Episode: 136 \\ Why Can't I Get My Husband to Behave the Way I Want Him To Behave? | 3 Key Things Stepmoms Do To Change Everything
(AI Typos are courtesy of ... well! Artifical Intelligence! You'll get the gyst if you're perusing the transcript! Blessings, Stepmama!)
Hey there, lovely! At the time of recording this episode, We are four months into the year of 2023.
In 3 more months, we will be at the height of Wedding season! It is fast approaching, can you believe it?! If you’re about to be the blushing bride, today’s episode is for you.
If you are wishing you had never walked down the aisle to create a stepfamily, today’s episode is also for you.
And, if you find yourself somewhere in the middle, guess what, sis? You, too will find powerful guidance in today’s episode!
A few weeks ago, I joined a Speaker’s Academy and the very first thing they did was push us off the edge of a ginormous cliff. Not literally, of course. But the challenge they issued was to prepare a short video talk about something you’re passionate about sharing with other women. The thing is, they gave us this task with one parameter – keep it to about 10 minutes. There were no other guidelines.
This is quite similar to the ginormous cliff we fall over after we say yes to blending families, don’t you think?
Back to the video…I’m curious – what would you do? Would you redo the video if you didn’t hit the 10 minutes exactly? Would you feel the urge to ensure you were 10 minutes on the snoz? Or, let ‘er rip?
Well…I got close to 10 minutes…13 minutes and 7.25 seconds to be exact. And I let ‘er rip.
In the video, I shared 3 of the 10 powerful strategies you must choose to create the life you crave as a woman of influence in your blended family. I chose creating this talk because I’m passionate about sharing what works for stepmoms. The downlow – there’s no fluff. We don’t have time for things that don’t work.
We also don’t have any time to waste in getting to work. If you said yes to being a stepmom, you’ve got tenacity, sista! Despite some desperate moments, the desire to give up, or the difficulties in dealing with a difficult ex, You have the power to make an impact in the family God has given to you, sweet woman!
Smart decisions, small habit modifications, & prayers that change stepmoms’ lives are what prevent generational divorce. I believe in this so strongly that in 2023, I’m on a mission to influence 12,000 women and challenge them to do the hard work of blending.
If you’re new to the community, be sure to head on over to stepfamilypodcast.com to discover all the freebies, courses, and coaching options that were created with you and your Stepmama journey in mind.
I’m Jen Rogers, Certified Life Coach, Trainer, and host of Bold & blended Stepmoms. In today’s episode, number 136, I’m going to share 3 of the 10 powerful strategies you must choose to create the life you crave. And, if you want all 10 of them, which I know you do, you can find them at stepfamilypodcast.com right at the top of the page. Just click on the Freebies and you’re all set!
Are you new to the podcast? I’d love to hear from you! Email me and the team at friends@stepfamilypodcast.com and tell us you’re new to the community so we can love on you and welcome you!
Ok, Sis – let’s get to it!
Are you familiar with Ted Talks? They're about 10 minutes and they show up on the internet or they show up in person. But people get up in front of an audience and they share their 10 minute talk. Well, that's the very idea that created this exercise for us in the Speaker Academy.
To prepare this 10 minute talk. Remember, my talk is 13 minutes and 7.25 seconds. So I created this in my mind and was acting as if I was in front of an audience, and then I was going to direct them to sign up for the workshop that followed my 10 minute talk. Okay. There is no workshop for you to sign up for from this talk, but there are workshops for you to sign up for when you go to stepfamily podcast.com, and you can see everything there,
whether you wanna dip your toe in the water and check out the free resources, or you wanna go all in and enroll in courses and coaching, all of those things are available for you@stepfamilypodcast.com. Okay. All right. Hey, join me in this 13 minute 7.25 second talk.
Are you ready? Here it comes. Imagine with me for just a moment. What would your perfect family look like? What would it look like? Take a moment and if you're willing, close your eyes and think about what your perfect family would look like.
Got it. How many of you heard all those messages about Jen? Wait, I don't have the perfect family! How many of you heard the message, ah, that ain't never gonna happen? Well, sister, let me tell you for sure that if you think it's never gonna happen, it's never gonna happen. And if you think it's going to happen, it's not gonna happen, yet.
Let me tell you why. Hey, you are in this room because you saw the workshop title that said How to Get My Husband to Do What I Want Him to do when I want him to do it in the way that I want him to do it, so that I can live a happy step-family life because I am tired of being a strung out step. Are you in the right room?
you were in the right room if you said, that's what I want. So I am here today to give you 10 tips. Well, actually, I need your help so that I can share with you three of the 10 tips and then invite you to scan the QR code at the end so you can get the rest of the tips. Are you in. Are you ready? All right, let's do this.
