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nextTalk contains content of a mature nature.
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Parental guidance is advised.
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Are you ready for the nextTalk?
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Today we’re talking about breaking bad patterns. This is painful, this is gonna hurt, because it applies to everyone.
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Okay, don’t turn us off, Don’t. I just want to put a little bit on here. If you’re a woman, especially hold on.
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Yeah, Put your seatbelt on. At first it’s gonna be real hard to hear, but then it’s gonna get better.
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But hang with us because we’ve got a fun story to share at the end about us in Pennsylvania and how we noticed we were breaking bad patterns. Like, I’m really proud of us. But we’re gonna have to share a lot of humility to get there, but that’s our. Please hang on while it gets. It’s gonna be tough.
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Yes, and men, in the beginning of this segment do you not be given the? Look to your wife like mm-hmm, no, Hold back. Yeah, hold back.
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Hold back what you really want to say so I was recently, you know, reminded I’m reading through Genesis as a story. You know, so often we just go to one part like a parable and we dissect it, right. But I’m reading Genesis as like a story right now and, oh my gosh, I saw this pattern, you had a revelation and I was like, oh my word, I think this is something for us. And so, okay, hang with me, I’m gonna try and get through this really quick.
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But it was good it starts with.
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Adam and Eve right, and we know in three, six. It says Eve ate the first fruit and then gave some to her husband. So the woman led the sin, which is why you know the whole child burn.
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Yes, my kids sell the child. Thanks a lot, eve.
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I’m going to menopause. I like I see a lot of Eve. Eve, you did menopause, you did beard, you did it all, all you Right. So Eve led the way.
Several generations later, in Genesis, we see Abraham and Sarah right, and they’re really old and they want to have a baby. And Sarah can’t. And you know, god had told her that she was going to. But she got impatient and she was like, oh yeah, this isn’t going to happen. So in chapter 16, she basically says hey, abraham, go sleep with my maid servant, produce a child, because I need that. And so all of this happened.
And then we know that this maid servant gave birth to a boy named Ishmael, which, if you trace his roots back, I mean he’s part of the prophet of the Islam religion. So he that traces back to that. So you can already see how Sarah, taking things into her own hands, created some divisions. So we see Sarah basically take things in your hand like she’s woman, like hear me, roar, I’m going to do this, whether anybody likes it or not. Abraham, go do this. Then, you know, abraham and Sarah finally had Isaac, they finally had the baby that was promised to them and Sarah actually gave birth. Abraham was actually 100. Yeah, bless it, it’s never too late. Oh, my word.
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Yes, it is, yes, it is I can’t even imagine.
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I can’t even imagine, right? So Isaac is Abraham and Sarah’s boy, right, you know that they prayed for their, their basically miracle child, right? Yeah? And Isaac then married Rebecca and they had twin boys. Okay, and there’s Jacob and Esau. Now, this is when I started writing in my Bible. Oh my gosh, I’m seeing the pattern.
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I’m seeing the pattern.
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I’m seeing the bad pattern. When Isaac was on his deathbed, he gave Esau some instructions and he basically was like go take this animal you know, create the meat, bring it to me, whatever. Rebecca overheard this and she said Jacob down. And she said Jacob, I want you to do this, I want you to basically deceive your father so that you can get the blessing Seal, the blessing Seal, the blessing, and not Esau. Yeah, oh, my word.
0:04:30 – Speaker 3
They are not an Ex-Hoc family. They are not an.
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Ex-Hoc family, right? So we see it all this again. A woman who is leading the deceit, a woman who is doing the manipulation. It goes on. Jacob married Rachel and Rachel couldn’t conceive a baby. So guess what she told Jacob to do? Go sleep with my maid servants. Sound familiar? Oh my gosh, I was scribbling it all in my Bible. Crazy, and here’s what. I just couldn’t wrap my head around. So many times I think we grow up in a world that is saying you know, men have control, women don’t do anything, women are submissive. I mean, right here in Genesis, women are leading the way. They sure are?
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They are more power than we think.
