Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 205 | infidelity, divorce, suicide, addiction, bankruptcy, and redemption with John and Ash Marsh

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. ▶ Visit https://www.BetterHelp.com/eastfam today to get 10% off your first month! Today we sat down with John and Ash Marsh and wow do they have a story for you! Their life is a living testament to their faith and perseverance in both their relationship and career. This couple has overcome addictions, extreme debt, infidelity, pregnancy loss, separation and divorce and are now stronger than ever and running their highly successful company, Marsh Collective. We were blown away by this couple’s story and we know you will be too.  This show is also sponosred by AG1! ▶ Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase exclusively at https://www.drinkAG1.com/COUPLETHINGS.  To Learn more about Marsh Collective check out their website: https://www.marshcollective.com/ Follow Shawn’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Shawn’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Couple Things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Buckle up for this one. Golly. I think there's our longest interview, and we could have talked for twice as long. I want to move in with them for a solid week and just get to know them even better.

John and Ash Marsh from Opelika, Alabama. He calls it Hope you like a Alabama. But this is filled with hysterical puns in one-liner. He has more one-liners. than anyone I've ever met, and we've met a lot of people. Yes. I've never met any couple like John and Ash Marsh, but their story is incredible. They talk about addiction.

They talk about fighting through affairs. They talk about... Divorce? Divorce, separation. A lot of heavy topics. A lot. Approached with an attitude of hope, and I found that really encouraging. If I were to select one couple who in my eyes and mind,

would be the reason we started this podcast. It would be them. Tell me more. I have shared before that I got so tired of the world painting marriage and relationships as having, as needing to be perfect in order to succeed. Whereas I see marriage as marriage is hard and you go through a lot of things and we are human beings and we make mistakes and we change. in their story of how they have worked so hard to redeem each other, to continually fight for each other,

I thought was so beautiful. Yeah. And if you're able to do that continuously through all of the faults and mistakes that the other person makes, there's something amazing about that. There is. And to see their dynamic now,

having gone through so much, was so beautiful. The respect for each other. the constant working to, like, still be there for each other was really beautiful. And they're also insanely talented and successful business people. Yes. They have what they call a redemptive real estate business. So they take old towns like Opelike, Alabama, and we'll renovate them.

So they renovated 280 buildings within 10 blocks of downtown Opelika to help save their city. So they make what was a washed up, like, kind of. a run-down village and turn it into a really interesting attraction, which I love. There's something that's paralleled to their story in that, I think, as well with the redemption aspect of it. They also do a lot of marriage work with couples, where they do these like intense kind of like retreats and workshops with couples to help them reconcile and get through hard times in their marriage or in their life, which it just seemed like overall.

all every single project they were working on was an example of their their lives together yeah i mean who's more qualified to do those workshops than them they also have a ton of free tools uh that we can link down below whether it be a family calendar uh communication tools and figuring out how each person communicates uh they're pretty intentional and so they've provided a lot of resources for you listening if you want to learn more about their free tools or their marriage workshops or um all the other projects they have going on. We'll link information down below. We first met this couple at the generous giving conference, which we've now mentioned several times. And I heard their story. I heard them speak and what they've been through. And I immediately thought we have to have

them on our show. I heard you talk about them more than anybody else from the generous giving summit. And when you listen to this, you'll understand why. You'll know why. So we have a couple interviews that resulted from that conference. John and Ash are one. Greg Balmer is another. And I think we have a few others on the pipeline as well. So check those out. And without further ado, we bring you John and Ash Marsh. Well, I kind of want to just roll the mics. And I don't know how much you know about what we do or our backgrounds. We have backgrounds in athletics. Sean was a gymnast. I played football much less successfully than Sean did gymnastics. But then we've been doing this family lifestyle content for the past eight years.

And we get asked all the time, like, you know, Sean has these adoring fans, these people that look up to her and really want her to give advice on like, how have you created this fruitful life? And we know nothing. So our goal has been to divert all that attention and curiosity and desire

towards something more meaningful. And when we met in, what was that, March or April at the... Generous giving? Yeah, generous giving. Your guys' story struck me and your thoughtfulness and how you've constructed, you know, your 5Fs,

you have the whole communication cards that I've been looking over. You have your website and all these resources. I was like, I would love to have you two on. And just kind of, I know the conversation is going to go all over the place. I'm curious to hear what you guys do as a business, but also, you know, outside of that as well. We can give you, you know, I mean, we've, of course, raised our kids where it be nesters now with grandparents.

Wow. So we've got a five-year-old granddaughter and a two-year-old grandson. son, it's fabulous. We've been through the transition. Darling, by the way. Darling, that's cool. And we went through the transition of building all 60 companies together

over our marriage. We extravagantly belly flopped our life early on. So we've learned how to love and forgive one another, which you want to know what marriage is all about is figuring out how to love and forgive. It's, you can't build. Great marriages are built, not found.

You have to pay the price to build them. It's like abs. Nobody gets in my accident. And things are tough to get. And if you got them, there's a lot of dang work to get them. And so we work hard to love one another. And we work hard to take the values we have, I mean, show up.

We have both of our sons work with us now, which has been an interesting, you know, dynamic. We've had the interesting of Ashes homeschooling 20 years, you know. She suffered in that and did it. She had tons of gifts to do all kinds of other things and put a lot of her life on hold to love our boys and to do that. So that's big. And then now, I mean, we started loving our city and now we're in 12 cities around America,

stewarding about $2 billion worth of stuff plus what we're doing in our town. And so we can talk about a lot of things from that standpoint. And then, you know, just like how do you build a – we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to build great marriages, great companies, be, you know, great lovers of one another like how does how many marriages do you know where they're the most excited they've ever been today after we'll be 31 years in December wow so we've we've learned to love one another and been through a lot so anything there's really we'll share whatever I was to say there's about 30 different topics there that we could do an entire episode on

um do you have any specific direction you want to go I kind of want to start by let's hear the early days how you guys even met you know got married and then those first few years of marriage you mentioned the word belly flopped but let's start from that's not even big enough I wish I could give a better word I think you can get it be not PG do we have to be PG? No we what is

so I actually we met a car stereo shop John was living in Atlanta Georgia and he was a professional that did like these really big competition installations and such. Really? Yeah, really cool. And I love bass if it works out. But that's not why I was there.

I actually came there because I had bought my first car. I was 18 years old. And whenever I bought it, the gentleman told me the speakers weren't hooked up as while the radio didn't work, right? So he told me go see Big Jimmy. Big Jimmy, I take care of you. I'm like, okay, sure. So I go down to Big Jimmy's, which is Jimmy's Carsteria.

And he calls it, Jun, as he calls him. Jen, come up here and help this girl. And so, anyway, he comes up, and I'm just like, dang. I mean, he was so cute. So anyway, I don't even know if he noticed me then too much. I did notice me. You know what I said to myself? That lady's like royalty without a crown.

She had a built-in class that you don't see much. I'm telling you can see that when I saw her, I said something's so different about that lady. She was pretty too. Whoa. So anyhow. yeah he come john comes up and he's like you don't have any speakers so there's nothing to hook up so jim's like put speakers in her car i'm charging this dude so anyway that's it that was how we met um and months go by and jimmy ends up um challenging john because he doesn't like john's current

girlfriend that he's um that's living with him her name um he's kim and so anyhow he's like john you need to i need to help you find wife material because she ain't wife material and um and so i would come into the shop periodically and he finally said hey ash how about i hire you to do bookkeeping for me yeah sure whatever jimmy and he kept like putting us together like to do inventory or to run errands or to take something to the bank or anything he could do to shove us in a car or a room together his wife in the meantime was telling us we're going to go to a hill in a hand basket um she would stand on her soapbox all the time like you're you're just sending beyond measure you're just all you're going to hell yeah that's what she'd tell me almost every morning and it's like i'm getting so

tired of hearing this i said first i don't think i'm going to hell but i'm sick of hearing So she always kept a close eye on what we were doing together, when we were together, which we weren't doing anything, we were running errands. But Jimmy finally, he's like, hey, Ash, I got a challenge for you. He's like, I like you a lot, and I don't like John's girlfriend. I'm like, okay. He said, I want you to go out with John. I'm like, yeah, no, I don't mess with guys that have girlfriends.

And he's like, so you don't think you can get her? I mean, get him? And he said, I said, what do you mean? Yeah, I can get him. I mean, look at me. I'm a little Alabama girl grew up in a middle village I mean I was the only girl

in my family of 20-something year I mean what are you talking about he said I bet you $500 you can't get him away from her oh my god I said Jerome fat man I won him with that that is a totally true story and he paid me

he was a mentor of mine I was living in Atlanta and I've never had a real job but I've always installed that time I was installing high-end car audio I got really interested in at 14 and apprentice for a year

and then from 15 on I mean I was making $1,000 a week after school putting in stereos and I thought man I was it was incredible and he said hey move to Auburn and you'll make more money than you ever made in your life I said it sounds like a good plan so I had a little shop behind him he'd sell the equipment I'd put it in but when I met ash I just thought wow she was in a tennis skirt and tomboyish kind of but had ponytail and she was but as you can tell she's a classy lady and really I I tell my boys I said man I see potential I said, I saw your mama.

They don't give me any credit for it. They said, you got her because somebody bet. I said, no, I won your mama. I said, she was young and not that smart back then. I talked her into. I said, you know, our oldest is he's a real smart boy, and he's eight years old. So he's really a genius. He graduated high school at 14, went off to college at 15, graduated at 19, inorganic chemistry, physics, and fine art.

So he's got this amazing mind. But his little eight-year-old boy, he's like, Hey, Daddy, how did you get Mama? I'm like, what do you mean, little pal? He's like, she's so hot, Daddy. You're so not. You better focus on sales, little buddy. That's the only way you get a girl like this.

I do, I false advertise. And I told her she was going to be everything. And I'm high energy, low IQ, which is a powerful combination. And I just put that thing on it. I was just making, I played, I didn't even know she played the second. saxophone but I put that Kenny G on. Oh man in the that's old school right there. That they worked me over and play Kenny G I was like oh my guy he loves saxophone too and so and then he would just talk sit and talk. I love listening to your boys. She moved in and it's like

check. I got the girl check how'd you propose yeah how did I propose well I took her back to the first place we had kissed and it was really my whole thing until until i got until my life changed i was an idiot and i mean not a little idiot but a big time idiot so i i just messed up all kinds of things we're laughing the other night about our anniversary date because we're coming up on 31 years but um how how i set the date is i thought i was putting our date on my mom's birthday so it'd be easy to remember but i didn't tell ash that and i missed a dang day so now i got two to remember and i didn't get the benefit of putting it on the date.

