Aligning Love with Action: Let’s Chat!

You love your spouse, but are you living like it?

Welcome to the Inspire Marriages podcast, where Jeff and Teresa feels.

And our mission is to help Christian couples strengthen their friendship, grow spiritually together, experience the marriage that God has designed for him.

Teresa, right now we are in the redeemed time arc.

Yes.

And this week we’re talking about alignment.

So we’re saying, we know that you loved your spouse, but are you living like it?

So I think sometimes, Teresa, we make marriage more complicated than it really is.

Didn’t really get a guidebook when we got married, did we?

Because if we were sitting around the table with you and we were just going to talk to you about some of the stuff today, we know that you love each other, and we know you really do, but we want to ask you, is the way you spend your time, does that reflect in your life, does your life get so busy sometimes that things get pushed aside?

And, Oh, you said, okay.

Now if we were sitting around the kitchen table and you would ask us, hey, we love each other.

We really do.

But when life gets so busy for you, what gets pushed aside?

What should we do?

We wouldn’t get out the big whiteboard and start writing on it.

Some guys might.

We wouldn’t say, okay, here are the seven steps.

And.

No, we’d probably get them some.

Coffee or some tea or some water or something.

Don’t overwhelm them.

Right.

Maybe something to eat.

Right.

And because we want to tell you something we understand because we have been there in whatever season life that you’re in, we have been there.

Absolutely.

And I think that’s important because when people hear us talking about being intentional with your marriage, we don’t want anybody to think that we’ve done this perfectly for all these years.

We certainly haven’t.

We’ve had to learn, and we’ve gone through times where we weren’t doing the best things for our marriage all the time.

So we had to make adjustments.

We’ve had times when we’ve been very busy, just like everybody else.

That’s really what we want to talk about today, because I think there’s a big difference between loving your spouse and actually living in a way that reflects that love.

You can love somebody deeply and still get too busy.

Yes, absolutely.

You can love somebody and be distracted.

You can love someone and let other things take priority.

Not because you decided that your marriage wasn’t important anymore.

It’s because this life started happening.

Yes.

It’s not even usually the bad things.

It’s something that I’ve been thinking about sometimes it’s your children, sometimes it’s your job, sometimes it’s church, sometimes it’s helping somebody else, and sometimes it’s things that really do need to be done.

So they’re not necessarily bad things, but if you’re not careful, you can spend all of your time doing good things and still not have much left for each other.

In our.

One of our videos last week, we talked about giving your spouse leftover time.

That really struck a nerve a lot of people.

It had a lot of views.

But I think maybe because a lot of couples, they recognized themselves in one of those seven areas where they gave their spouse leftover time.

And it’s not because they didn’t love each other.

Of course they loved each other.

You would not be listening to a marriage podcast if you didn’t love your spouse.

But because one of those seven things, the seven signs you live in, you’re giving your spouse leftovers.

They thought that’s what we’re doing.

And everybody else gets something from us.

Then we don’t have.

At the end of the day, we don’t have anything to give my spouse.

Or they just get whatever’s left, whatever energy, whatever words I have left, they just get what’s left over.

Sometimes there’s not much left.

No.

That’s really dangerous, Teresa.

Where at the end of the day, really usually pretty much spent.

Right.

And retired.

Really tired.

You talk to people all day or you solve problems all day, answer questions.

You’re taking care of children.

You dealt with things at work.

You’ve been on your phone, you’ve answered emails, you’ve answered texts.

And then you finally sit down with the person you love the most in.

The world and you don’t want to talk anymore.

Especially men.

They use up all their words.

Men often use up all their words before they come home.

They have used up all their words.

They don’t want to talk anymore.

If you don’t have anything left, it doesn’t mean that you don’t love your spouse.

It just means that something has gotten out of alignment.

That’s right.

And alignment can look different in different seasons.

That’s something we really want couples to understand.

Because if you have little children right now, your life isn’t going to look the same as somebody else’s family where their children are grown.

You’re right, Teresa.

If you have a newborn baby, there are going to be some nights when you’re just trying to get some sleep.

Forget date night.

I just want to go to sleep.

Yes.

Take frequent naps.

Right.

Like the baby, and that’s okay.

Maybe you’re taking care of an aging parent.

We many families go to through this.

Or one of you’s had a really demanding season at work.

