The Impactful Shift All Conscious Christian Couples Make

Transcribed from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. Speaker labels are automated and may occasionally be off.

Austin: Hey, everybody, Austin and Rachel Holt here, and welcome back to the Conscious Christian Marriage podcast. we're here today for episode three, and we've got one of our favorite topics, that we're gonna be diving into. But before we do that, we're going to share a quick appreciation of each other, because, one, we love appreciating each other, and we see the power of it in our marriage, and also, we want to inspire you to find more ways to use the power of appreciation in your marriage and appreciate your spouse. So Rachel, I'm gonna let you go first.

Rachel: Okay. Austin, I appreciate how much you believe in me and support me to lead well in certain areas in our life, like GCing the build and just encouraging me to, yeah, to do it. Because I, I don't know if I thought I could, but

Austin: I wonder, I could probably show, like, a video clip of you, like you know, s scooping concrete out of mixers into, you know, piers and stuff and give everyone a glimpse of your epic-ness.

Rachel: Multi-fa multifaceted life. but yeah, I really appreciate how you have encouraged me to do that and have supported me in it, that I can just ask you when there's something out of my depth. But also, I've been going out of my depth and nailing and conquering things. Literally nailing.

Austin: Nailing, literally nailing things, yes.

Rachel: Yeah. So thank you.

Austin: Yeah. You're welcome. Rachel, I just wanna appreciate you, for, how intentional you've been with your morning routine lately and how you've been getting up super early. And I just really love how often, like, our kids stumble upon you, like, spending time in the Word and spending time journaling, and I just really Well, I, I know that's a habit of yours, but I just really appreciate that, you've been so consistent with it, for a long time now, but especially lately. I just feel like there's a lot of times where, like, you know, the kids just, as they wake up and, like, the first thing they see is, like, you and your Bible and stuff like that. And, I just really appreciate that and the impact I know that has on our kids, so.

Rachel: Thank you, and thank you for supporting me in that.

Austin: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you are the queen of the Bible bag. So- When the Bible bag is open, good things are happening, so.

Rachel: Thanks, babe.

Austin: Yeah, you're welcome. all right, so again, we're really excited about today's topic. This is something that we've talked a lot about. And kinda like last week's episode, just talking about things that are a little bit more, like, foundational, into really stepping into what it means to have a conscious Christian marriage, you know, a marriage that is very integrated and very aware, where we're leveraging both the Holy Spirit and the heart and mind and, soul that God gave us. And, and so, you know, last time we talked about, agreements versus expectations, you know? And so just that being foundational really actually flows right into what we're talking about today. which is the ability to claim 100% responsibility, for everything that happens to you in your life and end the blame game.

Rachel: Yeah. And this shift is so impactful for every Christian couple. Every conscious Christian couple makes this shift. And we're excited for you, if you haven't already made this shift, we're excited for you to make this shift as well, because you will experience really great results from, what it looks like to take radical responsibility, because when we do, we inspire others to do the same thing. And it's this upward cycle. You know you talk about, like, the downward spiral, in marriage where it can get real hairy, and then we don't know even how we got there? This is one of the things that sends the

Austin: The upward

Rachel: Upward spiral. It starts that in marriage, in parenting, in relationships, in business. It's something you can apply to every area of your life, so.

Austin: Yeah. I think that, you know, claiming responsibility is such a foreign concept, because I think from birth, everyone is conditioned to just kinda think like, "Well, whose fault is it?" Like, "Why did this happen?" Like, "Who can I blame?" "Who can I point a finger at?" And in claiming responsibility, it's not only are you not blaming, and not only are you accepting responsibility, but you're actually claiming responsibility. Because it's kinda sneaky. Like, our culture likes to kinda hide blame in making someone accept responsibility for something. That's not claiming responsibility. It's not a willful exercise of our, our free will. You know, it's, it's this like, okay, it's like an admission of, you know, a guilt imposed by someone else. And so, we help couples learn how to actually claim responsibility, how to, how to step into the power God gave them, to get the result that they want, you know? And so a lotta times, you know, we like to use the filter of would I rather be happy or right, you know?

And sometimes you can be happy and right. Sometimes you actually can be happy and right, but a lotta times in marriage, a lotta times in relationships in general, you gotta ask yourself like, "Would I rather be happy or right in this moment?" You know, like, at the end of the day, like, if you forgot to get something at the grocery store, was it really actually your responsibility to have remembered to get mustard? Was it actually my responsibility to call you while you were there to remind you to get mustard? At the end of the day, I'd rather just be happy than right, and rightness might be, well, yeah, Rachel, you had the list and you literally forgot it. But, but me blaming you for something is not gonna help us be connected.

Rachel: And where does that even get us anyway?

Austin: It, it doesn't get us anywhere.

Rachel: Just disconnection.

Austin: But if I can be like, "Hey, you know what? It's okay that you forgot the mustard. If I would've called the, if I would've called the, the grocery store and asked the manager to get on the, the horn and, you know, over the megaphone and say, 'would a Rachel Holt please get the mustard?'" " then we wouldn't be in that situation." And so it's, it's a way that I can get what I want. Like, claiming responsibility helps me get what I want, and we'll talk more about that here in a minute. But if I, if what I want with you most is connectedness, then I'd rather be happy than right, you know? And so, you know, and we know that discipline is making choices based on what we want the most versus what we want in a moment. And in the moment, sometimes I wanna be right. Like, I know that sometimes I can feel my pride. I can feel that, like, the Austin expert persona coming out and wanting to be right.

