Season 13 Ep.3 / When Marriage Meets the Fall
Brenda Payne (00:01.955)
Well, it's good to be back again with Alex and Adam. We're continuing our journey through the grand narrative of scripture and pulling that thread of marriage to see how does marriage really show up in all of the Bible? What can we learn from all of the scripture? What can we see from the big plot of God's story about marriage as opposed to cherry picking or looking or just having a few topical verses that oftentimes leave us
I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?
Wanting. Wanting is the only...leaves us wanting. That's all I could think about. Frustrated and just with an incomplete understanding and view. And with that, I think missing a lot of the beauty from beginning to end in what God has to say about marriage. So we've already spoken about prologue and what we've really just said about the prologue is that we acknowledge that there is a wise and loving God who has authored and created marriage. He's the creator.
Alex Kocher (00:34.444)
you
Alex Kocher (00:38.838)
Frightened
Brenda Payne (01:03.305)
the entire universe, but in this series we're also acknowledging that we have this wise, all wise, all loving God who has designed marriage. And then in his design for marriage and creation last episode we talked about how God designed marriage to be good as both an institution and as an experience for us and for our spouses. And today we're going to venture into the fall.
And I think one of the important things to remember about the fall, which is laid out for us in Genesis 3, is just the idea that I think a lot of times we come into our conversations about sin.
talking about how bad sin is, and sin is bad, but I think what the fall also tells us is that sin is harmful and hurtful. That in the fall we see this complete fracturing, that we are fractured from our relationship with God, even how we view ourselves completely is fractured in changes, and then of course how we relate to other people as well. And so, yes, sin is bad, but it is also, it also hurts.
And we want to be sensitive to that. Even today as we talk about the fall and sin, because we know that among our listeners, there are different marriages represented, some that are experiencing a lot of the goodness already of the design of marriage, but others that are very much living in the fall as they are in difficult and even sometimes destructive relationships. But before we get started, last episode, episode two, we shared some
something good about our marriages. And I thought it might be fun to share something hard because we're calling this basically like the fall, what is hard? This is where we are in the story. What is hard? So I started with Alex last time. Adam, can I start with you this time?
Adam Coppock (13:01.325)
you know, sometimes it is really difficult to go back and consider some of the more challenging seasons. But, you know, as we've wrestled with this material, one thing that was kind of stuck out for me was really for eight years of our marriage, we really developed some pretty bad communication patterns in many ways. You know, our personalities, just maybe family of origin, a lot went into it. But I didn't realize how
how much it affected us, you know, until we really kind of came to some places of really needing help and counseling and,
But just realizing, you know, it's really some small things that little added up to some big things and really just communication where we're not seeing some of what we talked about in that last podcast about the goodness and valuing the other and hearing the voice and the agency of the other. And so, you know, as I look back, one of the places where I think about the fall impact our marriage was just the realm of communication.
Brenda Payne (14:01.143)
Hmm, that's good. think a lot of people could relate to that. What about you, Alex?
Alex Kocher (14:06.341)
I we, I'm going to take maybe take it in a different direction, but I think we've had two maybe big topics or areas that have been hard for us in marriage and one of course I've talked about on here a lot is my...
journey with chronic pain. And then for Mason, it's really been running a small business. we had one probably, mean, we've had certainly long, hard seasons in that. And there's a lot of dailiness in it, like just a lot of the daily struggle of how do we stay connected? How do we keep fighting for our marriage in the midst of what
like it just wears you down in the dailiness of the hard. And so I think Mason likes to say that we have learned how to appreciate small things because of it and I certainly think that's true. But that was born out of just having a lot taken away and from me with pain from him through the business and having to learn how to do that and there are certainly many years where that was not easy.
Brenda Payne (15:24.653)
Hmm, I love the two illustrations you gave. They're so different.
Adam Coppock (15:37.711)
I knew it was you too. I felt... I was just... I knew good and well. I was trying so hard. I was trying to think of how to... how to best you.