Okay. So for those of you who actually imagined and said, oh yes, I can see these family dinners, I can picture this cohesiveness, I can envision celebrating graduations where we're not fighting with the co-parent. Well...!. It is possible to get pieces of this as you move along. So here are three of the top 10 tips.
I'm gonna start with number one. Are you ready? All right. Journals and pencils at the ready. All right, let's do it. Okay. Number one, adopt a spirit of curiosity. Now we know in God's word that there are lots and lots and lots of reminders about who does the judging, and that's God. God is a judge. Jesus God, Holy Spirit, they are the judge.
We are not, and so we're reminded often get that big fat plank out of our own eye so that we can actually love the way that God calls us to love. And the only way we can get that is by being curious. Be curious, what is it that is preventing you and your husband from coming together to say, this is how we want to parent these children, regardless of the outside influences in the home, this is how we wanna parent the children.
What's preventing you from coming together to do that, we must adopt a spirit of curiosity. So one of the things women often do is, I should have done that. Maybe you're thinking, oh, I should have thrown the laundry in before I left to come to this workshop. Maybe you're thinking maybe I should call home and make sure that they remember to put the dogs outside.
Maybe you're thinking, I probably should have gotten more sleep last night. Those shoulds, I often say, should and shame they go together and they go together because when you should on yourself, you're telling yourself you didn't make the mark. You're saying, I missed the mark. I didn't do what I should have done, and in today's workshop, here's my invitation.
Let's get curious about what God is calling us to do. Let's get curious about what it is that's creating that tension between you and your husband, so you actually can blend your family beautifully together, so you can co-parent well, and it's so important to adopt this spirit of curiosity because if we don't, we're busy judging and we have a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies.
I'm sure they're gonna leave the lights on again. I'm sure his kids are going to be late. I'm sure that his ex-wife is going to do this, that, or the other thing. All those things that you're sure of, that you're speaking into your future. Let's decide. Let's get curious about what's in here. So when we're curious up here there, it's gotta, that curiosity must travel 18 inches down to our heart.
And I gotta say that's a very long 18 inches. Can you relate? I know you can. It's a long 18 inches from up here down to our hearts. But God calls us to love. He says, love one another. And he says, love your enemies. And I know that a lot of you in this room feel like there are forces on the outside of your family influencing your family and
um, they don't feel like you wanna love it. Doesn't feel like you wanna love them. In fact, you've probably brainstormed a few things that you would like to do with, with them now. Now, if you want to, you can lean over and you can whisper it in your sister's ear. Okay. . But let's not say it out loud. Not all loud.
All right. Some of those things that we've been thinking, Hey, let's get curious about what is that butt ugly that's in our own heart. What is happening there that's creating that angst in us? We wanna fix somebody else, but we got lots of fixing to do when we sit down with our Savior. All right? So let's get curious, and wherever you are, wherever you find yourself, Hey, I wanna give you full permission to be inquisitive instead of judgemental.
Look, you and I, if we've been breathing more than five seconds, we've committed some sort of sin today. We are a sinful people. God's word tells us that every inclination of the human heart is evil since childhood. Ooo..... Doggies. We don't really like how that sounds or how that feels, and yet God's word is truth.
It is 100000%. Actually, his word is truth. So a hundred percent is all truth. We can't go higher than a hundred percent. God's word is 100% true. Let's get curious about what he calls us to do. Okay? All right. Are you willing to stick around for the other few tips that I have for you? I said in total I have done, and I'm gonna share three.
So the first one is, That's right. It's curiosity. That's great. Okay. All right. The second one. Now I know again, women, we like to fix things and we like things to be a certain way, and we must acquire an attitude of through the power of prayer. So prayer is your offensive weapon. It is your most powerful weapon.
So if you want your husband to see things in a new light, instead of chasing him down the hallway when he is trying to run away from you and say, let me think about it. Let me think about it. And you're gonna say, no, no, we gotta talk about now instead of that, pray for him, for God to give him and you discernment on how you can be unified.
So that you can begin to blend together in a way that is aligned with what's important to you, with your values, with your beliefs, with how you see your family. Even though we know that the perfect family here on uh, earth right now, it's not possible. There are lots of things that we can do to enjoy and to delight in our families.
It takes work. So when we are curious about, wait a minute, what is causing me to feel this way we can pray and ask God to give us discernment about these emotions that we're feeling. So these emotions, they're powerful intel. So when we're curious about why do I get torqued every time the lights are left on, well, I would tell you that when I grew up, my dad hollered at me when the lights were left on and he charged me a fine.