But what I'd rather be more than right is just to have a really connected, epic, happy marriage with you. And so we really wanna help couples understand that they can claim responsibility, or they can blame. And blaming is the downward spiral. Claiming responsibility is the upward spiral, so.

Rachel: Because yeah, no one wants to eat the blame cookie.

Austin: That's right. No one wants to eat the blame cookie. so- Rachel, tell everyone, why is this topic so important? And how can their marriage change by claiming responsibility and ending the blame game?

Rachel: Well, kind of like you said, it's so important because it stops the downward spiral. It stops, really victimhood. it's very easy for us to be a victim. Like, "Oh, well you did this to me. I, I'm feeling sad about this. I'm angry," and we want our side to be heard. Which, the root of that is good, right? Like, you want to be heard. Probably below that is that you just wanna know that you're loved which of course is why God actually solves that problem when you know- "I am loved," and you fully receive the love of God. But that's another topic for another day. I could go on about that.

Austin: I like planting seeds for, like, 500 topics

Rachel: I'm super passionate about that Fully receiving God's love, which is self-love, you're allowing God's love into your heart. But when, so when you don't have self-love a and you need that validation from your spouse it's really easy to play the victim game of, "Well, you did this to me and you need to see how you did this to me," or, "I can't believe that you " You know, so on and so forth. But when we stop to think, "Well, yeah, if I would have done this " And here's the thing, curiosity. Curiosity is roo like, taking radical responsibility is rooted in curiosity. And curiosity is another thing, which we could have a whole topic about how that, it literally shifts something in our brain that takes us out of victimhood or drama or adrenaline, and it helps us go, "Hmm. Oh, wow, this is how I could have taken responsibility." It, it's shedding off the pride. That's like a, a humility, right? It's being self-reflective and being able to say, "Okay, all right, like, I could have called you.

I could have said this," or, I think we should We'll give some examples so that everybody n gets some really good applicable examples. But really being able to be introspective, stop, be introspective, and ask yourself, "How can I take responsibility?" Is super key.

Austin: Yeah. And I have seen, in our marriage and in a lot of other marriages, just that ability to put a pause between their, you know, stimulus and response. You know? you know, there's so many homages I could give to that idea. But just putting that gap homages, homages? I ne- I never know. I think it's homage.

Rachel: I think it's homage

Austin: I've only said it, like, 50,000 times.

Rachel: Someone can correct us in the comments

Austin: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure someone in the comments

Rachel: If we're wrong

Austin: Will be like, "It's homage!" It's, you know. But, you know, I think that just that very nature of being able to be like, "All right, stimulus just happened. Something, something happened," you know? Maybe it's a metaphorical trip in the sidewalk. It's, it's conflict. You know, whatever that is. Just the ability to go, "Okay, I'm gonna get curious. I'm gonna get introspective and figure out how I can claim responsibility, you know, for what I just experienced," you know? And so you talking about introspection is key because you can't, you can't self-introspect until you know the self, you know? And again, that's like why, like, all this, you know, rhetoric about, like, boo the self, anti-self, don't ever think about yourself, don't ever dive into yourself. But yeah, as we, as we dive into ourself, we become better people. We actually allow the Holy Spirit to, to really, co-create with us on a whole new level because we actually know ourselves, you know? And a lot of times if we don't know ourselves, then there's this, there's this moving target that really makes, it impossible, to, to move forward on anything, you know?

Especially when it comes to, like, working with the Holy Spirit. So the more we know ourself, the more introspective we are the more we can actually skip a lot of drama and, like, skip a lot of blame-type situations. Because we're willing to actually go like, "Oh, I know myself, and I know in this situation I could have done blank, but I didn't because blank."

Rachel: Yeah. This reminded me what my dad used to do. This remind me of this situation that was really painful for me. This reminds me of this area that I'm not loving myself in. Because yeah, the more we know, the more intel we have. You know, when you were talking about that, it made me think of someone who's blind stumbling through the dark. And it's like you hurt people and you hurt yourself. So if you're blind to yourself and what's going on inside you're just gonna You know, it's like s stepping on landmines. Like, you're gonna step on yours, you're gonna step on your spouse's if you're not being introspective.

Austin: It's like, it's like swinging at a pinata. You know? Like, first of all, I don't know why that's, like, such a just

Rachel: Thing?

Austin: Accepted thing. You know, someone blinded with a baseball bat, and everyone's like, "H how did little Billy get hurt?" "Oh, I don't know." You know, because Uncle, you know, Johnny was, you know, blind swinging a baseball bat around. But

Rachel: We've seen some fail armies.

Austin: But, but it is true. It's like, it's, you know, not knowing, you know, our own blind spots, not knowing our own, you know stuff is like that. And so when we claim responsibility, marriage changes really quickly because, one, we eliminate tons of drama, if not all of our drama. You know, I can think back to so many times in our marriage where we could have just downward spiraled over something small, but instead we just claimed responsibility. Because what we both want, again, is connection. What we both want is just harmony and peace and flow and joy and, like, God moving through us. Well, we can't do that if we're more concerned about who's right and who's wrong. But we can all claim responsibility. And I believe that, like, God was a creator in the beginning for us, right? And we're made in his image. We're made as imagers, you know, image-bearers of God. And so he has given us the power to create. Like you know, some Not, we don't have to get into sovereignty and stuff like that, but, but we obviously I think anyone watching this believes in free will.