You got a mixed up the first. Yeah, I got a little mixed up. It was good stuff. So then, if you don't mind me asking, you get married and then four years into marriage, you say you belly flaps. It's actually a little bit sooner. We were pregnant. When I was pregnant with Josh, I mean, I'm Nelson, our oldest.

Got pregnant on birth control. I found out I was pregnant four months in, and we were having already talks of divorce and everything. So I called to make appointments for. an abortion many times because I was just at the point

where they would still do kind of like partial birth abortion and everything and every time I would get up to the appointment time I would cancel it

but that we actually went through our divorce when Nelson was right at two and we reconciled shortly after that not extremely shortly

there were things that happened in between that was very devastational but I would say by the time Nelson was the end of three years years old we were reconciling and working on our marriage with God in the center so you got married

and then how soon after you got married did you start talking about divorce oh gosh months maybe six we had lived together a little while and you know one thing about it if you don't the thing we realize about conflict is conflict is normal it's neutral and it's natural is what you do with it but if you don't heal it it's nuclear waste in the basement and every conflict you have is not just hysterical, it's historical. And her mind, she whipped my butt in a historical battle. Take me back to current. The first thing I did wrong and bring it up to current.

And I just, all you can do is holler in that environment. So what happens is you talk about microwave popcorn and next thing you're fussed about yo mama and remember when. And so that stuff builds and the conflicts kept building and the lack of trust. When you build something on a broken foundation, remember there's got to be a death before a resurrection. something's got to die for something can live i mean it's a seed principle and it's a principle and we had when we belly flopped it i it what happened is i didn't lead my family in the way i should

have ash was loved me but then the minute she said i do i'm i made a mistress out of work and and i was searching for identity by making money and so i put her on hold and ignore her for years at least for you know after we after she moved in so probably two and a half years and it just it just really spiraled and you know then you get to the point where really you're just kind of goal is to disappoint one another at a rate of that each other will stand and it's no longer about you know I love you and I want to be with you and this is amazing it's like how do we manage conflict say imagine that pretty soon you get have so much conflict you shove under the rug that the rug doesn't touch the floor anymore.

And that's the way it was. We could only talk about the weather. Well, and it's amazing how powerful we are as parents to model in front of our children, how to truly have good conflict because it's going to happen. And actually it's something that can create more growth in a relationship than damage it. If you know how to have the right constructive conflict, I guess you could say. He grew up in a home that he never saw his parents have discord at all. I grew up in a home that it was constant discord.

and never in either one of the homes did we see any type of reconciliation. We'd never seen it. They seemed to say married because it was what, yes, they agreed to and made a promise about, but it was more about maybe the generation that they grew up in. It was just what you do. And so we didn't have a model in front of us. So we were determined when we reconciled. We were going to absolutely live out and follow our boys what God has for us, all of it.

We're not going to hide anything. We're going to show them because it's more important. you know, that they know how to have patterns, make choices, understand, resolve conflict. And how do you deal with the stuff? What about when one of you can change, you could change, and you should change, but you won't change? How do you deal with those things in marriage, you know? And even learning how to love one another is not intuitive, right? I mean, I thought when, if I grabbed her butt and told her she was hot, you know, that she'd think, man, this guy loves me.

That didn't work amazingly. There's a lot more to it. You know, I used to think, like, hey, marriage. I still do it, but I know now I'm not building my whole thing on it. I didn't stop. I just added more stuff. But, you know, if you think that I thought marriage was about sex and supper. And as long as those two were cruising, I thought, this thing's working.

One of those stops start going, what's wrong? That's so broken. I mean, we have to have models, right? We have to understand. Like, what is, if you want to find a new Ford pickup, you better know what one looks like. So what does a great marriage look like? What do you long to have inside this relationship?

It's the most important relationship in the world and the hardest one to do. You normally marry your compatible opposite and lots of times the defecations hit in the ventilation. You know, there's all kind of things going on and I didn't even know what to do. I mean, I was just like, this is the dumbest thing ever. I said, I can get something done at work, come home.

It's like I felt like I'd strap myself to the Unabomber. Because she would make these decisions that I thought were crazy. Well, she was trying to hold our family together, trying to do what was right. But I was just one of the first things I told her, and I talked about this recently. She said, you're not going to tell me what to do. That's what I told her early in our relationship. So I set us on this course. Well, how do you feel now?

Like instead of saying you're not going to tell me what to do, what's your perspective? You're the most important person in the world. And anything that you don't want to do, we're not doing it. And I don't care what it is. she has absolute veto power in our life and she's the most godly trusted person in the world my number one brainstorming partner

person I'd rather be with and that's hard ground it took a long time to get to where we could say that you know I mean the first seven years we just tried to survive and I didn't love her and she didn't love me in the beginning after we after our lives was destroyed

you know at the time what ended up happening we go through this financial trouble. We're a million and a half dollars in debt in two businesses. We're $99,000 overgrown. We're going through a divorce. And I go up in the attic of my house, hooked on meth, ready to hang myself, and got transformed. I mean, I wasn't even looking for that, guys.

I was just trying to, I just kept hearing kill yourself, kill yourself, take your life, take your life. And that wouldn't stop until finally I was in the attic of my house with a rope up there, fixing the jump and hang myself. And to be honest, I wasn't even afraid of that. What I really ended up doing was getting down on that old plywood floor and started crying out to a God I never met before.

How does that happen in an instant? Dude, I don't know. I mean, I was there, but it's like I got struck by lightning. And honestly, what was so wild to me, I said, I was telling somebody the other day, I said, imagine like you're a syringe and everything that you've suffered.

everything that you did wrong all those hurts the burdens the things you think about when no one else is around you know the weight like you're weighted down from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head it all got pushed out two solid hours i couldn't lift my pinky off the floor like it weighed a million pounds and i got up for the first time my life ever set free and the first time my life love got past the fence and i went right down the stairs got back out of the attic went downstairs found her i said man I just got born again. She's like, no, you do. I'm not serious, I did. She's like, you're a liar. I'm walking off. Well, you're a mess on this point. Dude, I wasn't after that.

No, but I mean, I didn't quit drugs. They quit me that day. Boom, straight. Now, I don't think that happens. Like, there's a million things I've had to walk out slowly and through discipline and suffering, learn how to live with, right? But not that one thing. Wow.

I was set free that day, and I'll tell you what, I committed. that I was going to love her all the days of my life no matter what if there was one one millionth of a chance I could get her back I'd take it so I did I stuck with it I feel like your guys's story obviously has a happy ending so it's beautiful but it's just getting started babe I know no no I know but it's literally the reason we started this show is we both got so frustrated at seeing either princess fairy tale in the news or absolute devastation and divorce and there was no other option there's no in between and we would ask for a couple of friends of ours for like advice who had been married before and they're like I've never argued with my husband and it's like okay well that's not us so I need to go searching for another one and the next one would be like well we argued so we aren't together anymore and I think something so beautiful is we are believers that marriage is very hard

and you will go through in your life the hardest things but it's marriage that redeems you and keeps you accountable and brings you back even in the lowest of times but my question is like you said you don't know how you had that lightning shock but how do you rebuild from devastation

and rebuild trust and rebuild just your entire life together when it's all been broken down. Yeah, I felt like it was just, I said, I started thinking if it's going to be healed, imagine that your marriage is a base and you throw it on a concrete floor and it shatters into a thousand pieces.

Oh, God's going to put this thing back together. So it's going to look like crap. It's going to be all glue. But I didn't realize he wanted to build something totally different with the same stuff. So what you had before has to die. go away. And I do know this. I finally got to the place where we think people change when it hurts too bad and costs too much, when the know enough or they want to, or when the pain of

changing is less than the pain of staying the same. And for me, I got to the end of myself, got to the place where the life I was living was not worth living. And the lie is take your life, but the real truth is lay your life down. The lie is kill yourself and the truth is die of yourself this perverted truth that makes us want it's the right idea but the wrong action with it so when i come back down to be honestly she didn't want me and um i didn't i understood that you know it took it took a while first i said well i guess i got maybe i got the best chance of dating or of anybody i think i'm gonna go ahead be the kind of man she'd like to date yeah even though we're going through a divorce we had paid for a divorce we didn't get those dang ternies still

made us pay so even once we reconciled we hated each other but we reconciled us so two different people wouldn't parent our son if i could if i could ask please i believe that one of the things that was key to us having success was in the very beginning we did have amazing really godly people around us by god's providence but the questions that we got asked in the very beginning was um by a pastor at a Baptist church there in Auburn and we got invited to this church and we would cuss each other out like you have never seen. We would make a lot of people blush with how we could

talk to each other. And we would pull up in the parking lot and just like slam the door and go in and then just like smile it up. But we would go in the adult, the young newlywed adult Sunday school class or whatever and they would do prayer request and you know John would raise his hand and be like oh God please pray for us. We were we hate each other, we cuss each other out all the time.

She called me up, we're like four times in the barking light. They were like, you ever put, you know, if you take like the whole thing, you put like a pepper in a dish, you drop a little don in it. It goes all scatters, you know. That's what it was like. The chair's mood. I mean, we were like plagued. And then people would be like unspoken.

So I don't like unspoken prayers. I think they're bogus. But anyhow, we had a pastor that really, truly was a loving kind man. and he would see us struggling through these things. And one day, I think when he finally had his moment where he could get us alone and he knew we would listen was when we were up on the front row

at the end of service. And we had literally, I mean, we were like kids like punching each other like, you get off of me, if you, ugh. The whole time during service, it was like craziness. And so anyway, we're sitting up on this front row and we're waiting for him to get through talking to all 1,500 of his parishioners

and praying for them and loving the babies and everything. And he's like, you two in my office. We're like, great, here we go, you know. And so all he asked us was, he said, Ashley, do you want to follow God no matter what, even if he does not, will you follow him? I said, yes, or I will. And he asked John the same question.

And then he sent us to someone else. He said, okay. Gave us a car and said, see you later. He said, I have never had these struggles in my marriage, and I cannot comfort you in the way that you need comforted. And I think one of the key things is getting around people that have walked through what it is that you are trying to survive. and what you're trying to have actual hope in.

