FamilyLife Today®

Beyond the Vows: Preston and Jackie Hill Perry

Overcoming marriage challenges is hard work that can’t be done alone. Speakers and podcasters, Preston and Jackie Hill Perry, share insights on emotional idolatry, sanctification, and overcoming past trauma together to build a healthy, lifelong relationship.

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Beyond the Vows: Preston and Jackie Hill Perry
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Show Notes

About the Guest

Photo of Jackie Hill Perry

Jackie Hill Perry

Jackie Hill Perry is an author, poet, Bible teacher, and artist. Since becoming a Christian, she has been compelled to use her speaking and teaching gifts to share the light of the gospel of God as authentically as she can. At home she is a wife to Preston and mommy to Eden, Autumn, Sage, and Augus

Photo of Preston Perry

Preston Perry

Preston Perry is a poet, performance artist, teacher, and apologist from Chicago. Preston’s writing and teaching has been featured on ministry platforms, such as the Poets in Autumn Tour, and Legacy Disciple. Preston is cohost of the popular podcast, With the Perrys. He created Bold Apparel and the YouTube channel, Apologetics with Preston Perry, in order to engage the public in theological discourse. Preston and his wife Jackie reside in Atlanta with their four children: Eden, Autumn, Sage, and August.

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Beyond the Vows

Guests:Preston and Jackie Hill Perry

From the series:Beyond the Vows (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:January 16, 2025

Jackie:I heard this statement where there is ambiguity, we try to make sense of what we don’t understand by projecting. He could easily say, “You’re choosing ministry over me,” when I’m not, right. And so he has to be honest with himself in saying, “Is that actually reality or is this my fear, my anxiety, and my pain projecting onto my wife what doesn’t make sense to me?”

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Alright, so we’ve got a good day today.

Ann:Yeah, we do.

Dave:We’ve got somebody in the studio we’ve never had together.

Ann:Yes.

Dave:Who do we have?

Ann:We have the Perrys with us.

Dave:We are with the Perrys.

Ann:Preston and Jackie Perry.

Preston:Hilarious.

Dave:I mean, that’s the name of their podcast. I know a lot of people listening go, “Yeah, we listen to With the Perrys.” Well, we’re with the Perrys today, so this is authentic Perry podcast, right?

Preston:Yeah.

Jackie:That’s awesome.

Dave:We got Preston and Jackie Hill. We’ve had Jackie with us before, but never together, you guys. And you guys don’t even know what we’re going to talk about.

Preston:No.

Jackie:Not really.

Ann:Let me ask you, you just finished a tour around the United States.

Dave:Yeah, we do tours all the time; big time. We’ve never done a tour.

Ann:But with that, did you dive into marriage at all?

Jackie:Somewhat, because we had a live Q&A with the crowd where they could pick the topic of their choice, and the topic was always emotional idolatry. So we engaged kind of the emotions that can come out of certain relationships and how to work through it. And so our marriage is obviously a main component by which we’ve discovered how to work through our feelings.

Preston:For sure. For sure. And it’s a lot of married couples who come to the tour, and so they always want to have questions about marriage and life and stuff like that, so yeah.

Ann:I think one of my favorite things about you guys is your authenticity. You’ll go there and you’ll go deep, and I think we all appreciate that; that you’re honest.

Dave:So talk about authenticity and you got four kids at home. We just watched you deal with stuff in the home front. On a scale of one to ten, how’s your marriage?

Jackie:I’ll let you do that, high priest.

Preston:Hilarious. I think our marriage is healthy. I’m grateful I can honestly say that; but, like every other marriage, it takes a lot of work. I think God is very sovereign in putting two people who are so different alike, and I think to sanctify us. And I think sometimes those sanctification seasons look different in stretching us, using one another to stretch us.

But I’m grateful to say that me and Jackie do ministry together. And anytime that we’re doing ministry together, it’s a sign that we have a healthy marriage because we’re not the type of people that would just force ministry together if we’re not good, if we’re not in a good place. And so I’m grateful I can say that. But yeah, we have our problems just like every other marriage, and she get mad at me.