You're creating everywhere you go. You're, everything you're doing, you're creating, you know? And so you're, you might be creating with God, you might not be. but more than likely you're creating with God. Like, if, if, if the Holy Spirit's in us and you're trying to move and be Spirit-led, you're co-creating with God. And so, we are actively moving and creating. And so, I've just found that, like in our marriage, the more that we're willing to take responsibility and not blame each other, we just, we create more together, you know? Like, we, we have more fun together. We're in more flow together. when we're more concerned with connection over rightness, then that's what we get. Okay? If you want rightness over connection, you'll get it. You'll get rightness. And rightness usually means you're alone. You know, if the rightness comes at the cost of the connection.

Rachel: Our entire lives we take responsibility for. Every single area of our life, we believe is the the way it is because we've created that. So we take radical responsibility for everything we experience. So if we're experiencing something that we don't like or that is frustrating or, you know, there's a snag in our schedule, in our in our, routine and what we're Just generally what we're experiencing, like life, we believe life doesn't happen to us. We create the life that we want. We have the opportunity and the same hours in every day to create what we want.

Austin: A and because we respond. We either create or we respond.

Rachel: Right. So if something is happening to us, yeah, we have the happening to us, like an unexpected death in the family or something like we are responsible for how we move through that. And we get to create the life that we want regardless of some of those situations. But a most the situations in our life we actually have control over. And we experience so much flow, so much joy, so much happiness because we If there's anything that's not working, we shift it pretty quickly 'cause we're like- "Mm, I don't like this. Let's shift this." Instead of, "Oh, this is so frustrating."

Austin: Yeah. We we

Rachel: You know?

Austin: One one thing we like to say is, the only time you get hit in the face by a log is if you swim upstream. So if it's not working, stop doing it. You know, if swimming upstream doesn't work and you don't like getting hit in the face by a log stop swimming upstream. Find your flow. Find what actually works, and do it. You know? And,

Rachel: I we see this a lot with people's career. It's like the husband and the wife are, you know, frustrated and they don't have time together or you know, th their life is like, "Well, we just never get this."

Austin: Yeah, but they have a huge mortgage payment. Huge car payments. Yeah. They they don't need a house that big. They don't need cars that nice, but they're still choosing it 'cause unconsciously they actually care about that more at that moment.

Rachel: And so if if they could pivot to say, "Well, what am I not experiencing that I don't want?" But I think some of it goes back to establishing their values together and reassessing those because some things might be actually logistically getting a higher value on their priority list. But

Austin: Well, one thing you said, I wanna say this before I forget is, like an extreme example, you know, talking about like responding to the world around you. It's like if you get T-boned and it Like, we've had people say to us, "Well, what happens if someone runs a stop sign and T-bones you in an intersection and it breaks both your legs or you become paralyzed?" It's like, well, you didn't have to drive. Like, you chose to drive. Like, you chose to live a life that required a car. We know people Well, we know like people that know people. Like our Amish hookups, you know? You know, for like goat cheese and stuff like that. You know, like we know people that don't live their life

Rachel: Hard floor

Austin: With cars. Yeah. I mean, they have like buggies and horses and they go down the highway so it's probably just as dangerous.

Rachel: Right, they could Yeah.

Austin: Maybe more dangerous actually as I'm saying it. But but you can actually organize your life in such a way where you don't have to drive a car. So if you're in If you get T-boned in an intersection, if your whole life your response to that is, "Why me? How did that happen to me?" "I can't believe you, God. I'm so mad that you let this happen," you're never gonna have power. You're never gonna have closure. You're gonna have never gonna feel back in control. But if you can say- "You know what? I chose to be in a car that day." "I chose to live a life that required me driving around the city in a car." And I Every day you're rolling the dice by driving a car, every freaking day.

Rachel: It's true.

Austin: Every day you eat broccoli you're rolling the dice, okay? More people choke on broccoli than like anything, okay? So, like every day you roll the

Rachel: On broccoli?

Austin: Well, yeah, choking on broccoli.

Rachel: Is that like a stat?

Austin: Yeah, I it's a stat somewhere. And of of course five-fourths of stats are made up on the spot. But, you know, a lot of people choke on broccoli. So you're rolling the dice if you eat a anything other than baby food, okay? but one thing I wanna talk about is why there's so much resistance to claiming responsibility, and we're gonna give some really good examples, I think you guys are gonna like. But my first thought on that is just thinking developmentally. I've been thinking of this yesterday. I think, this one like Malachi like fell out of his car seat when we were all getting in the car, and all my You know

Rachel: Aw

Austin: We have, we have three daughters plus Rachel, so there's like four moms, you know. And then me and our son. And m he fell, and every single person in the car was like, "Oh, Maly, are you okay?" And Caroline came over and was like patting him. "Oh, Maly boy are you okay?" So it's like he got hurt and all of a sudden everyone felt sorry for him. And he probably felt a lot of love. He probably felt a lot of comfort, like, "Oh, everyone's like coming around me and loving me." So a lot of times in life it's easy to play victim. Because it's like, well, if I play victim, if I fall on the ground and get hurt and I wait long enough, everyone's gonna be like, "Oh, are you okay? Oh, come here." "Oh, I just love you. Feel better." And that's really comforting. Like that's really comforting to our nature, you know? And so if we can play the victim card, play the blame card, okay, like, "You did this to me," okay?

If I can do that, I'll generally get people to feel sorry for me. "Oh, you're right. You know, that person did do that to you." You know? And, and we're not talking about every extreme case. Like there, there are cases where, you know, people are truly victimized. Even in the cases of extreme victimhood, we want to just honorably observe the idea that we can still respond to our strongest, you know, like some of the strongest people I've ever met in my life were the most victimized people I'd ever met. But they chose to Like people, like rape victims, all kinds of things, but they chose to respond to that with maximum responsibility so they could get their power back. So they could reclaim their power. They could reclaim their, their personal sovereignty. But I think that most people are stuck because it feels so good. And we have this apology culture where it's like, "Oh, you better say sorry to them. You better apologize to them.