Brenda Payne (17:20.149)
I love that both of you shared something so different and I'm gonna just layer on top of that because I think the hard that Paul and I experienced points to a difference in our personality but also revealing something about a sin struggle in us. And I've said before that Paul and I are very different. mean, talk about marrying your opposites, we really did. And so, and interestingly enough, I mean, I married this guy who was the most godly guy that I'd ever known and then I cried all the time my first year of marriage because he constantly
hurt my feelings and of course he was in shock. He didn't know what to do with that. But Paul is very much, and I would say very much was, because he softened so much and now I have, know, redemption has come and we'll talk more about that maybe when we get there. I'll say how this is kind of what the Lord has done. But in the earlier stages of our marriage, he was very conflict oriented. I was very avoidant. He was very direct. I was very indirect and his besetting sin was really a desire for control.
Alex Kocher (18:11.406)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (18:27.362)
like to be in control and to have control, and mine was peace at all cost. And so, as you can imagine, that just created a lot of hardship. I'm gonna say, especially for me, in the marriage, because it was a lot easier. That's right, that's right. It's my story and I get to tell it the way I want to. It was really hard for me. I think he would say it was hard for him, but part of the...
Alex Kocher (18:41.498)
Cause I'm telling the story.
Brenda Payne (18:53.826)
Part of what happened in the heart is because I kept responding to him, not doing the good created design where I would be that force that would actually push against his control and continue to give into my people pleasing. It just allowed him to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger in the marriage. And I got smaller and smaller and smaller in the marriage. And so I think a big part of the redemption story in our marriage is how that got turned around because you can't have a good friendship, much less a good marriage with those sort of dynamics going
on. So, okay, well, we are dead center in the fall on this episode, and we want everybody to know you are in good company. This is why we share just a sampling of the hard, the bad, or the ugly in our marriage. But Alex, we just talked about how the fall, of course, just came and distorted so many things. But one of the first things it distorted was just this good design for marriage. What do we mean by that?
Alex Kocher (19:46.692)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Kocher (19:52.912)
Well, one of the things I wish we had said in the last episode is that what creation calls us to do is give honor and delight to one another, to the Lord.
And so what happens in the fall is that instead of giving honor and delight to the good design in ourselves and to our spouse, we end up using that God given design to consume and destroy what He created. And those are really big heavy words, but I think they're meaningful. I think they're helpful when we see how sin begins to affect our relationships, how it breaks down intimacy.
Consume and destroy is what the fall is all about, I think. And so we're gonna just start with the story of the fall. I'm gonna read the scriptures and let Adam kind of break that down and just show the way that the fall has affected marriage. We're read Genesis 3, 7 through 12. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. God said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.
Adam Coppock (21:33.679)
clear as day the woman did it. Now you know it's it is so it's hard for us to you know sometimes even our culture we we think the way that we deal with what is hard is almost to ignore the the truthfulness of the heart or the foundations of it and we try to almost cover it with other things and we actually see that in this text as it goes further to
Alex Kocher (21:34.824)
There it is.
Brenda Payne (21:35.97)
Hahahaha
Adam Coppock (22:02.823)
But what happens is when sin enters the world, immediately all the relational dynamics change. First, vertically, their relationship with God is broken. It is altered because of this choosing something other than God. Sin at its core is just not God. It isn't just breaking a command, it's breaking the heart of the lawgiver of choosing something other than God. we again talked about starting in the prologue with God himself, the relational
dynamic with God has changed, with each other has changed. You immediately see Adam and Eve like bolt, you know, to hide from the other. Where that image of what's naked and unashamed, we have the first experience of humanity experiencing shame in this.
Suddenly there's this feeling of something's not okay between me and you and I've got to hide. I've got a distance and I've got to cover up. I've got to somehow protect against you really seeing me. And so that dynamics change, which in turn also tells us I actually are our relational dynamic with self is actually changed here. That that inability to feel safe with the other that inability to really offer ourselves to the other person is actually broken as well as Adam and Eve distance.
So what you have is that idea of hiding, of blaming, then beginning to say like, the woman you gave me, Lord, she did it. And then, you know, it's going down the line, a serpent did it, you know. So there's this blaming, this destruction of behavior.
even with one another. And again, so really the beauty of every aspect of creation is distorted here. And distorted is a really important word because it's not demolished in the sense of eradicated. Like Adam and Eve are still like, we still look human, we still bear the image of God, but our desires have been distorted, have been twisted. And as Alex used the word shalom, that idea of not just
Alex Kocher (23:49.133)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (23:49.282)
You
Alex Kocher (23:56.271)
Hmm
Alex Kocher (24:00.142)
Mm.
