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Jeremy Pryor: Hey, everybody. We're back. This is the Jeremy Pryor and April Pryor podcast. How's it going? Good. Having a great day. Nice and sunny out, even though it's freezing cold. Yes. So we are cruising through, uh, the, let's see here. We're just into the second chapter of the book, The Ruling Household. So I wanted to read this for y'all and get April's reaction. This one is called A Companion Who Helps. And opposes, right? This is what it says. Husbands, does your wife often oppose you? Mine does. About two to three times per day. A few minutes ago, my wife sent me a text about an email blast I sent out that she felt was a bit off. This is an annoyance. If you're trying to construct a life where you easily get your own way.

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The direct result of this new ideology is that Pew Research recently reported that in a study of 130 different countries, the United States ranked number one in single parent households. That doesn't make us number one, it makes us dead last. My country is the worst country in the world at building intact households. Quote, The Lord was a witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, Malachi 2, 14. So first a companion. Number two. A helper, we don't have what it takes to build a household. We need help. It's okay for men to make bad mothers and women to make bad fathers.

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We build a household through the constant opposition between opposites. This continual friction is going to wear out both partners if they lose sight of why this opposition is a feature and not a bug. Most modern people understand the purpose of authority in marriage. They feel the idea that the father has a greater degree of authority than his wife signals her inferiority. Not to erode governmental authority or to damage the country, but to make the country stronger. Would it be better if the press was given equal authority over the country? Of course not. Does that make the press less valuable? That's a category mistake. Both are important, but for different reasons. While this analogy is not perfect, I receive a stream of regular press releases from my wife.

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He needs you to have compassion for the challenge. The Proverbs warn of the wife who is a dripping faucet. I also receive another kind of press release of positive progress being made, and we celebrate those wins as a family. Remember that the biblical ruling household is a monarchy, not a democracy, but it's an accountable monarchy. The goal of every leadership meeting was to facilitate constructive conflict. Every business has serious issues to solve and having a whole team present to find the best possible resolution meant everyone had to freely speak their mind. But this takes three things to do effectively, time, connection, and a repeatable process.

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So enjoy the process, give it some space to breathe, go on long walks, have extended lunch meetings, schedule all the time you need. You'll get it back in huge measure as your team flourishes under the dynamic leadership of your opposing strengths and aligned vision to connection. The effectiveness of those intense conversations must be balanced by the feeling of constant connectedness. It's in those moments that I thank God for having a better idea. Marriage. We do our productive work from a state of connectedness and the nature of that connectedness is for life. That means we have date nights without trying to be productive, take off on getaways to grow our relationship, enjoy frequent physical intimacy, reach out multiple times a day to remind each other.

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Number two, metrics that matter. What are important facts? How are our kids hearts on a scale of one to 10? How connected do you feel to me? What's in the bank? Let's review the budget and then to do reviews. Did we do the things last week that we agreed on and then household issues? What's not working right now. The better you get, the more you'll be given to steward. And that's it. April, what did that start for you? A lot. That was a good one. Um, Well, I think going back to the very beginning, talking about the idea of a suitable helper that's fit for him being someone who opposes or, um, Holds you up like the picture that you have on this article is, um, like some trusses, some roof roof, um, trusses and like a skeleton of a building that's being built.

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Perspectives, of course, and, and just the, our personalities and, um, because of, I think love, we're, um, able to, you know, be curious about those differences. And I think like when you're falling in love with someone that's, you know, they're, they're intriguing to you and. Um, I'm, I think back to our, the time period in our life when we were meeting each other and falling in love, it was very intriguing and the differences seem exciting and, um, and then you get married and not too long into marriage, then it's like the differences can be frustrating and annoying and, um, hard because that's not the way you do it or. not what you're used to. And so to get past that into the place where you're actually appreciating each other's, um, differences and the way you oppose each other, um, in the way that you're like holding each other up is, is, uh, a really cool thing to experience that journey. It seems like if, if you, this is why I think going back to why was marriage first invented, if it was invented for personal fulfillment, for, um, romantic pleasure, and this opposition is, you know, it's got some elements that are nice.

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And so God in his wisdom has created the perfectly diverse team to rule a family and the way he's wired men and women. Um, and the problem is you have to have an arena, right? For that diversity to play out, you have to have a way for your wife. In this case to oppose you, like, but you have to prepare for that. Yeah, it's been such a journey. Cause I kind of, what I was just describing at the beginning, I think, so we've been married 25 years now. And, um, at the beginning, I feel like I was so threatened by our differences.

