Mike: 00:07

Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual in local church and counseling and discipleship.

Mike: 00:18

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Shauna: 00:19

Yo. Yo.

Mike: 00:21

Yo. Shauna, you and I are back. It's been a little while. Yeah?

Shauna: 00:24

Yeah.

Mike: 00:25

Good.

Shauna: 00:25

It's been great. And I love that we're launching this partial series of how to use just new books like book reviews. We don't normally do book reviews, but this is cool.

Mike: 00:33

Yeah. We sprinkle them in the podcast from time to time. And speaking of book reviews, we've got a couple of guests with us. One of our guests has been with us before, but we have his better half with us today. And, Sean, you wanna go ahead and introduce who our guests are?

Shauna: 00:47

Well, I was gonna let them introduce you. Alright. Curtis and Jenny Solomon, thank you guys for joining us today.

Curtis: 00:52

Yeah. Thank you so much for having us.

Shauna: 00:53

Yeah. Glad to be here. So we thought maybe you guys could just take a minute to introduce yourself. A lot of people who are listening probably already know who Curtis is, but if you could just tell those who might not Curtis what the Lord is doing in your life and then obviously introduce your wife, Jenny.

Curtis: 01:07

Yeah. Thank you so much again for having us. My name is Curtis Solomon, and I serve in a variety of capacities in the biblical counseling world, which is part of the way we have connected. One, I'm the executive director of the biblical counseling coalition, and our we really seek to unite biblical counseling through building relationships among leaders. And then recently, I took on the role as program coordinator for biblical counseling at Boyce College, which means I teach full time at the college and then also help coordinate the curriculum and the other faculty who teach in the program as well.

Curtis: 01:37

And my son asked me the other day, dad, which of your jobs do you like best? And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you run the biblical counseling coalition. You work at Boyce, you run Solomon Soul Care, and you write books. And I was like, I don't think about some of those as jobs, but

Shauna: 01:51

I hope you said being a dad. Son, that's my favorite.

Curtis: 01:56

Not a job. But yeah. So we have two boys, and we live in Louisville, Kentucky. And we're really excited about the various opportunities we have, including those. And Solomon Soul Care is a ministry that we have that does counseling, consulting, other things like that related to biblical counseling.

Curtis: 02:11

And then my lovely wife, Jenny, here to my right is I'll let her introduce herself.

Jenny: 02:16

Actually, I wanna hear what you have to say.

Shauna: 02:18

That's a little yak. Yeah. So

Curtis: 02:21

Jenny is my wife. We're getting ready to celebrate our twentieth anniversary in April. We met twenty years ago right about now, and she's a great mom, an amazing thinker, a really gifted writer, and I was really and really funny. So if you have the blessing of following her on social media, you will know and be really blessed by her wit there. And I'm really excited about talking about her book because I think it is the best part of the books, and you'll get a snippet of her writing quality and skill as well as just some really great biblical insight.

Mike: 02:52

That's awesome. Hey, Jenny. Really quickly, what stream of social media do you tend to amuse the most?

Jenny: 02:58

Well, the private sector for friends and family get Facebook, so they do the really funny stuff.

Curtis: 03:04

Oh, okay.

Shauna: 03:04

I'm But thank you

Jenny: 03:06

if you're listening and you follow me there. I also do have an Instagram account.

Mike: 03:09

Okay.

Jenny: 03:09

Jenny Solomon twenty twenty two.

Mike: 03:11

Alright. Good deal. Speaking of which, obviously, these two books that we were talking about that were have been alluded to at this point, we've got redeem your marriage. Curtis, this was your contribution, hope for husbands who have hurt through pornography. And then as Curtis mentioned, Jenny's contribution, which by his own admission is the best contribution.

Mike: 03:31

Reclaim your marriage, grace for wives who have been hurt by pornography. So, obviously, this is something that hasn't been done for the most part. There's a lot of books out there on pornography, and to have a wife's perspective is obviously something that was sorely missing. So what did you guys enjoy in coming together in this collaboration to produce these two books?

Curtis: 03:53

You wanna start with that?

Jenny: 03:54

Sure. I'll start with that. The thing that we really wanted to do is to come together so that couples who are struggling and working toward repentance, working toward growth, working back toward unity after the struggle would have a place to go together. And that was the hole we really felt was missing that we could work as a team to fill.

