Youtube Interviews
In this episode of Roapmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by guest Doug Barry for the second part of their discussion on Ephesians 5 and what it means for husbands.
The discussion revolves around the key focus of Ephesians 5, which is husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church and presenting them without blemish. Adam starts by reflecting on how he contributes to his wife’s purity, considering that both of them will one day stand before the Lord. He emphasizes the everyday opportunities to protect and guard his wife’s purity.
Doug stresses the importance of the emotional and psychological aspects of a person’s humanity, particularly within the context of marriage. He encourages listeners to pay attention to their wife’s emotions, thoughts, and changes throughout the day and to address them with love and patience. The need to balance spiritual practices with acknowledging the human aspects of one’s spouse is emphasized.
Doug encourages men to be vigilant and protective, both spiritually and physically. Suggestions are given for spiritual practices such as prayers, adoration, fasting, and regular church visits to defend and protect one’s family.
The importance of a husband setting a positive tone in the home is stressed. Even amidst conflicts, a man’s voice and position can influence the atmosphere. Men are urged to take responsibility for their mistakes, seek help, and strive to be faithful and holy leaders.
Overall, this episode of Roadmap to Heaven provides valuable insights into the responsibilities and opportunities husbands have in their marriages, reminding listeners of their duty on earth and the importance of being present for their spouse in times of temptation.
Adam Wright:
Recently, Doug Barry was with us. We were talking about Ephesians 5, and we were having a great conversation. We just ran out of time. So today, I want to pick back up, and Doug, it’s great to have you back with us. We’re looking at the second part of this passage, around verses 26 and 27, where husbands are exhorted to love their wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her. Why did he do that? Our Lord did that, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Now I don’t know about you. I’m not the Lord, and I’m not presenting anyone to myself, but one day my wife is going to stand before the Lord, and one day I am as well. I have a feeling there could be some questions: “Adam, what did you do so that she could stand here in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing?” It’s easy to philosophize about it, but we have plenty of opportunities in the every day “mundane life” to make sure we’re guarding her purity.
Doug Barry:
Yeah. And one thing I’d like to address at the beginning of this, Adam, is looking at this from more of an interior standpoint, not just a spiritual interior standpoint, but the psychology of humanity. Your wife, gentlemen – and I know the ladies listening right now, some are gonna be cheering this on, I have no doubt. Because a lot of times, and I’ve been married 33 years. And a lot of times, we get to that point in a marriage – and you’ve been married 14, you know it already too – where you could become almost mechanical in the way you go through your day-to-day life. I raised five kids and now we’ve got grandkids, and it’s very easy to get focused sometimes on the list of things that need to be done. And that’s important because it’s life, and we have to go through life and take care of different things. However, the emotional and psychological part of what’s going on inside a human being needs to be acknowledged.
You know, I remember one of the best bits of advice I heard from a priest when I went to confession one day, years ago. And he said to me, “Don’t beat yourself up over your humanity.” The fact that there is this component in us that God has created that is very human. And what does that mean? It means that we’re not robots and we don’t just clock in and clock out, and you turn on the car and you drive. And if there’s no gas in the tank, the car just doesn’t go. There’s no juice in the battery, your power tool isn’t going to run. Or whatever it may be. When it comes to a marriage, when it comes to a person, it’s not necessarily the same about gas in a tank. It’s more complicated. There are nuances. There are emotional and psychological, this and that.
And I think one thing that has to be looked at when it comes to helping your wife be prepared to stand before God and present her without spot or blemish or any such wrinkle and so forth, is understanding that this emotional psychological part of who she is needs to be loved and addressed. Now that doesn’t mean, of course, just like with our children – you’ve got smaller kids, I know – so when they go through the emotional upheaval of some sort, you don’t just cater to the emotional upheaval. That’s not what I mean specifically when I’m talking about addressing the emotional and the psychological part of a person. But it’s acknowledging that it’s there and realizing that from a day-to-day, even from a moment to moment sometimes, part of our life, that can change very easily and very quickly. And that doesn’t mean because someone’s bipolar, that’s a separate issue. That’s not what I’m talking about.
But you can be in a really good mood and then something starts to happen within this very short amount of time. All of a sudden, you’re concerned about something, you’re worried. You see something in the news. Something happens here. There’s a family event. You get a call from your parents. Someone’s sick. Someone said something about your aunt, your uncle, your brother, your sister. And now the emotions have shifted. The psychology is shifted, and sometimes men can, with their wives, – I think more so than women do with men – just walk in and say, “Well, what’s the problem?” “Well, this happened now.” “So? Get over it. Just move on.” And you can’t do that with people. You take that particular moment that your wife is going through something, and you address it lovingly, patiently, and help her through it. Strengthen her through it.
