1/28/26 - 2131: The Ripple Effect of Marriage
Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him - 13 years of covering the Faith and Work Movement.
Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Our mission is to release the testimonies of workplace believers who have learned to unleash their job related and social contributions for the flourishing of the world. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.
Jim: One of the greatest ways for the enemy to disrupt our Heavenly Father's plans on Earth is to destroy the institution of marriage. The attack started with screwing up Adam and Eve's paradise based marriage, and marriage has been under attack the entirety of history since. In today's modern world, the next generations look at marriage was skepticism and scorn.
Traditional marriage is denigrated and made to look absolutely ridiculous. But God designed marriage between a man and a woman as the very fabric of society. Without marriage, but still producing children, you get a society with kids who are now adults who have serious daddy issues, and childhood trauma still rocks the minds of many in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties.
Marriage is sacred and it's the answer. It is the answer to so many of society issues like poverty. So why is iWork4Him focusing on marriage when our clear focus is the intersection of faith at work? Because our marriages are a light to those around us. When our marriages are a mess, it impacts us and our witness and it verifies the lies that marriage isn't worth doing.
National Marriage Week is the week leading up to Valentine's Day, and Julia Dezelski is here to tell us about it. And we've talked about it in the past, so we're following up on one of those great conversations. Julia, welcome to iWork4Him.
Julia Dezelski: Thank you, Jim and Martha. So glad to be with you today.
Jim: Julia, as a follower of Jesus, how did you come to be so passionate about marriage?
Julia Dezelski: Yeah, that is a great question and I have to start with a story that starts in my childhood really. I was probably in the fifth grade sitting in the school cafeteria with my friends. It was just a regular old day when out of the blue, a friend of mine, Kate, in my class says, my parents are getting divorced.
My heart I think stopped at that point because I had never heard anyone's parents getting divorced. It was an absolutely new concept to me. And another child at the end of the table says, oh yeah, mine too. And then my heart stopped again. I was in complete shock, and part of that shock might have been because there was nothing casual about the news, and yet they acted so casually about it.
But instinctively I knew that their lives would change forever, and I was beginning to hurt for them, and I continued to hurt for them because I realized that, instinctively, there was something that was going to not be the same for them or for their families, and it would interrupt their existence.
My parents were solidly married. Divorce was not part of their vocabulary. And although I didn't think that would ever be an issue in my family, I continued to ache for all the kids in my life whose parents were getting divorced. And I start with this story because it seems to me that I instinctively knew in the marrow of my bones how existentially significant marriage is for the identity of a child born from the union of a man and a woman.
And Christ, in fact, uses the very same image, right, when speaking of the church. He speaks of that love that he bears for the church in the same way as a spousal love, right? And so our identity, even as Christians, is very akin to that image of marriage because we are all married to Christ in some way.
And if God uses that image of marriage for his church, then it must be a very powerful union that he's talking about. And so early on in my life, I just recognized instinctively really just the significance of marriage between a man and a woman. And I knew I wanted to do something about it later on in my life, and God offered me the opportunity.
Martha: Yeah, so the, it's so great that you can see how God wired you very specially for what he has you doing today. And I think that alone is a message for our listeners to hear, because each one of us, God wires a passion inside of us and tapping into that and utilizing that is so powerful. So just personally, how long have you been married?
Julia Dezelski: I've really only been married for 10 years, almost 10 years. My husband and I just celebrated nine years, and so we're moving into this 10th year together, and I have resolved that we are going to get our wedding pictures printed and framed. (laughter) It's been on my to-do list for nine years.
Martha: There you go.
Jim: That is truly a sign of the next generations, because yeah, our marriage book, our marriage wedding book was done and we've got it leather covered. It's been in a box for 40 years.
(laughter)
Martha: Yeah. So let's talk about maybe some of the things that you have seen as being the secret to keeping marriage strong and healthy. What are some of the things that you know?