Curtis: 04:17

You know, I think the word enjoy is not what I would use to describe this writing experience. It was very difficult, very challenging, very hard, lots of tears, lots of hard conversations. But I think the thing that we did enjoy, as Jenny pointed out, is meeting a need that wasn't there. And I think primarily her book, there's very little written to those who've been impacted by the sin of pornography. And even in our counseling, a lot of what both what we went through as a couple, but also the counseling that is out there focuses so much on the perpetrator, the one who's struggling with porn, that the one who's sitting there reeling in the aftermath of this hurt of revelation of their spouse struggling with pornography is almost left to just tread water by themselves.

Curtis: 05:02

And Herberg is a great lifeline to those women. And we, in men, we also acknowledge that porn is not just a man issue and we try to point that out in the books and say, hey, women women who are struggling with porn, their husbands are going to be impacted as well and you might just flip flop the books as but the statistics are pretty clear. It is predominantly in couples, the men who's struggling, the woman who's hurting. So, really providing that care for the sufferer in this instance was something that we wanted to do. And so the enjoyment, I think, comes from the fruit and knowing that people are blessed.

Curtis: 05:34

The process was not a joy.

Mike: 05:36

Yeah. No. That's good, though, because oftentimes we we tend to think that, oh, a writing project, we get to go off and isolate ourselves in the woods and just ponder and think about things and just know it's brutal.

Shauna: 05:47

And it naturally flows

Mike: 05:48

on the scene. Yeah. Everything just comes together, and it's just this wonderful process, which so thank you guys for being honest about it.

Shauna: 05:57

And and actually, I pick up the books and I'm obviously knowing the heart. You know, it it says very clearly on the front cover, like, what to expect in these books. But for some reason, when I was reading Jenny's book, it still surprised me when I'm like, he she Curtis. I came back to Curtis, and it's very personable. So you're really putting your story on the pages.

Shauna: 06:17

And so you're not only just helping us walk through this and learn these types of things, but it's very authentic to your story. And so was there any type of struggle or challenge there when you when I think about you putting the names on the pages. Right? You guys are really opening up your heart and life to us in this way, which I obviously am so thankful for and think it's the most fruitful, right, to be able to share what God has personally done in your life. Right?

Shauna: 06:43

It makes the books all the more authentic, more personable. But how was that process for you guys?

Jenny: 06:51

Yeah. I think for me, that was probably the hardest part was allowing it to become personal. When I started the process, I hoped naively to be able to write in a way that could communicate the same things but without bringing my own self onto the page. And as the project progressed, I just realized there really was not a way to love the reader well unless I was willing to tell parts of our story. And so there was a sense in which that felt as I was writing it as if I was reliving it.

Jenny: 07:24

Even though our marriage, before we started the project was in a good place, while I was writing the project, it was in a good place. It felt like I was revisiting those really dark times in our marriage, and it was just painful. There were many times where I would walk away from writing and just weep or weep while I typed or want to avoid the day because I knew it was going to be so painful. But I think ultimately, what I hope that produced is something that a woman who this isn't something that's in the past that she's recalling to help someone else, but she's actually right in the middle of the struggle, will be able to read what I say and say, this person really understands where I've been. And she wants to hand me something that will give me hope, hand me something that will remind me how much God loves me.

Jenny: 08:11

And if I accomplish that for one woman, for 10 women, for a thousand women, it's worth the struggle for sure.

Shauna: 08:17

Thank you. Thank you for doing that because, obviously, can can't imagine how hard that was. But to just to know that and for people to hear your heart in that, I think it takes it more than just a book. Right? Like, words.

Shauna: 08:30

Like, we can enter into this with you. And then, obviously, women relating to it. And and realized what we started off with saying that, hey. This is a missing piece out there. So you guys found a gap in a way to serve the Lord faithfully through your story, and so thank you for that.

Shauna: 08:45

I noticed in both of your books, you put a chapter on lamenting. So y'all both obviously found that as an a very important aspect of the book to make sure that you both included in both of the journeys. Could one of you tell me a little bit more about that? Like, why was that important to you?

Curtis: 09:01

So lament, I'm been very excited to see a re reincorporation of lament into the church, both in individual relationships and corporately, you with Mark Vogroup's book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, and a lot of other books that have been coming out pointing to the fact that, hey, lament is a real thing. It's something in the that the Bible is very clear. A lot of the Psalms are Psalms of Laments but we're not good at it. We're not good at grieving and the church, I know, we're roughly the same age. So growing up in the church in the eighties and in the nineties, it was very much like you don't talk about sadness and sorrow.