And he sent us to a couple that had, John considered that situation that they had in their marriage, but he knew who to send us to. But I think the key of that, before we even got to that place, was the fact that it was an individual walk with God. It wasn't us. It was me and God, John, and God. We obviously were one under the covenant with God because we chose to be married and have that covenant.

But God looks at us as individuals, right? you're responsible for your own choices. That's not on your husband and it's not on your wife, the choices that you make individually. And so we had to get our eyes on God and quit putting them on each other because we made each other

each other's little gods if you do that. Then I'm expecting for him to make me happy. I'm hoping that he'll show me that he's trustworthy. I'm hoping he'll prove he's not a liar and he's thinking the same things about me. Well, if I got my eyes on God, I don't have to worry with that. I don't have to manage that.

God is fully sovereign to take care of me. You know, in relationships, you chase somebody, they chase you. It's like this. You know, I mean, in the beginning, I chased Ash. Then after she said, yes, she chased me. And then she said, hey, I'm not going to put up with this anymore. I'm going to go, I don't want to be with you anymore. So then I chased her.

We realize if we're both chasing the common thing and not chasing each other, there's healing. We get closer together and closer to the thing we're pursuing. And we had to learn this. The couple that told us, they had been married 15 years. He cheated on his wife 13 years of that time in front of her. For 13 years he did. Of the 15th. Wow.

And she couldn't leave him. She was in a bad situation. They had, I think, three kids. Then he finally just left her and married another lady. I could get a hold of that guy and brought him back home and they reconciled him. For the next 12 or 13 years, they helped couples like us reconcile. So it took us seven years of counseling slowly by. slowly to find one another.

There's a lot of peace along the way. Like, how do you learn to love one another again? Like, what's the starting place for that? How do you forgive one another? And what is forgiveness, honestly? If it's so easy, how come we can't seem to get the thing done? What does that mean? Just the pieces to it.

But I wouldn't want somebody who can't swim teaching me how to swim. And I don't want people that hadn't walked through hell in their marriage trying to teach me how to go through it. Because we went to a lot of counselors. And I just finally start telling them, all they'd say is, oh, my God. God, you're so messed up. I'm not paying you if that's all you say. You've got to give me like something to help me here. Yeah.

And we were just broken. So John Marsh is, she said, making a mistress out of work. He's going through a lot of, you know. Addiction and all the challenges with that. And I understand concurrently about the same, is it the same time that you're going through? I remember a piece of the story of like the, abortion, lost baby, yes?

Okay, so when I met John, I did not know that he was a drug addict at all. I didn't know he did drugs. He did it really well. Honestly, I didn't know until after we reconciled that he was a meth addict until actually he was given a testimony. But yeah, all at the same time. So all this is happening, whenever he comes down from the attic and he's telling me this story and he's telling me that, you know, I'm going to follow God and I'm going to love you.

this is going to we're going to work these things i was like you're a liar you've always been a liar just a liar i was i just i could not trust that he actually was the man he was saying that god had um was showing him he could be and so i continued in my affair i think it's what you're talking about and so i was still um continuing to stay in connection with this young man that i was having an affair with and he i think john might have known honestly i'm is that right about that time i did what ended up happening is our part we were in business as an automobile business at the time we had a salvage yard and we built totals total cars for 12 years very difficult business and the guy that she left me for was one of our employees um who happened to be one of our banker's sons and so how i found out as our partner at the time he had had her followed tried to blackmail her to be with him when she wouldn't he gave me the information so that's how found out oh so he's he's he's He's, I mean, John, John is one of the most determined people you will ever meet. He is, he calls himself a blessing or a bellhole.

He's like a pendulum. It's either really here or it's really here. There's zero in the middle. So he is all on or all off, and he was all on for God. And once he decided that, that was it. And so he was going 100% forward with that. I didn't believe it. And so I was afraid, like, if he's like playing me or messing with me or doing this to hurt me more,

which would have totally been. of the kid. The lawyers were sitting there going, well, yes, she's going to be nice to you so they can get full custody. And you have to remember, gosh,

God bless. Anyone that has divorce lawyers, you know, and they're going through all that, they're really good salespeople. And they're selling a product and their products divorce.

And it's according to how much money you have is according to how much your product's worth that they're going to sell. And they're going to try to get as much of it as you can. Fast deals are not a good deal for them. And so they're just in your ears all the time. So my lawyer was telling me he's like they're going to pull, he's going to pull the faith car.

they had already told me that he's going to get saved he's going to get in church because that's the good thing to do then he looks like the good dad then when you're in court he's going to be the one that looks better than you don't fall for it right and so all this stuff's in my head so anyhow um i continue in that relationship and um and i'm playing like i'm you know being the wife with him and i end up getting pregnant and um about 12 weeks into that pregnancy i lose the child and I did not know if it was John's child or this other gentleman's child. And that's what broke me.

That was the place, that was the time that I was absolutely unable to even want to look at myself anymore. I thought I hated him and then I was able to look in the mirror and say, like really who you hate is not him. You hate yourself.

And to, I had a similar experience. It wasn't in the attic. It wasn't suicide. It was desperation. It was anger. I spent a better part of an entire day screaming and crying and wallowing on the floor so angry at God why would he let this happen to me why did he all the things had to be his fault obviously right and so when it finally got

to the place that I could sit still and realize that it was just me and for me to actually be able to say I just surrender and I can't do anymore because I need to get away from me that's whenever I just had I knew I had the presence of God and then I was forgiven and I asked him to forgive me and that's what changed me. And I got up different. And I mean, that's it. That's all I did. And so people, I think a lot of people try to make that really difficult.

God is such a precious kind to God. And one of the things that I practice now is the study of hospitality. And it starts in our home. And how can I bring hospitality to my most important relationship after God, which is my husband and then my children? And one of the things that God showed me is that he anticipated me. he thought of me before I got here he knit me in my mother's womb he said he knew me before the foundations of the earth so he has been building and preparing for me for all of creation all

of time he has and in this window of time he already knows those thoughts that he had planned for me and so all I have to do really is trust that anticipation with God and just relish in it and then turn and anticipate John and then in turn and anticipate my children and then give that to our our clients, to our tenants, to anyone that I'm working with. It's like, how can I anticipate you? How can I actually truly think of you before you're in my presence? And so that, but that came out of that moment of being with God because what he showed me was just a picture in my mind of seeing almost like myself being in a position of being

taunted and ridiculed and, you know, the whole scarlet letter thing. That was all that was in my head. I will never be worthy. And that has a lot of truth to it. It's got a lot of power to it. I've definitely been more harshly judged for my acts and choices in the marriage than he has for his choices. From society. We said in church the first time we went back after that, and they said, I can't believe he's here with her.

We could hear them. And we couldn't hardly find anywhere to fit because we're so darn screwed up. He'd come in and smell like Big Ben in a way that with you're the problems you've got. I mean, we just reconciled. We're trying to figure out we're a million and a half dollars in debt. We're $99,000 overgrown. We can't hardly figure out what in the world to do. We are so messed up.

And who do you go to when you're so messed up? I mean, nobody gave us hope. They said, file bankruptcy. Try to build a new life. Well, we didn't believe that's what we're supposed to do. So we dug in. Start doing rock repair on houses for $150 a day. And we're trying to make payments on that big note.

Trust in God. And over time, seven years, we repented one check at a time, got to zero. Yes, zero. We thought we won the lottery. I said, man, this is awesome. We can do anything. I really thought it'd take us 30 years.

No kidding. But then the gifts started showing up that we have together. You know, we started realizing how to love one. I didn't know how to love her. So really the best question I ever asked her toward this was what is the one thing I could do to show you I love you. The number one thing that I'm not currently doing. And I said, don't tell me 10, one. She said, don't throw sweaty socks on the floor.

Inside out, I hate it. So you never pick another one up. Because every time you look at that laundry basket, you'll say, this guy's crazy about me. We just little by little begin to love one another. And love is, it takes, you have to, I think that question, and even for kids, it's like, what is the one thing that your daddy does,

that when he does it, you feel the most loved? those things open doors if you'll do them right that's like a master key to the relationship so here's how you make me feel love we'll do that and i just went big on it i just started trying to love her and um the most godly beautiful sacrificial person in the world that i know is ash there's no one like her she's so far above everybody else in my eyes it's not even close because i've watched her live out all the stuff she says think that's one of the what well just that definition of hospitality yeah stuck with me ever since I heard you share that in Arizona and I think it's the most beautiful thing when you practice it you're like oh that changes everything I thought of you before you got here so like the difference there's a huge difference if Sean wakes up and I'm like oh hey good morning can I make you a cup of coffee compare that with like here's a cup of coffee good morning darling that's a big difference of like oh these little signals of love of like you know it indicates that I know

Sean and her preferences and what she and the things that make her feel love. It indicates effort of like I am trying here which is a big thing sometimes in marriage right I think it's so beautiful so thank you for that. It's really cool to make that connection because I wasn't able to make the conference but I've heard him talk about that one line that he heard from that conference and we practiced it every single day since so that's really cool but it it breaks my heart i learned this from my mom who experienced it firsthand in her church growing up but that's why churches can be so frustrating is they should be the safest place for the most broken people and that's where they should be able to like build their foundation but it it's almost like the opposite the most broken

when people get kicked out, pushed out, judged. And I just, I don't have any other follow-up thought to that, other than, like, that is my biggest frustration at church. When I say church is somewhat like a crappy country club. Big doos and no fun for the most part. I said, dude, I went to him. I was like, hey, uh. I was like, dude, where the blind people and the lame people?

They're like, we don't do that anymore. I'm not sure. I quit drugs for what you guys are. I said, where's all the powerful stuff? We don't do that. Dude, I said, drugs were better than this. And I'm not saying all churches, but I do believe it's one of the greatest self-improvement plans going. I mean, it's basically oftentimes self-improvement.

The sermons and things, not life on life. It seems that it's contradictory of the testimony of Christ a lot of times. Because it's like this, it's an unspoken rule, right? if you behave, then you can belong and maybe you'll believe. And that's not at all what Jesus said. He's like, if you believe, that's what he started with. And believe in me, you belong.