Ladies, you got to do the same thing for us men. There’s no question, because we’re human too. Sometimes guys get kind of stuck with that. “He doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t talk about his feelings.” That doesn’t mean we don’t have them. Alright? But in general, not a blanket statement, women can easily shift sometimes when it comes to this. Now that’s the feminine genius part of them, as well, that God created. They have the ability to nurture so wonderfully because they can shift that emotional piece of themselves very quickly. I think more so than men.
My kids would say this. My oldest son in particular, we do a lot of work together with our BRC (Be Ready Coalition) group. George is 29 now and he has three kids of his own. And he would say to me, “Yeah, when we were hurt, and we needed tenderness, we’d go to Mom. But when we were scared and we needed protection, we’d go to Dad.” Because Dad normally has that more staunch, “Hey!” type of attitude and voice. Well, gentlemen, we cannot necessarily be that way when it comes to our wives when they’re going through changes throughout a day of emotions and feelings and the psychology of this.
Now the reason I wanted to spend some time on that first, Adam, is because that’s a key part of our humanity. We’ve got to understand that God put us together. And because that key part of our humanity is there, if it’s ignored or not dealt with in a way that’s compassionate and strong, and trying to order things the way God would want, that we’re missing a major part, a beautiful part of a person in general, but especially our wives. And my wife, your wife, a wife in general, has a beautiful gift to be able to nurture and has aspects and pieces of who she is that need to be looked at carefully.
So I can lead her in the Rosary, I can say we’re getting to Mass every Sunday, and confession every two weeks, and we’re doing the five first Saturdays and the nine first Fridays. And I can say we’re doing all this, and establishing that. That is also very, very key and very important. But if I don’t, on a day-to-day basis, pay attention to the humanity that God has created her with, and I don’t look at those emotions, those feelings, and those thoughts, those changes that happen throughout the day based on whatever events occur and unfold, and I don’t address that. And then lovingly, patiently, as Christ does for the church – does Christ not patiently address the changes going on in our world and our faith and our church? Of course, He does. Does He still hold true relentlessly to what the deposit of faith is all about? Of course He does. But He’s still patient in the process of looking at the details and the nuances of all the little things that happen, and we men, I think, need to do that every day with our wives.
Adam Wright:
You know, one of the lessons I learned pretty early on is that if I want to encourage my wife, I have to keep an eye on pretty much everything I’m doing throughout the day and around the home. And not just, we talked last time about not just being the drill sergeant or mastering commander that, “We’re doing this, we’re doing that and that’s how it’s going to be.” By the way, if you ever want to get in a lot of trouble, just look at your wife and say, “Why can’t you be logical?” My wife is a very logical person, but in the heat of the moment, Doug, I happen to say that a lot. It was a bad move, one I regret, very much. But it’s one of those things. A while back, we were watching a movie. It was either Maureen O’Hara or it was from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn, right? And I said, “Wow. She’s beautiful.” And I thought that was a really innocuous thing just to say, here’s this movie actress from days gone by, that I’m like, “Oh, wow. She’s beautiful.” Then I caught on, that every time I was making a comment like that, was I saying that my wife is beautiful, too? Like, she’s hearing me say, “Oh, this person’s beautiful. that person’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, and she’s beautiful.” Does she hear me say, “You’re beautiful”? Does she hear me say this?
I wonder in our society, it’s kind of a chicken and an egg thing, especially as we talk about modesty, and we talk about chastity, and as a father of girls, it’s something I worry about very much. And luckily, they have a mother who does a great job of teaching them by example. You know, as men, if we’re looking at pornography. If we are objectifying every woman around us, is that making our wives say, “Well, you know, maybe he wants me to be like that. Maybe if I did this…” Maybe not even consciously. Now all of a sudden, Doug, we’re setting them up to fail. Or if we come home and the first thing we do is gripe, “Why isn’t dinner on the table? Why isn’t this? Why’d the kids do that?” Guilty as charged, some days, on this. I think most of us men would raise our hands and say that. Are we just causing our wives to say, “Well, what did I do wrong? Why can’t I make him happy? It’s all my fault” and start beating themselves up? My professor once said to me, “Adam, you’re the captain. This is the ship, you’re the captain. You set the mood. If you’re calm, they’re calm. If you build them up, they’re built up. If you tear them down, the ship falls apart.”
Doug Barry:
Mhmm. Yeah. My wife said to me one time, years ago – one of my favorite, actually, let me back up. One of my favorite paintings ever is the painting of Jesus in the boat. It’s a Rembrandt, I believe, and it’s the painting of Jesus in the front of the boat. You know, the famous story of Him sleeping in the boat when the storm is raging, and then they wake Him up. “We’re gonna die, master. Don’t you care?” He basically tests their faith again. But He stands up at the front of the boat and He says, “Be still” and everything calms down. My wife said to me one time, she said, “That’s you. When you come home,” you know, we’re in the thick of raising five kids at the time in homeschooling. And she said, “When you come home, you have that ability.” And she wasn’t in any way criticizing me. She was saying “It’s not as if that’s this natural great gift that you just have. Though you’re good at it. But it’s the fact that you are the husband and the father. You are this man.”