Adam Coppock (24:04.595)
peace in the sense of absence of conflict but of wholeness. Dan Allender says here is where shalom is shattered. You know that's the great offense of the fall is that the peace God intended in his design of us to experience with him with each other and even in our making has all been shattered.
Brenda Payne (24:14.53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (24:27.714)
Yeah, as you were talking, Adam, I was just thinking about you were using the word blame, you know, a lot there's blaming and then in marriage so often we see the minimizing of sin or even the denying and so there's no there's shame and then there's because of the shame there's actually no
ability to come and be honest about what's happened. And so it's just like the sins just keep mounting up and keep fracturing and fracturing. It's kind of a snowballs effect. And another thought I had Alex, when you were using the words consume and destroy, that this is, you know, what happens when we get out of God's design and when sin is given, is unleashed in our marriage and we don't have Jesus or the picture of redemption or life coming back in. I mean, we see this because we
Adam Coppock (24:51.588)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (25:17.76)
know that the statistics for divorce are, you know, 50 % and higher and it's no better in the church, supposedly. statistics say that it is outside the church and, I mean, I have thought so many times even in the 35 years of my own marriage, like, it is really hard to stay married. There have been some times that I wanted to bolt my marriage so bad.
And even one time that is just terrible thing to say but one time I was like if Paul were just dead I could do this so much better without him like that's just kind of that depth of just despair and that impact of sin my sin his sin the sinners we were living with the stressors of all the things going on so I don't think we can just really underestimate how much sin has come and impacted those of us who are wanting to live in that good design and those of us who are wanting to honor the Lord and
to create a good marriage. It's still really, really, really hard.
Adam Coppock (26:14.639)
Yeah, I think what understanding the fall really helps us with is not it helps us see that we don't just make mistakes today is that sin has affected us wholly like
the way we think, the way we feel, the actions that, you so sometimes we treat sin as like, you know, an old road runner, like acme, like a hole is covered with leaves and we fell in it, like, I see it coming. Like, I can't believe you showed up this way and I responded this way. Like, you know, I had no choice but to respond this way. No, like sin, all that we do today can be traced to the garden and that destruction of.
Brenda Payne (26:35.81)
you
Alex Kocher (26:39.567)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Brenda Payne (26:49.345)
Yeah.
Adam Coppock (26:50.977)
you know, in some ways of choosing against God's design and then all of the tactics that we do today, they're just outworkings of the story in the fall.
Brenda Payne (26:59.434)
Yeah, nothing's changed. Same old tactics, same old issues. So you think we'd have it down by now, but there and again lies the effects of the fall. It's not just about, I'm going to not do this and do this. There's so much underneath with desires and thinking and our will and all of those things. Well, Alex, let's turn our attention a little bit. We've been talking about how the fall has impacted the bigger story, the good design of God, but we've been also talking about this idea that we are made in God's image.
Alex Kocher (27:05.805)
Right. Right.
Brenda Payne (27:29.418)
to reflect Him and to represent Him in the world. And then if we kind of narrow that down to marriage, we should be reflecting who God is within our marriage to our spouse. And that should be representing something about who He is to the world. But with the fall, we also have not just the distortion of God's good design, but the distortion of who we are as image bearers. Take us...
Alex Kocher (27:55.853)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (27:57.399)
I think if you and Adam could kind of walk us through like what has happened in these four areas or these four buckets as Adam has called them, where our image bearing really begins to give expression and then what are those distortions for us in the marriage relationship?
Alex Kocher (28:13.071)
So just to remind us that four areas are agency, purpose, belonging, and rest. And in agency, we're talking about the ability to make choices and act independently. And I see like two ditches that we fall in here with agency where one ditch is the ditch of control where...
we want to use our choices in order to take responsibility for what is not ours. We want to control our spouse or we want to make our spouse in our image instead of into the image of God. And I think we see it just, I mean, it can come out in so many ways, constantly correcting and criticizing, micromanaging, pressuring our spouse to look or be or do certain things and then even use
sex as a weapon of control. We weaponize good things in our marriage in order to get the control that we want.