Curtis: 09:36

Like you come to church to sing happy songs and leave feeling happy. And then the nineties, there's a little bit maybe push against that. Like we need to be raw and real and grunt and all that kind of stuff. But it never came to what the Bible helps us to deal with loss is lament and to grieve. And so we were really encouraged by other authors like Mark, like Bob Kellerman, his book, God's Healing for Life's Losses was very instrumental both in my life personally, but also in in guiding what we wrote there.

Curtis: 10:08

But we realized that no matter whether you're the offending party or the one that was sinned against, the sinning party or the one that was sinned against, you've gone through loss. You've experienced loss in some way, shape, or form. And what God calls us to do with loss is to lament, to bring it to him, to talk to him about it, be real and honest about what has objectively happened and then the internal experience that is resulting because of that objective, hard, shameful, sorrowful reality. And if we don't do that, we're gonna be missing a significant part of the process of growth and transformation to be like Jesus.

Shauna: 10:44

That's really good. Thank you for that. I totally agree. I think that's obviously very important, but and I like how you taught it, wrote it out. This is what lamenting.

Shauna: 10:52

Let me first teach you that and then how does this apply to what we're going through. Jenny, in your chapters, you have one that's called not another hallmark movie, which I think is clever. For us girls, we can immediately pick up that chapter and kinda enter into that chapter saying, okay. I get what she's saying here. But as a biblical counselor and just a leader in women's ministry, one of the chapters that really stood out to me that I think is gonna be really impactful is chapter three where you said don't blame yourself for his sin.

Shauna: 11:18

Could you tell me a little bit about why you've also felt that was important? And you really just go in and say, this is a lie. This is a lie.

Jenny: 11:24

Yeah. We were right in the era where I remember the big book that everyone was reading around the time that Curtis was really struggling hard, and I was really just totally off kilter, had no idea what to do. It was every man's battle. And that book just has some really I, unfortunately, don't remember the good parts of the book. There probably are some, and so I don't wanna throw the whole book under the bus.

Jenny: 11:47

But the parts that were unhelpful were the parts that made it sound like a wife can somehow impact her husband's purity by just having sex regularly. And he even gives you basically a schedule. Like, at this point, it's gonna be hard for the husband to control himself. And so just to have that kind of pressure put on me early in my marriage by a book, basically, that I picked up to read to hope I hoped I could read it and gain something that would be helpful for me as a new wife to help my husband. And it was really damaging to me.

Jenny: 12:18

And so I think that that chapter was me saying, I hope that you, wife, don't live under the same mistakes that I lived under. I hope that you understand, right? I hope that you get this information early on in the struggle and you realize that this is not your fault. You don't bear any responsibility for the fact that your husband is sinning in this way, and you can love and serve him and care for him well, but you can't stop him from looking at porn. You can't do those things.

Jenny: 12:48

That's the holy spirit's job. And so I hope that I can alleviate some of the burdens from wives maybe that I experienced and didn't took years for me to figure out that I had learned the wrong thing and then unlearn that thing. And I just I don't want other women to suffer that way. So I hope, yeah, I hope that chapter is a blessing. Yeah.

Mike: 13:07

Thank you. I think that really demonstrates the point of the book. Right? Because there there's such a lack of resources for women and wives who are going through these sorts of things on the other side of it. So thank you for that.

Mike: 13:21

So not to end to the point of negative and feelings and feeling good and everything, but what was your joy? What was your, let's say, maybe favorite chapter, thought process of just your contribution and just what was pleasant and and encouraging and edifying to you in writing this?

Curtis: 13:42

I think the as I continually will say, the best part of this whole book or people ask me, what's your favorite part of your book? And I always say Jenny's book because it is filling such a needed gap. But I think in this book, being able to share First of all, we try to be really clear, this is not our story. Like it's not a memoir of our thing. And we don't get into salacious and all that kind of stuff.

Curtis: 14:07

So, that's what you're looking for, don't buy the book. This is Jesus's story and this is his story of redemption and restoration and reclamation and marriage and we're really excited to to share that. I think for me, a few things that I tried to do, like you've mentioned, Mike, there are so many books out there for guys who struggle with porn. I did want to try to address a few things that were unique or maybe that I felt were missing. One of those was lament like we already talked about.

Curtis: 14:33

The other is dealing with forgiveness and repentance and what does that actually look like? And those are terms that we use a lot in Christianity. But you guys know in the counseling room, again and again, I run into people who just have no concept of what biblical forgiveness actually looks like. So being able to flush that out and then flush that out in this particular area, I think was helpful. I was excited to do that.