So when you come in the house, you can set that tone by simply saying, “Hey, be still.” This is the complimentary way God has designed husbands and wives to be able to work together. She says something to me that encourages and points something out clearly what my role is and how it helps. Now we don’t always do that in marriages all the time. We know that we sometimes get on each other’s back. Any marriage knows that. Again, if you’re married longer than a week, you realize this can happen. However, understand the role. The role of it is when the man can come into that home or into that situation, and you’re right, just set the tone. He has that ability.
I would say, if a mother yells out the door in the evening, “Jimmy, it’s supper time!” the kid’s down the street. You know, this may have been years ago when kids would actually play outside, down the street. But that Jimmy would [say] “Oh, it’s just my Mom. Don’t worry about it.” But if Dad yells out the front door, “Jimmy!” every kid goes home. Because the strength of a man’s voice, the strength of a man’s position. When it is a position and he’s using that strength, I should say, in a Godly way, in a prayerful way, that only magnifies it, and amazing things can happen.
So, yeah, you’re right about that captain of the ship piece. That’s a key thing, but that captain of the ship is willing to go down with the ship. He’s not going to abandon the ship. He’s not going to abandon his crew. So we men can’t abandon. And when we make mistakes, I want to emphasize this for the men. Get back up. Keep moving forward. I don’t care if you’re crawling into the confessional. Get in the confessional if you have to. If you’ve got to deal with the laziness, the terrible attitude, the anger issues. A lot of guys have bad anger issues, or they’ve got pornography issues, or they’ve got issues when it comes to gambling or drinking or something else. Get the help that’s needed, get off the pity party knees that you’re on, and move forward because you need to be that faithful, holy captain of this ship.
Adam Wright:
Before we wrap up here, Doug, I wanna go back to the book of Genesis, because as you were just saying that part, one of the things I couldn’t help but think is the quote in Genesis. “It’s not good for the man to be alone.” And thank goodness I have a wife. We often tell people that we’re like rocks in a tumbler, smoothing one another, polishing out the stones and the jagged edges. I think I’ve got a lot more than she does, but we go back to that story in Eden. We all like to say, “It was Eve’s fault.” Because she was off, and the devil appears to her as a serpent and says “Did God really say that? No, God said this. Oh, but here, take a bite of this apple” and that Eve ruined the party for everyone. But every now and then, someone will ask this question: “Well, where was Adam? Why was he letting Eve be off being tempted by the devil? Why wasn’t he there with her?” And again, going back to something you said when we started this conversation last time, that as a husband, I am not the savior of my wife. I will never be able to get her to Heaven, but I can sure do a lot to tempt her away from it. It’s our Lord that’s the savior, but that doesn’t negate my duty here on this earth. And I think sometimes we forget that. It’s like, where was Adam? Why wasn’t he there to be like, “Eve, that dude’s lying. Let’s go.”
Doug Barry:
Yeah. I joke around about, what was Adam doing? Well, he was probably out there in the garden watching the bears and the lions chase a pig skin around. Anyway, somehow he was either distracted, or he was cowardly, or something got in the way there. You think about what he could have done when Eve said, “Here, I’ve got something for you, Adam” and he could have said, “Oh, Eve, we weren’t supposed to do that. You know what? I’m going to intercede for you and plead before God on your behalf” but Adam went along with it. So, yeah, they both did it. They both stepped into that, but you’re right about that. We men need to be on our guard. We need to be on the wall, basically, guarding the perimeter. It baffles me why men don’t understand that it’s built within us to be a protector and a defender. Again, back to that statement my son would say, and pretty much all my kids were the same way. They get hurt, they need tenderness, they go to Mom. She can nurture. They need protection, they feel a sense of threat, they go to Dad. Dads are protectors and defenders.
We need to be that way naturally, need to have a plan to protect. I’ll always say this. We do this with our BR Coalition work. Be ready to protect and defend. Spiritually and naturally, have a plan, learn how to defend and protect. This is something that’s key with who we are. If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and tries to hurt your family, men, what are you going to do? Are you going to get out of bed and engage the bad guy, or you going to go hide behind your wife? You going to go run in the closet? No. You’re going to engage. If you love, you engage to protect and defend. Most of us, please God, are never going to have a home invasion. But spiritually, it’s going on all the time, every day, in every family, and every life. Somehow shape or form, world flesh and devil, we’re getting hit with stuff. Men, we’ve got to be on that front line. We’ve got to be on that perimeter. We’ve got to be on that wall. We’ve got to be ready to engage at a moment’s notice.