Or there could be something going on with one of your children.

Sometimes people have a child that needs hospital care or doctor visits more than just an annual checkup.

There’s.

There are things going on with your kids, or it could just be that they have a lot of activities going on.

So those things are real and they definitely use your time.

So we’re not saying every week of your marriage is going to look the same.

It’s just not right.

You cannot ask chat GPT to generate your perfect calendar, a perfectly balanced calendar where everything is just aligned perfectly.

Right.

It doesn’t exist.

Don’t for a minute think that Jeff and Teresa have everything all together, all the time.

Because.

Because we don’t.

We make an adjustment just like everybody else, face seasons just like everybody else.

We face storms like everybody else.

But so we’re not saying that we have it all together.

Exactly.

What we’re, what we’re saying is, does your marriage have an intentional place in your life you’re actually living right now?

Yes.

That’s different.

So your marriage doesn’t need all of your time.

We’re not telling you to quit your job and both of you quit your jobs and sit on the couch all day holding hands, believing God for provision.

No, we’re not.

We’re just going to live on love.

And guess what?

After a while, your electric, your electric company is going to turn off your power.

Your water company is going to just turn off your water.

Your gas company is going to turn off your gas.

Eventually they’re going to throw you out of your house.

They’re going to.

Going to come back by and pick up your cars.

So you can’t just live on love.

Right.

So your marriage can’t have all your time.

You have, you have responsibilities.

Your children have to be raised.

Dishes have to be washed, clothes have to be cleaned, floors have to be mopped, grass has to be mowed, gas got to be put in the cars.

There’s things that have to be done.

So.

So your spouse cannot get 100% of your time, but it needs intentional time.

Theresa, that’s so good.

And I think your spouse needs to know that they matter.

We used to tell kids, or it was taught to parents, kids spell love T I M E time.

Sure.

They know that they’re loved when you spend time with them.

So your spouse needs to know that he or she matters not just because you tell them, but they need to experience it by you spending time together.

Oh, that’s good, Teresa, expound on that.

Tell me about that.

You can say I love you.

And of course each of you should say that to one another.

We should always tell each other that because that is your heart.

But if I tell you I love you and then I never really have time to listen to you, I’m always too busy when you want to talk.

If everything else is interrupting our time together, then you don’t feel love from that, right?

You’re not going to feel like I say I love you, but does she mean it?

You’re going to start to wonder if I’m constantly looking at my phone when you’re trying to tell me something, then at some point my actions are not matching my words.

That’s what we call.

We’re calling that alignment.

That’s right.

So does the way we’re living line up to what we say matters most to us?

And something else?

I think sometimes we only look at how much time something gets.

But the number of minutes doesn’t always mean.

It’s not always the best measurement.

So what do you mean by that?

So let’s say someone spends eight, nine, ten hours of work every day.

I can’t possibly spend eight or nine hours every night talking to my spouse.

Of course you can’t do that.

So that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re just saying because you spent 10 hours at work, you got to spend 10 hours talking to your spouse.

We’re not saying that, but we’re saying that it’s not necessarily who gets the most hours, it’s who gets the best.

Who gets the best attention.

If I’m able to focus at work, give.

Give my work my best attention, I should be able to give my spouse the best attention.

If, Theresa, when you were homeschooling, you had to give that.

Those subjects a lot of attention and a lot of your effort.

And you were able to do that when I came home.

You should.

I should.

You should be able to also focus on me, right?

That’s right.

So what gets your best attention?

What gets your best energy?

What gets your undivided attention?

What gets protected?

Because there are things that we protect.

That’s right.

If we say we got a doctor’s appointment Tuesday at 2 o’, clock, we don’t say, I’ll see if I have time for that.

I don’t know if it’s on the calendar, then we need to show up for it.

If I’m supposed to be at work at 8, I don’t usually say I’ll be at work at 8.

Unless something else comes up.

Oh, no, you’d probably lose your job.

But think about how we protect those type of things.

But then we don’t protect things in our marriage.

So we might say we’ll go on a date tonight if we have.

If nothing else comes up.

Or we’ll talk it later.

We’ll go out next week.

Hey, we’ll spend time together when things finally slow down.

But they don’t slow down, do they?

No, they don’t.

We’ve been waiting for life to slow down for 35 years and hasn’t slowed down yet.