Curtis: 14:58

The other thing I was excited about was the appendices. I tell people all the time, the appendices are worth the price of admission. I have students and they're like, Do you want us to read the appendix of the book? And I'm like, Appendix often are the best parts. They're like the most practical.

Curtis: 15:12

They just don't fit in the flow of the book, but they're good. One of those was the appendices that we did on porn and abuse. And we had such a great team of abuse experts speak into that and help us craft those well. I can't remember all their names off the top of my head, but thank you to them. And those are very important and I think very helpful tools and resources for the biblical counselor, but also for the person who might be in an abusive relationship or might even be an abuser.

Curtis: 15:40

And that was part of my hope for my book was that maybe a guy might realize, Oh, dang, I have a tendency not just to look at porn, but look at my wife and treat her in a way that is oppressive and abusive towards her. And then the other, I think the other big thing is just helping couples realize what is your relationship look like moving forward as a couple? So I talk about allies in the fight against pornography. Jesus being the first and foremost, the spouse being your second greatest ally. And so often

Shauna: 16:12

That was so that was something that actually stood out to me, Curtis, because when we do biblical counseling training and we're having those conversations where the men has confessed this, one of the things that as we were watching videos and we've had there's certain people who have wrote a lot of curriculum in these areas, and so we watched the videos and that type of stuff. And one of the things that kinda came up that we Michael and I would go back and forth on is when do they tell their wife? When do I bring her into this, and how long do you work with the male before you you bring her in? And then also where wives are coming in saying, am I their accountability partner? Am I the one monitoring these types of things and, like, that relationship?

Shauna: 16:49

And so I think this is actually a really important chapter. And I so I I just wanted to take a minute to just I know you're gonna keep telling us a little bit more about it, but just thank you because I think this is really vital for people to really understand, obviously, Christ being your first ally, but how important your wife's role is in this process.

Curtis: 17:06

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing is there's no other human being on the planet right now outside your spouse who has more vested interest in your growth and transformation in this area than your spouse. And often the spouse feels like the purity police and the person who's struggling wants to hide and run away from them and not divulge and keep them at a distance from the sin. And it becomes almost an adversarial or police detective type of relationship.

Curtis: 17:35

And we wanted to help them see, no, your spouse is your ally. They are there for you to fight together towards this and we give some general principles and then a few particular examples but then, encourage people to adopt those, adapt those particulars to their own their own situation but within that is really a heart transformation on the part of the perpetrator to see their spouse and the accountability partners and the accountability software or other parameters not as like barbed wire keeping me in, but guardrails keeping me on the path. That they are not something I should run away from, be ashamed of, be sick of, or frustrated by, but rejoice in and appreciate and long for and love. When you really see when somebody's genuinely repentant, they really want to put off their sin. They're going to see their spouse not as adversarial, but as an ally, somebody that they want to lean into and trust and invite into the process.

Curtis: 18:31

Now there are we try to give some specific guidelines like she doesn't need to be the primary person you're talking to about your porn struggle all the time, but she needs to be aware of it. And you need to have somebody else that is that primary, like, check-in so that it doesn't become your relationship doesn't become all about your porn struggle. It's about so much more, but she's there to help as well. I won't spill all the beans that are in the book, but

Shauna: 18:54

Yeah. Let's just read it together right now. Yeah. Jenny, do you have anything to add to that just about you being an ally in the process? Or in the journey?

Shauna: 19:04

Not process. But

Jenny: 19:06

Hey. Do I do think that it is a really just fundamental way I can love Curtis and serve him. And it's increasingly become something, especially as he has demonstrated repentance and desired to grow. And I've seen change along the way. It's gone from a situation, I think, which we talk about in the book as one of the possible struggles of just feeling like a nanny to your spouse.

Jenny: 19:34

You certainly are never God wouldn't call you to that. You're called to be a teammate. But it's just become something I think that we do together. And even just the thought for both of us now of making our home a safe place where he can come to and doesn't have to worry about pornography because we have filters on our routers and our password protection on devices and things like that. It's just, I think, a joy to both of us that we can have a peaceful refuge for him to come to in a world that's just saturated with pornography.

Jenny: 20:04

And so it's been neat to see that shift over the years and that growth and that change in both of us. And I think it's something that we both value and work toward now, and it doesn't feel like a burden. It feels like a joy.

Shauna: 20:15

Yeah. And you this is obviously, we're talking from a marital context, but knowing you guys, y'all have two boys. And so do you have any tips that you could communicate out there for parents of just how do we are there things or little things that you could tell us parents to think through of how to have these conversations with our kiddos?