So when that moment happens, when our wife is going through something, be there. Pray for her. Be that spiritual intercessor. Go to adoration for her. Gentlemen, if you’re listening right now and you’re driving down the street and you’re even close to a Catholic church and you’ve got five minutes, pull in, go in, get on your knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and just say two, three, four minutes of prayers for your wife. Light a votive candle, and then go back to what you need to do. It doesn’t have to be an hour of this or some big, grand sort of thing to engage in the spiritual battle and protect the wife that has been given to you. It does not necessarily mean you have to be Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, or George Patton, you can be who you are because you’re the best one suited to protect the wife that God gave you, but you’ve got to engage.
I don’t go anywhere without a Rosary in my pocket, a Scapular around my neck, and I have other more natural defensive measures on me, too. But let’s just focus on the Rosary and the Scapular right now. And when I’m out and about, I stop regularly into the Catholic church that I drive by. It’s not always on the way to where I’m going, if I’m going to run errands or do something, but I make it on my way and I will go that direction to spend five or ten minutes in prayer. Go to adoration, gentlemen. Pop into that church regularly, get that Rosary prayed daily. And I also encourage some sort of fasting. There’s this thing out there, Exodus 90. We’ve all heard about it. I like the Exodus 365. 365 days a year – maybe Sundays you take off because it’s a mini Easter. Okay? But how about 6 days a week, gentlemen? We have that strength and that grit and that manhood to do something extra. Sacrifice, extra prayer, make yourself uncomfortable spiritually or in some way, and offer it up for a list of intentions that we could come up with. And, of course, if you’re a husband, first on that list should be your wife. Of course, your kids would follow right there with that. But, gentlemen, six days a week, do some intermittent fasting. Not only will it help you get physically healthier, it will be a spiritual gift. So, adoration, prayer, fasting. Engage in this spiritual battle.
Adam Wright:
Alright. You heard it here first on Roadmap to Heaven: Adam Wright, Doug Barry, Exodus 3:13, but for legal reasons, not Exodus 3:13. Prayer and fasting every day. Doug, this has been great. Before we wrap up here, I want to go back to a story you once told us about your wife. Because I know for a lot of the men listening to this, maybe for the first time, they’re saying, “Alright. I’m on board with a lot of this, but now you’re starting to get me out of my comfort zone. You want me to go around like I’m on the wall, like I’m on the perimeter.” And I remember you telling me early on in your marriage, the priest was very direct with you: “Are you praying over your wife and your children? Are you blessing them? Are you going around with the Holy water?” So that night, you had no problem going room to room. Sprinkle here. Sprinkle there. Sprinkle there. But when it came to your wife, she was already in bed asleep, and you kind of peak your head in the room, and you’re like, “Okay.” And the next morning she said, “Did I have a dream that you were sprinkling me with Holy water?” And you said, “Yeah.” And she goes, “Well, why don’t you do that every night?” How is it now? Now that your five kids are grown, you’ve got grandkids. Has the weirdness of that first moment worn off?
Doug Barry:
Oh, yeah. I hear that from guys all over, because I’ve told that story hundreds of times. Guys will say, “Yeah, when I first did it, I was petrified or terrified” and 99% of the time, I guarantee you, the women are thrilled. If your wife is on board at all, there’s some women who are a little weirded out by it maybe at first. But right now, it’s normal. Holy water, Blessed salt, marking the doorway on Epiphany.
Whatever it is to bring blessing and have the man initiate that. But to walk around the house with Holy water, they grew up with it. My wife and kids are familiar with it. I have Holy water bottles strategically placed, if you will, in different places. So they’re there. And it’s not an over-the-top sort of, we’ve got to light incense and have monks singing Gregorian chant. No. Gentlemen, just pick up the Holy water and trace a sign of the cross on your wife’s forehead. Sprinkle someone in the bedroom, in the kitchen, the living room. Bless your kids with this. Make it part of your day. Integrate it into your life. It’s a very powerful way because it’s one of the greatest sacramentals the church has given the world.
Adam Wright:
On that note though, I do want to give a shout-out to the Benedictines of Mary in Gower, Missouri. If you do want some sacred music playing around the home, they’ve got some beautiful CDs of sacred music. You don’t have to have it to go bless your wives and your children as Doug just said, but if you just want your home to be holier, put some good, sacred music on. Have good, sacred art. That’s a whole conversation for another day. Alright. Doug Barry, thank you so much for being with us to talk about Ephesians 5, these last two episodes that we’ve had you on. I look forward to our next conversation.
Doug Barry:
I do too, Adam. God bless you, my friend.