And then the other ditch is this passivity. And it can seem like passivity may seemingly be a godly thing, but what we're talking about with passivity is avoiding the responsibility that's ours. So we don't want to be responsible for lovingly investing or engaging in the relationship because it would require us to make choices that are choices of self-sacrifice. And so we see this played out in withdrawing or failure to initiate or engage.
in our God-given responsibilities, the place I probably see it the most is failing to initiate or engage in any kind of emotional intimacy, just withdrawing, not just leaving the room, but may oftentimes staying in the room, but not really being there. And I also see it play out a lot in this kind of, we call it the game of chicken, where there becomes this standoff where both people withdraw to the point that they're both just waiting for the other one.
Brenda Payne (29:51.938)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (30:11.924)
to be the one to make the sacrifice, the other one to be the one to change it, and I'll change if she changes. And we call it that game of chicken or just waiting for the other one to break. And so there are lot of ways that we use our God-given ability to make choices to harm each other and to harm the relationship.
Brenda Payne (30:19.062)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (30:32.822)
Hmm, very good. Those are some really great explanations. I like the ditch, the ditches we can fall in. So Adam, do you have some ditches for purpose that you can help us understand where we might go that would be keeping us in the fall?
Adam Coppock (30:48.013)
Yeah, I mean as we talked about, know, God has a design that for us to actually operate a certain way. So purpose, you know, is this idea of living in God's design. how the Fall has touched it is that instead of seeking to, you know, what we say that enjoy God and glorify Him, we seek self. we, purpose begins to be either self-centered or spouse-centered.
And so the way it shows up with spouse centered, if we start with that one, is like we look to our spouse as our role to give us meaning, direction and significance. And really in some ways, like I joke as being an enneagram too, the mantra of an enneagram is I'm okay if you're okay. And so sometimes we do that as like we seek to like find our validation in the success of our marriage or in the satisfaction of our spouse, whether that's.
Brenda Payne (31:15.97)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (31:32.738)
you
Adam Coppock (31:42.733)
and getting affirmation back from them and trying to just do things so that we get something again back. You know, we believe that if we can make somebody else happy, maybe that will help us cover it.
our own shame, our own sense of not measuring up. know, another way is like it feels a desire to be needed or valued. That's a little bit of that enneagram language I talked about. Or the fear of losing the relationship. That one of the attacks of the fall is that relationships feel unsafe. And as we see Adam and Eve like bolt for the bushes, we wonder at times, if I do this,
Will they bolt? Will they finally say that's enough? Like you said earlier, know, Brenda, if we actually act on the thought of like, maybe life would be easier without him. so, so really since distortion is thinking that I've got to do whatever to keep them in this and, you know, our purpose has lost sight.
Brenda Payne (32:35.638)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (32:39.515)
And so, and really in light of that, it's a misunderstanding of biblical roles. Then instead of thinking of how to compliment the other and being that, you know, help me and that good contending with and contending against for the sake of the other, it's sometimes cheap peace.
Like my role is just to lay down. think y'all use like the image of a, of a doormat or, you know, yeah. And so that begins to be part of it. you, you structure your whole life around your spouse's needs, preferences, their success. And again, you lose your sense of self and you lose your sense of calling. And that's a really big deal. Like sometimes you hear people say it, like, I don't know who I am anymore. That that's the language of like, I've gotten absorbed into my
Brenda Payne (32:57.857)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (33:02.476)
Dormant. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (33:27.449)
spouse. Sense distortion is my identity is rooted in my spouse not in me being an image bearer in relationship with God. And so you know part of that may be losing your voice like I don't feel like I have a sense to to say anything or to have a difference of opinion or there's no view for your own growth. The other ditch is it's all you it's you know it is planet you and everything's revolving around you and so we want to find our purpose away from our spouse.