Curtis: 20:34

Become Amish, I think, is the no. I'm kidding. I mean, the

Shauna: 20:39

After COVID, that's very intriguing.

Curtis: 20:41

Yeah. No. It was tempting. No. I think the hard thing is to recognize, like, you cannot control that absolutely.

Curtis: 20:48

And your child's heart is in the hands of God, not yours, ultimately. But as a parent to be wise and to be engaged, the difficulty of giving really specific advice on particular devices or filters is that stuff will be out of date three weeks from now. So instead of telling you which devices to get and which software to put on them or whatever, it's just to say the general principle is be engaged. Have conversations around sex and pornography and these kind of things and continue to be engaged wherever your kids are in digital, online, etcetera, you need to be there too. That doesn't mean you need to read every post they read or post they post, but you need to be aware of and having conversations about what's wise, what's foolish.

Curtis: 21:32

We have in particular avoided having our kids with devices of their own. We understand that's different for every family, your school situation, whether or not your kids travel, that all dictates that. But if I do think a general a specific principle would be to never give a human being unfettered access to the Internet. We wouldn't say, hey, here is a store full of weapons and pornography and women and all the temptations you can possibly imagine. And there's bullies and there's people who are trying to traffic you and all these things and just cut them loose in a mall by themselves as things around.

Curtis: 22:12

But that's what we do if we give somebody an unfettered access to the internet. How you control that and the specifics there are going to change all the time. But yeah, Jenny mentioned router based filters instead of just device based filters. So your home is protected devices. Be aware of what's going on and realize that access to the internet doesn't just come through browsers, but it comes through different apps on the phone.

Curtis: 22:34

That's where we do encourage spouses as well as parents to have password protection where kids or people who struggle with porn apps to their phone without access, without their accountability, people knowing what's going on. But again, those are particular examples of engagement in the in this arena.

Shauna: 22:55

Yeah. I think one of the things too that was important and what you just communicated is the relational part with our children, where I think what we see sometimes is others will get so dependent almost on the software. Okay. We put these things in place. Okay.

Shauna: 23:08

We're good. When in reality with our kids, there needs to be a relationship that you're having these conversations, open conversations, where they always have a place to really talk through and be very vulnerable within what they're going through, what they're struggling with, or what they're being exposed to, whether it's intentional or by accident. Because we see a lot that are coming through where my friend showed me this image, and now I can't get it out of my head. And I don't want this. And I wish I could go back to not seeing it.

Shauna: 23:36

But now this is my reality, right, as young women who I'm talking to. And then, obviously, I'm sure Michael has tons of stories there. But with our boys, it was really important for us to and not just have a relationship where the only time you're talking to them is about this. Right? Like, need to be talking about everything, just life in general, but then this is an important part of it, and you're very intentional about it and not making the software, like the like, being too dependent on that.

Shauna: 24:02

That's not saving their savior and then leading them to Christ in that.

Curtis: 24:06

Yeah. A couple of the things I wanted to share on the parenting side. We didn't write a parenting book, so I wasn't totally There's

Mike: 24:12

your next project.

Curtis: 24:13

As you talked, I was like, oh, these are a couple of things. One thing that we've learned from some friends and we implemented and think it's really great and have not heard a lot of people talking about is that with parents, when you get to conversations around sex, whether it's pornography or sex or what's appropriate touch and not appropriate touches. I actually have both parents involved in the conversation. Historically, we've had dads talk to sons, mom talk to daughters. And there's we understand there will be some conversations that take place in that context.

Curtis: 24:41

But we actually thought it was very helpful and good for both of us to sit down with our boys and talk to them together about it because sex, these things involve both genders. They involve both people. And each of us are gonna have different perspectives. Each of us will be able to answer different questions differently. It removes an element of the shame and that we need to hide this conversation if you're able to engage and talk openly about it with both people.

Curtis: 25:07

So it makes both parents approachable in the conversation. And we found that to be extremely helpful and valuable and would encourage other parents to do. I think sometimes we take the easy out. Of course, I can say that as a guy without daughters, I think it would be harder. Like, I understand that urge of, I wanna talk about sex with my daughter.

Curtis: 25:24

I get that. But that's the problem is we're that we're giving over to that and using this convenient excuse of she's her mom. That's her mom's deal. I can't talk about that stuff because I'm not a woman. No, you can't talk about with experientially about what it's like to menstruate or carry a baby or anything like that.