Behavior can come later. And he's not, honestly, I don't think, I might be saying something if I get people in trouble. I don't think God's so much worried about that. He's worried about your heart. Why are you doing what you're doing? I mean, we don't look at our kids and when they're doing something totally crazy,

which they do, the most unbelievable stuff that no one can ever think of. I imagine that God looks at us the same way. It's like, huh. I knew that you had the capability, but you know, and I know he knows all things, but it's just like, I'm sure we just like keep him chuckling. But we never look at our children as loving parents

and wanting to steward them in a direction of growth and say, you know, if you don't act right, you're out of here, you know? Like, we don't do that. But God forbid, if I do walk into it, there are some places if you walk into it and they know that you participate in certain ways in your life. Like you said, the dirtier, as we call it, the dirty sins.

You know, if you're a drug addict, if you're a prostitute, if you're, if you are an adultery, if you're a pornographer, if you're all those things, it's like they have almost like this little bubble they want to put you in because they're almost scared they'll get it. Well, and it's not right. We talk about this a lot, and it's been like philosophical debates that we've had, but I, something that I despise in our world and culture right now, is there is a scale.

It's like, well, I only, like, do white lies. That's it. But, like, you did this. So you shouldn't be allowed. And it's like, it is all the same. It's literally all the same. We are all just as broken as one another. But we live in this, like, judgmental society of, like,

oh, I'm so much better than you because I never did that. Right. When it... Well, we love it because we bust it wide up and we say, there's no way you're screwed up as we are. John was given his testimony to one of our city officials one time. And he made the comment. He's like, what?

What? Oh, God, I'm so glad I don't need Jesus like that. John's like, I'm going to pray for you that you do. Yeah. Well, and it's probably people who say that kind of stuff that actually need them, like, just as much as everybody. Like, we all, I don't know. But honestly, I mean, it is challenging for me personally where it's like, you know, the reason I'm so interested in your story is because, like, man, addiction and affair. and all these things, it's like, wow, gosh, you know, I point to that.

I'm like, well, I'm not doing that. But the challenging thing is, like, oh. But we're all capable of it. Like all of my brand of sin, my style is like right in there with it. So like, I do want to know how do you recover a marriage from addiction and how do you recover a marriage from an affair, like just from a practical, yeah. Most people talk philosophical without being brain. Practical.

Yeah. But one thing about an addiction. So a couple of things. Number one, I believe we're all born addicts. We're just addicted to different stuff. If I was addicted to church or softball or work, people be praising me for it. But if you pick meth or something like that, they don't praise or porno. So everybody's got the addictions running.

You've got to pick the good ones if you want people to like you. But what we realize, we're born to be addicts. We're addicted to all kinds of stuff, but we're supposed to be addicted to Jesus. and when you get that lined up right because he's the one thing you can be addicted to and ain't no bad side effects that thing works and so first if you're in addiction

they need to find something better like what's something that you don't want to lose and people think well just quit well I never thought of that I mean think of it every day all the time this is so dumb I'm just like thanks for the great advice but you don't have

if you don't have something better honestly I mean, some people I've watched quit because of their children. Some people quit because of their marriage. Some people will quit because their own health. Some people like me will quit because they fell in love with the creator of the universe. And the way he made me feel, nothing has ever made me feel like that before. I had long to be loved and accepted my whole life. And once I got it, I didn't want to let go of it.

It still hadn't. Just as shook up as I was that day today. And everybody doesn't have to be like that. think some people maybe it was a quiet moment they decided hey I'm going to turn my life over but for me I'm telling you I needed something radical because I am radical like whatever I'm doing I'm doing if I'm a butthole I'm being a big one I say I'm a blessing or a butthole I just don't stay in the middle much I just swing past that normal and so Ash it's still a truth it's still a truth I still go stupid sometimes but we used to live like it elevates our heated

We call our fussing Heated Fellowship, and so we have Heated Fellowship often. But the blessing is we don't have yesterday's conflict. It doesn't have all the energy of everything that was broken from the past. It's just today's. So love, you've got to learn to love one another, and that's preferring her above myself. And number two, I've got to forgive. And forgiveness is not a one-time event. It's not a vaccination.

It's a second by second. minute by minute hour by hour choice of your will that will last a lifetime say that again it's a second by second minute by minute hour by hour day by day choice of your will that'll last a lifetime you have to decide I'm good like it's like exercise I'm going to do this from now on I started exercising and you know we do five Fs faith family fun fitness and finance and most people don't have a sophisticated plan for one of them much less all of them but when I started doing exercise 46 years old I started doing it I got a plan and I began to realize that the only language your muscle knows is time under tension right it doesn't know what you do just put me under tension take it off put me under tension take it off and I'll grow well that's a bit like our faith and that's like our forgiveness like we I still struggle to forgive sometimes and I still bring up stuff sometimes but when I do we deal with it and then And we go on.

Same thing with Ashley. We have to, forgiveness is an active thing, not a passive thing. But people, I did that. No, you're going to be doing that

if you do it. Because you have to continually do it. Now, we used to live 30 days of hell and a day of heaven. Now we're like 30 days of heaven and day of hell, but we're still pushing that thing back.

Still have problems. Still miss one another sometimes, still get sideways. We just don't go to bed with it. That's one thing we don't do. In our bedroom is a sanctuary. We don't have a TV. We don't have devices and we don't talk about anything except how hot I think she is and how much I love her.

We don't talk about kids. We don't do anything. It's the one place. When that door shuts, I never have to worry about the daggum, it going sideways. Only thing going to happen. Now, sometimes we try to start, and we're standing back in the hall talking outside our place until we get that thing right, then we go back in there. I think it's so funny. Sometimes our kids do, we're like, they're standing in the hall.

But now it's just being hurt. we're this big old housebuyer so weird and they tell us to quit touching each other all a time yeah they're like stop messing with each other say hey your mom is hot and i'm gonna be chasing her man i said i'm gonna be getting all the good i this say i said this is a great relationship i got a naked woman that's mine this is i always wanted one there's a little boy you think man i'd love to have a naked lady yeah girls never think that they want a naked guy right but i was like man this is awesome this is so cool so one of the things that i had to do because because I had been in such a lie for so long that I actually had to become self-accountable.

And then I had to make myself overly accountable to John. And that's a choice of will, right? And it's hard. And you talk about marriage being hard. Those are the things where you have to be willing to do those type of push-ups. So I would be overly accountable to him. I would say to him, hey, I'm going to the store. It's 5.30.

I will be back at about 6.15 and then I was. If I was going to be late, I would let him know I'm going to be late. So one time, the funny thing is that I was so accountable to every single thing that I was doing because I wanted him to know I'm trying. I wanted him to know I'm not disappearing somewhere that you don't know where I am and then you're in this angst wondering is it happening again. I didn't want that to happen for me. If he made that choice on his own, even if I was being accountable, that was between him and God. But if it was up to me to be obedient to a showed me I was going to do those things. So I go to the grocery store one time, though.

The old Wind Dixie. And I'm at the grocery store and these alarms go off. And they make everyone evacuate the store. And so I'm like, I go outside and we're standing at the edge of the parking lot and all these fire trucks and everything are there. Nobody knows what's going on. Come to find out there was a bomb threat at the store. And so I'm obviously very late getting home because all of our steps inside,

a buggy with our bags and everything. And so I tell him it's like, I don't believe you. That's a bunch of crap. Right. And then the next thing, you know, he sees on TV, he's like, dang, you were telling the truth. And so I had to practice truth. I don't have to do that now as much. But in the beginning, because the lies I had told were so many, I did not even know what I was telling if it was true or a lie anymore.

You get so deep in that that you start making lies for the lies. And then you can't, you can't tell the truth. And he would sit with me. He's like, just tell me. I was like, I can't. I don't know how many layers down the lies are to get to the truth anymore. And it was a lot of work to do that. We finally had to stop going.

I didn't want to know every single thing that we had went through that was wrong. They said we want to put every bit of that under a blanket of forgiveness. I'm not going to ask you questions and try to probe every single situation that we went through through this devastation. Because if there's hope in your future, there's power in your present. And what we had to do is start building hope for great marriage. What's this thing going to look like? How are we going to live? What are we long to do?

do together. And what most people do is try to deal with the past and keep looking in the rearview mirror instead of setting forward. You can do that a little bit, but you've got to have something that's compelling for the future. Something you're willing to write checks with your life for, right? I mean, it's difficult. And like, so many marriages don't have a vision, they have division. It's two visions. And if you want to know if you're in a marriage that's divided, and most everyone is, all right? Here's a simple way. Just take and say they got $10,000, $10 million, $10,000 left at the end of the day, month, week, whatever, and ask both spouses write down the number one priority for that money, number two, and number three.

Specifically, we've never seen them be the same unless they've been doing the work. I'll be close sometimes, but mostly disconnected, but that doesn't work. You've got to get that thing the same. You've got to take the most important areas of your life and get unified on it because the place of unity is a place of commanded blessings. if I get hit by bus tomorrow Ash knows exactly what we're called to do and she's going to wake up being able to do it

and that's uncommon so what's a worthy vision you mentioned like hey people people don't know what a good marriage looks like like what is that what's the vision well I think everybody has to work out you know vision is a powerful thing vision is the answer for perishing

predicaments if you're in a mess having a clear vision of the future this compelling is an answer. But like for us, I mean, we want to leave a legacy on the hearts of men and women and not sticks and bricks. We want to create social, spiritual, and economic capital in a way that

it's so radically done that people say something's different about these people. I mean, why would a couple do 300 properties renovate them in 10 blocks in a city? Why would they invest 25 years in 10 square blocks? Why would they care so much? Like, why would they show up

and only buy things that are broken and unwanted and unloved nothing that's a good deal nothing that we can extract value everything we purchase we have to add value to we have to create the value and it's because there's something about what we're called to do and we know like if you got to figure out what you're here for most people don't understand their purpose yet and it's not easy now I'm telling you I'm 52 now I probably didn't know it clearly till I was in my maybe late 30s but there's four things I do that when I do it is supernatural. When I help people grow personally, love God passionately, do good work purposefully and live intentionally, it's little rocks and a shepherd boy sling. That thing's

going to work. And that's what I do. I get up every day and do that. Nash, taking over, we started 60 companies during our marriage. We only have five now, but she took over 14 of those five years ago to open up the door where I could do my purpose. And now she's using her gifts. This next season of our life is the most exciting we've ever lived we're about to go big bigger than we've ever gone on anything and we're darn excited about it we're on our third marriage so yeah we have one of our mentors said that there's three marriages that you get to go through if you're blessed and fortunate enough to do so the first marriage is whenever you first meet each other and you got a whole lot of you know attraction some lust some good stuff going on and that's your first marriage

It's a lot of fun. And you're young and you're youthful and tight and toned and all the things. All right. You got to work as hard, right? You need to hold pizza and be like, yeah, that's a big deal. No big deal. And then the second marriage is whenever you start having responsibilities and, you know, you have children, you have businesses.