Adam Wright:
Recently, Doug Barry was with us. We were talking about Ephesians 5, and we were having a great conversation. We just ran out of time. So today, I want to pick back up, and Doug, it’s great to have you back with us. We’re looking at the second part of this passage, around verses 26 and 27, where husbands are exhorted to love their wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her. Why did he do that? Our Lord did that, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Now I don’t know about you. I’m not the Lord, and I’m not presenting anyone to myself, but one day my wife is going to stand before the Lord, and one day I am as well. I have a feeling there could be some questions: “Adam, what did you do so that she could stand here in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing?” It’s easy to philosophize about it, but we have plenty of opportunities in the every day “mundane life” to make sure we’re guarding her purity.
Doug Barry:
Yeah. And one thing I’d like to address at the beginning of this, Adam, is looking at this from more of an interior standpoint, not just a spiritual interior standpoint, but the psychology of humanity. Your wife, gentlemen – and I know the ladies listening right now, some are gonna be cheering this on, I have no doubt. Because a lot of times, and I’ve been married 33 years. And a lot of times, we get to that point in a marriage – and you’ve been married 14, you know it already too – where you could become almost mechanical in the way you go through your day-to-day life. I raised five kids and now we’ve got grandkids, and it’s very easy to get focused sometimes on the list of things that need to be done. And that’s important because it’s life, and we have to go through life and take care of different things. However, the emotional and psychological part of what’s going on inside a human being needs to be acknowledged.
You know, I remember one of the best bits of advice I heard from a priest when I went to confession one day, years ago. And he said to me, “Don’t beat yourself up over your humanity.” The fact that there is this component in us that God has created that is very human. And what does that mean? It means that we’re not robots and we don’t just clock in and clock out, and you turn on the car and you drive. And if there’s no gas in the tank, the car just doesn’t go. There’s no juice in the battery, your power tool isn’t going to run. Or whatever it may be. When it comes to a marriage, when it comes to a person, it’s not necessarily the same about gas in a tank. It’s more complicated. There are nuances. There are emotional and psychological, this and that.
And I think one thing that has to be looked at when it comes to helping your wife be prepared to stand before God and present her without spot or blemish or any such wrinkle and so forth, is understanding that this emotional psychological part of who she is needs to be loved and addressed. Now that doesn’t mean, of course, just like with our children – you’ve got smaller kids, I know – so when they go through the emotional upheaval of some sort, you don’t just cater to the emotional upheaval. That’s not what I mean specifically when I’m talking about addressing the emotional and the psychological part of a person. But it’s acknowledging that it’s there and realizing that from a day-to-day, even from a moment to moment sometimes, part of our life, that can change very easily and very quickly. And that doesn’t mean because someone’s bipolar, that’s a separate issue. That’s not what I’m talking about.
But you can be in a really good mood and then something starts to happen within this very short amount of time. All of a sudden, you’re concerned about something, you’re worried. You see something in the news. Something happens here. There’s a family event. You get a call from your parents. Someone’s sick. Someone said something about your aunt, your uncle, your brother, your sister. And now the emotions have shifted. The psychology is shifted, and sometimes men can, with their wives, – I think more so than women do with men – just walk in and say, “Well, what’s the problem?” “Well, this happened now.” “So? Get over it. Just move on.” And you can’t do that with people. You take that particular moment that your wife is going through something, and you address it lovingly, patiently, and help her through it. Strengthen her through it.
Ladies, you got to do the same thing for us men. There’s no question, because we’re human too. Sometimes guys get kind of stuck with that. “He doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t talk about his feelings.” That doesn’t mean we don’t have them. Alright? But in general, not a blanket statement, women can easily shift sometimes when it comes to this. Now that’s the feminine genius part of them, as well, that God created. They have the ability to nurture so wonderfully because they can shift that emotional piece of themselves very quickly. I think more so than men.
My kids would say this. My oldest son in particular, we do a lot of work together with our BRC (Be Ready Coalition) group. George is 29 now and he has three kids of his own. And he would say to me, “Yeah, when we were hurt, and we needed tenderness, we’d go to Mom. But when we were scared and we needed protection, we’d go to Dad.” Because Dad normally has that more staunch, “Hey!” type of attitude and voice. Well, gentlemen, we cannot necessarily be that way when it comes to our wives when they’re going through changes throughout a day of emotions and feelings and the psychology of this.
Now the reason I wanted to spend some time on that first, Adam, is because that’s a key part of our humanity. We’ve got to understand that God put us together. And because that key part of our humanity is there, if it’s ignored or not dealt with in a way that’s compassionate and strong, and trying to order things the way God would want, that we’re missing a major part, a beautiful part of a person in general, but especially our wives. And my wife, your wife, a wife in general, has a beautiful gift to be able to nurture and has aspects and pieces of who she is that need to be looked at carefully.