Brenda Payne (33:29.078)
you
Brenda Payne (33:33.26)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (33:43.746)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (33:47.234)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (33:57.409)
happens sometimes when people have hobbies that so consume them it takes them out and are unwilling to hear the voice of their others in the ways that they might say like, I think you've missed me in this. You know I mentioned one of the hard things for us was
Brenda Payne (33:57.622)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (34:02.026)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (34:08.898)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (34:13.391)
just relational like communication and one of the places that most showed up was me being in a ministry I kind of turned to ministry for some emotional fulfillment of being needed in people's lives and then not being able to hear the voice of my wife saying like I need you and I miss you in this and so even something as good as ministry distorted my view of purpose and marriage and it was really self-seeking and so then marriage needed to fit my my
Brenda Payne (34:34.007)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (34:39.756)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (34:43.345)
of ministry even. So that can be so harmful for our spouse. So we prioritize our individual goals or ambitions or maybe we become so driven by a personal need for success that we forget the purposes God has for us not just as individuals but as a couple. And we talk about shared purpose, shared meaning. This is like not even on the table at this point. It's when that's not even a concern. And so maybe that that's some of your biggest life decisions.
Brenda Payne (35:00.236)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (35:06.72)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Adam Coppock (35:13.365)
job without consulting your spouse taking on something new or saying we're just going to move to this city it's like wait a minute like that feels like a conversation we could have you know or yeah there's thousands of implications of this
Brenda Payne (35:20.288)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (35:27.178)
Yeah, that's so good. Alex, we had talked a little bit about just there's a little bit of a nuancing between purpose and belongings, but there's also going to be a lot of crossover. So how do you think the fall has touched belonging?
Alex Kocher (35:42.862)
So it's going to sound like you said very similar because they these do overlap and that you know belonging is that need for community for intimate relationship with God and others and so we see it play out in two different ways the fall effects it through enmeshment again like Adam said where we lose our sense of self I think with purpose we lose our voice and our calling but with enmeshment we lose
a sense of self in that we give the power to the other person of defining like if we're okay, like Adam said, emotionally okay, and we may so structure our lives around our spouse that we fail to cultivate our relationship with God or our relationship with others because our spouse's approval is what we're really living for. And I think this can take place on a continuum from
You know, people pleasing where we overly want to please our spouse, but then you see it in very destructive relationships where addiction and abuse are happening and someone has completely lost their ability to be a person because the addiction or the abuse has now taken over the marriage. And then, yeah.
Brenda Payne (37:09.698)
And I think, Alex, I was just going to say the term that we most often hear for that is codependent. And that would be enmeshment.
Alex Kocher (37:14.53)
Yeah, codependent. Enmeshment is codependence. And in both of these, in purpose and belonging, we're losing a sense of self. I think the distinction we're making is that with purpose, again, we're losing a sense of calling of who we are, why we're here. In belonging, we're losing a sense of pleasing God, and now we want to only please our spouse above all else.
Adam Coppock (37:37.039)
Hmm.
Alex Kocher (37:40.638)
Then the other dish would be detachment from our spouse or we we completely Don't want to or fail to cultivate a relationship with our spouse because we want to find belonging and approval in others So the famous verse on marriages, you know, man will leave his father and cleave to his wife And so what we see a lot of times is his failure to leave or cleave where? We prioritize our family above our spouse. We we
want their approval, we want their validation, or maybe it's we want our friends or even our children, our people who we detach from our spouse to only get that sense of belonging and intimacy with other people who are not our spouse.
Brenda Payne (38:29.378)
Great, I think that was a great explanation. Thank you. Adam, let's move on to the last one and the distortion of rest and beauty in the fall. Can you help us understand that?
Adam Coppock (38:40.759)
Yeah, I mean, it's the ability to create and enjoy peace and shalom that wholeness. And so in one sense, you know, false distortion is where we don't actually get to express experience any rest or any beauty. And so we live as if we're infinite, like we, we live with no, or we leave no margin for rest or beauty in our life. And so, you know,
this might be structuring our life with high activity. know, again, going back to the idea of like enmeshment in a relationship, like we drive our spouses beyond their limits, requiring the family to take on too many responsibilities. So either as a seeking to please kind of the ideal of something or even seeking to please self, but it's not leaving space for beauty or even thinking maybe it's an even an ideal to value in marriage. So, you know, I think as a pastor,
This is one that feels very pertinent because we're in a culture that is highly mobile and
If you don't say like where your limits are then everybody else will. You know everybody else will set your schedule for you and so not leaving that that rest or capacity for rest or beauty that we we get over committed. We're always rushing there's little time to be together and then when we're together there's little time of enjoyment and even going back to that idea of belonging one of the threats of the fall is the is the sense that I can be enjoyed. I can be
Brenda Payne (39:52.107)
Right.