Maybe you might have some things you have to walk through with elderly parents or sicknesses and things. Yeah, you have to really be involved and engaged. The third marriage is whenever your kids have grown up, they're actually successfully doing the things that they're going to do. and then you're at home and you're with your spouse and you have a little bit more money you have more time

you definitely have more wisdom even if it came from doing all the stupid things you definitely have more wisdom and you now know how to see each other and how to live life together and you can actually create a different third marriage and you're in the first time and so we're in our third marriage

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This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at This is more of like an advice question, I think, than an experience because I think you guys have spoke on quite a bit in different ways. But I feel like we live in a time where our generation and even younger believes in this like, I don't know, everything's living your truth and making sure you feel it before you ever like act on it. Well, I don't know. It's all this like spiritual stuff. not godly just like it's spiritual though it's spiritual right um but i've had a lot of people say that the only time that they would ever contemplate getting married is if like they meet this one

who's just so perfect that they would never fall out of love they would never lose that feeling because that's the perfect person for them and it sounds like from what you're guys saying I guess the question is, do you believe love is just something that is there, or do you think love is a practice? I thought she was going to say that. Oh, I did too, and he was about to get animated. I said it go nuts. He can tell you about that. It's a practice.

It is absolutely a practice. I believe you practice yourself to get to the place that you get the appropriate type of goose bumps because you've actually learned to see your mate. And you understand who you are well enough to be able to teach them how to actually love you. It's unfair to think that love you. is just a feeling of, you know, butterflies in the stomach all the time because those go away. Those go away when you were way too tired. I've been up too long. Like, whatever.

I mean, I was homeschooling all day, helping run all the back end of these companies. He was gone all day, doing all the things he was doing. We were trying to come in the middle. I don't know. I don't feel like talking about things. I'm much less having sex right now. And so it's like, so we're supposed to feel in love? It's like, no.

It's like it's a choice. If you choose to love and actually believe that God will. will bless that, and you love the way God says to love, you don't have to recreate that. And then out of that obedience, it's almost like you start loving and seeing things differently in each other more through God's eyes. Now, that's my belief, that's my advice to you, is that it absolutely is a practice.

It doesn't just happen. Now, we had a great conversation about this, if you want us to share with you, and it turned into a great heated fellowship. All right, we got a little heated on the subject similarness. Some young ladies ask her some questions, but I would say about love, you know once i got my life changed god got a hold to me i asked him i said this love the high jump bar

of what you expect of me am i supposed to be patient kind long suffering no record of wrongs hopes all things believes all things trust all things not behave rudely i said if that's what you expect to me i'm screwed i'm not going to make it i can't even do two of them at the same time harbored and you know what i felt no no no that's not what i want from you that's how i'm going to be to you and if i give it to you that way you can give it away and so what i learned to do is receive love and give it away we don't have a place to manufacture it or forgiveness and so most people are capped by their willingness to receive love to have it to give and so it's really easy to give it if all you have to do is get your love tank filled up and then let it splash over on your spouse but it's

if you're empty trying to manufacture stuff in my experience has been impossible well I have a question, but I do want to emphasize something you said that I've never thought of is I've always viewed love as an act of like something I can do for Sean, right? Like let me be hospitable or whatever. But the act of the self-awareness of me so I could help her know me, it's like that really struck me. That's not, I've never thought about that before of, okay, I need to like know who I am at well. enough to know that like that's going to that's going to make me have a short fuse or that's going to make me uncomfortable or that's going to it's harder than knowing your spouse looking at your own thing belly button is crazy I mean I tell me just do your own heart

surgery well I can't do that well now you see the troubles right I mean like us we have someone we don't we're we're excellent at helping couples and I mean we we bring in high impact couples and do these three day intents as we do which is really the culmination of 25 years of work to learn how to help people see one another we just completed two of them in the last seven days it but but what i realized that's one piece of it but that isn't the meat of this thing the meat of this thing is that you would desire to learn about yourself because that's a limiting factor you will not love your spouse more than you love yourself and you will not forgive your spouse more than you forgive yourself so how do you uncap that receiving of the love you have

to change identity you have to ask if if you at why are you worthy of extravagant love? I mean, think about this. If I had a personal financial statement believing what I believe at the bottom, you network, you could just put Jesus because that's what people like me cost. You can know the value of something by what it cost. And I had to be, I know I'm extravagantly loved. And I can tap into that and receive it and give it away. But there's so many arguments. And one thing, Ash said that what these girls came to Ash and they said, tell us about soulmates. And what they're trying to do is decide where they could leave the ones they got,

you know, a number of them. They were like, we're trapped in these things. We thought we were with our soulmate. Now we're not. I need a hot new soulmate. And so when she's talking about this, she's asking me about what I think she should say to them. Well, I'm not interested in what she should say to them.

I'm thinking, if this lady don't believe in soulmates, I could be screwed. And so I said, well, I don't know. I just know when you find a person, it's the one. And we started, and she's talking about these girls. I'm talking about us. And the more she goes, the matter I get. I was like, what is it wrong with you? No, you have to know.

I was getting all hot. I was like, she'd be married somebody else if I don't watch. So John's definitely the more emotional one in our relationship. I'm more logical. Yeah, I'm the wife in this thing. Oh, that's me. So typically, I'm coming and asking a question. It's more of almost like a scientific gathering.

I just want to know some information. That is Andrew always. I just want to know some data. And I read into everything. I'm like, I'm sorry. What are you talking about that? It's like insensitive bunch of questions. But that, again, though, that's like you're saying just many ago.

It's like if you know yourself or if you start practicing, learning about yourself, who does God really say you are? Not just those words that he says that we are and when he says that we're beautiful and we're, we're, we're heirs to the kingdom and we're saved and we're blessed and all those. Those are truths. But I mean, like, how did he? create you like because when how do we show up who how do we show up from our nature nurture choice how do we show up like how we were made that is a part of us that we cannot there's no way you're going to get it out of you you're five foot tall guy you shouldn't be in the dunking

contest all the time her girl you know you got to work with what you got so and then the nurture is most of the time that's how we show up that's the influencers that we have in our life our family our church our friends whatever we were really exposed to and most of the time that's what we are imitating and showing. We don't even realize we're doing it. And so to do this self-work is being so aware of who you really are and how you're choosing to show up. And so knowing that, when I could see John, they're starting to get perplexed, I'm like, hey, I can stop and be like, I understand that you're seeing the side of me that is not, like, I'm not reading to this at all. It's just scientific to me. I'm just asking a question for me to stop and be like, you know what,

I wasn't, I wasn't saying that about us. And I don't want you to read into that because he believes magic. And that's, I love that about him. But, you know, You know, and so he does believe in the serendipity of we met this way. And I believe in the truth that we chose each other. And so it's like there's the two different feelings and beliefs. She's a thinker and I'm a feeler. Okay. And 27% of all men are feeling men and 75% or whatever it is, 25% are all feeling men.

75% are thinking men, okay? So it's hugely different. One thing that I love, Ash is always like the husbands when we're, doing some counseling she's like yeah yeah she's like him with them thinking i mean she she totes the pistol she's got the concealed carry she'll blow somebody's butt away if they get wrong she drives she has great directions she handles the money i'm like a high maintenance wife i mean i think she was born to she said i love to serve i said i love being served what a great combination we have here this is perfect but it's fun we just think i mean i feel my way to thinking and

She thinks her way to feeling. Right. I want to, the idea of knowing yourself, like, I think looks a lot different under the heat of a marriage versus, you ever met, like, someone has a ton of money, and they're able to, like, do all these, like, weird self-expression thing. Like, they know themselves in weird ways. Like, you go to their house, and they got, like, you know, leopard print everywhere or, like, like, they have too much money that they all, they're able to go. To be eccentric? yeah but like in like their own corky way it's like that's not what we're talking about knowing yourself or like you know your self-expression it's like no it's like um knowing yourself in

in regards to being in community right and marriage is like a beautiful iteration of that like how how do i respond uh to sean when she asked me something am i like annoyed like you want me to do the dishes right now like that's not good that that that divides community right we put a number on each other's head if you put a 10 on somebody's head that I tell people, I said, imagine if you felt the same way about your spouse that you feel about whoever, Elon Musk or whoever you think is cool or great. I mean, when Ash is talking, I'm taking notes. We've been married 30 years and she says stuff I've never heard before.

I say, you're a dang genius. I said, I'm getting the credit for all this stuff and you're a genius. And it really is. There's so much. I think here's a quick statement I had recently. if the person you're married to is not the most interesting person in the world to you

you might be an idiot right I mean if they're not and it's your choice to think that right like I stopped thinking it and then I started thinking it and like I told her

I said you keep getting smarter I'm just recognizing I think most men at least from a man's standpoint never get the good that's placed in their wives the genius because they've got their heads up their butts

just last week Sean joined the board of a company she's a boss and I've like I used to be I don't know like embarrassed almost we were sitting in a meeting I haven't told you this

but she was talking like kind of a lot like not too much but like a lot and I was like this is our first board meeting I wanted to like kind of go over and squeeze her leg and be like but everything she said everyone would always be like oh my gosh

I'd never thought about that and in that meeting I was like why is that my, why was my initial reaction that, like, you know, give her a subtle hint? It was like, dude, I got to let this, this wild one just run, man. Just, that's my job is, is to help her do her thing and amplify it. One of my mentors said, let Ash talk more, you look better. That's what he said. I think, I think, so there's, there's the, the logical and the, I'm sorry, the filling parts of us and everything.

But I think there's also, there's the husband and one. wife roles also and especially in the south man do we have some shoulds and aughts and our husbands should protect us and should guard us and should help us and should do all those things and there's nothing wrong with that but there comes a time whenever there is a place as being a woman that gets dishonored and the fact that they're not seen as being capable of actually carrying certain loads that they can carry so that was probably something you picked up along the way of i don't Where are you from? Midwest, which is the same.

The same. It's very nine to five. Husbands should. Yeah. And so I'm quite sure something just from growing up. It's what you learned and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a protective role. And also a place where you're like almost kind of sort of need to keep them into place a little bit.