Curtis: 25:41

But you can talk about as a man, like this is how sex is perceived, other things like that. Yeah, that was a big.

Jenny: 25:48

Another thing I did when our boys were really small is I was trying to figure out how to talk to them about learning to avert their eyes from situations that there was someone dressed inappropriately or choosing to be immodest and doing that in a way that wouldn't pique their interest in the situation or draw undue attention to it. And so I realized that what I would always say to my boys is if I'm in my bedroom and I'm changing and they knock and wanna come in, I say, no, I need privacy right now. And and they knew that meant mom's changing or something like that. I can't go in there. And so I, when they were younger, would frame those conversations in terms of privacy that a person gives themself privacy by covering the parts of their body that need modesty.

Jenny: 26:33

And then when we're out in public, if a person is choosing not to give themselves privacy, then we give them that privacy by being respectful, by looking away. And I think that was a good way for them to begin to learn. And they would notice things like there's a sculpture on our drive to church that's has a bottom. And so they bring it up every time they've noticed it. And so we always just say, okay, there you can practice the privacy thing in that situation.

Jenny: 26:57

Just look away from it. Try not to look. And that's been a helpful way, I think, for them to begin to practice some of those things, those skills that they're gonna need to be godly men without having really explicit conversations about things that maybe they wouldn't be ready to handle at that point.

Shauna: 27:12

I've never heard it that way, Jenny. I think that is really wise. I love that a lot. Thank you for sharing that. I think that right there in itself is a really great tip that adds a lot of value to this podcast.

Shauna: 27:23

That's really good.

Curtis: 27:24

I think building on that too is just helping this is good for parents to instill in their children but also all of us need to as adults begin practicing this better but maybe we didn't. It wasn't instilled in us as well as how to have cross gender relationships that are friendships, that are, like, how can we, you know, we've seen some of the people, some people talking about this in the fallout of quote unquote purity culture is that we were taught as men in the church a lot of times, implicitly or explicitly, women are either a potential future mate or a temptress. And the problem is that there's one woman out there who's going to be your wife, and there's a few billion on the planet who are not, and you have to learn how to relate to them in a non romantic, non sexual way. But if our conception of relating to the opposite gender is always revolving around sexuality or potential sexuality, that's setting us up for lots of failure, lots of problems, lots of weird, awkward interactions, and so we're helpful. We're really happy to have our boys have friends that are girls, and we just talk about them as friends.

Curtis: 28:33

And we try not to tease and try to encourage them not to tease each other about having a girlfriend or whatever. And then we also try to mimic that by having relationships with couples where I'm a friend, my friend's wife is my friend. It's not my friend's wife. She's my friend too. Similarly, Jenny has my friends are her friends, whatever gender they are.

Curtis: 28:54

And yeah, we don't want to be foolish. We understand that temptation can come in and other things, but we need to make sure we're pointing people to what is truth and what is right and what is the template and the model to follow instead of just reacting against the extremes or the sins that are potential hazards.

Mike: 29:11

No. That's good. And I to that point, one thing that at least I see it in my son's group, our 20 year old, we were at a function last night, and we spend Sundays with him and stuff is they're really beginning to understand what it means, eternally speaking, to have brothers and sisters in Christ. So to that very point is there's not gonna be marriage in heaven. Marriage isn't the end all be all of existence.

Mike: 29:35

We need to begin to cultivate more of an understanding around what it means to have brothers and sisters in Christ that are actually healthy relationships. And in the same way that they would treat their sister if they were blood, that's how we need to be treating our sisters in Christ. And to to your point, Curtis, we've become so hypervigilant against that spectrum and swinging one way or the other that we haven't really had a very healthy approach to what it means to be the body as brothers and sisters in Christ as children of God. So Yep. That'd be a good little writing project, I think.

Curtis: 30:07

For you guys to take on. That'd be great.

Shauna: 30:09

If we live closer, we would definitely be on that friend list or at least that we would put push ourselves on.

Curtis: 30:14

Are for sure. When we get together

Jenny: 30:16

friend list.

Curtis: 30:17

Shauna, I call you sister. You know that. Yeah. Hug and we can talk and we can have a conversation, and it's great. Yeah.

Curtis: 30:22

And I do think getting back to the book, the topic of the book, that is part of the problem with pornography is it makes us view other people. It twists the way that we think about other people, and we puts a huge barrier to that, having good relationships and friendships and being brothers and sisters.