So I can lead her in the Rosary, I can say we’re getting to Mass every Sunday, and confession every two weeks, and we’re doing the five first Saturdays and the nine first Fridays. And I can say we’re doing all this, and establishing that. That is also very, very key and very important. But if I don’t, on a day-to-day basis, pay attention to the humanity that God has created her with, and I don’t look at those emotions, those feelings, and those thoughts, those changes that happen throughout the day based on whatever events occur and unfold, and I don’t address that. And then lovingly, patiently, as Christ does for the church – does Christ not patiently address the changes going on in our world and our faith and our church? Of course, He does. Does He still hold true relentlessly to what the deposit of faith is all about? Of course He does. But He’s still patient in the process of looking at the details and the nuances of all the little things that happen, and we men, I think, need to do that every day with our wives.
Adam Wright:
You know, one of the lessons I learned pretty early on is that if I want to encourage my wife, I have to keep an eye on pretty much everything I’m doing throughout the day and around the home. And not just, we talked last time about not just being the drill sergeant or mastering commander that, “We’re doing this, we’re doing that and that’s how it’s going to be.” By the way, if you ever want to get in a lot of trouble, just look at your wife and say, “Why can’t you be logical?” My wife is a very logical person, but in the heat of the moment, Doug, I happen to say that a lot. It was a bad move, one I regret, very much. But it’s one of those things. A while back, we were watching a movie. It was either Maureen O’Hara or it was from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn, right? And I said, “Wow. She’s beautiful.” And I thought that was a really innocuous thing just to say, here’s this movie actress from days gone by, that I’m like, “Oh, wow. She’s beautiful.” Then I caught on, that every time I was making a comment like that, was I saying that my wife is beautiful, too? Like, she’s hearing me say, “Oh, this person’s beautiful. that person’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, and she’s beautiful.” Does she hear me say, “You’re beautiful”? Does she hear me say this?
I wonder in our society, it’s kind of a chicken and an egg thing, especially as we talk about modesty, and we talk about chastity, and as a father of girls, it’s something I worry about very much. And luckily, they have a mother who does a great job of teaching them by example. You know, as men, if we’re looking at pornography. If we are objectifying every woman around us, is that making our wives say, “Well, you know, maybe he wants me to be like that. Maybe if I did this…” Maybe not even consciously. Now all of a sudden, Doug, we’re setting them up to fail. Or if we come home and the first thing we do is gripe, “Why isn’t dinner on the table? Why isn’t this? Why’d the kids do that?” Guilty as charged, some days, on this. I think most of us men would raise our hands and say that. Are we just causing our wives to say, “Well, what did I do wrong? Why can’t I make him happy? It’s all my fault” and start beating themselves up? My professor once said to me, “Adam, you’re the captain. This is the ship, you’re the captain. You set the mood. If you’re calm, they’re calm. If you build them up, they’re built up. If you tear them down, the ship falls apart.”
Doug Barry:
Mhmm. Yeah. My wife said to me one time, years ago – one of my favorite, actually, let me back up. One of my favorite paintings ever is the painting of Jesus in the boat. It’s a Rembrandt, I believe, and it’s the painting of Jesus in the front of the boat. You know, the famous story of Him sleeping in the boat when the storm is raging, and then they wake Him up. “We’re gonna die, master. Don’t you care?” He basically tests their faith again. But He stands up at the front of the boat and He says, “Be still” and everything calms down. My wife said to me one time, she said, “That’s you. When you come home,” you know, we’re in the thick of raising five kids at the time in homeschooling. And she said, “When you come home, you have that ability.” And she wasn’t in any way criticizing me. She was saying “It’s not as if that’s this natural great gift that you just have. Though you’re good at it. But it’s the fact that you are the husband and the father. You are this man.”
So when you come in the house, you can set that tone by simply saying, “Hey, be still.” This is the complimentary way God has designed husbands and wives to be able to work together. She says something to me that encourages and points something out clearly what my role is and how it helps. Now we don’t always do that in marriages all the time. We know that we sometimes get on each other’s back. Any marriage knows that. Again, if you’re married longer than a week, you realize this can happen. However, understand the role. The role of it is when the man can come into that home or into that situation, and you’re right, just set the tone. He has that ability.
I would say, if a mother yells out the door in the evening, “Jimmy, it’s supper time!” the kid’s down the street. You know, this may have been years ago when kids would actually play outside, down the street. But that Jimmy would [say] “Oh, it’s just my Mom. Don’t worry about it.” But if Dad yells out the front door, “Jimmy!” every kid goes home. Because the strength of a man’s voice, the strength of a man’s position. When it is a position and he’s using that strength, I should say, in a Godly way, in a prayerful way, that only magnifies it, and amazing things can happen.