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And I, I had to really. Understand that and get to the place where I actually believed that, that I was kind of being a nagging wife and what that did to you. And it also kind of mixed in with my lack of respect, like I, I would make me disrespect you. And then that became this kind of like downwards downward spiral. And so now he's so, you know, so learning how to lay it at your feet and then walk away Was quite a skill I had to develop. Um, and so but the more the better I got at it the more you were willing to kind of let me in and be like Oh, uh, yeah, I don't really know how to deal with a tenant, so do you have any suggestions, or what do you think, or I don't know how to deal with that, that's why I haven't done it, what are your thoughts, and then we could actually be, like, start to have more conversations about it, and, um, then you, like you said, you, you learned how to, how to, Um, and able to put things back on me.

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So just being able to realize when things are left hanging in the air, learning how to handle that. You don't want to be passive aggressive about it and being like, so are you. Like what? I don't want to take that thing so I won't say anything and then, but both of us have just really had to grow and learning how to take things on to like believing that we are a ruling household or that we're trying to be a ruling household. Yeah. It's interesting too. Cause I, you know, the, I kind of poked a little bit at the evangelical description of marriage is, it's not about being happy, but holy. It's almost like, it's kind of depressing the way sometimes that's framed because I feel like the idea there is, okay, we know that marriage is really hard and so we need to come up with a reason for why it's so hard and the reason can't be that God's a really bad architect, right?

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The scriptures, it doesn't directly talk about marriage. And I think, I think sometimes, um, the reason we lurch towards that as a way to defend God from, from maybe being a bad architect is because we don't really understand that, that the design of marriage is to build a household. And that this is a perfect design for a household, but for the modern Western fragile nuclear family, it's, it doesn't really make a lot of sense why husbands and wives are that different. Right? So that's, that's a part of it. Now, the reason why that's important is because there's very little to hold him accountable. And so it's really important that, that, that those messages actually reach him so that he has a signal as to whether or not he's, he needs to adjust something. And the other thing I feel like the press does is it makes.

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That, that could, that the leader may be really thinking about one thing, but the, the press is drawing his eyes to this issue so that he can deal with it. Um, so he knows he's going to be criticized and held accountable. And he knows. that his eyes are going to be, um, drawn to problems that he would otherwise really like to ignore. And so there's this, these signals need to get to him somehow. And so I know that's been a really dynamic part of How has that been for you? Like sending those out and I was gonna ask you what it's been like for you. Cause I think that would that'd be really hard as a man. Cause I think I think what I mean, I mean like husband, leader, I think, you know, in our dance.

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Or how our family handles certain things, then it has helped me be have more like grace for you. Cause I realized how hard that is. Like, I don't want to be, um, the nag that prevented his husband from do her husband from doing something. And God's up there, you know, I don't know exactly how it's going to work before the throne, but I want you to be able to stand before him and be responsible for your own actions. There's a lot of us. Five kids and me and we're just coming to you with everything, you know, so many things and you have to you've had to Be quick on your feet. You've had to make decisions quickly. You've had to You can't just say let me think about that about all the things that are going on You know in a little person's heart in our household running and the relationship dynamics between the kids like you you kind of have to know how to grow and and Answer those things in a pretty quick manner.

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Thinking about something really complex and abstract all the time and around him. He's just like is, you know, he's, his shirt's buttoned wrong. And he's like, nah, just, he's just completely oblivious to, to the real world. Um, And so I, I would say that, that if I were to completely give into my strengths and ignore my weaknesses, I go further into that world. And I think a lot of people, because we celebrate individualism so much, I think this is a, such a misunderstanding that we think, you know, in the workplace, I could literally get a job that rewards me for my strengths and compensates for all of my weaknesses. I could be a professor. And I could have, you know, teachers assistants and a whole faculty or a whole administration that takes care of all the details so that all I could do, all I need to do is show up and do what I enjoy doing.

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And so just embracing the role, embracing all of the role, all of the, the challenge of it. But then you could just feel constantly incompetent if you do that and you're not wired for it. And I certainly have that problem. And so the way I've overcome that is, is really a search for tools. And as you guys, as you're reading this, this book, you know, basically I try to spend as much time unpacking tools as I do theology. And so I brought up this idea of the co founder meeting, right? In this, in this context, you and I have a meeting every week where I show up and there's metrics involved. We have quarterly goals that we're reviewing, um, you know, and, and we're ratcheting up, you know, our experience of those meetings, because I think that I've really struggled with.

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Um, but then also wanting you to feel. Like encouraged and supported and, um, your ability to like lead our family is intact. Yeah. I think, I think that there is a, you don't want, you don't want the press to overthrow the president, um, using that analogy. And let, and let the leader lead and just say, like with, you know, with. And so it's, I think it's led to a really sweet, um, would you say like interdependence is that the right word? Yeah, I think this is where the romance comes full circle. And this is where I think a lot of people get stuck. You know, you experience all this infatuation and romance in the early stage of your marriage.