Julia Dezelski: I don't think I have any secrets, but there are certainly some practices that my husband and I maintain for our marriage. And one of the essential things, and for your audience, I'm sure they, this resonates with them, and that's prayer. Pray together. Please pray together every single day. My husband and I have had some ideas about what prayer might look like and when you have young children that it doesn't always turn out the way you want.
(laughter)
Jim: Certainly not at bedtime. Never at bedtime, yeah.
Julia Dezelski: Don't attempt it. But we always manage to say at least one Our Father together, even if we're absolutely destroyed by the end of the day, saying one Our Father together hand in hand really makes a difference. So I would really suggest it every single day. Don't let the sun set without saying an Our Father with your spouse.
We also check in regularly with one another throughout the day. We don't always work together from home. If we're in different places, I'll text him and I'll just say outta the blue and just say, how's your day going? How can I pray for you? Is there anything that you know I need to do before I come home this evening? So finding those ways to just touch base.
Then make sure you schedule a date night, continue to date. Even as some married couples, it's important and we haven't been good at this. Especially with small children, it can be hard to find those babysitters when you need them. But once a month we make it a goal.
Jim: And babysitting today's gotta be somewhat of a, you almost need to take out a loan so you can go on a date night. How many kids do you guys have?
Julia Dezelski: We have four girls.
Jim: You have four girls. Oh my word. You guys better start saving now. (laughter)
Martha: I just wanna highlight the fact that you said that the very first thing, without knowing our heart, prayer is what we say, and we actually call it the secret sauce. No, it is not a secret, but so many people ignore it or never have been encouraged to even try it. And for a lot of people it really is a new experience to pray with someone else, and they may not have had it modeled in their home.
They may have never heard from the pulpit or anywhere someone in leadership saying husband and wife, pray together. But we do believe so strongly in that and on a consistent basis. And, for years it was daily for Jim and I, and now it's multiple times a day, every day because we do work together. And so there are stresses that come up or confusion or choices we have to make where we're not clear. And that is the place to go in that moment. So thank you for sharing those things because I love the, just the fresh perspective on it, especially right now when people can say, oh, I could do that.
And I love the fact, I'm just gonna say this, that you said date night is a good, it's a goal, but it doesn't mean all of us are perfect at it, but we need to keep trying. And I know that there were a lot of times in seasons in our life where it just meant after the kids go to bed, let's have a piece of cake or let's just sit.
Jim: And we watched ER. (laughter)
Martha: We did, on Thursday nights. We had date night on the couch on Thursday nights after the kids would go to bed early and it was like, this is our time just to be our by ourselves. And now, whatever it is, that is such a good thing.
Jim: Do you have a special book? So, we've got several marriage books that are our favorites that we love to give couples, especially when they're getting married. Do you have a favorite book you and I believe your husband's name, was it Fran, that I saw on your Zoom thing before you got rid of his name?
Julia Dezelski: Francis.
Jim: Francis. Okay. So you and Francis, do you guys have a book on marriage that you guys love?
Julia Dezelski: Actually, I'm glad you asked this, because my husband is the one who finds them for me.
Jim: Ooh. Very unusual. Most of the time it's the women going, here, honey, I've got a book that we should read. And the guy's going, what? We don't need to read a book. Yeah. That's funny. Okay, go ahead.
Julia Dezelski: Yeah, and it's Love and Respect, I believe, this is an oldie but a goodie. You probably know it well. The Love and Respect series.
Jim: Yes. Emerson and Sarah Eggerich. Yeah, that's right.
Julia Dezelski: That's right. So we're reading that together now. But I have to say, even before we were married, while we were engaged, we started reading together, and one of the books that, again, my husband pulled off the shelf for me was not specifically marriage related, but it has a lot to do with marriage, and that's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen Covey. We found that to be very beneficial for each other as well as for family building.
Jim: Those are awesome.
Julia Dezelski: So that's another one of our favorites. And then, my husband really likes the exceptional 7%. That's by Dr. Greg Popcak. Maybe a little less, lesser known, but we have also benefited from that. So those right now - Love and Respect has gotten my attention, but we go back very frequently to Stephen Covey and any of his books, really.