You better." And it's like what? Like I have to share how bad I am for you to feel better about you? That sounds like I have a remote control to your emotions. We even teach this in, in management, all kinds of things. Like if you have this sorry culture, okay, you're actually disempowering people by that. But a responsibility culture, like if everyone claims responsibility, no one has to say, "I'm sorry." Yeah. And then

Rachel: And we experience that together.

Austin: Yeah. And if no one's at fault, no one has to be blamed, no one has to be punished. And typically when people feel guilt, they punish themselves. So like in our model, like in our marriage, our parenting, like even the way we run our businesses, it's like we have this responsibility culture- So that people don't have to feel guilty. And then people don't have to punish themselves. Because we all know that guilt leads to shame. So if we do bad things long enough, we think that we're a bad person. You know? And the, that, this whole apology, I'm sorry culture feeds right into that. You know, but anyways, all that to say, good bunny trail, long time on that, just one of the questions we have on here is, you know, what's people's resistance to this change, this shift? And I think it's people just love when people feel sorry for them. What do you think?

Rachel: Yeah. That and also just ego and pride, you know? Maybe some personas of, like, well, like you said, what did you say your persona of

Austin: Like Expert Austin. Yeah

Rachel: Expert Austin. Like, I have one of, like, being smart, like, not being Avoiding the negative emotion of maybe, being stupid. Which I don't even like saying that 'cause I don't speak that over myself, but that was something that I noticed early on that I would be defensive or be prideful or wanna be right because- I was avoiding facing the fact that I didn't love myself, or, you know, even go back to certain experiences in my childhood where I felt stupid. And that I didn't feel you know, validated for my, my sh my smarts and my wonderful brain. and so there's something there in us with our ego or our pride or a persona that's calling the shots.

Austin: Yeah. And then you're using situations as a gauge as to whether you can validate the belief about yourself or not, as to whether you're intelligent or not. You know, it's like, well, if I can make you tell me I'm right, if I can make you admit that you are wrong, I'll f- I'll feel more validated about how intelligent I am. And that's where that persona gets fed. You know, and it comes, and you already said it, that that answer is loving yourself without the condition of how smart you think you are or you're not.

Rachel: Which is why I could get going on this. Pride is actually the lack of self-love. A lot of people in church culture say, "Oh, well, self-love is prideful." It's actually the

Austin: It's the opposite

Rachel: Lack of love. Because where there is fear, there is no love. Like, where there is love, no fear is present. They, they do not commune with each other.

Austin: Yeah. And the more you love and appreciate yourself, the less you need to convince other people to do it for you. It's such a great cycle 'cause generally the happiest people I know who have actually fully accepted God's love the very most they do not need you to know they're right. And they don't need you to know you're wrong. They're content with where they're at with God. And I, and, like, I love communing with these people because it's like, I don't need to prove anything. I don't need to defend anything. I'm gonna just gonna be Spirit-led. and if you're wrong, like, unless I'm your mentor and you're asking me to correct you, like- I'm gonna let you evolve on your own. You know? Like, we like to look at the word love as letting others I was gonna sign it. Letting others voluntarily evolve. I've never done that before, but I was gonna sign it for some reason.

Rachel: Take your hands

Austin: Letting others vol- No, I'm counting it. I can't There's some mannerism I do with this, but, you know, love is letting others voluntarily evolve. You know, and again, unless you're in a mentor-mentee, discipley type relationship, people typically don't take well to you just popping into their world and correcting them, right? That's a happy first right thing too. You know? But, yeah, I, I think that you're right. I know that you're right. It's this idea that pride is the absence of self-love, deep self-love and self recognizing the value that you have, you know, in Christ. Because when you don't do that, you'll try to fill that bottomless pit and you need other people's approval, submission their apologies to make you feel better. I don't need anyone to apologize to me to make me feel better. No one can make me feel better, okay? Christ makes me feel better. Okay? And because of him, I can choose to feel better. And then if other people are pouring into me, it's like a cherry on top.

But I, but I, I, I really appreciate what you said there

Rachel: Love that

Austin: Because that is, like, one of the most important pieces, so. but just other, couple other things in general, like marriage just is in flow with responsibility. Like, I just think through so many times where, you know, we could have let one thing just disrupt an entire day or days of connection and just being able to be like, "Yeah, you know what? Like, I totally could have," and we'll give examples again, "I totally could have blank," and then it wouldn't happen. Anyways, all right, so let's move on. So when we claim 100% responsibility for everything that happens in our lives, and we end that blame game, couple of powerful things happen. Number one, we end victimhood, and we step into, the sovereignty, the personal sovereignty God's given us. Okay? When I claim responsibility, I take all remote controls back from other people. 'Cause what we don't What a, what a conscious Christian does is they live their life in a way where other people don't have a remote control to their emotions to what they believe, okay?

When Paul talks about, like, being tossed by the waves, so many Christians are tossed by the waves of just one person's opinion of them. Oh, Sally said that, you know, you suck at theology, or Sally said that you this, this, this, and now all of a sudden you're, you're emotionally crippled for a week. That's no personal sovereignty. Like, that's, there's no freedom there. There's no power there. when I take personal responsibility, I step into that personal sovereignty that God gives us.