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They are manipulating and being deceitful and the only thing that I thought of was oh dear Lord, don’t let me be that. You know, and so many times I know you may be thinking well, how did God use all of that? Like they were bad, like that’s bad stuff, that they did. I think God shares all of that because he wants to show us I can take all the dysfunction that you’re going to create in your life and I can still make a way, like I can still make a plan, because these are like Jesus came through. All these descendants, like these are our birth people. Where everybody comes, human kind are born through these people. These are our people, right, and so God used them mightily in history, but they messed up.
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I think the point that needs to be said here too, is that God can use anything. He can redeem anything, Even our biggest, greatest, most awful mistakes. But it’s a painful process when we take it into our own hands, when we first say Lord your way, and we follow him and we follow the natural order of things the way he intended it. It doesn’t have to be that way. They made it very difficult for themselves and future generations by choosing their own way first. So it’s not an excuse. Is what I’m getting to? It’s not an excuse like oh God’s going to fix it so I can do what I want to do anyway. It’s not an excuse.
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Well, look at all the turmoil that Ishmael and Isaac division, division for generations, till now.
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We’re still, you know it’s the sins of the father Right. Yes.
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I mean, like all of these rifts, we’re still feeling the consequences of Sarah’s deceit. Yes, and Sarah taking the reins of herself right and Eve doing what she did. We’re still feeling. We are feeling every day Women are feeling every day.
There are still consequences, yeah, but at the same time, he is still good through all of it and he like, he has this way of being able to say I can take your chaos and I can do something with it. Yeah, even though you’re so destructive and crazy. I mean, if I were him, think about a parent. When you see your child making all kinds of crazy decisions, you know and you’re like, what are you thinking? You want to just send them to their room, but God doesn’t send us to our room Like. He like uses us in huge, amazing ways.
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Yeah, that is grace right there. That’s what that is.
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That’s grace.
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So go ahead.
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Yeah, well, I wanted to just point out too. I think one of the things that just kept coming up when I kept reading these things is I was thinking about a marriage, yes, and I was thinking about how men and I don’t want to stereotype here, but oftentimes men have trouble opening up, and in a marriage, I pray that that is the place where they can be vulnerable with all of their stuff, in all of their you know, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, all of it, that they can lay that on the table in the marriage. And I want us to be super careful, women, because I feel like sometimes we use that vulnerability and we tend to manipulate or we tend to be deceitful or we tend to twist it, and I’m I’m saying that I mean it was done throughout history and I think we do it too Absolutely, and we need to be careful of that, because that’s going to hurt our marriage. It’s going to cause rifts and families for years to come.
0:08:41 – Speaker 1
Yeah, we need to be careful. Well, I just think it’s worth saying here is we have a lot more power in our relationships than we even realize sometimes. I think a lot of times subconsciously right way to say it. Yeah, subconsciously we are thinking well, he made that decision, but what led up to that and what did we say or do that may have contributed to it? This is because Abraham did it, like yeah, he did it.
0:09:04 – Speaker 2
He could have said I’m not going to do this. Adam could have said I’m not going to eat the fruits. Yes, but they were coerced by their women in their lives to think that was okay. I think that’s a word for us as wives.
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I’m feeling a little tense, right now.
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So it is a word.
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It is Don’t turn it off. Don’t turn it off.
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You know this is not biblical at all, but this takes me back to a movie that I love my big fat Greek wedding.
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Just plop it right down there in the middle of Genesis, Jesus would approve.
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I feel like it. Just this comes up in my head all the time the mom in this, I mean it’s a, it’s a great funny movie and it’s like hilarious and the whole movie kind of centers around the power a woman has in a man’s life and the mom, the maternal kind of grandma mom, in the story she says that the man is the head but the woman is the neck that controls the head, and I think that’s so true, that’s so true in a lot of relationships and I can’t get past it. I think because of my own life I can remember back to experiences and even now where I know just what to say or just what to point out that would influence my husband one way or the other, and you know what I’m saying.
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So he may make a decision. Yeah, I absolutely know he may have the final word, but I know what to say to get there, and that’s a lot of power, that’s, power in can be manipulation, yes, in used in bad situations, yes, and so I think it’s important for us to identify this cycle. And also we have to look at our own lives and we have to identify what bad patterns have we picked up from our mom or our grandparent, or something that’s been passed, or maybe from Eve or from Sarah?