And I'm not saying you're a chauvinist at all. You seem like a really nice guy. Thank you. I mean, she married. I'm messing with you. But no, I mean, I think that happens. I think John does that sometimes to me And that's a husband and wife role

And we talk a lot about How different it is for a woman to show up as a business woman And as a leader And as someone that can make really Has to make decisions that affect a lot of people And how differently society receives them Their husbands receive them I mean parents, my mom and dad still like

I mean baby every day my mama It's like calls me and she'll say Baby do you have to go to work? Oh I wish you could have a day off. I'm like Mama. We own our own businesses. I work every day. I was like, I love going to work. But it's like in her head, she thinks, like, but you're like, you're like, you're like, you're like, you're like, you're like, you're going to be at home. I mean, your kids are gone, but you can be with the grandkids now. I'm like, I get it. And it's one of those things where it's like we're viewed a lot of times in a construct. And it's not even a feminist thing. It's just a true thing. It's just that we are, we are viewed in a way that we are not really created by God. And the big transition, five years ago when Ash took over the company is one thing we realized is that she had been behaving in a way that was expected of her, but not how she was truly built. And she got liberated. And it's interesting because a huge piece of the liberation had to do with telling me no.

A lot. I mean, it changed our lives. After 25 years of marriage, she said, you know, all those things I used to do, well, these things I'm not going to do anymore. I thought well day one of our mentors that said this he said John this will be one of the hardest times in your life because she's going to to be who she's called to be and who she's gifted

to be she's going to have to not do some of the things she was doing and so think about this one thing we did well is when our kids left home they shut down the job that Ash had been doing for 20 years and there was no more hiring

homeschooling being a stay at home mom yeah you know and most ladies never make the transition well from being if they stayed home stay at home mom to whatever the next and three years before it happened i started telling her so we need coaching therapy we talk about this thing we need to work on this i want to know what you dream about she said i don't know i don't have really any dreams i do i do what i have to do and you do what you want to do it's pretty darn true and so we began to work on this and thank goodness when our last

when our youngest son left ash was ready she said okay i know what i want to and it really honestly aligns with the proverbs 31 women it really does if you really read that she she was a CEO she was she was absolutely on the board i can tell you she was she was running it um she if you really read that in today's terms you'll see it and the more that he actually participates and he has been the most unbelievable husband partner lover friend

but he's also a coach to me, a trusted coach to me. He has so much wisdom, and he has for so many years been around the most amazing mentors. And every week, probably seven, eight hours a week, he still has amazing men that speak into his life. And so for me not to trust, like, hey, if I come up against a problem, or even if I'm, like, individually trying to figure something out for myself of how I'm showing up,

sometimes I give them a little bit of lip back, but usually it's because I'm working it out. but anyhow I'm still taking that and applying that because it's wisdom that he's given to me and it's shown me how to really trust that I can be who God may be and show up and my children still need me to do that

they have a great admiration for me my boys are very much just they love their mom for sure but my grandchildren they get to see a different version of me than my boys got to see and I love that I love that my little granddaughter when she looks at me actually she came to the office not who long ago i love this so i come in i have a

cardigan at the office like mr rogers i don't know why but i always put it on when i come in it's like really weird thing that i do um but anyway she had come in the office that day and i got there and she was gone but all the sleeves were rolled all the way up right and my glasses were on my desk and i was like what's going on with this and they're like oh well lily was here earlier today i'm like really okay they're like she was um shrunk darling and i'm like shrunk darling all right all right so what's a shrunk darling they're like well it's it's a small version of a big darling okay well what's the shrunk darling do and um so lily's i'm asking lily this so what's a shrunk darling do and she said well everything that big darling does i'm like well what does

a big darling do she said oh whatever she wants to do but i think the thing that she sees though is like people trust you're darling darling he's charming yeah that's amazing that's your grandma for a name. Darling and Charmin. And we're a one package thing. And the kids come into our house is Darling Charmin. Darling Charmin.

But anyhow, what she sees is that I'm a trusted person, that people rely on me to make decisions for them all day long, and that I'm kind to them, and that I'm patient with them. And then I have an open-door rule. I'm always available to the people. Now, that can get crazy for me, but it happens that way. And so she gets to see that, and I love that. Because I was very tense, I think, with the children, with the boys,

whenever I was trying to school them and everything. I was trying to be so serious and so perfect and, you know, make sure I showed up the way that I was supposed to and everything. And I was doing what I think others expected of me and my personality how I was showing up. I was not showing up in my truth, though. One of the best things I think we could, if you wanted a little advice about how to build what we've learned over,

in the last five years, we've started having a weekly meeting. That weekly meeting that is so intentional. It's as intentional as any business meeting. we have we use there's a book business book called rocket fuel made by EOS and it's the visionary integrator for a business where we use that in our marriage so we believe Ash is the integrator of our marriage and I'm the visionary and so when we have a meeting every week has the top five priorities at the top then prayers what we got going we go through a form and we do it and so we'll

do it in two sessions the first session is details because Ash wants to know details who what when, where, how, where are we going, how much is it going, all this stuff. And for the longest time, I thought, she's a dream squisher. Every time I try to do something, she's like, how are you going to pay for it? Who's going to insure it? I thought, dreams are tender. You're killing me. I said, nobody gets pregnant.

And nobody gets pregnant without excitement. You're killing mine. I said, we've got to get to where I can do it. So we'd go through all the details. But every week we go through the details. And it's really an organized place to have some heated fellowship. we normally rub on that thing you know what I mean

because we're talking about the things we need to talk about this hard and then the last section of it is vision and all she does we change venue and she says tell me more you change spaces yeah we'll go to like if we had it at the kitchen counter on our computers that we do it we kind of made this form

then she would say let's change venue and we'll go out on the front porch we'll go for a walk or get in the pool and then she's like okay tell me what's on your mind and all she does is tell me more interesting I get more excited the more she says it

and I just tell her the dreams I have about anything crazy whether it's the indoor skydiving arena I want to build or I want to like not long ago

I said baby you need to get your pilot's license I said this would be awesome and I said and your massage license that way I could get a massage

and you can fly me places she didn't think it was as great as I did and I thought leather suit this thing would be tight a wife that can massage and fly you to play and I said this will be awesome

but I have plenty of room to say anything I want so we talk about all kinds of crazy stuff I mean it's just my spot because most couples the person that is a visionary and doesn't know what they think till they say it needs a safe pace to share it and if they

don't have it with their spouse they'll find it with somebody I did promiscuous visioning for years I would vision with everybody but her because I couldn't stomach and you know that's happening whenever the person that is the visionary in the home or somewhere or is doing that is that when they come home and you're like hey how is your day and they're like it's all right what you do today well like seriously i mean anything happened today no and it's not because they don't want to share

it's because they've already shared it they've already given out all that energy and everything so he made an agreement with me he's like you know what i'm going to give you first i'm going to give you the, when I have something really exciting happen with me or I meet someone or something, I'm going to bring that to you first. As this hot potato, I said, I'm going to hold that thing. No leftovers for you. I said, I'd give it one, but it's tough. Right. Then it's my responsibility. If my mate is doing that for me, and I'm more serious and kind of, you know, a little bit more stoic than him. So my place is if he's going to bring that to me, that's a gift he's given me, is to show up

and say, that's amazing. Like, you met who? Or, I mean, you just ask. questions that bring open-endedness. It's like, keep going. Tell me more. Instead of being like, well, why didn't you call me when it happened? Or, well, I bet you told somebody else before me. Or just anything that's negative, it just shuts that down. And I was doing it before and not realizing that I was doing it. And I was like, why would I want to take that from him? That is such a gift that I get to have with him. Now, what it showed with us, this is a good one for you all. I'll give you a nugget. What we learned is, I'm a very, present voice he's a very future voice so there's future and present voices so think about this a present

voice is what is a future voice is what could be and i'm always what could be and if it's exciting enough i'll work back to the details of what is she's always what is and if you show me it's safe i'll work toward what could be so we're standing at two sides hollering at each other and we have to build a bridge right and it's very difficult there's two things happening we're that is that we both have an opportunity there to trust each other right and so when he is saying what is instead of me telling him no that's not going to happen because we can't afford it and it's not in our schedule and we can't get it into all this and said if i'm creative and i ask questions to allow him to really expound on that he's either going to say i can ask a question like is that something

you really would like to do should we should we plan to spend some more time on that and he's like no i'm just i'm just thinking out loud that gives me the freedom to relax and quit being a jerk about it and thinking that, oh, my God, you're going to take all of our money and do all this. You know, it's like we go into these detrimental places in our minds. We assume what the other person is trying to do. He also can then, if he, if he's willing to take my gifts, which is asking very clarifying questions. Penetrating questions. Seeming like they're on purpose hurtful, but they're not.

They're helpful. They just come across them, like fastballs. I just keep my pencil sharpened. But whenever, if he trusts me, then he understands like if I say, hey, Would you like us to spend some time planning on that? Can I ask some clarifying questions? That means he's now trusting me to say, yes, you know what? That'd be good for you to ask me some good questions to challenge it,

to kind of see if there's any holes there. But if we don't trust each other in those giftings, then he would assume that I'm just nagging or just beating him down, and I would assume you're going to tank us and you're just a loop and you don't have a clue of what's going on, and there we stand. Right? So which one would we rather be? Dang.

We can take a lot from that conversation. right there so plan provisional and promise yeah that's i speak in promise and i hear and promise if you say something to me it is what is you have to tell me it's something different for me to plan as we want to go there but we're not sure how provisional no idea's a bad idea let's brainstorm you can imagine if you don't know that about each other if he's talking and i hear and promise but he's speaking and provisional i'm assuming everything he's saying is what we're doing and there's been a time in our life when i've been doing that i've been trying to align things getting it all set up setting aside the resort and doing whatever it was and he comes down he's like what do you do and I'm like

what you said he's like I was talking I just brainstorming and then I'm just like oh my God I want to kill you and then the other side of I mean so we we have learned that it is so important now when I speak promise if I speak he absolutely knows when I say it if she's she's thought about it like she comes with an idea this thing ain't half baked she's been thinking about me I don't know what I'm going to say till I say it I'm surprised as she is I'm like oh my God I can't believe I thought That was awesome, wasn't it? Sometimes I'll take notes on myself because I didn't know how I was going to say it. Because I don't think about stuff.

It goes straight from, like, my brain to my lips. Hers, she thinks on it a long time. And so how do you process decision-making? See, my process is gather information and talk about it, get alone, and tell in my heart whether I've got peace or concern about it. And sometimes it's like, peace, concern, peace, concern. And so that drives her crazy. Like Wayne's world.