Rachel: Mm-hmm. And like you mentioned, you know, when I claim responsibility, I actually get what I want. Right? Because what I want is connection with you. What I want is to feel love. What I want is to be happy. What I want is to experience an awesome marriage where we're fulfilled, and we're in flow, and we're having fun and experiencing joy, and I don't get that from, you know, digging my heels in and trying to prove a point or trying to, convince you of whatever it is or just, you know, wanting you to agree or validate

Austin: Or needing me to agree, to validate.

Rachel: Yeah. And so when we shift that awareness of, "Oh, wait a second, this, I'm not actually getting what I want."

Austin: Yeah. Yeah. It's like everyone wants to talk about power, right? I feel like in the last few years that's been, like, a big, you know, phrase, like in the, the life coachy type industry. Everyone wants to talk about their power, their personal power. You know? Real power comes from two things. It's knowing the source, okay, which is Christ. And everyone wants to say the source is you. Well, the source is actually Christ. And then we create with God in that relationship, and that's where, like, our personal power comes into play. So it's first Christ, and then it's our personal power. Our personal power is just our ability to take responsibility, to claim responsibility. If I claim responsibility, I'm right back in the, the co-pilot seat. And I get to move on. You know? Like, I'm not gonna stew all day and all night over is someone else gonna take the blame for this? Is someone else gonna apologize to me for this? I'm basically not gonna sit around all day and all night stewing on, and circling on is someone gonna take responsibility for this?

Is someone gonna apologize to me? Is s is Rachel gonna come around tomorrow and be like, "Babe, I was wrong," you know? And like, 'cause that's not what I want, you know? The moment that I'm willing to go, "Hey, you know what? Actually, I could've been more patient with you." "And yeah, maybe you did say something out of anger that was like a projection of your sadness or something, but I could've been more patient with you, I could've been more present with you, and I think if I would've been, you probably would've been easier to get along with. So you know what? Like, I'm gonna claim this, and we're just gonna move on." That's power.

Rachel: And then that inspires me to be like, "Well-" And because I, I see that you're trying to take responsibility and it softens my heart to say, "Oh, well, yeah." "I was, you know, I did say that thing in anger," or whatever. And I could have been more patient as well, and I appreciate that you're reflecting on yourself. And then again, it's this upward cycle where he says it

Austin: It is powerful

Rachel: And then I say it, and it really is an incredible way to elevate.

Austin: Yeah. There is so much, like leveling up that we do in inspiring. Like, when I claim responsibility, you do and then I do, and then, you know, it just kind of goes back and forth. And it reminds me, so one of my favorite movies is the original Spider-Man. It may not be the original, I don't know, but I think it's the original.

Rachel: It's with Toby Maguire, right?

Austin: It's with Toby Maguire. You know, and he's quoting his Uncle Ben, you know, and he says, "With great power comes great responsibility." I actually believe it's the opposite of that. It's with great responsibility comes great power. 'Cause responsibility means the ability to respond. Responsibility means I am response able. Okay? It means that I can experience stimuli, I can pause, and then choose how I want to react. The, the greater length at which I'm willing to claim responsibility means I have more power. You wanna be a leader? Walk into any crisis, claim responsibility for the current stat the current status, the current response plan, and people will be led by you.

Rachel: You should give your paper example.

Austin: Yes. I, I will. I'm, I'm gonna give that in just a minute. Yes. all right, but

Rachel: We keep teasing these examples

Austin: Yeah, I know. I know, right? so I, I, I wanna share, before we go through the examples, I, I just wanna share, like, one key scripture real quick. and, and then one other point after that. so one scripture that we just wanna observe today, is, Paul's letter to, the Galatians, chapter 5, 6 through 18. "For each will have to bear his own load. Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows that he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up." Couple, couple thoughts on that. Number one, we will bear our own load. Like, it's just made so clear in a lot of places in scripture, like we will bear our own load.

And if we are willing to accept that, that we will bear our own load, we are accepting responsibility for our life, for our calling, for our duty. Okay? And so if you can understand, like, on a felt sense, like other people are not going to bear your load for you, at least not forever, and at least not in a substantive, identity type way. You know, there's t different parts of scripture talking about sharing the loads of others and helping others. Like, don't get me wrong. Like

Rachel: Share the load.

Austin: Share the load, Frodo.

Rachel: I couldn't help it.

Austin: I know you can't.

Rachel: I bet everybody Well, all the LOTR fans.

Austin: Share the load, load, load. you know, like yeah, there are times where we come alongside, especially each other in marriage. You know? It's, the, the, the, the three strand cord, you know? but for the most part, we are, we are told, you know, that we will bear our own load. Like and, and again, we will reap what we sow. Okay? And the only way to change what we reap is to what?

Rachel: Change what we sow.

Austin: Change what we sow. And the o and the, this is to me, this, really tees up this next part. The only way we can ever change what we sow, I'm sorry, what we reap, is by understanding that what we sow equates to what we reap, right? So if you're not w if, if you're looking at your life and you don't like what you're reaping you have to have the humility, the responsibility to be like, "How did I sow this?" And the only way I'm gonna change what I'm reaping is what I'm sowing. And telling the truth about what you're sowing. 'Cause another thing we teach in marriage a lot is that, you know, drama comes from the competition of conscious, commitments and unconscious commitments. Some people might have a conscious commitment to getting along well, but they have an unconscious commitment to being right above all things. Those two will be in conflict. Okay? And as conscious Christians, as faithful Christians, we have to have the ability to take full responsibility, to go, "Okay, if I'm reaping it, I sowed it."