Ann:Why do you get mad at him? What’s your thing that makes you the most frustrated?

Preston:I leave my drawers in the bathroom.

Jackie:Maybe mindfulness—

Ann:What’s that mean?

Jackie:—and consistency. Leaving underwear on the floor is a lack of mindfulness to me. It’s just like, but I realize, we are year ten, he just doesn’t see it. Really, he’s not purposely trying to—

Ann:What is that?

Jackie:—irk me. He just didn’t see it. And so that’s given me a little, so I’ve realized, oh, I just have to communicate. Can you pick that up? Can you put the cap back on the milk? Can you close the refrigerator door? Can you put the toilet seat down? Can you wipe toothpaste off the sink? I have to just ask the question instead of assuming that he’ll do it himself.

Ann:Dave’s not like that, but we have a son. One of our kids was like that.

Dave:Every door, every door.

Ann:In the cupboard; like the kitchen.

Dave:You walk in the kitchen, all the cabinet doors, drawers are… I’m like, he doesn’t see it.

Jackie:Preston was just raised around a lot of boys. And so that’s really the energy is you were just raised around a bunch of boys where y’all was just out here living life like it’s a dorm. Life is a dorm room. You know what I’m saying?

Ann:How many brothers?

Preston:I only have one brother, but I grew up with 15 cousins who every summer we stayed with one another at my grandmother’s house and we all the same. We’re all around the same age.

Ann:Wait; 15.

Preston:Yeah, 15 boy cousins. It’s 28 of us all together. But just, yeah. So 17 boys, my brother, and we have 15, and we are all around the same age, and so they just let us stay in the basement, with one another. The boys: the basement was ours, every year.

Jackie:I know that thing smelled like something else.

Preston:We were just some rough kids. I lived on the south side of Chicago. We were just; it’s hard, but God has sanctified me.

Jackie:You’re a godly man.

Preston:I’m so different than how I used to be.

Jackie:I’ll take the raggedy toothpaste. Your integrity is fantastic. So if that’s like the cost, that’s fine. That’s minor.

Ann:See, that’s a good way to say it.

Jackie:Yeah, that’s minor.

Ann:You see it. But I like how they’re saying God’s sanctifying us. That’s what we; you need to start using that word when God is just shaping us when we’re in a valley. We’re in the sanctification process.

Dave:And we are. It really is marriage, isn’t it?

Ann:It is.

Jackie:Oh, yeah.

Dave:Yeah.

Jackie:You have a quote; I think it was Piper, or Paul Washer about how God puts people together for that purpose.

Preston:Yeah. Yeah. I think Paul Washer, and I think I read this a year before I got married: If God gave us a spouse that met our every condition, we would never learn how to love unconditionally. I took that into my marriage. I’ve always lived by that; that if God gave me a spouse that met my every need, I would never learn how to love like He wants me to love. And so just all the things in which, irk us about each other. You know what I’m saying?

One, I think it exposes things about your own heart. My lack of love probably exposes her lack of impatience and vice versa. And so instead of looking at your spouse and trying to figure out “What are they doing and what are they not doing?” it’s like no, what is God trying to reveal in your own heart? And how can you become better? If marriage is a picture of the gospel, God is going to use marriage to help sanctify us better than any relationship on this earth.

Ann:What do I do that bugs you? How have you been sanctified through me?

Dave:We don’t need to talk about that.

Preston:Hilarious.

Dave:It would take too long. I actually, you sharpen me in a beautiful way. I’m the one that’s the problem. It’s not you, it’s me. I mean—

Ann:We all need that.

Dave:When we teach on marriage, we say one of the missions I think of marriage is I think Jesus is trying to shape us individually to become like Christ. Isn’t that the goal? Become like Christ. And in glory we will be like Christ. Tim Keller calls it our glory selves when we stand before him. So we won’t be in perfect till we’re there. So between now and then is this sharpening process. And I think marriage is part of that. I always say this, God changes us with the Holy Spirit and an unholy spouse.