Brenda Payne (40:08.802)
Hmm.
Adam Coppock (40:16.209)
delighted in. And so then the other aspect of it is not not just like having no space for it but then it's counterfeit beauties or counterfeit rest where we lose the ability or willingness to to notice receive or even cultivate what is good. You know this comes for settling for shallow distractions or emotional disengagement so in some ways like
Brenda Payne (40:23.862)
Yeah.
Adam Coppock (40:37.599)
you know, we see a lot of presentations of marriage and relationship on TV and so we settle for a lot of like what real beauty and marriage ought to be and so perhaps we don't spend the time to really cultivate what would be good and beautiful in our marriages. Instead we settle for what's fast, what's easy, what feels like it's not going to be costly to me. One of the first things you said today is like to really like
make marriage work and our dependency upon the Lord actually does require effort and requires repentance and requires a vulnerability that at times means like what happens if this doesn't go the way I think it will. And so, know, that idea of counterfeit rest and beauty is that we're not very intentional. We start giving up and we start doing maybe very cliche things like, I bought you this or, you know, we went on that one date, you know, a couple of months ago.
Brenda Payne (41:09.324)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brenda Payne (41:18.562)
All right.
Brenda Payne (41:30.21)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Coppock (41:33.763)
you ask for. You know, so we begin to not only lower a bar, but we again don't think of what actually would move towards the heart of the other.
Brenda Payne (41:35.18)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda Payne (41:47.211)
I love that you included the counterfeit rest in beauty.
because I think that that's something we don't consider a lot, but it's very, very available to us in our culture where we think, you know, we're doom scrolling and we actually think this is rest. I mean, there's so many studies showing now that it's not resting people or yeah, just I think the way there's so much information coming at us, there's so much noise on the outside, soul noise on the inside. goodness, I don't know what I would do if I was growing up in this day and age because there's too many
Alex Kocher (41:54.445)
you
Brenda Payne (42:20.982)
choices for everything. There's so much information about everything. It just feels very overwhelming. So it doesn't even allow for rest. And then when you're trying to escape the rest, I'm going to binge watch a Netflix show or, you know, just kind of the escapism that we can get. Like we see escapism as being rest, but there's really, you know, there's not the beauty of that or the rest in those things that God has for us. So think we have to be very wise and discerning and even
Adam Coppock (42:34.275)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (42:50.852)
I don't know intentional. Yeah, and really what is rest and beauty gonna look like in our lives and in our marriages?
Adam Coppock (42:56.739)
One of the things I want to say is, a similar way that like, we go back to that idea that God is reorienting his people to a different story than the story they're coming out of, and the people of Egypt coming out of slavery and finding their
you know, their value and their productivity and you know, the narrative of creation is rest. Like in some ways we adopt these really weird views of marriage at times and relating together where, hey, if we just do all this stuff or if we orient towards our kids for the next 18 years, like we can get to a place of rest one day or we can get to a place where then we can earn like what we're supposed to be experiencing in marriage when really like setting limits and honoring those limits allows us to experience
It's the very design that God has for us. But again, it's that question of what's driving my view of how I'm supposed to relate to my spouse and what's feeding that. If we were to go through each of these, what's the assault on my agency? What's the assault on belonging and purpose and rest and beauty?
Brenda Payne (44:02.7)
think that's so good. I want to say we're giving the two ditches, there's a continuum. You may not be all controlling or all passive, but you're going to lean one side to the other. And as we've gone through these, I just realized like Paul and I, and of course where we've grown is different, but I can just see like in every one of these areas, one of us leans strongly toward one side of the ditch. Maybe we weren't in the ditch. I think at a time or two, we may have actually been in some of these ditches, just straight in the ditches. But the leaning, like one side or the other side. And so for us, we were very
Alex Kocher (44:22.957)
Hmm.