Jim: What we love about Love and Respect is, we didn't get exposed to Love and Respect till 2008, and so we were, it described why we were arguing. And it helped me understand Martha didn't mean to be disrespectful, but I was interpreting it as disrespect, and I didn't mean to be unloving, but she was interpreting it as unloving, and it put a language for us to be able to work through it, and it gave us the three key sentences that every husband and wife need to understand and memorize and repeat often: "I'm sorry." "I love you." "Please forgive me."
Love and Respect's a great one. We also love the 5 Love Languages. Go ahead, Martha, you were gonna say something.
Martha: No, that's okay. But I'm gonna put the actually the link to the interview that we did with Emerson Eggerich. Actually, didn't we do several in a row for Love and Respect? Very powerful. I'm so glad that you guys have found it for yourself. And there are some things that they're timely no matter when they were written. And I hope that people see that perspective because they're biblical truth. There's nothing new under the sun. God created it that way. But helping us to have understanding is incredibly important.
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Jim: All right, so let's talk about National Marriage Week, but I wanna put one more plug for another phenomenal marriage book.
Martha: Oh, you thought of another one? Okay.
Jim: Marriage Mentor. By Rhonda and Steve Stoppy. So Rhonda and Steve Stoppy wrote this book. It came up several years ago, five or six years ago, not too many. And when we read it and then we interviewed them, it had everything in one book that we'd ever said in any marriage mentoring session. So we really loved that one. And really in any marriage retreat that we'd ever done.
Martha: It uses Love and Respect and 5 Love Languages, like lots of things all put together. Good plug, Jim.
Jim: All right. Good plug. All right, Ronda will like that, right? All right. National Marriage Week, which is the seven days leading up, or eight days leading up to Valentine's Day every year. Julia, tell us about it. What's what? This year, your theme is Together with Purpose. Explain this.
Julia Dezelski: That's right. Together with Purpose. This was chosen primarily because it is one of the most powerful yet overlooked aspects of marriage, right? It's the purpose of why we are together, right? It goes beyond the day-to-day life. The day-to-day humdrum. It's about a higher commitment, right?
To walking together, especially towards the Lord. Towards Christ, building a life that is intentional, meaningful, and enduring until death do us part. But marriage is unlike any other relationship. It's a covenant, first and foremost, right? It's a covenant that you've made before God. So it's a sacred bond of trust, of intimacy and of shared vision.
It's not about simply coexisting. It's about choosing to prioritize, to support one another above everything else in our lives. So building that purpose together by dreaming together, by serving together, by creating a life that leaves a legacy for generations.
That's all what we mean by Together with Purpose. And we're trying in this week to encourage couples to really dig a little deeper into what the purpose is that drives them and to recognize that it's a vocation. They've really been called to it. And how do they live it out distinctly? Man and woman, husband and wife, and yet a marriage takes two. It wouldn't be complete without either one.
And ultimately we hope that they grow towards God in their marriage. That's what they're called to do, to bring each other to the Lord.
Jim: Yeah, it is graded as one of the worst movies ever, but great, is the Christian thing called Marriage Retreat. And they draw triangles on the back of people's hands and they say that's the secret of marriage. But they have to spend the whole weekend figuring out what the triangle's all about. We'll put that on the notes as well.
Martha: We won't give the answer, right? So they have to watch the movie.
Jim: No, I'm not gonna make you watch the movie, because it was just horrible. (laughter) It was like totally C minus class Christian video.
Martha: It wasn't the greatest acting. It was a fabulous story.
Jim: You have a husband and wife at the corners of the bottom, part of the, it's an isosceles triangle, so an equilateral triangle. Excuse me. Equilateral triangle, not isosceles. I guess it doesn't really matter. Triangle. Husband and wife at the bottom corners. And as they're seeking God, they're also drawing each other together to where to every time they draw closer, they're getting closer to God.