Preston:Wow.

Dave:I mean, think about it. The Holy Spirit transforms us, but when your spouse calls out something—it could be something I see in you that’s beautiful, and it affirms you. It could be speaking of truth in love—we can get defensive and say, “Wait,” or we can go, “I need to hear that.” And this is making me more like Christ if I respond. If I don’t, I’m a jerk, I’m an idiot, and our marriage is going to be in trouble. But if I can receive that almost like a gift, like, “I just got a gift. It was hard. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t even think it’s true. But if she says it and a couple of my buddies are saying it, guess what? It is true.” And I need to go, “Okay, I got to deal with that.” Is that what you’re saying?

Preston:Yeah, humility. That humility factor. It takes humility to do that.

Ann:Yes.

Preston:But I think if we have humility, we can grow really fast.

Jackie:And I think remembering or having a framework for our spouses as they are also members of the church. So I think we accept the idea that the church is the means by which we are sanctified and grown and matured and all the things, but our spouses are also a member of the church. And so they are also a means by which we are sanctified and grown and matured. And I think having that framework, I think gives you a healthy perspective on difficulty that could say basically what Preston is saying, what is it that Christ is trying to provoke in this marriage? What is he trying to bring forth so that I can put on Christ more effectively?

Preston:And I also think that what I’ve learned in marriage is that both parties have to have that humility because when you’re in marriage, you’re in such close proximity, the closest proximity that you’re in in any other relationship. And so one, you have to understand that because your spouse sees your flaws better than anybody else, a lot of times they’re accurate. They’re accurate things that they see.

But also too, on the other side, it’s like because for the person who’s seeing it, you have to remind yourself. You have to remind yourself to give them more grace because you see so much. You don’t want to just consistently remind your spouse of what you see, the flaws in what you see, but how can you encourage them, to build them up in a different way and expose stuff that is good about them? And so I think both have to have humility.

Dave:I love the idea of the church and your spouse because it’s community. Have you ever heard this quote? I don’t know who said, it’s a long time ago and I’m going to clean it up. It was not said exactly this way, but said, if one person calls you a donkey, disregard it. If two people call you a donkey, consider it. If three people call you a donkey, get a saddle. You heard that one?

Preston:No, I haven’t, but it’s true.

Dave:It’s sort of like, yeah, if your wife is saying something or your spouse is saying something and you have guys or women in your life and they’re saying the same thing, it’s true. And that takes humility to go, “Okay, I’ve heard this a couple times. This isn’t ‘People are crazy.’ I’m the one that’s crazy if I don’t consider this and say, ‘Okay, God wants to do something in my life.’” Believe it or not, that’s not even what we want to talk about today.

Jackie:What are we talking about?

Dave:Here’s what we thought. Maria’s sitting in there, and her husband, Bruce is our audio engineer, and Maria listens to With the Perrys, and she says, you guys talk about this topic a lot. So we thought, let’s talk about this. Now, here’s how I’ll set it up. When I was pastoring for 30 years, I was the kind of sermon guy that was always thinking creative. How can I say something in a creative way and not be cute, but sometimes I grabbed my guitar—

Ann:But a visual too sometimes.

Dave:—but a visual or something. And so one time I was talking about marriage, and I said, “We got to do this.” So we had a groom, and a bride walk down the aisle like it was their wedding day.

Ann:It was the bride that walked down to meet the groom, just like a wedding.

Dave:So he’s up there and I’m standing there like I’m officiating their wedding. I was just trying to make this illustration. As soon as they got to the front, these attendants rushed up. And I don’t know if you notice the luggage over here, but they put luggage all around the guy and one little bag around the bride. And so everybody in the church is like, “What is going on?” And so the whole idea was this is what we bring into marriage. We come in with bags, luggage. And so the fun thing was we sort of had it scripted. The bride looked at her husband or groom that day and is like, “What’s all that?” And he’s like, “Well, that’s me. That’s just who I am.” “Well, I don’t want this coming to my…” He looks at her and goes, “You don’t have any bags?” And then her mom runs up and goes, “Oh, yeah.” and throws four big bags. “I’ve been dealing with this for years. Now they’re all yours. Here you go.” So anyway, it was just a visual to say—

Preston:Wow! That’s a great visual.