No, it hasn’t happened yet.

Which is good, right?

I don’t think it’s going to slow down.

There’s always something going on.

But I think one of the things that we learned that if something really matters, you just can’t hope that eventually you have time for it.

At some point, you have to protect time for it.

Teresa, that’s so good.

That’s so good.

And that always doesn’t have to mean something big.

I think there’s another thing people sometimes misunderstand.

Intentional time doesn’t always mean you’re going away for the whole weekend.

That’s right.

That’s nice.

But that doesn’t happen all the time, does it?

So we can.

It can be sitting down together and talking.

It can be taking a walk.

It can be praying together.

It can be going out and just getting a cup of coffee.

It can be sitting in the car and talking for a while.

We like to do that.

It could be turning the television off.

Wow, that’s so helpful.

And sometimes it’s just looking at each other.

There’s so much value in looking into each other’s eyes.

We really feel loved when someone looks us in the eye and talks to us sweetly and really listening to each other.

That’s so powerful.

That’s where the whole concept of Kronos and Kairos that we’ve been talking about becomes real.

Paul tells us in Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 15, 16, 17, to redeem the time.

The word time is not chronological time.

It’s not Chronos.

It’s not hours, minutes and seconds.

It’s meaningful moments.

You can spend two hours together and not connect at all.

You can spend 24 hours a day with your spouse, seven days a week, and not connect at all.

Or you could take 20 minutes and connect in ways that really matter.

Yes, it’s not just about the amount of times.

It’s what we were building inside that time, right?

Yes.

All right, Teresa, I’m going to bring up something that may be a little uncomfortable for some people to talk about.

Okay, here we go.

Let’s talk about church and ministry.

Yes.

Because those things are good things.

Now, we’re not against the church.

We believe every Christian Christians should be planted in the church and should be serving in the church.

Absolutely.

You should be serving in your church in some way.

And most of you are serving in the ministry of helps.

You’re help taking care of from nursery to toddlers to preschool to first few grades to middle school to high school, youth, seniors, singles, sound, worship, parking lot, so many greeting, cleaning, ushering.

There’s so security.

There’s so many different areas to serve.

And.

But.

So we’re not against the church.

We’re not against ministry.

But sometimes even ministry can get out of alignment.

Yes, it can.

Especially if you really care about people.

So there’s always going to be somebody who needs something.

There’s going to be someone who needs prayer, somebody needs help, somebody needs to talk.

There’s going to be somebody who needs.

There’s something that needs to be done at church.

And those are good things.

But your spouse shouldn’t always be the person who gets told.

You’ll understand, because I need to do this over here.

And the thing is, they probably will understand.

That’s right.

What almost makes it dangerous?

Yes.

Yes.

We assume that the people closest to us will understand.

They know I love them and they know I’m busy.

But they should know this other person needs me.

And they probably do know that.

But understanding doesn’t mean they don’t need you too.

Exactly.

We can’t spend our lives helping others, everybody else’s family, and neglect the one that God gave us.

That’s right.

That’s right.

And I don’t think God asks us to do that.

He’s always.

The word tells us that God is of course the most important relationship, but right after that, it’s marriage and the family.

Another thing about alignment is that every yes is also a no.

That’s true.

So our time is limited.

You only have so many hours in a week.

You cannot generate more time.

So when you commit to spend time, we say a yes.

That means you’re spending time.

When you say yes to something to A, that means you don’t.

You can’t say yes to B.

It’s a no to be right?

Yes.

So if I say yes to something, that means I’ve given it time that can’t be given somewhere else.

And sometimes that’s absolutely the right decision.

That is, yes, you are doing the right thing.

That, yes, you said, is the absolute right thing that needs to be done.

It’s the right decision, but we need to be aware of it because some of us are really good at saying yes.

Yeah, saying yes to almost everything, especially if you don’t want to disappoint people.

And who gets disappointed?

Your spouse because they’re safe.

You don’t.

Yes, we assume that.

Right.

But it doesn’t mean it’s causing some harm to your relationship.

You’re careful.

You would not cancel on somebody else if you had a lunch date with somebody.

You wouldn’t cancel it if you had a doctor’s appointment, you’re not going to cancel it.