Then once I get to peace, I come back to the world with a message that we can speak on. And it's, and it's, it's poignant. She doesn't do that. I have to, I have to have my, I have to be able to ask questions, gather data, take it, compare it to past data, like what, historical. What happened last time, you know, how much it did it cost last time? How much time did it take? All those different things.

And then I need to think about it. And then I can come and bring that and have clarified vision to align with his vision. Now, when we do that on our projects, we're unstoppable. We're absolutely unsophable. We put our hands on something to say, amen. It's frightening to people. They're like, oh, dang, they're here again. When we don't do that, they're like, oh, dang.

Can I say stuff that's politically correct? You can edit it out. But I said, we're like a dang gay couple. Gay couples are on the same page. Two guys working hard on something. I'm like, we're like two guys. I said, we're killed it. We're on the same page.

I don't know how that one's going to play out. But it is true. You know, most husbands and wives are not on the same page. Like, Ash needs something. I got you. What do you need? I got it. We're like, we're so fast at handing the baton back and forth

and understanding where the other. person's going we're on stop we're complete we're aligned but the same page you end up on is a different page than each of you started off right yeah john has his page ash has his page that's it's amazing when you view marriage is that type of team where it's right oh well way she contributed the logistics i contributed that's right now we're freaking yeah imagine the two of you on either side of a bridge right yeah and if you've got the person that was the visionary and they they jumped over the doggone crevice and they got up there They're like, come on.

And the one that's very present, it's like, you're going to have to build me some steps to get over there. But the beauty is that you're both standing at the same end of the same bridge. You just got to figure how do you communicate well enough with each other, trust each other, and see each other for who they really are to build that bridge. And letting, if you don't, like, when I first Ash took over all our money, I handled the money after we reconciled because I didn't trust her. But then finally I got the point, and I was like, she needs to do it.

She had the gifts, but I was too hard-headed to do it. I think I'm going to be begging this lady for sawblades, you know, because she can control me one more dang way. But it wasn't like that. She's like, I'm on your team and I want to help you. I mean, I'm not going to poop in the pool we're swimming in. I'm going to try to help you get where you want to go if you'll get out of the way. God, I should have done it sooner.

I'll waste a ton of years. I'll give you guys a little bit of a chuckle. Andrew and I will have to, we'll have fun talking about this afterwards and figuring out how to best go through those conversations. But our, I don't want to say our struggle. It's not a struggle. It's comical, but I'm the dreamer. I'm the one who's like, I say it before I've thought it through,

but I just like future fun ideas. It sounds so confident too, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. But what's scary is if I say something, I'll forget about it immediately. Because like, there are so many things that I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then in my mind I'll go through it.

I'm like, not worth it. Give it 48 hours, it will be up and running. And I'll be like, oh, my God. You bought the house you talked about. Why is there a website with this title on it, and it's live? He's like, well, you said it. And I'm like, okay. Yes, I'm not very good.

I'm not a very good legit. I'm just like, all right, let's go, baby. It's like you said it. That means that obviously is what you want, right? Which has ended so beautifully for so many things. And some other things, I'm like, take it down right now. We're done. We're not doing this.

Good thing is you hadn't said. You know, we say there's two kinds of people. there's make the decision and options open let me share so this is if you're myers briggs it's the difference in a j and a p a judgeer and a perceiver so the the the options open which i am gets ready to make a decision oh almost made it didn't make it oh almost did it again and i just hold it off and she's going nuts as i almost make the decision she thinks we got it we got it oh i didn't and and she's like get all the information, make the dang decision. So, like, airfare's a great

example. If we're flying commercial and I'm like, baby, I may want to stop off like in London if we're going to go, be going to Italy or so. She's like, first it's not stop off. It's not like train stops. It's like the countries. I'm like, well, I got this person, I bet. And so

she'll be like, so what she ended up doing is saying this. I'll tell you what, the more you, the longer you wait, the more it costs. And it's making me angry. So what we're going to do is up the two weeks before any trip, you can do all this monkey business you won't. But if you ain't gave me the information, I'm making the dagam decision. And so what we realized is she collects data and wants to make the decision.

I keep my options open for as long as I can because something amazing may come up. And it has a lot. I mean, we've had amazing experiences. It's not right or wrong, but you've got to know how you process decision making. Because if not, the people that are closed decision making that get the information, information to make it feel like the other folks move the goal post all the time that drives them crazy yeah because because yeah and i like to win obviously i mean yeah i like to get the best team yeah i like to win so whenever he moves the goalpost i'm like i think i won i'm like you mean

you're on the five sorry what we're doing uh-huh i'm like it's defeating there so you guys do these weekly meetings what other cadences or rhythms do you do as a couple one thing we dedicate enough time to planning um think about how hard it is to plan honestly and as couples i mean we had no business everyone plans there's documents there's decisions there's frameworks there's timelines one three five seven year and then we go to relationships and we act stupid so we needed a framework so what we did is we said it's five s faith family fund fitness and finance and we we take and we've kind of created a tool to do that do this to go through those. And so once a year we take and decide the one word that we're

going to anchor our year on this year is endurance. And so it's how we're going to look through everything. Last year was unity. So all year we were looking for a place of unity. So where are you and I on the same page? Because that's a place of power. If not, we don't, we just go along. So we do the one year, we do the this I believe. We try to understand what one another believes because your beliefs drive your behavior. You want to know why you behave like you behave. All you got to do is look at what you believe, right? And then we do a survey that we create.

And it's free on our website on the couple section, a 5F assessment. And what it forces you to do is codify where you are. So like if you talk about like, how's our sex life? One to ten. Two is not confusing. We had to do zero recently. I thought. That thing's in serious trouble.

But what we're trying to do is. is help. We learned this actually through eating out. So like you go to a restaurant, hey, baby, you want to go eat somewhere? She's very decisive. I'm not.

I'm the lady, remember this thing kind of. He's like, where do you want to go eat? I don't know. It doesn't really matter. She's like, okay, great, pizza. I don't know. I don't want to go there. How about tacos?

Like, pretty soon she's upset again because I won't get to a thing. And so what we started doing is like pizza, one to ten, two, tacos, four. So anything six or better, we're going. So what we realize is you need to codify the things that you believe. And anything you need to do

is start putting numbers to how you're experiencing certain things. How happy are you with our income? One to ten. Do you feel like you have enough time with your elderly parents or with your family? When you start doing this,

then we say, okay, like two years ago, Ash's family score was very low. And I was like, what's wrong? She said, we're not spending enough time with our elderly parents and the time is limited. say well what do we do and we came up with a family celebration once a month so we're we put these

on and her score went up so what we try to do is she was a four we said what do we do to make it a five so codifying we speak so subjectively and so little is it objective that we can actually get on the dang same page and do something with it instead of just you know feel like you know we're talking about emotions and feelings and all kinds of stuff but we can't figure out what to do with it You've got to make it actionable. So when we do that, one of the places that it hits first is our calendar. Because, you know, we have, we have. You do that once a year or what?

How often do you? Our calendar? No, these evaluations like that. That big evaluation we do at the end of the year for the next year. And then we touch in on it individually. We'll touch in and, like, keep up, like, change anything that has changed. And if there's anything significant, we'll talk to each other about it again. He can always see his mind.

I can always see his. But we also built a calendar tool that's more important than, like, the hardest thing to do is to look for we think is annually it's the number one place that people have trouble as a as a couple seeing it all at one time and so whenever we do the five-ups every one of those actually speak into how you're going to walk that out right and so if you're saying well fun and family and faith and fitness and fineness like how do those really lay out on your calendar what does that look like and so we predetermined like what we're already looking at 24 like what is our year like for our life how we want to live according to

what we believe God has for us to do. And then we fit working around that. So that's our family trips. It's vacations. It's, um, it's, it's times that we want to be there. It's freedom we need for staycations we do together. All these things, we put all the way we want to live on an annual calendar first that, that we can measure and then we fit work between it. And what that's allowed us to do is to at least when she says we're too dang busy and we are too busy a lot of times because I try to put 50 pounds of stuff in a five-pound sack. I'm trying to make stuff happen. And she's like, it's too far.

So we'll know how to back off. Okay, so we need three less. You know, I traveled 166 days like a couple years ago that all these cities were working, and that's a lot of travel. It was too much. We said, okay, well, it's good. We can do 120, and that's probably what we'll do this year

is about 120 days of travel. A good bit of that was this year we spent January in Italy for our oldest son getting married, so that was. That's amazing. It was a lot of fun. And we had some fabulous feels. But it's just how do you have these conversations and you need to write it down? I just, there's nothing better than writing it down.

And most people don't, just pretend you're running a Fortune 500 company in your marriage and write it down. Well, and then the other thing that we do is we have these weekly meetings that stem off of what we're doing in that big yearly meeting and everything. But we keep those open. So we have pen tabs. they're always, they're our dashboard, you know, of what is it that we agreed to help each other with? What is it that we are responsible for? What is the things that we're dreaming of? So we're always keeping attention and awareness on all of the different documents or any links

or anything that we have in culmination of data or information that both of us are trying to share with each other. It would be as simple as things we want to do at our house. Like we've got one, we know one of this, we want to do that. So, okay, what are the material types of how we're going to do this? Or it could be as complex, like what are we doing for our grandchildren's future? financially or how are we going to take this company or this thing forward or we're writing a book right now when do we need to be done with this section and there's all these pieces and so how do you discuss them we we know if they're on one spot ash keeps this open and so do i like it's our dashboard

this list of what we're doing together as a couple and that's the number one thing just do just do what you would do to run a decent business and you'll start I mean think about it how many businesses have no meetings. And we keep everything there. We have access to all the links to all the documents that we need to be able to get to. We use Google Docs for that because it's simple and it's collaborative. She can be on her laptop and I can

and so imagine it may say okay we want to do something in the backyard around the pool of this and then we'll have a link here to either the list or the thing we're talking about and so on one page it's got fair request, businesses, trips,

vision, details. all on one document so we can do it. So that's a, it's a master key, honestly. People don't run their marriages like business. And I say, marriage is complicated. I mean, nobody fix their own automatic transmission hardly, and marriage is more complicated than that, right? They take it to the transmission guy,

but we're going to wing this thing. Well, that's pretty brave. Well, I think because we do that, then we get to marriage it the rest of the time, right? Like we really have the hard conversations and we discipline ourselves to treat it like a meeting, the business of the marriage, and then we have fun with each other. We have freedom to just enjoy. The state of the family. We try to do all of our fussing one year.

