, what say you?

Jackie McHarris: Wow, that's wild. Let's start with one flesh and that idea in scripture. One flesh happens when we bring two fleshes together. I used to say this is terrible math. Only God can do math where one and one equal one. Then someone said, well, multiply. One times one. Oh, okay, got it. We're still at one. But it's one times one equals one.

So I need a whole person here and a whole person here and we're bringing those two whole people into this new unit, this new relationship. To assume that one of those two people needs to completely vanish in order for the other one to rule is nonsense. That is not scripture. That is not what God is asking for. That's a power play. That's about power and control.

The two becoming one is God's going to use the best of both of us. The idea that God doesn't use women, and yes, men are called to be the head of the household, but if you look in scripture you see women in leadership roles all throughout the Bible. So my husband isn't going to make all the decisions without any input from me. He's going to hear what I have to say. We'll talk about the things we disagree about. Then he's going to decide what he decides and I know I was heard. So it's not just he's making all the decisions and I just need to be okay with it. He's making decisions based on who we are because we have become one.

A woman doesn't lose her identity as a human because she becomes a wife. Unfortunately, too many husbands believe that that is the case and that's not loving your wife. That's not caring for her. That's diminishing her. Sometimes people need to diminish others in order for them to feel powerful. That means you're not even showing up fully as your whole self.

The two becoming one means you take these two whole people, and sometimes we're not whole so you need to get in some couples therapy so we can work on ourselves and then come together and have a whole family unit that is built upon the truth of who we are now. So we're the Harrises. And that includes who I am and who he is and then what we do to build a family.

New Life: Ellen, thank you so much for submitting your question online. It looks like we have time for another phone call. Here's Mary in Los Angeles who listens to us on KKLA. What's your question for us, Mary?

Mary: Hi, thanks so much. My question is what do I do? My accountant wants to borrow $1,000 from me and do not tell his wife or his sister-in-law whom he lives with.

Jackie McHarris: Say no.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Mary, have you heard the word Ponzi scheme before?

Mary: No. Well, yeah, but I don't know what it means. Yeah, I'll look it up.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Okay. So CPAs know a lot about money. And CPAs know a lot about money, about financial fraud, about the law. What is it about this CPA that would you're his client, okay? You're his client. That would violate his role and power as your CPA to ask you for money. I am sure that the CPA boards, the financial boards that govern CPAs, would be very interested in what he's asking you to do right now.

Jackie McHarris: It's got to be an ethical violation.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: It is. It's definitely an ethical violation. And I want to say this to you, Mary my dear. Do you know what? Your CPA has done this before and he may even be doing it for a number of you.

Mary: Yes, ladies, and he's asked me before for bigger numbers.

Sherrie Denham-Keffer: Okay. He doesn't need access to your money anymore. New CPA. And here's the other thing, it's immoral. What do you mean, we're Christian? What do you mean don't tell? I mean not that I would call, but what is that part? Do you see how he's grooming you for more? He is manipulating you. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

I want to invite you to do something very brave and I don't want you to tell him you're doing this. I would like you to go and look at who it is in your area who would be the board that would oversee CPAs. I would like you to make a phone call and I would like you to file, make a file against him. I know, now that's scary, right? Because now you're asking us, do you want to get well? It's like a pick up your mat and walk type of thing. Now you may need some counsel, legal counsel, as you're doing this so that you can protect your funds, right? So that you're not harmed. But this person is a financial con man and he's manipulating you and others and telling you not to tell and he's making money on you and others and he needs to be he needs to lose his license.

Jackie McHarris: In California, it is the California Board of Accountancy. So Google that. I Googled CPA complaints and that popped up. Google that and make that call. The answer is no and you're fired. Just like that. No more conversations. He's had enough access to your mind as well as your money. So glad you called, Mary. Oh my goodness. And that he's asked for larger sums before. Hopefully you didn't give them to him, but you may have and that's why he's coming back for more. Somebody needs to go through and do an audit on this man. Everybody's records, all of his clients' records should be being audited because as you said, he's doing this to someone else. This is how he makes probably the bulk of his income.

New Life: Mary, thank you for your phone call today on New Life LIVE. Everybody listening and watching, please be sure to bookmark our website newlife.com. Check back often to see details on upcoming workshops, webinars, and courses. Of course, can't forget about the courses. Three of them starting later this month. You can also read the latest blogs and watch new videos all designed with your growth in mind. Follow us on social too. A great way to connect with the New Life community. If you're watching us on Facebook or YouTube, yeah, just like us, follow us because we throw out little bits of wisdom every now and then and videos and everything and it's always good for you to share those on your page as well. God bless you guys. We'll see you at church on Sunday and we'll talk to you again here on Monday on New Life LIVE.

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