If you’re supposed to be at work at 8 o’ clock in the morning, you’re not going to say, well, if I feel like it, I’ll be there at 8 o’.

Clock.

No, you’ll be there at 8 o’.

Clock.

But with our spouse, we’ll cancel our date night.

You wouldn’t tell somebody else?

No, sorry.

I just don’t feel like talking tonight.

But sometimes we act like that at home.

Now, we’re not saying these things to make anybody, to condemn anybody.

This is not a condemning podcast where we are strive.

We strive to be an encouraging podcast.

Absolutely.

We’re saying pay attention to what you’re protecting because what you protect usually tells you something about what carries weight.

Yes, that’s so true.

And I think couples need to talk about this too, together.

Just don’t be writing down a list of everything you think your spouse is spending too much time on.

This is not about that.

It’s talking about these things together so that you’re not accusing each other.

That’s important.

We’re not.

Don’t listen to this and say, see, See, See, that’s you.

Oh, no.

Oh, my goodness, Chris, I knew we were listening to this for a reason.

No, no, that’s not the point.

Each person needs to look at themselves first.

What am I doing with my time?

Where am I distracted?

Where have I gotten out of alignment?

Then we can talk together.

We kind of switch places.

That’s okay.

That’s okay.

Go ahead.

So that’s actually consistent with this framework that we’ve been teaching about.

Jeff.

It’s awareness first and not blame.

Don’t.

I’m not going to take the marriage audit so I can blame Teresa to find out where all the places that she’s wasting her time.

She spend time on this, not spending time on this.

I’m not getting this from her.

I’m not getting that.

No, thank you.

It’s not.

You’re not auditing.

You’re.

You’re not.

You’re not an IRS agent auditing the taxpayer.

It’s a self audit.

Right?

She’s not doing it so she can audit me.

We’re looking at it ourselves and then looking at it together in our marriage.

That’s so good.

So, Teresa, what if someone’s listening right now and they say, wow, we are out of alignment?

What should we tell them?

First of all, I would tell them not to be discouraged.

This is something that everybody needs help with, because becoming aware of something is a gift that is a blessing.

We can become aware so we won’t just continue these patterns endlessly.

Right.

You can’t change something that you don’t recognize.

So when the Lord shows us an area where something needs to change, we might tend to feel bad about it at first, but really, that’s not the purpose.

The purpose is restoration.

God is always revealing things to you for restoration.

He wants us to become more like Jesus.

He wants our marriage to become more like Christ in the church.

Right.

So he’s telling us these things so we can grow.

It’s becoming more of what God has called us to be.

Ooh, that’s so good.

Because remember, we’re talking about the redeemed of time arc.

Time becomes patterns.

Patterns establish direction.

Direction eventually produces an outcome.

But arc doesn’t stop there, does it, Teresa?

No.

There’s redemption.

Yes, redemption.

That’s why we call this the redeemed time arc.

If you look at your marriage and say, we’ve been doing this for five years, that doesn’t mean that it’s too late.

No, absolutely not.

Now, you can’t go back and recover those five years, but you can begin building something different today.

That’s right.

And one intentional moment can make the difference.

I want to talk a little bit about what God says.

He will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.

Talk about in Joel, chapter two and say that you made bad decisions or you haven’t spent your time wisely and you’re not where you need to be.

The great thing about God’s redemption, as soon as you make that.

That adjustment.

Yes.

Boom, you are right back where God continue to be all along.

It’s amazing.

Not lost anything.

God’s redemption.

You don’t lose anything.

Exactly.

You don’t lose anything.

God restores the years that the locusts have eaten.

It’s one intentional moment.

It’s one conversation.

It’s one prayer.

It’s one decision to put the phone down.

Yes.

It’s one evening where you say, we’re going to just sit here and talk.

That’s how patterns begin changing, Teresa.

Yes.

Yes.

And we also need to give each other grace.

This is going to take some time to make, recognize these patterns and make adjustments.

There’s going to be weeks where things are not going to go well.

We might say, okay, we plan to do these things and make these changes, but everything is not always going to go according to the plan.

Absolutely.

Someone could get sick or something happens at work for you, or there can be an emergency that you have.

You as a husband and wife or your family have to deal with.

Your kids are going to need things that come up you may not have known about before.

We all can say, this life happens.

Right.

So healthy alignment doesn’t mean that every week is perfect.