The big fussing is monitored. We have adult supervision. We get a couple of our mentors in the room and we have lined up an agenda where we're going to talk about all the hard stuff. With all the kids? No, it's just mainly us. I say adult supervision because we get mentors because we act like kids and that thing. But we get like maybe our, all five S we have mentors and one for faith, one for family, one for fitness, one for fun and finances.

And so we'll get them in the room and we'll do this thing called State of the Family. And imagine it's when we're going to put down everything we're going to do for the year and we're going to have all the conflict we're going to have about it. This is the moment that if we're going to have big chest-thumping moments, I call it, like when you're unwilling. It's like this is something I firmly believe in and I don't want to back on. off of it and I need to talk it out and I need we need wise counsel

to come into the room with us. It's not that we can't figure out throughout the year but it's like sometimes we as we're working through it we realize we keep coming up on something. We're making 20 year decisions. I mean we're building a campus that will have all these hotel rooms and events. We need a lot of folks look at it. It's just hard to get unpregant

every way you get unpronged is messy. Yeah. And so we had to we said before we get into this we need a lot of wise people looking at it right? But we do bring our boys in now for parts of the conversations that we have. And they can be in any parts of it. They want to be in because they're old enough now.

But it's hard because they also are wondering, like, they don't really want to do what we want to do. I mean, sometimes they're like, I don't want to do that. I like what you do. I want to do something else. Go for it. Great. Can I ask, so I'm just reflecting you saying

you're like, well, kids in church punching each other, calling each other that F word. And now in the next thing, next sentence you're saying she's the most creative powerful teammate what were the milestone you said it took seven years it took seven years to get where normal people to get to zero not here this is 25 years to hear we put we try to put decades and days but we're we're still deeply under construction right you got to wrap us in that yellow paper it says under construction we're not we're not done right I mean we're trying hard but

Some of the big things is trust is the currency of the relationship. If you tell me how you trust, what you can trust and what things you don't trust. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's, no powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. I'll tell you where this thing's going. I mean, we can do business with people with a handshake if we trust them, right? wouldn't it be a fault of anyone to say that they're not under construction

I mean if they there's people say that but I don't know I mean I think I do think so I mean I think we're all imperfect in so many ways and I can still go stupid in the heartbeat say dumb stuff but I think we don't do it as much but yeah I really do believe only the couples we admire are working their butt off to be great with one another were there milestones of like to get from that pit the rock bottom to zero even was there like breakthroughs that come to mind of like moments of like and then I trusted her or and then I trusted him like I'm just curious what that's like because a lot of times it doesn't end up back to zero they just say all right games off we're done when they start over and then they're surprised they moved to Idaho and their problems in Idaho because they move there we're our problem there's no question if you want to know where your problem is is you stand in the mirror every one of us right we've got our own problems that's what we can truly deal with but for ash i guess the first breakthrough and i wish i could say something profound but i found out she

was i said you're on my team day you actually want me to do good when i realized it it changed everything for me i was all of a sudden like somebody flipped on a lot i was like oh my gosh I mean, she, why would she want to hurt herself in the first place because she's women? But secondly, she wants my dreams to come true more than she wants her own. And once I realized that I was like, oh, I was undone. Because you could see the same thing in two different lights, right? You could see her poking holes in your dreams as like, oh, you just don't want me to dream.

And you don't want the best for me. Or you could see it as like, oh, no. She actually wants to see this work, and she's helping me get to the logistics. And she doesn't want to fuss either. and she's willing to even ask the hard questions because of her love for me. It takes, that's a tender thing that willingness to switch the perspective

of like the generosity and like, oh yeah, no, she's doing this out of love. It gets so easily flipped to like, you just spite me. Well, that's coming full circle. That's why I ask the question of like choice versus the just, should I always feel it? Is I think you either choose

every single day to see the positive which is she's trying to love me he's trying to love me he's trying whatever or you wake up each day and you say why didn't you get me flowers today or why whatever it is and I think either one either builds a path towards you slowly get closer and closer

to where you're just enamored with each other through all the flaws or you focus so much on flaws if you ask me one flaw of ash I couldn't give you one right now No, I'm honest, and I used to say, oh, you got your dang pencil with you? I can do this.

But I'm telling you, she'll say it sometimes. Baby, what I need to get better at? I said, I just don't see that. It's so much good there. But you know one thing I learned about this is I asked, why do I feel fake when I do some things, and I feel like I'm operating in faith and other things? And I ask myself, what's the difference in fake and faith?

Because they feel the same. It's why you do it. Right? It's motive. If I do it because I love, if it's we, then it's motivation. If it's me, it's manipulation. See, the difference in fake and faith feel the same. But if you say, I'm going to love you because God, he's given me this to love you. That's one thing. Or if you say, I'm going to love you because I want you to do what I want you to do. And it's service with a hook. Everything I do for you, you owe me one. And see, fake is the, we feel fake. So that's a hard thing when the feelings don't come. I feel like there's literally a million questions we could ask you guys. And we can keep you guys here for hours. Where can people find more of your amazing wisdom? Well, there's a couple places, marshcollective.com is our website.

Redemptification is our podcast. That's gentrification redeemed. I love that. I say it's when we believe that there's intended beauty and glory. and people in places. That's two easy places to find us. And then the documentary on our story, a nine-minute documentary is called beauty from brokenness.

And it really gives you a deeper dive into really the brokenness we experienced and the beauty that came out of that. Practically, it's about a 10-minute documentary. You can see that on our website, too, and about Ashina. Do you think eight hours of mentorship a week is too much or too little? Too little. I mean, think about this. Think about how honestly, if you're going to, I mean, you've been an Olympic athlete

and you've been a professional athlete. How much did you train? Tell me the training. Tell me the coaching. Tell me the detail. I'm playing this thing to win. I want to be in, I want to be the goal, do gold medal work. Got to have a lot of intentional training.

So I actually, I mentor and disciple others and that value them, but I'm in seven hours of either coaching therapy. or work for me per week. And that's just, that's not anything to do with the fitness and all that. That's just in working on, but I'm, I say I'm like a Ferrari, big pit crew needed. Goes fast. Lots of additional help required. And so it is good.

Now, Ash is she, ladies, really I've had men just, my, our longest mentor is 28 years. Our second is 25 years. And so how do you find a great mentor? I think people wonder this sometime and they're everywhere. I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. There's opportunity everywhere. But what I realize is this, you know how I know, when someone speaks to my heart and not my head, when it's humming inside of me, like, oh, my gosh, that's for me.

I schedule a second time. And then I think there's a confusion. Mentoring in my, this is my opinion. Mentoring is when I share my glasses with you. You can see the projects and the decisions I've made in life. Here's the stories. Coaching is when you hold the environment for people knowing the information's in them, and you wait for it to come up by asking great questions.

Therapy is when you're working with someone's previous trauma and counseling is when you're working to reconcile people. And I think you need all of them. I really do. Most people don't have, and, you know, we use the Eniogram, Five Voices, DNA, and the positivity, PQ. we use those four things together to help build a composite, low resolution composite of how you're wired from nature, how God made you, nurture, how your parents raised you, and choice.

And just to give you a quick example, this is a choice? Choice. So imagine somebody who's very detail-oriented. They were raised in a family of hippies who were going with the Grateful Dead. They started selling pot at 17. Now, they're very detailed. Well, they got a little different expression of it than a kid who's very detailed raising a German engineering home,

went to a German engineering prep school, and now I'm about to go to a German engineering college. And see, that's the different, it's nature, how God made us, it's nurture how they raised us, and then the choices we did with it. And those combined together to make the composite of who you and I

and everyone listening is, and we've got to work hard on that. It's hard to see yourself. Eyeballs point the other direction. Yeah, there's a book that recently came out called The Boys and men, and it talks about the issue of how men are struggling today's society, which you know, kind of a tough subject because there's a lot of people struggling, but men are like,

you know, high imprisonment rate, suicide rate, all these things. And the author brings up this concept that men have a higher degree of influence, but they also simultaneously are more easily influenced, which is powerful when I think about it. Like, it's like, man, yeah, eight hours to get poured into positively and steered in the right direction by, you know, coaching, mentor, whoever, for someone who has a high degree of influence, like turns, turns that around and then influences others. He's like, yeah, let's do, let's do more of that. More people need to be more thoughtful, more humble and seeking advice. And there's so many older people that what happens, I mean, think of the men that are not being tapped. Yeah.

I mean, one of my mentors is 83. Not many people call him. Yeah. But I do. And so we need to look at this older generation, say, man, we could, one day somebody's going to close the library on all the information they know. Dang. There's no more access to the library.

Gosh, but that's what gets me pumped about marriage, too, is because, like, you could have ended up staying with meth. You know what I'm saying? The whole thing could have ended in the train wreck. But, gosh. And our kids and our grandkids. I mean, it would have devastated a generation, you know. That's amazing.

And I think that's a story. I think everyone has a potential to do what you guys have built. Today we've talked about how you have worked on redeeming relationships and marriages, love your work there. For those listening who want to find out more about these two, they do incredible work. We'll link some resources down below. Unfortunately, we didn't. I think we're an hour and a half in.

We didn't talk as much about your work that you're doing outside of that, which is redeeming cities, which is awesome. but maybe there's a part two in store. I mean, this was an enlightening conversation, so I really appreciate you guys. Thank you for having us. We love hanging out with cool folks. We love to rub off.

Oh, man. We've learned a lot today. Seriously. One of my favorite interviews, hands down. Good stuff. Nice. That means we've got to hang out. You've got to come to Hopalika.

Hope a Lika. We say put the cookies on a low shelf where everybody can get to them. It's like easy. Well, I make it complicated. I will say one thing Andrew told all of us coming in today was to get ready for the best one-liner. And you lived up to it. Mosquitoes in a nudist collars.

Ash says I said that he speaks bumper sticker. I love it. I said, I speak bumper sticker because they stick. Oh, they do. You know, I think of things if they're memorable and portable, we can actually take them with us. Mm-hmm. And it's the way I love.

I want something simple enough. that I can hold on to profound enough that it will actually make a difference. And I care deeply about that, honestly. I need to go back and take notes on this episode. Yeah, this is good. Thank you so much, John. Thank you.

Thank you, all that. Thank you. Yeah.