Dave:—we all bring bags, everybody. So here’s the question.

Ann:And it’s normal. We all have it, but we don’t necessarily see it before you get married. Even if you say, this is the baggage I’m bringing in, you don’t feel it until you’ve experienced it and lived with that person.

Preston:For sure.

Dave:So I guess the question is, what pieces of luggage did you bring in? And I know, and I’ve actually put ours in there. There’s a word in each bag over here.

Preston:Oh, wow.

Dave:Yeah, for us. But who cares about us? We want to ask about, when you think about what you brought in—maybe you didn’t know it, maybe you did know it, but you’ve had to deal with—what are some of the biggest ones that came out?

Preston:Oh, man, that’s a loaded, loaded question.

Jackie:You want to go first?

Preston:You could go first. I got to think; I brought a lot.

Jackie:In a positive sense, I think I’ve brought some good bags.

Ann:That’s a good thing to start with some positive.

Jackie:Because gifts come in bags too. And so I think I’ve brought my administrative, creative, entrepreneurial, wise, intellectual, rational mind. I think on the other side though, I brought a lot of fear, a lot of shame, which I think are products of trauma, abandonment, rejection, abuse, being an only child on top of being guarded. It’s made me a person who is satisfied with doing stuff by myself. And so I think being with Preston is always pushing against my commitment to being an individual. And so those are some of the bags.

Preston:Yeah, I guess I could start with good.

Ann:Yeah, I like that.

Preston:I think for me, because I grew up the opposite where I had to share my life with so many people, I just learned what selflessness looks like. And so for me—

Jackie:So you’re calling me selfish.

Preston:No, I mean, yeah. No. I think one of the things that the Lord challenged me as a leader of my home early on, that he wants me to model what I want to see displayed. That I just can’t point out what she doesn’t do. I have to model what I want to see.

I know that God in this sovereignty put us together for that purpose. And so just modeling the things that she didn’t experience growing up, I think baggage. I mean, man, I grew up in a very poverty-stricken community on the south side of Chicago. I saw a lot of hard things growing up. I saw my first murder when I was six, when I was in sixth grade. The man who raised me, my uncle, was killed, shot and killed. One of my closest, best friend was shot and killed. And so I just experienced a lot of loss. And so for me, I came into marriage with the fear of losing. And so I think for me, I caused stress in my marriage. I brought that baggage because everything would happen. I would just get so freaked out because I think I would lose my family.

Ann:What’s that look like when you get freaked out?

Preston:I think just worry. And coming to Jackie about—

Jackie:—accusations.

Preston:—accusations. I dealt with that early on. I also dealt with the fear of abandonment too, because when you have a lot of loss in your life, you fear people leaving you.

Ann:I think you start protecting your heart too, to not experience it.

Preston:Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things, even in becoming a father, I had to honestly ask the Lord like, man, do you really want me to have kids? Because not growing up with your dad in your home, you start to ask yourself, “Man, can I be the father that I didn’t really have?” So you coming in with that type of baggage and just a lot of anger that came from my neighborhood and the way I grew up. And so that dealing, having to submit to the Lord and give my anger to Him. And so it’s a lot of things. And then I don’t know how to clean up by myself all the time.

Jackie:And I think what we’re discovering is that you start gathering new bags.

Ann:What do you mean by that?

Jackie:So we got married when I was 24. I’m 35. He was 27. He just turned 38. Like, who I am, who he is, our lives are different. Our friendships are different. Our circumstances are different. And so I have new traumas. I have new betrayals. I have new sources of abandonment and rejection that I’m now trying to navigate while being married with four kids, with a ministry, with a business, with leadership responsibilities. I think in our marriage now, it’s like, okay, how do we work through the new stuff and not allow the new stuff to affect our marriage? That was something I didn’t anticipate.