Oh, that’s really important.

What we’re looking for is direction, not perfection.

Theresa.

Yes, yes.

One crazy week isn’t necessarily a problem.

Right.

But when every week becomes a crazy.

Week, then that’s becoming a pattern.

That’s right.

And that’s when we have to stop and say, okay, this isn’t a temporary interruption anymore.

This has become how we’re living.

So if you’re sitting here with us at our kitchen table right now, and I think there’s one question Teresa and I would like you to take home, if you.

If we were sitting with you at our kitchen table, and we would ask you to ask each other this one question, does the way we’re spending our time reflecting what we say matters to us,.

That’s such a good conversation to have.

So you don’t want to try to start fixing everything right at the start here.

Just talk.

These are things you may not have been aware of at all before.

So it’s going to take some time asking each other questions like where are we doing well?

Where do we feel connected and what’s been working for us.

And then you can talk about maybe the not as positive things, like where have things gotten a bit out of alignment?

Oh, I like how you started with what’s working already.

Yes.

Because there’s probably a lot that is working that’s important.

So we’re not asking you to look at your marriage to try to find out everything that’s wrong with it.

No, no.

Let’s celebrate what’s right.

Absolutely.

You might say, you know what we actually do a pretty good job of talking in the morning.

Oh, we have been praying together consistently or Friday nights have become really important to us.

Recognize and celebrate those things.

Yes.

And protect them.

That’s alignment too.

Not only discovering the things that need to change, but.

But recognize what already carries value and saying.

And then maybe identify one place where what you’re doing doesn’t really match what you say matters.

Don’t try to take on 10 things, just one.

That’s good because next week we’re going to talk about adjustment.

So when we come aware now we’re looking at alignment, then we’re going to ask what needs to change.

I think this is where couples sometimes make a mistake.

They recognize a problem and immediately change their entire lives.

You know how everyone has the New Year’s resolution?

Oh, yes, yes.

At some fictitious random point of the year happened to be January 1st.

I’m going to make changes to my life.

You can make those changes to your life at any time.

But no, January 1st, that day I’m going to start my diet.

I’m not going to start it on November 5th when I got to weird and my diet is out of alignment.

I want wait until January 1st and then I know I’m going to change my diet on that day.

No.

Is this what couples, they really make a mistake because New Year resolutions don’t last.

They last about three days.

Yes, exactly.

You’re like, oh, we’re going to get up every morning and we’re going to give about 4 o’ clock and we’re going to exercise and then we’re going to pray an hour.

And they were going to have a date night every Tuesday.

And then no more phones after 6 o’ clock will be turned off.

And then Thursday comes and you’re exhausted and you’re exhausted and the whole thing is over.

No, we don’t want to go to extremes, do we?

No, it’s small directional changes.

Yes, that’s what, that’s where we’re headed.

So, Teresa, what would you say to the husband and wife listening who really does love their spouse, but today they realize I haven’t been living like they’re as important to me as they really are.

What would you say to them?

Well, first I would say don’t run.

From what you’re seeing, it might be a little shocking, it might be surprising, but don’t get into condemning yourself over this.

Thank God that you are both seeing this.

And then tell your spouse, maybe you can say something like this, I love you and I’ve realized lately that my time hasn’t reflected how important you are to me.

And I really want that to change.

So you don’t have to have the whole plan yet.

Sometimes just saying that can mean so much.

You’re in this together, right?

You’re seeing each other again.

You’re going to sit down and talk about this.

You’re spending time together.

You’re giving each other your attention.

And now you’re inviting God into this process.

We cannot overestimate or overemphasize how important it is to invite God into your process.

That’s right, it is.

We can’t exaggerate, can you, Teresa, how important God is?

Exactly.

And what you said is beautiful, Teresa.

And that’s where we’re going to leave our conversation today.

Your spouse doesn’t need every minute that you have, but they should experience that.

They matter.

It’s not only through what you say.

It’s also through your attention.

It’s through your presence.

It’s through the things you protect and through the time you intentionally invest.

And if today, if you realize that something is out of alignment, that’s not the end of the story.

That’s just the beginning of redemption.

Because time is not redeemed by how much you have.

It’s redeemed by what you intentionally build within it.

That’s right.

And remember, God designed husband and wife to be friends for life.