He charged me money because I left the lights on. Now let me tell you that that has occurred to me, and I have shared that with my husband, and he's not so jiggy with that idea. He's like, oh man, Jen, that may be pushing in a little bit, but I wanna say, I think, you know, at some level it, maybe it would work, right?
I don't know. Well, it didn't really work for me. It actually had me feeling shame, like, gosh, why can't I, why shouldn't I be able? Should shame be able to remember to turn those lights off, and yet we've gotta have something, uh, a more ingrained value besides saving money on the electric bill . Okay. The value might be that we know that we're saving for a vacation, and so one of the ways that we can do that is by not leaving the lights on.
Use the lights when we need them and turn them off when we're done. It's good steward. So we need to pray about God, where are you in this thing? And can you reveal to me maybe what's underneath the angst so that I can move forward, so that I can close that gap, that 18 inches from my heart to my head, so my heart and my head can be aligned with your word power of prayer.
Okay, that's two of the 10, and I'm gonna give you one more today. All right, so top three. So the first two, the first one is, that's right, curiosity. And the second one is, Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. Pray. In a position of humility, God teach me what it is that you would have me learn here. What is it that you want to reveal to me?
Because the thing is, is we cannot give what we do not have. So if you do not have discernment, if you do not have peace in your heart, you can't give it. Okay? All right. The third thing, the most, not the mo, I mean. They're all so important. That's why there are 10 of them. But the third thing for today, community, community, community, sweet, sweet, sister.
You are here because you felt lonely. You're here because you're tired of walking on eggshells in your own home, and you just want someone to say, Hey, it's okay. I get you. In fact, I've crushed a lot of eggshells, too. I've been in the kitchen where I've been cooking dinner and the rest of my family has been around me, but I felt invisible, unseen, unheard, talked over, talked about right there in my own home.
I didn't feel safe in my own home. In fact, I did actually run away one night, . I did run away. I ran away to a hotel and I refused to talk to my husband. Let me tell you, that went over like a lead balloon, right? I mean, I thought I was proving something to him to teach him a lesson, right? And God used that to reveal some things to me about those butt uglies that are stored up in my heart that Jen, there's more to this than you and I call you and your husband to be unified together.
And so that's why we come here. That's why we are in this room full of women because you know the guys and I'll get it , and that's okay that they don't get it, but they don't get it our way. The real question is, is are they hearing from God? Do they have an ear in tune with the Holy Spirit to know how to be the spiritual leader of their household?
Because that's a prayer that God will honor. God, will you reveal to my husband how to be the spiritual leader of this household? Will you help me be his helpmate instead of being his checkmate Father God? Those are the kinds of things that will create this family that you're craving this perfect family image that you have.
Listen sister, it starts with one small thing and you are a woman of influence. And you can use that influence through being curious through the power of prayer and coming together in community just like this, where we can learn things from one another. Hey, in the subsequent workshop, I pray you signed up for that because we're gonna do some real work, but we're gonna apply this teaching to practical steps that you can walk away with because we know that we can hear all kinds of stuff.
But until we apply it, until we take that one small step, there's no real change that can happen. Okay, the first step for you to take is to scan that QR code behind me so you can get all 10 tips and then join our community so you can be heard, so you can learn, so you can adopt a spirit of curiosity in community with women who love the Lord, who love their husbands and are going kind of crazy in their stepfamilies and they wanna figure out, how do I make this?
That's why you need this community. All right? And yes, we do pray together because we know that there's nothing that we can do on our own apart from Jesus. His word tells us in John 15, five. Apart from the vine, you can do nothing. I mean, we can get a 10,000 sisters in this room and there's some stuff we could do, but not in the Lord.
If it's not with Jesus, we can do nothing. Hey, thank you for coming in here today. Thank you for joining me. I'm Jen Rogers. I'm the host of Bold and Blended Stepmoms, and I can't wait to work with you and have you join the Bold Stepmom community. We are so excited. We're waiting for you. We are ready for you on the inside, one small step.
Scan the QR code. Let's get going. All right. God bless you.
I'm so curious, what did you think of that message? Are you curious to know what the other seven are? You know what to do, go to stepfamily podcast.com and you'll find everything there.
Hey, if this episode helped you today, would you consider leaving us a five star review on Apple Podcast so we can reach more women and prevent generational re-divorce? All right. Hey, thank you so much for spending time with me. I know time is your most precious resource. I am honored that we got to spend time together and I hope to see you inside the Facebook group to get to know you more.
Hey, thanks for listening, and I will catch you on the next Sacred Stepmama Shortie. God bless you during this holy week, especially I pray special blessings on you as you take the time to contemplate the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus who loves you very much, who gave his life for you.