If I'm reaping it, I sowed it. And the proof is always in the fruit. Right? So here's the fruit. If I'm, if I'm reaping oranges, I sowed orange seeds.

Rachel: Right. You can judge a man by the fruit that he bears and that goes for yourself, too.

Austin: And so the third thing I wanna just point out here is I know a guy- I know a guy who is the ultimate model of claiming responsibility. Okay? You, you ready for this? Everyone ready for this? The ultimate man who claimed responsibility more than any man of all time was Jesus Because he claimed responsibility for our sins. Because, here's what he wanted. If Jesus wanted to be right, he wouldn't have done it. Like, you guys are sinners, I'm not, so you can face death. And I'm just gonna chill up here in heaven with God. But what Jesus wanted more than that was to reunite us with God. Jesus's happy was connecting us with God. His rightness would be letting us suffer in our sin. But his happiness was reuniting us with the Father. So Jesus came down, claimed responsibility for our sins so that we could be reconnected to the Father again. Think about that. Happy verse right, right? Like, Jesus could've just been like, "Whatever, you guys screwed it up.

That, that's not on me. That's on you." But he didn't, because I think Jesus clearly wanted to be happy over being right. So he chose to be happy because he delights in us. It's amazing. It's amazing. He d he delights in us. He delights in his friendship with us. Because not only are, are we, you know, sons and daughters of God, but we're friends of Jesus. You know, we're brother and sister with Christ, 'cause our Father, you know, our Father's who we have in common. You know? And so if we are to look like Jesus, walk like Jesus, model like Jesus. He even claimed responsibility to some degree even when he was being crucified. You know, just like, and I mean, you know, Stephen said the same thing. It was like, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing." You know? And maybe Jesus wasn't claiming responsibility, but he was, he was sort of like trying to vindicate them to God. You know? Like, that's how powerful his love is, you know?

And it's like imagine if we do that in our marriage. It's like, "Oh, like I forgive Rachel. Like, she's upset right now. Like, she doesn't know what she's saying." You know, like, "She's hurt. She's, you know, hurting. She's feeling unheard, you know? And so, like, I'm gonna give her extra grace." You know? It's like

Rachel: I have enjoyed being the recipient of that. Thank you.

Austin: I'm, I'm, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. 'Cause I just wanted to make sure that we really highlighted just the ultimate champion of claiming responsibility, and that's, that's Jesus. So a couple examples. Actually, just for fun

Austin: We're gonna give four examples today.

Rachel: I love this one, the first one. Can I share? So for those of you who listened last week about agreements, this is a topic, this little juicy intake or, in Oh, gosh. This little juicy look into our marriage.

Austin: Juicy look into our marriage.

Rachel: Is something we've created many agreements around. because, yeah, it's been a learning, an area for learning opportunity. And you might relate. It is leaving for church on Sunday mornings and getting ready.

Austin: It's probably leaving anywhere on time. But specifically when we have to be at church at 7:00 AM for worship team with four kids. And we live 25 minutes from church.

Rachel: Currently at the time of filming this, we have a 9, 7, 4 and a half, and 2-year-old. And getting them up super early, getting ourselves ready for worship, packing up your guitar gear and all that, it's a feat. We feed them breakfast. We get them dressed. We do their hair, you know. We all have tangles in the morning that need to be taken care of.

Austin: I don't.

Rachel: And so, right. Ex except for you. and so we've had some snags around that, and it's been, a learning opportunity for us to both take responsibility. So usually what it looks like, like let's say I, we were like five minutes late, which is from our 15 minutes earlier rule. We have an agreement that we leave 15 minutes

Austin: 15 minutes

Rachel: Early to anywhere. So but for us, if we're leaving 10 minutes and not 15, it's like we broke that agreement and we're late at that point, because we like to be 15 minutes early. And so if we're five minutes past that, you know, and, and Austin's feeling frustrated, he can He, I really appreciate that you have done this. He'll say something like

Austin: I'm noticing right now that I'm feeling a little frustrated because we didn't leave on time. Yeah.

Rachel: Yeah. And I'll say, "Thank you for sharing that with me. You're right. I could have gotten up an hour earlier. I could have set the kids' clothes out ahead of time, like last night," which this is something that I do. But early on, this is what, how I how I got curious, took responsibility and it actually helped me to create new habits. And then you would say

Austin: Then I would typically say, "Well, you know, honestly, you know, if I would've gotten up earlier, if I would've made sure, like, breakfast was set out maybe the night before, you know, we would've left on time for sure." You know? Or, "Hey, if I had got the kids to bed earlier last night rather than wrestling with them in the living room, maybe they would've been, more easy to wake up this morning, and then we wouldn't be running behind."

Rachel: Right. And then we'd just go back and forth.

Austin: And then you would say Yeah.

Rachel: I could say, yeah, w- I don't even know what else I say.

Austin: If I ha if j if I had prayed that Jesus himself would have gotten our kids up

Rachel: Yeah, there's always something

Austin: We wouldn't be in this situation.

Rachel: There's always something, like

Austin: But basically, yeah, but we are, we are essentially racing to responsibility. which is something we're gonna talk about here in a second, too, but, yeah, that's a great example.

Rachel: Yeah. And it's actually helped us. We come, we have lots of agreements around it. The agreement is you make the breakfast, I get up extra early, I set the kids' clothes out the night before. And we make sure we hold bedtime the night before sacred for me and the kids. You're, you're good on sleep.

Austin: Good on sleep. That's right.

Rachel: You're not as sleep-dependent as me and the kids. but that's a good example.