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Or just learning things that have worked over time In history.
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Yes, so what is that? We need to identify that. And it hurts to kind of look at that and see, look in the mirror and kind of see, oh my gosh, I’m a little guilty of this.
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Ask for it too, lord, show me, show me where I am like in the bad pattern and I’m not recognizing it.
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That is super painful. It’s not fun to do it. You know, one of the things that God identified to me early in our marriage you know I was a runner that’s what we called myself, and that means when the going got tough, I was. I would have a hard time having a conversation. Yes, which is so funny now because I wrote a whole book about open communication, but I think I think it’s because I’ve seen God do this work in my life through communication and through conversation and how, looking at a person when I was so mad at them or when they were not treating me like I thought they should treat me or just anything them doing something that caused a trigger in my life being able to push through, wanting to run away and actually digging in and having the conversation. It’s the only reason Matt and I are still married. Honestly, God showing me that and doing that in my life is one of the reasons why we’re still married today. I don’t think we would have made it had I not learned that lesson.
0:12:23 – Speaker 1
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0:13:24 – Speaker 1
Today we’re talking about breaking bad patterns, and you just identified one that the Lord showed you early on in your marriage, that saved your marriage.
0:13:32 – Speaker 2
That’s huge being a runner, being a runner and being able to stay and do the hard work. It taught me a lot about pushing through having the conversation. Another thing that I’ve struggled with a lot is perfectionism. No, I’m a one on the Enneagram, we all know it. Kim likes to point it out when I’m editing and editing and re-editing stuff. It’s a gift. It’s a gift. But you know, what is so funny is because I identified early on in our marriage. Matt and I were starting a church in Indiana and I remember distinctly one night the pastor said we were talking about our first official service that we were going to launch. We were going to launch this church and I said we are not ready yet. This needs to be done, this needs to be done. My perfectionism, this is the story of my life. You’re like, let me call that back. Yeah, I was just going to say we need to have coffee.
And he looked at me square in the eye and he said why are you such a perfectionist, mandy? Why I had never thought about it before. I didn’t even really know I was a perfectionist. I had never even identified that I was a perfectionist and I burst out in tears and I said, if I would have been perfect, my dad would have stayed. My perfectionism was a defense mechanism and it was causing crazy impact on my relationships because I wanted everything to be perfect, because then nobody would leave.
Nobody would leave, and it’s a bad pattern that I picked up. It’s okay that I’m a perfectionist I call myself a recovering perfectionist now but I need to be a healthy one. It’s not about manipulating people to be perfect to stay in my life. It’s just about loving people and loving me even when I mess up.
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Absolutely yeah, for me. A good example that came to mind real quick was half truths and in my marriage early on my husband would say, well, how much does it cost? And I’d be like about $200 when it was like $2.99. You’re the rounder, I am. I’m always round down. I’m a runner, you’re the rounder.
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We are messed up, we are.
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Super special ladies. See, see, hard work. It’s hard work today. It’s painful, and so I would tell these half truths, because I wanted him to make the decision the way I wanted it. So I try to make it sound as good as possible.
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It’s only about $200.
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And then we’d get the bill and it’d be like with tax like $315. He’s like Kim, it’s not $200. Oh my God, I don’t know. I saw two, I saw the two and that’s what I told you about. And that was a big problem. And I was doing that to manipulate him into making the decision I wanted, not the best decision for our marriage at that time, but being deceitful.
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Being deceitful and you know, you knew how to word it and I was justifying it because I was like I’m not lying.
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I’m just saying it the way it makes it sound the best. You know, it was a problem.
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And then one I don’t know if that anymore, me being a perfectionist, oh my gosh, I would lie. I have grown with you, sister, I have grown, you’ve called me out.