Shauna: 30:39

Yeah. That's good. We didn't plan to talk about parenting, but, obviously, the Lord led us there. So I'm thinking

Mike: 30:44

y'all might They need to put a familial vein. So it is

Shauna: 30:47

They need to put a call in a new growth press and see if that might be the next deal, and y'all write it together. Good idea.

Mike: 30:53

We keep giving them writing projects.

Curtis: 30:55

Yeah. Well, we'll just it can be tennis. We'll just bounce them back to you.

Shauna: 30:58

You guys might. You know? I do we do know our main audience for Speak the Truth is biblical counselors and pastors. And so one of the things we like to ask and so maybe, Curtis, you could help us know help them know how to use reclaim and redeem your marriage, like, maybe in the counseling room and as a pastor for their church. Like, how do you think these books would be beneficial for them specifically?

Curtis: 31:22

Yeah. We designed the book specifically that the ideal situation, we even talked about this in the introduction, is for a husband who's struggling with porn to have a spiritual mentor, counselor, whatever you describe it as, and then the wife to have a separate one as well for her. And sometimes they're going to meet individually and talk about particular issues and problems. And sometimes they're going to come together all four of them and talk about particular things. And we designed the books with roughly the same number of chapters.

Curtis: 31:50

Jenny's is longer in pages. But roughly the same number of chapters so they can walk through them chapter by chapter together. And at the end of every chapter there are questions for reflection, action, discussion, and then further reading recommendations on each of those particular areas. So we really did try to structure it as this is a for ten weeks, you could walk one chapter a week through this with a couple. Now there's a few where I would I encourage counselors to slow down.

Curtis: 32:18

And that is where you have the confession seeking forgiveness, granting forgiveness conversations. I think those things need to slow down a little bit, not just be done once a week. And we talk about in the books not rushing to forgiveness because you need to have multiple conversations and Shawna, you alluded to this earlier like there are times where the husband needs to have a full confession with a counselor alone and make sure everything is out because one of the worst things in these situations is for there to be a partial confession and then later stuff later on, more stuff comes out. That is extremely damaging to the spouse and to that the process of reconciliation. So really making sure on private that the guy is meeting with his male counselor, getting all of it out.

Curtis: 33:04

And sometimes it helps to write it down. The counselor can review it, ask further questions, make sure it's all there before they go and have a full confession with the spouse. So sometimes there you're you'll have the council read it as homework between and then come in and talk about it. But sometimes you might want to just pull it out in session, read sections, and ask and make sure there's clarifying questions. And on those particular ones like lament and confession forgiveness, that's where I would encourage them to maybe do a little bit more in session clarifying.

Curtis: 33:35

They really understand those processes because they unfortunately, they're foreign to our church experience in Western the Western church at least.

Shauna: 33:43

Jenny, do you think, like, if a church used this where there was a few women, like three or four women who were hurting in this particular area, could that be, like, a small group? So say just say, I'm me for a biblical counselor in my church. If I saw three or four women who, you know, through one off conversations, were really expressing this hurt in this way, and then I got them together for a small group where they read the book on their own, and then I came together and facilitated a group discussion. Do you think that this would be a good tool to use in a setting like that, or do you think it's more of a one on one individual story? Or do you think that there is benefit for women to talk about it together?

Jenny: 34:21

I do think it could be used in a group setting, especially if the person facilitating had some experience in this area, either they had been there and had some victory or had been willing to walk this road with other people before. The main caveat I would have to that is I think a few of the conversations, especially the ones that surround abuse, would be best done one on one. And so I think whoever was facilitating that group would just need to be willing to take some time to meet individually with the women and just find out. I the the stats on violent pornography right now are just astounding. I don't know if you've taken any time to look at those, but it's something like there was a survey done pretty recently in the last few years, and they found that twenty five percent of women in The United States had been in a situation with a sexual partner that scared them.

Jenny: 35:12

And so I think just taking into account the way violent pornography has wrecked the landscape even further than it already was wrecked by more traditional forms of pornography, I think it's really important that we take some time with women who are coming forward and making sure that they are in a safe environment.

Shauna: 35:30

That's really wise because I would assume that most churches like most leaders, if they're not impacted by this directly, they're not thinking about it. They don't know those things. So that's very wise to make sure that the facilitator so pastors, if you're listening, just make sure that your leaders are very in tuned with what's going on and prepared to be able to have those conversations wisely and intentionally. So that's good.