So, yeah, you’re right about that captain of the ship piece. That’s a key thing, but that captain of the ship is willing to go down with the ship. He’s not going to abandon the ship. He’s not going to abandon his crew. So we men can’t abandon. And when we make mistakes, I want to emphasize this for the men. Get back up. Keep moving forward. I don’t care if you’re crawling into the confessional. Get in the confessional if you have to. If you’ve got to deal with the laziness, the terrible attitude, the anger issues. A lot of guys have bad anger issues, or they’ve got pornography issues, or they’ve got issues when it comes to gambling or drinking or something else. Get the help that’s needed, get off the pity party knees that you’re on, and move forward because you need to be that faithful, holy captain of this ship.
Adam Wright:
Before we wrap up here, Doug, I wanna go back to the book of Genesis, because as you were just saying that part, one of the things I couldn’t help but think is the quote in Genesis. “It’s not good for the man to be alone.” And thank goodness I have a wife. We often tell people that we’re like rocks in a tumbler, smoothing one another, polishing out the stones and the jagged edges. I think I’ve got a lot more than she does, but we go back to that story in Eden. We all like to say, “It was Eve’s fault.” Because she was off, and the devil appears to her as a serpent and says “Did God really say that? No, God said this. Oh, but here, take a bite of this apple” and that Eve ruined the party for everyone. But every now and then, someone will ask this question: “Well, where was Adam? Why was he letting Eve be off being tempted by the devil? Why wasn’t he there with her?” And again, going back to something you said when we started this conversation last time, that as a husband, I am not the savior of my wife. I will never be able to get her to Heaven, but I can sure do a lot to tempt her away from it. It’s our Lord that’s the savior, but that doesn’t negate my duty here on this earth. And I think sometimes we forget that. It’s like, where was Adam? Why wasn’t he there to be like, “Eve, that dude’s lying. Let’s go.”
Doug Barry:
Yeah. I joke around about, what was Adam doing? Well, he was probably out there in the garden watching the bears and the lions chase a pig skin around. Anyway, somehow he was either distracted, or he was cowardly, or something got in the way there. You think about what he could have done when Eve said, “Here, I’ve got something for you, Adam” and he could have said, “Oh, Eve, we weren’t supposed to do that. You know what? I’m going to intercede for you and plead before God on your behalf” but Adam went along with it. So, yeah, they both did it. They both stepped into that, but you’re right about that. We men need to be on our guard. We need to be on the wall, basically, guarding the perimeter. It baffles me why men don’t understand that it’s built within us to be a protector and a defender. Again, back to that statement my son would say, and pretty much all my kids were the same way. They get hurt, they need tenderness, they go to Mom. She can nurture. They need protection, they feel a sense of threat, they go to Dad. Dads are protectors and defenders.
We need to be that way naturally, need to have a plan to protect. I’ll always say this. We do this with our BR Coalition work. Be ready to protect and defend. Spiritually and naturally, have a plan, learn how to defend and protect. This is something that’s key with who we are. If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and tries to hurt your family, men, what are you going to do? Are you going to get out of bed and engage the bad guy, or you going to go hide behind your wife? You going to go run in the closet? No. You’re going to engage. If you love, you engage to protect and defend. Most of us, please God, are never going to have a home invasion. But spiritually, it’s going on all the time, every day, in every family, and every life. Somehow shape or form, world flesh and devil, we’re getting hit with stuff. Men, we’ve got to be on that front line. We’ve got to be on that perimeter. We’ve got to be on that wall. We’ve got to be ready to engage at a moment’s notice.
So when that moment happens, when our wife is going through something, be there. Pray for her. Be that spiritual intercessor. Go to adoration for her. Gentlemen, if you’re listening right now and you’re driving down the street and you’re even close to a Catholic church and you’ve got five minutes, pull in, go in, get on your knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and just say two, three, four minutes of prayers for your wife. Light a votive candle, and then go back to what you need to do. It doesn’t have to be an hour of this or some big, grand sort of thing to engage in the spiritual battle and protect the wife that has been given to you. It does not necessarily mean you have to be Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, or George Patton, you can be who you are because you’re the best one suited to protect the wife that God gave you, but you’ve got to engage.