Martha: So let's talk about just some of the logistics of National Marriage Week. How long has it been around?
Julia Dezelski: I just discovered that it's been around 30 years exactly. It was started in 96, 1996. It was started in the UK, so not in the US, surprisingly. We tend to be such trendsetters, but instead it started in the UK, but it's really taken off well in the US. We have National Marriage Week USA. That's a strong, thriving organization.
And my job, one of my jobs, is to partner with them in ensuring that National Marriage Week really thrives during the week that it's scheduled for, from February 7th to the 14th every year. And so specifically, I'm working for the Catholic church in this area. But it's a wonderful movement that's spread across the world already.
Martha: So how do people actually get involved? I know you have a lot of resources, but what does that actually look like for the individuals and or organizations or groups, whatever it might be?
Julia Dezelski: Sure. One of the goals of National Marriage Week is also advocacy, right? So we have lots of resources on our website for the couples themselves, enrichment opportunities, courses. There's a calendar feature on the National Marriage Week website that relinks you to US marriage, which is a great interactive map of all of the opportunities to enrich your marriage, throughout the country. So you can search by address, locality, all that.
But one of the other things is that we really hope that people will get the word out about National Marriage Week by encouraging their pastors to preach on marriage from the pulpit, especially on World Marriage Sunday. What a great opportunity!
Jim: What a great idea. What an idea. Talk about marriage. I would love to, if you know a pastor that is gonna preach on marriage on the Sunday before Valentine's Day, 'cause I think it's this year, it's like in the middle of the week or something, if you do, you let us know and iWork4Him - just go to the Contact us page - and we'll make sure that we put it out there so people know, Hey, go to this church. And so you can hear about marriage, 'cause it's not talked about enough in our churches, all over the country. It doesn't matter what denomination, it's not being talked about enough.
All right. I interrupted you, but you got me excited when you said, wow, pastors are gonna do this.
Julia Dezelski: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's hard to gauge exactly who is doing it, but if I find out who is, I will let you know. I will do that for you. But also listeners can get involved. Almost everyone has a social media channel of some kind, instagram or Facebook. We've got lots of social media graphics that they can download and they can start hashtagging, whatever they wanna do to get the message out to the friends and family members that this is happening.
Also, why not reach out to your local representatives, your mayor, your governor? There's a great marriage proclamation that a lot of different places have produced. You can see the proclamations on the Marriage Week website. And there are sample templates there. So if you wanna share that with your local municipality, it's great to also hear the national voices on this to hear that a local community supports marriage.
And of course, like I said, we've got lots of other resources to enrich your own marriages. We produce an at-home couple retreat. So each day of the week there is a prayer, a reflection, and it's so easy to do for that couple. All you do is just download it, just print it out, and you can do it each day of the week with your spouse.
Jim: I love that. So lots of ideas. So Martha and I are taking National Marriage Week USA to a whole new level this year. Oh, we are.
(laughing)
Martha: Tell me.
Jim: Here's what we're doing. So this year in June, Martha and I will both have a significant birthday and we're also celebrate 40 years of marriage. And so during National Marriage Week, we're going on a cruise to celebrate our marriage. That's right. No social media. Nobody else is invited. We're getting away. We've been caregiving for many years. It's time to just celebrate marriage during National Marriage Week on a cruise ship near you.
That's right. Okay. And maybe it's too late to try for this year for many of you listening, but you can work on it for next year. A cruise is a great place to get away. And I'm not endorsing any cruise line. I'm just saying when you can't get your internet and nobody can get ahold of you by phone and you could sleep in and it's incredible.
All right, Julia, that's for you and Francis. When you need break away from your four daughters, cruising is a good idea.
Julia Dezelski: We've thought about it. We have, we really considered it.