Preston:And also too, just remembering that we have a real enemy in the devil because it’s one thing to be married. The enemy hates the union of marriage because it’s a picture of the gospel. But it’s another thing to be married and to do ministry with one another. And so how the enemy is just really good at using old traumas to affect you now. So it’s like he’s always trying to retrigger old trauma and old pain to affect what you’re doing for the gospel and your home. And so as we grow, as we mature, how can we navigate through the new schemes of the enemy? You know what I mean? And him not trying to consistently use our past baggage to affect us now but submit it to the Lord. I think that’s the biggest issue.

Ann:Dave’s going to pull out

Preston:You bringing the bags out.

Ann:Yeah, he’s pulling out our bags now.

Dave:I mean, I don’t know what I put in each one.

Jackie:You got a toiletry bag. Okay, that’s the little baggage.

Dave:This is the little one. I thought—

Jackie:That’s like somebody stole my bike when I was eight.

Dave:—“Oh this one is all crumbled up.” I think this is the one just you were talking about.

Ann:Why is this in the little bag?

Dave:Because I think—

Preston:Anger, wow.

Jackie:That’s a big bag.

Ann:That is a big bag.

Dave:I think you think it’s little. That’s what I thought. That’s why I put it in the little bag. It’s like, “Ah, it’s not a big deal. I didn’t have a dad. Two alcoholic parents. My dad left when I was seven. My brother died when we moved to be with my grandmother. So I brought family issues. And I have some bitterness toward my dad. I probably need to forgive him, but it’s not that big of a deal.” And then we get married, and it becomes huge. When Anne says to me, “You’re really angry a lot.” I’m like, “No, I’m not angry!”

Ann:I remember saying to him, “I can’t talk to you about anything,” just because—

Dave:I blow up. I just blow up.

Ann:Instantly, instantly he erupts.

Preston:Oh man.

Ann:So I’m like, “I didn’t even know how to approach you when you’re like that. How do I even have a conversation?” And then I would say, and then I’d add on to this bomb, “And how are our kids going to approach you?”

Preston:Wow.

Ann:I’m not always very good with my words, especially when we were first married.

Dave:I mean, I’m out in the garage in the—

Ann:I use my words as weapons, but also—

Dave:I mean, the lawnmower won’t start, and she walks out, and I literally have a crowbar and I’m hitting it as hard as I can. And she’s like, “Okay, that’s a little out of control.”

Ann:He’s hitting it with the crowbar and then he’s kicking it across the garage. And we’ve got a two—

Preston:I feel seen.

Dave:You do?

Jackie:You don’t do that.

Preston:I don’t do that, but I have anger.

Ann:It’s in you?

Jackie:He has suppressed rage.

Dave:Yeah, that’s what I had.

Ann:But it comes out somewhere.

Jackie:Oh yeah.

Preston:Yeah.

Dave:And so we bring that bag in. I’m not saying everybody does, but I did.

Ann:Wait, wait, wait. But we’ve got a two-year-old in the garage watching his dad.

Jackie:Oh, I didn’t know the baby was there.

Dave:You know that baby; his name was Austin.

Ann:No, it was CJ on that one. I’m like, “Wait, what is happening?” I had no idea because he’s happy, he’s funny. He is like the party guy and he’s up all the time. And so when this guy comes out, I’m like, “Who is that guy?”

Preston:Kind of sounds like us.

Dave:I had never even heard the term, family of origin issues, or brokenness. I had it. I mean, duh, all you have to do is have a drone look down on our lives and go, “Okay, this couple; sexual abuse in her past; my past you heard,” they’re going to have issues. We literally thought, because of Christ, it’s all in the past. That’s all done. And then we realized it is done. God has it, but you’ve got stuff you got to work through it.