0:16:47 – Speaker 1
I’ll tell you a huge, probably one of the hardest ones that I see all the time with women, and I had this amazing woman’s pastor point this out to me and it changed my life, it changed our marriage, and I had never thought of it, never heard of it, until she said it. We were talking through an issue that I was having with Charles, my husband, and I was telling her how it went down and she looked at me and she said did you cry? And I was like, well, yes, through the whole thing, the whole conversation. And she said that’s manipulation. And I was like what? And she said listen, men are wired to protect and fix and when you cry, from the beginning of the conversation to the end, all they can think is I need to fix this. This is someone I love and care about and I have caused them pain and it really oftentimes mutes their ability to see the problem clearly.
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I could see this, that we sometimes, not always, not always sometimes you know you’re grieving your. I mean, you’re just in a place where you need to cry.
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And it’s okay to cry.
0:17:49 – Speaker 1
That’s very different than what you’re saying. But you’re saying do the elephant tears and bat your eyes and just, but then also learning, because sometimes it’s a painful conversation and your default tears and if you know that about yourself, like that’s me, yeah, learning to cry first and when I’ve gathered myself together, I think that’s a great advice, yeah so it’s not always manipulation on purpose. Sometimes you just know yourself I am a crier and I know my husband likes to make me happy.
0:18:18 – Speaker 2
You know what? And one thing that I’ve started to do is when I, when I’m crying and have a conversation, I will say to him listen, I don’t need you to fix this, and I’m yes. I’m sorry, get out. I’m sorry, I’m crying.
0:18:28 – Speaker 1
I don’t want to cry exactly, I’m just emotional. I’m just emotional, yeah, able to say that, being able to say I just need a second, not a place of manipulation, right, yeah, and we don’t think of it that way. We were like this is just how I feel I’m not trying to manipulate you.
It’s sometimes we do intentionally, sometimes we do, and so I know this is a painful one or it could be touching for you. But if you find that you are crying on purpose or that you know that about yourself and you’re not trying to adjust a little bit to actually have a healthy conversation, that can be an old pattern that you need to break.
0:19:01 – Speaker 2
Well, we just light our stuff out there cam.
0:19:03 – Speaker 1
Oh man sirs, manipulator bad patterns.
0:19:06 – Speaker 2
I think these are all good things that we’re looking at. Once we’ve identified those patterns, we need to confide, yeah, in somebody about them, so that Mostly will probably be our spouse, but it also can be a very close friend. Yeah, I struggle with this. Yeah, so if you see me doing this, I need you to call me out on this. I do not. This is like we did a show on boundaries and bitterness. You need to go back and listen to that show. This is that loving Someone so much. You tell them the truth, yeah, being accountable, right and so.
0:19:37 – Speaker 1
Let’s just throw in here yeah, say to them, if you give them permission To call you out, then when they do, it’s not okay to get bitter, because you said I need your help in this area and I just want to remind people of that because we do that a lot and it’s okay to have that defense mechanism.
0:19:52 – Speaker 2
You’re human. It’s gonna sting. Yes, you may need to take a walk before you have a conversation. Because you have to process. Yeah, okay, I really messed up. I do need to go back. It’s like Adam and Eve in the garden when they wanted to go hide after they realized they were naked. That’s the thing when you, when your friend calls you out, when your spouse calls you out, with that accountability, you, like want to go hide under the rock be like okay, it’s true. Give me leaves to hide everything.
0:20:22 – Speaker 1
Okay, I feel my house with bushes.
0:20:24 – Speaker 2
So you gotta have, you gotta, you gotta have an accountability partner and you gotta have a safe place to point you out, okay, so once you identify these patterns, you’re trying to break them. You’ve got an accountability partner. Here’s the thing. There’s gonna be mess ups, yeah, and when you mess up, you got to give yourself grace. When you see yourself going back into the Cycle, it’s okay to be like okay, I didn’t get that right, but I’m not gonna do that again.
0:20:54 – Speaker 1
Yes, you know, to our humans.
0:20:56 – Speaker 2
Yes, to break that pattern. The other thing is you have to Celebrate it when there’s a win. Yes we had a win we did.
0:21:07 – Speaker 1
It’s kind of embarrassing, we had a win in Pennsylvania.