Martha: Just a little aside: our listeners, many of them know that for years we did marriage cruises where we would take 20 couples out to sea and focus on their marriages because we'll go to the gym and work on our bodies to keep them strong, but we don't do things intentionally to keep our marriage strong. We just expect it to happen, and it's such a broken mentality around that. So we really wanna encourage people, and that's why we're talking about this today, is to encourage people that investing in your marriage is an ongoing process and to keep making it stronger and stronger so that it can reflect Christ. And I love that your Together with Purpose is a wonderful theme.
Jim: And it also just goes to the fact, Julia, that our marriages are to be a light to the community, aren't they? When you've got friends, I'm imagining you've got friends now that are your age that are getting divorced and you're like, ah, it still breaks your heart today, doesn't it, Julia?
Julia Dezelski: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jim: But when people can look to you and Francis and go, that's a marriage I wanna reproduce. That's a marriage, I'd like my marriage to look like Julia and Francis, their marriage. That's what the purpose of marriage was. It was meant to be an encouragement to others. Talk to us about that.
Julia Dezelski: Oh, absolutely. Actually, we recognize more and more that by surrounding ourselves with friends who are also working on their marriage, then we're encouraged by that. And there's a certain amount of accountability that comes with that when you know that our marriage is not perfect, but we're trying our best.
But we also know that our good friends next door are also really trying to work on their marriage. And so we can encourage each other in that way. So rather than having my friend over and griping about my husband or complaining about how the garage is still a mess with all of those tools that I've been asking him to clean up.
(Jim laughing)
Jim: Just as an example, just saying, Francis, clean the garage for Valentine's Day.
Julia Dezelski: He knows. He knows, God bless him, he knows. And he's working on it. But rather than doing that, my friend will encourage me to just keep striving to just be the good wife that I am also called to be and like, we talked about the respect issue, right? Just respect him and recognize that he has his own time and place for getting things done, and he knows that it's a desire of mine and out of love for me, he will eventually fulfill it. It'll just come at a later time.
Jim: But it may be that he's not sure 'cause it's so overwhelming, he's not sure how to get started and he may need his best friend's help to just get started. So instead of it just being Francis' job, 'cause I'm guessing some of that junk in the garage is yours as well. So I would encourage you to work on that project. And then you have four girls, so you got some of their junk in there too. I would say work on it together, 'cause sometimes people can't see the marathon.
They're not, they don't understand the whole elephant thing, how to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. That's just my encouragement to you guys. And if you've got a garage that's messy, clean it together as well. Donate the stuff you're not using. Give it to somebody who could use it. So you could put your a hundred thousand dollar cars back in the garage and protect them. That's what that's all about.
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Martha: That's right.
Jim: Okay. I'm not gonna give you garbage anymore about your garage, but.
Martha: It is a sensitive spot for you.
Jim: So we lived in Florida for 20 years and we talked to people about their cars, and cars today, it's nothing to have two cars worth a hundred grand sitting in your driveway. And people like, those are sitting outside in a hundred degrees sun every day, all year long, while there's a bunch of stuff in the garage that you don't even need that you could give away. So it's one of those, we've had a few of those.
Martha: Not saying that's their situation.
Jim: Not saying that's your situation. I'm just saying.
Martha: But you can invite us over to help.
Jim: That's right. We could be over. We love to clean up messes.
All right. You spent a decade in Rome, so you've seen marriage on different continents, including my own country of Italy. My great-grandmother was from Sicily. So what do we need to do in this country to firm up the foundation of marriage and speak the truth about its significance in our culture?
Julia Dezelski: I think the first thing we have to do is recognize that there are challenges, but to not be afraid of those challenges, not be afraid to speak the truth about the beauty of marriage.
Speak the truth about how Eve was taken from the side of Adam and was made as a suitable helper to him, and that is the image that we have for loving one another. We are all made for communion. That's how God intended it. I think we just have to recognize too that stronger marriages is really key to the building of a strong nation.
We're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the country right now. So what better time than to really focus on that significance of strong marriages, which lead to strong families, which leads to a strong society and just strong communities, neighborhoods, states, country? I think that's really important to not be afraid to share that message, that message of how significant marriage is, really, for the building block of society and for the good for all of our wellbeing in so many ways.