Ann:Well, wait, let’s go back to you Preston. So all that was in there. And Jackie, you didn’t know that his anger.

Jackie:Well, yeah, we were friends. So I saw his expressions of anger. So it wasn’t a surprise to me. If anything, it was “Okay, how can I help you work through that?” “What is it that you need?” too. So I think in our marriage it’s been, Preston will have feelings about things and emotions about things that he doesn’t have language for yet. And so if anything, it might create an anxiety where I’m just waiting for when it will come up because he doesn’t know it’s there, but I know something is there.

Ann:But you’re seeing it, feeling it.

Jackie:I feel it before I see it.

Preston:And I had to really work through identifying it, even going through therapy. My therapist let me know “There’s a lot of unhealed pain in you; the things that you saw because of the fall of man, we weren’t supposed to see things like that.” But because of seeing as a human being, that was the first time I realized, “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to see somebody killed.”

Jackie:He saw a man kill his wife and then kill himself when he was eight.

Preston:And so just coming into marriage with trauma like that, and even abandonment issues when it came to my father or my mom. She was a great mom, but she had to work three jobs to take care of us. It was days I didn’t see my mom. And so I realized I was putting too much on my wife, especially early on in my marriage.

Ann:What’d that look like?

Preston:Just when she would leave for certain periods of time and I would have to be with the kids, I would feel like she’s abandoning me.

Jackie:You got to think about the irony of our marriage. So he has abandonment issues, and yet you have a wife who is ambitious and so who is traveling and teaching and writing. And it can seem as if these things have the potential to cause her to leave me. So having to work through, no. So I, on my end, had to be very particular with my calendar. I can’t just be saying yes to everything just because like, “Oh no, God has called me to this.” He’s called me to him.

Preston:And I’m also—

Jackie:And so I think that’s helped him have security, is that he’s seen me choose him over even a more successful ministry group.

Preston:That’s why I tell people all the time, “That’s the reason why I love her and respect her so much because with all the Lord has given her, she’s always chose her family first.”

Ann:Way to go.

Preston:But early on, it was just a deep fear. And even I have a ministry too, and I have these busy seasons, and she never puts that type of restrictions on me. She’d be like, “Go ahead, Bucko”—

Jackie:Go, leave.

Preston:—”leave, travel the world.” You know what I’m saying? “Do you.”

Ann:Really?

Jackie:I’m an only child. I am fine. I promise I am.

Preston:But with me, when she would leave, it was like I had this abandonment issue. The Lord had to show me. It’s a difference between your spouse wounding you and triggering old wounds in you, you never dealt with. It’s a big difference. And so what the Lord was showing me is “I’m using your wife to reveal deep, deep wounds in you that you need to come to me with, not come to her and stress her out. I am using her to trigger things in you that you haven’t healed from yet.” And so when I started to do that, I feel like I started to get better. And therapy. She started going therapy first, and she was like, “You need therapy too.” I was like, “I don’t need therapy.”

Jackie:Because I think baggage, I heard this statement where it says, where there is ambiguity, we try to make sense of what we don’t understand by projecting. And so I think he could easily say, “You’re choosing ministry over me” when I’m not. That’s your fear talking. And so he has to be honest with himself in saying, “Is that actually reality? Or is this my fear, my anxiety and my pain projecting onto my wife what doesn’t make sense to me?” And so I think having these conversations has helped us to just relax. I feel like people in marriage just got to relax half the time.

Ann:And that is exactly what I did to Dave. He would go out, do stuff. He’s traveling. He’s gone, and I have these abandonment issues. I was always alone, and nobody was ever there for me. No one ever saw me. You’re going out to get all the applause of people. I’m here by myself with the kids, and you’re going to leave me just like everybody else has. That same thing. But because I’m verbal and I get mad and I can get hot, I would say all of that.