Austin: Yeah. And blaming each other, like, "Oh, you didn't get up early enough," that's, all that's gonna do is disconnect us. You know? Rather than like, "Hmm, as I'm getting curious here and using the brain that God gave me- I, realizing I probably could have gotten up earlier today, or I could have set out the kids' clothing, or I could have made sure they went to bed early." "Or I could have made sure that, I could have started the car 20 minutes early so it was nice and warm." Like, there's just so many different ways.

Rachel: This is a good one for the ladies. I could have asked for your specific help. 'Cause it can be really easy for ladies to fall into, like, the victim of, "Oh, I'm just doing all these things. He's not helping. He should know." But that's an expectation that you have. If you need the help

Austin: And, and a lack of

Rachel: Ask for the help

Austin: And a lack of understanding of the masculine and the feminine. The, the masculine is very macro The feminine is very micro.

Rachel: Yes, we are detail

Austin: You have to train the masculine. You have to tell him. He's not just gonna know. He's not just gonna think about it. I know that Hollywood and Disney has made a lot of women think that, like, men are gonna be these, like, ultra, uber thoughtful, insightful romantics. We have moments of being romantics, for sure. But most of the time you have to tell us, and that's okay. I'd rather be told rather than guess.

Rachel: Hey, brush this kid's hair right here.

Austin: Yeah. All right.

Rachel: That one with the brush.

Austin: All right, we're gonna move to the next one here. another fun example. This is just kind of one maybe more a little bit from my world. I was in a mastermind group one time, and a mastermind is basically just a, like a group of business owners or business leaders that we meet quarterly and go over goals and go over tactics and stuff like that. Anyways, and so I was at this, two-day, three-day mastermind event, and, we got there the second day. And, generally, when we get there, like, all of our paperwork is printed, and it's set at everyone's spots, and there's coffee cups and everything's set up nice. Well, I think it was the morning of the second day, we got there and none of our papers had been printed and set out yet. And, you know, there's, like, an assistant that handles that kind of thing, and, and everyone in the room was all bent out of shape about it, like, "Ugh, I can't believe this.

Like, you know, what's-his-name didn't print all the stuff and have it in here on time." You know? And, like, everyone was getting all worked up about it. And I was like, "Yeah, if I would've got here 30 minutes sooner and printed it all myself, we wouldn't be in this situation." And someone's like, "Yeah, but that It wasn't your job to do that." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, maybe it wasn't my job to do that, but I don't think that I should sit here and whine about it if I had the power to do it myself." And everyone in the room was like, "Oh, that I co-" You know, and then across the room, "I guess that's true. I guess I could have printed them from home and brought them this morning, and then I wouldn't be so upset about it." And I'm like, "Yeah." You know, because, you could have sat there and blamed, but then you'd have The reward of blame is validating your victimhood.

And that reward is not worth it. Okay? But if you claim responsibility, you have the power. So I felt better immediately 'cause I was like, "I coulda done this myself." So I was like, "Austin, next time you just do it yourself, man, and you'll be fine." Boom. I instantly felt better. Claim power. cl claim responsibility, and I got what I wanted. another fun one. Actually, you, you should share this one just about build stuff.

Rachel: Yeah, so I had an issue with a lumber supplier where they, they actually made a mistake. They didn't get something to me in time. I was waiting on it, and, instead of, you know, saying something like, "Well, yeah, you shoulda gotten this to me," I was really frustrated about that. I said, "Well, hey, if it was really that important to me, I could have called you. I could have, followed up on email." You know, I, I took responsibility in a lot of different ways. And this person was like, "Well, no. Yeah, no, it was on me. Like, I should have done this and this and this." And, it was a great way Like, I didn't feel upset at them because for me personally, it wasn't even about me taking responsibility for them. It was just about me not being upset at them. It's like, well, yeah, I could have If it was that important to me, I could have called you, more times. I could have emailed you, you know, and said, "Hey, I need this back by, you know, 5:00 PM tonight," whatever it was.

I could have been very,

Austin: You could have drove by.

Rachel: I could have driven over there

Austin: You could have sent a freaking carrier pigeon over there

Rachel: And said, "I'm sitting here." "I'm sitting here until you give me this answer." because yeah, it, it doesn't serve me to be frustrated at anyone when I could just reflect on myself and see how I could have done better.

Austin: Yeah. That's really good. I'd like to give an example of a client, like of a couple that we've worked with, and there's, there's just so many that I'd, I'd love to pick. But, I think a good one would be the I think maybe some people watching this could relate to. so, like we've got a couple, an amazing couple. and, so, like, the wife, her dad was an alcoholic growing up. and you know, she likes to have alcohol occasionally, and her husband, likes to have alcohol occasionally as well. And basically, when there's just alcohol around, like, there's just a general sense of, like, some uneasiness because of the developmental wounding of alcohol being in the home so prevalently for the wife. And so they came to a place in their marriage where they wanted to make an agreement about how to, like, you know, cut back on alcohol to, like, you know, 10%, you know, the occasional glass of wine, the occasional, you know, drink somewhere. and so, basically, when that conversation kinda started, like, there was upset about like, "Hey, like, when you have alcohol, I feel really upset.

I get scared." "I feel shaky. I " You know, like, all these things. And so, like, there was a really great responsibility claimed on both sides of that. Like, you know, the wife was like, "Hey, like, I realize that, like, by me having any alcohol in the home at all, like, by me having alcohol, it's gonna make you wanna have alcohol. And so, like, I'm creating the thing that I don't want by me also, even though I might just have a couple glasses of wine every once in a while, it's still, like, attributing to that." And then, you know, he's like, "Well, like, I know for me, like, I might be causing some of the, like, trauma response or, like, sadness you have about your childhood because, like, I have alcohol mo maybe more often than, you know, than you do. And so, like, I'm gonna cut way back on it." And actually, this guy ended up giving it up completely to, like, best honor his, his wife and his marriage.