0:21:09 – Speaker 2
Okay, so you know, hear me, I am a perfectionist, and so Kim and I in. Recently we were in Pennsylvania for an event, and I’m one of those get to the airport two hours before I’m get to the event an hour before and I am like find out what time the flight is and how long would it take me to run from the car To the plane?
0:21:30 – Speaker 1
She still does that, yeah, even when we’re there two hours before. I will be.
0:21:34 – Speaker 2
I will be, I will be like come on.
0:21:42 – Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s a problem.
0:21:43 – Speaker 2
Yeah, so, yeah. So anyway, we’re in Pennsylvania, we get there the night before. Everything’s great, I’m calm, you know it’s good doing good. We have a big storm coming in the next day right during the event, but that’s okay, because we’ve plotted out to leave two hours before we’re gonna get there. We’re good, we got it in navigation. We’re headed that way, great mindset, ready to do this event. Can’t wait to meet parents and all of a sudden, kim’s doing the navigation for me.
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I got real quiet.
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She’s like okay, turn left, we’re here. We’ve been on the road for 45 minutes. We turned into an auto collision.
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I look like a church.
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I was like, is this where I’m speaking, like, is this what we’re doing?
0:22:28 – Speaker 1
I inside. I’ll be honest with you as a three who likes to always win. It’s any gram three diet. Yeah, I am, and that’s a perfectionist. I’m like what just happened here. Yeah, I need to know every little detail.
0:22:39 – Speaker 2
Yeah, you know what just happened. So what just happened was we were, we had pulled in, we were gonna be there an hour before we pulled in we would have been there. We went is somehow it was like this state road east but we put in west, or something I love see, this is the gift of friendship.
0:22:58 – Speaker 1
She says we, the realization here and the giving yourself grace is, I put in the address now.
0:23:05 – Speaker 2
If I just it just bumped up, it auto populated.
0:23:09 – Speaker 1
But if I was you, you would have double checked it and said this doesn’t look quite right. Let me make sure I was just like being let’s go, it’s time, like I just don’t do so.
0:23:20 – Speaker 2
We were in or setting in auto repair collision sitting. We realized what happened, we realized we’re in the wrong spot and I said, okay, put the right address in and see how far. I see how far away we are. And she said we’re getting there two minutes before you go on stage. Yes, it’s awful. I just kind of looked at her. For the other side of town we had to go all the way around the all.
0:23:44 – Speaker 1
So it was a three hour two.
0:23:45 – Speaker 2
So it was beautiful, though we had to see Pennsylvania in a new way. So we got, we got on the phone with the person who was organizing the event and we told her what happened and we apologized profusely. We prayed in the car with her because we knew we weren’t gonna have time to pray with her when we walked in the church, and she was so graceful and so sweet. But it was so funny because, as after we did all that and then we have another 30, 45 minutes to get there, we’re sitting in the car and it’s kind of quiet, you know, and all of a sudden I was like you know what? Wait a minute, I just need to celebrate something right now.
All of me and all my perfectionism would be totally scattered, crying, so upset, and I had already said we need a new process in place from now on. Two people the two people are doing the navigation to make sure we get the right time in the right place, right? I had already fixed all that. My perfectionism, yes, but old Mandy would have been really upset, yeah, and I wasn’t. I was just like okay, lord, we get extra time in the car, let’s turn on some praise music, let’s talk through this. Let me get my mind centered. Mm-hmm and I literally walked in and went to the bathroom and run around stage like it was.
Mad it was a hole.
0:25:01 – Speaker 1
I was worried that you were going to beat me on the side of the road, but it really was a win.
0:25:08 – Speaker 2
And then the other celebrate that you got to celebrate, celebrate the wins. I didn’t revert back to perfectionism.
0:25:14 – Speaker 1
I was really proud of you. That was a big deal. So you know. What we want you to take away from this is identify the bad patterns you need to break, Communicate with your spouse or close friend. You need accountability and a safe place to talk and give yourself grace when you fail and celebrate when you break out of your bad patterns.
0:25:33 – Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk. Radio with Mandy and Kim on am 6 30 the word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. Find our video series and podcast at nextTalk. Or are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page