Martha: So tie it in all together with the iWork4Him audience. How do you see a healthy marriage really impacting the workplace?
Julia Dezelski: Gosh, I think that my marriage does affect the way I work because I know that when we're having a bad day or if we just started the day off wrong, with my husband, didn't quite start on the right foot, I know that very easily things begin to spiral and I'm not doing my best work in the workplace.
I also realized that maybe situations might have changed during COVID when so many couples were beginning to work in home together, right? And that's created certain dynamics that really probably also helped distinguish between what was going right in their marriage and what was going wrong, right? It was a great opportunity for my husband and I to also recognize that home and life and, personal life and professional life do permeate one another. There is an interpermeability there that you can't really overlook.
But I'm particularly blessed though because I do work in what I love. I work in my faith, right? What I do is also fueled by the faith I have. So I'm really blessed that way. My husband works for the government, a little bit of a different relationship there (chuckling) but regardless of what we do, the people we do it for also really matters. And a lot of the work that I do, obviously, it's for God, but it's also because I love my husband, I love my children, and I want to be able to provide for them.
So yes, I would say our personal and professional lives, there is a need to ensure that they're protected from one another, if things get a little awry, but there's a lot of interpermeability there, and we have to be aware of that.
Jim: It is so true because on the opposite side of that, when you've got an unhealthy marriage, it really impacts your work. And people going through divorce, it really impacts your work. And so we encourage every one of you out there that is a business owner or a leader of an organization to also talk about marriage during National Marriage Week. Because if your employees have healthy marriages, it makes your company more productive.
It not only blesses their home lives, but when you start to recognize it, people can't just leave their garbage at home when they come to work. When marriage garbage is piling up, it really impacts, it not only impacts worker productivity, but also worker safety. Somebody going through a divorce is almost guaranteed to have a car accident 'cause I was an insurance agent for decades.
So understanding all those things, and as believers, we can encourage others to recognize that there is hope for their marriage. We have seen marriages on the rocks being slammed by a hundred foot waves and they can be saved. There is no marriage that cannot be saved if both a husband and wife are willing to work on it.
Julia, you get the last word. Anything else you'd love to say about National Marriage Week?
Julia Dezelski: Yeah. I would say that just to remember that marriage affects everything. It really does. It affects all of our lives. It affects our workplace, it affects our professional lives, it affects our families, especially. And I think that if, especially considering that we're at a milestone anniversary of our nation this year, I think it would be behoove us all to really think in our parishes and our communities, our churches, our neighborhoods.
Just imagine what it would look like in our nation if everyone focused on building strong and healthy environments at home, starting with their marriages. When children can look up to their mom and dad and recognize just how much love they have for one another, and that from that love flows their own existence and flows their own identity as children of God, but children of their parents too, and of their love for one another, it would have a ripple effect, right?
That would just multiply over and over again into our schools, our communities. And so I think that it's really important to reflect on that and encourage anyone that you might know who is struggling in their marriages, but also struggling to even make the commitment to marriage. There's a lot of young couples that I know that are worried, that are fearful about what marriage means. And I think that, I actually, to give you a, just a short story, just yesterday we had one of my colleagues from Workover, she just got engaged and we had her fiance and her over for dinner with my family, and we were just so happy and they were so happy to just spend time together, a married couple and an engaged couple.
And we were able to just encourage them in this calling and in this journey that they're taking, that they're about to embark on. And so if you know another, a couple that's dating or just engaged, invite them over to learn from you a little bit and to share in that mutual exchange of happiness that God gives us through marriage.
Jim: Did you tell 'em to pray together?
Julia Dezelski: Oh, absolutely.
Jim: Absolutely. Julia Dezelski with National Marriage Week, thanks so much for being on iWork4Him today. Thanks for bringing National Marriage Week back to our iWork4Him audience.
Julia Dezelski: Thank you. Thank you both.
Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.