Rachel: And she did too. She followed suit, actually.

Austin: Yeah. And, and so essentially, what ended up happening was a, a topic that really caused them a lot of duress, it could have been like, "Hey, like, it's your family history that's why we can't ever have, you know, alcohol." Or, you know, or it could have been like, "Well, no, it's you that's

Rachel: You're triggering me

Austin: Yeah, you're triggering me." And that's what it is. But instead, they had a really conscious conversation about it. A really, like, high integrity, high responsibility conversation where it was like, "Hey, like, what do we wanna create in our marriage? You know, like, what, what, what do we wanna create? Like, do we wanna have this drama, or do we don't? Like, let's both take responsibility where we can and heal." And that's what they've done. And this is a tricky one because we get questions about this all the time, you know about how to, like, navigate that. And, and that's, like, a whole nother conversation, so like you know, we have, like, a lot of thoughts about, like, how to balance, you know, things like that. but it was just a really cool way to see this, like, really strong power couple, I mean, like s s significant, church leaders, business leaders, like a really epic couple be able to navigate something that's, like, pretty touchy for a lot of couples.

Because you could just replace alcohol with so many other things that's touchy like that, right? And so but it was like, "Hey, like, I'm gonna take responsibility for what I brought to the table." He's taking responsibility for what he brought to the table. And they didn't have to blame each other, they didn't have to say sorry to each other. They didn't have to beg each other for their forgiveness. It was like, "Hey, like, well, if I do this, this would happen. And if I do this, this'll happen." And then they created something really amazing. So just another example. All right, three big takeaways. Let's leave everyone with just three kinda core takeaways. Why don't you share the first one?

Rachel: The first one is when you claim responsibility, you get what you want, and you get it way faster. When you claim responsibility, you get what you want and you get it way faster.

Austin: Yeah. Claiming responsibility is swimming down the river in flow versus swimming up the river.

Rachel: You could even hold onto the log and it'd be your flotation device.

Austin: You could, you could ride the log. Yeah. You could, you could, you could literally

Rachel: Surf the log

Austin: Kick back on the log, you know and take a nap on the log. the second is no one wants to receive blame, okay? Empower and inspire others, to claim responsibility by claiming responsibility on your own. No one's gonna receive blame. They don't. They, they don't receive it willingly or joyfully, for sure. Okay, but you can inspire other people to claim responsibility by claiming responsibility. Okay, third one.

Rachel: Sometimes you can only be happy or right. We know sometimes you can be happy and right. But sometimes you can only be happy and right. And you get to choose which one you want in your marriage.

Austin: Yeah. I'd rather be happy.

Rachel: For sure.

Austin: I'd rather be happy. That's right. okay. So what we wanna do now is just take a quick pause for our nonprofit shout-out. Rachel, you wanna shout out our nonprofit for this week?

Rachel: Yes. We want to shout out Mother's Refuge. They are a local, women's, shelter and community, and resource here in Kansas City. They help homeless mothers, pregnant homeless mothers. they give them, assistance in their medical care. They give them, counseling, whatever it is that they need.

Austin: A place to stay. Yeah.

Rachel: Yeah, a place to stay, education, until they're able to be fully independent as a mother, as, you know, employed somewhere. they have so many resources. We'd love for you to go check that out. We'd love for you to donate to them and support them. and you can do that by going to mothersrefuge.org.

Austin: Yeah. Great.

Rachel: So please do that. We love

Austin: Yeah, there's also information about them on our website. But, but pause this episode, go to their website, kick 'em over 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50- $50,000, whatever you're feeling like. And drop a little memo in there that, you know, their good friends at, you know, CCM, said to stop by. But we really want you to, just understand who this awesome local mission is and, h how you can help, so.

Rachel: Yeah, you can find out so much more about what they do on their website. They do so much for young women.

Austin: Yeah, mothersrefuge.org, so. All right, Rachel, what's our big action item, intention, commitment? What's, what's the last thing we wanna leave with people today that they can walk away and take action on that'd be, like, the biggest lever that they could pull, in their marriage?

Rachel: Yes. So next time you are feeling frustrated or you're observing something in your life you're not happy about or you have a learning opportunity with your spouse, we encourage you to get curious, hmm, deep breath, hmm and ask yourself, "How can I take responsibility for this?" So if you take anything away from this, if there's Just remember, if there's anything you're experiencing that you don't like, ask yourself, "How can I take responsibility for this?"

Austin: Yeah. That's it. It's that simple. It's that ability to go something's going on, you know, we give a nice hmm, okay? The hmm vibrates the vagus nerve, which gets all of your serotonin flowing and helps you think, helps you feel. Hmm, how can I claim responsibility for this situation and what I'm experiencing? And that is where power and freedom comes into play. That's taking the remote control back from the people or things around you. It makes you a more solid person, a more solid believer, a more solid representative of Christ, who is the ultimate responsibility claimer. So thank you guys for, watching this episode and for hanging with us here today. We hope it was valuable to you. As always, be sure to check out consciouschristianmarriage.com, and see, what we've got there that might help you, catapult your marriage in the right direction, help you level up, not just your marriage, but your relationships, everything else in your world. thanks for being here, and we'll see you on the next episode.