Dave:Well, the bad thing is what I didn’t realize, and again, this isn’t about us, but I was trying to be significant out there. I felt like, hey, go out there. They go, “You’re good.” I come home and I go, I hear “You’re not good. You don’t do this; you don’t do that.” I’m like, “Okay, see you later.” I get back out there. I mean, her book that’s coming out in spring is on that: how to speak life to your husband, where all you want to do is yell at him because all she was trying to do is get my attention and it didn’t work until she actually changed the tactics.

Ann:The truth; you guys are just more mature than us.

Jackie:That’s not true.

Preston:That’s true at all.

Ann:At least back then, I had no control of my mouth and my tongue.

Dave:It took years to figure out, why am I—when I sat down with a therapist, that was his first session. He said, “Go home and answer this question: What are you running from?” And I laughed at him, “What do you mean I’m running? I’m not running.” He goes, “Okay, dude.” And when I came home and said, “Ann, yeah, he wants me to answer the question.” She goes, “Duh.” I didn’t see that was part of the bag I brought in is I’m not significant. My dad left. I got to prove myself. And so that’s what I was doing. And I wasn’t proving it at home. I was proving it out.

So to hear you guys say, especially you, Jackie saying Preston is choosing—no, no, you said it about Jackie. She’s choosing marriage first. Even in the middle of all this, you’re both doing that. That is hard to do. I mean, I’m thinking there’s businesspeople listening right now are like, “Well, I’m not in ministry.” It’s the same deal. Are you choosing your marriage and your family before your job? And not to say that your job doesn’t matter, it matters. But this has got to be priority number one.

Jackie:And it’s hard because I think when success is an idol for you, it can be easier to choose the thing that is more natural or more easy for you to be good at, right? So I told Preston the other day, I was like, I often feel like a better preacher than a mother.

Dave:That was me.

Jackie:I can lean into, “Let me go do the thing I’m good at because I have shame here. I have disappointment here. I have like, ah here.” Right? But I think we have to be honest with ourselves instead of going to the easy thing, go into the hard thing with Jesus. You’re not doing it alone, so you’ll be alright.

Preston:It’s good.

Ann:As a couple, I think it’d be an interesting conversation to say, “Is there anything, is there any baggage that we’ve brought in that we haven’t addressed, we haven’t looked at, we haven’t even talked about?” That’s a hard and scary question. But to be careful and honest and kind as you talk about it.

Dave:And believe it or not, one of my other bags deals with that. Because I don’t want to deal with that, and I brought that in.

Preston:Yeah. Wow.

Ann:We’re Ann and Dave Wilson, and you’ve been listening to FamilyLife Today with Preston and Jackie Hill Perry. We’ve been talking about baggage that we bring into marriage.

Dave:We’ve been unpacking bags.

Ann:Yes.

Dave:And as you heard, we’re going to unpack another one tomorrow. But let me tell you something that we didn’t really understand early in our marriage as we just talked about, that we all bring luggage in, and if you don’t process those, that luggage is going to tear down.

Ann:It will process you.

Dave:Yeah, exactly. And so one of the things that we do at the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember marriage getaway, is we help you process through that stuff.

Ann:We totally do.

Dave:It’s really important. Let me tell you, you need to go if you’ve never gone or if you haven’t gone in a while, come back to a Weekend to Remember and process through some stuff because God’s going to meet you there and it’s going to be a life-changing weekend for you.

Ann:And because it’s half off right now, you can get 50 percent off your registration price now through January 20th. Who doesn’t want that good deal?

Dave:Yeah. I mean, that’s a whole nother bag that we carry around. It’s called finances.

Ann:And the fear of it.

Dave:So if you can get a half off deal, you take advantage of it. And I’m telling you, you need to do it right now. I know you’re thinking, “Well, maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.” No, no, no, go to FamilyLifeToday.com right now, sign up. Maybe even surprise your spouse and get a weekend away. Pack your bags, go to a hotel, work on your marriage. It will change not only you; it’ll change your legacy. We hope to see you there.

Ann:We’ll see you back next time on FamilyLife Today. And you’re not going to want to miss the Perrys are back with us.

Dave:FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® Ministry. Helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

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