Adam Coppock (44:24.878)
Yeah.
Brenda Payne (44:32.644)
And when that happens, there's just going to be a lot of conflict. There's going to be a lot of misunderstanding. There's going to be a lot of disappointment. There's going to be a lot of hurt and pain. And if you continue in that direction over time, you are not going to end up in a good place and you are not going to end up with a beautiful relationship or a good friendship or a good relationship. So I think this is, like you said, it's a great litmus, if you will, to kind of go back and say, which way do I lean?
You may not fall in the ditch, but where do I lean? And so, what we're going to do in the next episode is talk about redemption, and we're going to talk about how does the gospel correct your leanings? Like, how do you get back to that good place, that good design that God has? But Alex, we're giving tools for each of these, and you've got a tool that you will record and release separate from this talk. Can you tell us a little bit about the tool? excellent.
Alex Kocher (45:28.909)
There are actually two tools for this one because the fall is so pervasive. The first one is learning how to take a pause when we're outside of our window of tolerance, which sounds even when I explain it to people, think that they think it's really maybe even silly or simplistic, but it is often times. Excuse me. What people come back to me and tell me has changed their communication and their conflict resolution.
Brenda Payne (45:33.954)
Right?
Alex Kocher (45:58.863)
more than anything and so it's a very important tool. And then the other tool is called relational trends. It's probably more
aptly relational patterns, it's within conflict, we tend to have a way that we handle conflict, move towards, move away or move against. And we begin to see that each marriage has a dance. When we're in conflict and we talk about how do we identify that dance and then how do we work against it. And these are probably my two favorite tools for conflict resolution. And I think when we did the marriage conferences, these are the tools we
got the most feedback on as being the most helpful ones that we gave.
Brenda Payne (46:39.958)
Hmm.
That's great. We'll look forward. think the tools I've heard you explain the tools at the conference and you did such a great job and they are very usable. All the tools are very usable. So I hope that our listeners will take the time to listen to those and then really take the time to implement them because we don't just need to be hearers of the word but doers are it does take effort. It takes effort to have the good marriages we want to have and it takes our effort and of course so much of God's grace and that's what we're going to
talking about in episode four is how does redemption in a sense undo the fall. We know that the penalty of sin is broken when we're saved as individuals and the power of sin is we're able to overcome as individuals and so how does that look? How do we approach our marriages? How are we going to be transformed? How are we going to make repair? How are we going to get to the good stuff that God has for us and we can't do that apart from Jesus and the redemption and the sanctification and all the things that just
Alex Kocher (47:36.043)
Hmm.
Brenda Payne (47:42.705)
come from the whole story of the scripture as Jesus as the center and the hero of the story. So we're looking forward to episode four. Please don't stop here. I keep saying that. Please take us, go with us the whole journey because there's so much hope on the other side of this podcast. Sure.
Alex Kocher (47:53.759)
Mm-hmm. Truly.
Adam Coppock (47:59.373)
Yeah. Yeah. Can I say one last thing with the fall? I just think like we do sometimes want to fly right pet like we know things are bad, but we don't really want to look at it because sometimes we're really afraid to see or to wrestle with what we might actually see.
And the fall really does help us recognize like you're not extra broken, you're human affected by the fall. And so there's a great hope to realize like my marriage may feel very different than somebody else's, but the fall helps us understand like it's not a mystery. Like there's some really sin and suffering happening and there's a grace to be able to be honest about that because it's in recognizing the trueness of what's broken to recognize the true healing in Christ redemption. so there is a
Brenda Payne (48:24.448)
Yes.
Adam Coppock (48:49.051)
element that sometimes we think like talking about the fall as being like negative or being Debbie Downer but like there is this grace to just name like I'm I mean I have limits and they've been affected by the fall and I'm not loving the way I but I'm not extra breaking. There's very particular ways I might be struggling today and so there's a there's a grace to really reckon with the story.
Brenda Payne (49:10.944)
I love that Adam. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's so hopeful and encouraging. Well guys, we're gonna wrap this up and we will see you next time.