Curtis: 35:52

Yeah. We have had people who are using it in more group settings as not just a small group, but we're gonna do this as a study together as a church, maybe broader than even couples who've said they've dealt with it because they want they know one, some people who are dealing with it aren't talking about it. So just saying, hey, we're going to do this as a church wide or at least an optional Sunday school thing to use it as a curriculum there that will bring some of this to the surface that's hiding under the waters. And then also equipping people who maybe aren't struggling, but their brothers or sisters are. We just know it is a rampant problem outside and inside the church and that was one of our one of our goals too and and even using our story and Shauna, you asked earlier about that and the hardship of what it was like, I didn't want to write this book actually.

Curtis: 36:39

This one, I was really excited when Jenny wanted to write her, not excited, but I was more encouraging about her writing her book, and then when they asked, would you write a companion piece? I was like, let me pray about that. And I've talked about that on a few other podcasts. I won't go into all the thoughts that I've had. But since then, since it came out, I've thought about it more and I'm more encouraged and more thankful that I did because of all of the people who are struggling, Christians, pastors, church leaders who are struggling with this.

Curtis: 37:09

And it's coming out posthumously or it's coming out in a discovery kind of way rather than a disclosure kind of way, and it's destroying families and destroying ministries and destroying these things. I hope that this example would encourage people in that situation to say, this is not the end of life and this is not the end of ministry. But if you don't disclose it, if you don't bring it into the light, it could be. We need more transparency and more people talking about this and that it's a personal one. Not just something, hey, I dealt with when I was a teenager and look at how great I am now, but this is still a struggle.

Curtis: 37:50

This is still a temptation for me coming out and saying that. I hope that more men and women will be encouraged to do that, to come forward and get the help that they need because bringing it into the light is gonna be the best disinfectant for this sin.

Mike: 38:05

Yeah. That's good. That's good. This is I might have turned this into a two part at this point. That's good.

Mike: 38:11

That's very good.

Jenny: 38:12

Can I answer that question about something I like to be about writing my book? Because I didn't answer it.

Mike: 38:17

Yeah. You passed it to Curtis, and so yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

Jenny: 38:21

Is that okay?

Shauna: 38:22

Yeah. Of course.

Jenny: 38:23

So when we were thinking about writing the books, we went to see the movie about Harriet Tubman, Harriet. Have you all seen that?

Mike: 38:30

Uh-uh. I

Jenny: 38:31

think everyone should see it. She's just one of the most amazing human beings to ever walk this planet. And I came away from that movie just in awe of her courage, but also thinking that's the kind of person I'd like to be. And, obviously, I'm I've not and never will experience the systemic oppression and dehumanization that she experienced in her lifetime. But I think what I realized I could emulate is the idea that she got freedom for herself, and she was in a good safe place where she could flourish, and she chose to go back to help other people.

Jenny: 39:09

And so I really wanted to carry that forward into this book project and think, how could I go back? But also, I came away with that thinking what a helpful thing it is to have women to emulate and women to look up to and women to want to be like. And so as I was thinking about the project, another thought that came into my mind was who in the Bible could I hold forth as an example for women to follow in this situation? And Abigail is the person that came to mind. And so that was my absolute favorite part of the writing process.

Jenny: 39:40

And, Shauna, you mentioned the chapter, not another Hallmark movie. That's my favorite chapter in the book. But I will just say this. I hope that everyone listening reads my book. But if you don't, you should go today and read first Samuel 25.

Jenny: 39:55

Read about the life of Abigail because everything that I wrote from her about her is things you'll see in scripture, and she's just the most incredible woman. And I when I get to heaven, I wanna be with Jesus, but I also wanna sit down with her and have a good long chat. I love that. That's so cute.

Shauna: 40:12

It's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

Mike: 40:15

That is so good. Thank you guys so much for being with us. And, we hope to do this again soon. And we look forward to seeing you guys because we probably won't be to Louisville anytime soon, but maybe we see each other at ABC campus.

Shauna: 40:27

I wanna visit Southern Seminary again. Again. Maybe. Go spend three, four hours in the bookstore. Yeah.

Curtis: 40:36

Oh, we cross again as some people say here, they are

Mike: 40:39

in the air.

Shauna: 40:39

Yeah. That's good.

Curtis: 40:40

We're invited in Christ. So There

Shauna: 40:41

we go. The show notes will make

Curtis: 40:42

I know I'm a little cheesy sometimes.

Mike: 40:44

Is that alright?

Shauna: 40:45

Let's put in the show notes about Solomon Soul Care, obviously, Southern Seminary, and how to get their purchase their books. So check out the show notes to find more about Jenny and Curtis. We thank you for joining us on Speak the Truth.