I don’t go anywhere without a Rosary in my pocket, a Scapular around my neck, and I have other more natural defensive measures on me, too. But let’s just focus on the Rosary and the Scapular right now. And when I’m out and about, I stop regularly into the Catholic church that I drive by. It’s not always on the way to where I’m going, if I’m going to run errands or do something, but I make it on my way and I will go that direction to spend five or ten minutes in prayer. Go to adoration, gentlemen. Pop into that church regularly, get that Rosary prayed daily. And I also encourage some sort of fasting. There’s this thing out there, Exodus 90. We’ve all heard about it. I like the Exodus 365. 365 days a year – maybe Sundays you take off because it’s a mini Easter. Okay? But how about 6 days a week, gentlemen? We have that strength and that grit and that manhood to do something extra. Sacrifice, extra prayer, make yourself uncomfortable spiritually or in some way, and offer it up for a list of intentions that we could come up with. And, of course, if you’re a husband, first on that list should be your wife. Of course, your kids would follow right there with that. But, gentlemen, six days a week, do some intermittent fasting. Not only will it help you get physically healthier, it will be a spiritual gift. So, adoration, prayer, fasting. Engage in this spiritual battle.
Adam Wright:
Alright. You heard it here first on Roadmap to Heaven: Adam Wright, Doug Barry, Exodus 3:13, but for legal reasons, not Exodus 3:13. Prayer and fasting every day. Doug, this has been great. Before we wrap up here, I want to go back to a story you once told us about your wife. Because I know for a lot of the men listening to this, maybe for the first time, they’re saying, “Alright. I’m on board with a lot of this, but now you’re starting to get me out of my comfort zone. You want me to go around like I’m on the wall, like I’m on the perimeter.” And I remember you telling me early on in your marriage, the priest was very direct with you: “Are you praying over your wife and your children? Are you blessing them? Are you going around with the Holy water?” So that night, you had no problem going room to room. Sprinkle here. Sprinkle there. Sprinkle there. But when it came to your wife, she was already in bed asleep, and you kind of peak your head in the room, and you’re like, “Okay.” And the next morning she said, “Did I have a dream that you were sprinkling me with Holy water?” And you said, “Yeah.” And she goes, “Well, why don’t you do that every night?” How is it now? Now that your five kids are grown, you’ve got grandkids. Has the weirdness of that first moment worn off?
Doug Barry:
Oh, yeah. I hear that from guys all over, because I’ve told that story hundreds of times. Guys will say, “Yeah, when I first did it, I was petrified or terrified” and 99% of the time, I guarantee you, the women are thrilled. If your wife is on board at all, there’s some women who are a little weirded out by it maybe at first. But right now, it’s normal. Holy water, Blessed salt, marking the doorway on Epiphany.
Whatever it is to bring blessing and have the man initiate that. But to walk around the house with Holy water, they grew up with it. My wife and kids are familiar with it. I have Holy water bottles strategically placed, if you will, in different places. So they’re there. And it’s not an over-the-top sort of, we’ve got to light incense and have monks singing Gregorian chant. No. Gentlemen, just pick up the Holy water and trace a sign of the cross on your wife’s forehead. Sprinkle someone in the bedroom, in the kitchen, the living room. Bless your kids with this. Make it part of your day. Integrate it into your life. It’s a very powerful way because it’s one of the greatest sacramentals the church has given the world.
Adam Wright:
On that note though, I do want to give a shout-out to the Benedictines of Mary in Gower, Missouri. If you do want some sacred music playing around the home, they’ve got some beautiful CDs of sacred music. You don’t have to have it to go bless your wives and your children as Doug just said, but if you just want your home to be holier, put some good, sacred music on. Have good, sacred art. That’s a whole conversation for another day. Alright. Doug Barry, thank you so much for being with us to talk about Ephesians 5, these last two episodes that we’ve had you on. I look forward to our next conversation.
Doug Barry:
I do too, Adam. God bless you, my friend.
In this episode of Roapmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by guest Doug Barry for the second part of their discussion on Ephesians 5 and what it means for husbands.
The discussion revolves around the key focus of Ephesians 5, which is husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church and presenting them without blemish. Adam starts by reflecting on how he contributes to his wife’s purity, considering that both of them will one day stand before the Lord. He emphasizes the everyday opportunities to protect and guard his wife’s purity.
Doug stresses the importance of the emotional and psychological aspects of a person’s humanity, particularly within the context of marriage. He encourages listeners to pay attention to their wife’s emotions, thoughts, and changes throughout the day and to address them with love and patience. The need to balance spiritual practices with acknowledging the human aspects of one’s spouse is emphasized.
Doug encourages men to be vigilant and protective, both spiritually and physically. Suggestions are given for spiritual practices such as prayers, adoration, fasting, and regular church visits to defend and protect one’s family.
The importance of a husband setting a positive tone in the home is stressed. Even amidst conflicts, a man’s voice and position can influence the atmosphere. Men are urged to take responsibility for their mistakes, seek help, and strive to be faithful and holy leaders.
Overall, this episode of Roadmap to Heaven provides valuable insights into the responsibilities and opportunities husbands have in their marriages, reminding listeners of their duty on earth and the importance of being present for their spouse in times of temptation.
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