Lisa Barry: With so many marriages on the rocks these days, aren't you glad there are radio programs out there that call for loving sacrifice between husband and wife? This is such a program. Today on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot and special guest Donna Otto talk about practical ways to better that lifelong relationship. That's next on Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, and I've been talking this week with my friend, Donna Otto, about that endlessly fascinating and perplexing subject of the relationships between husbands and wives.

Donna, you told me that you had fasted for a whole year for a good reason.

Donna Otto: I did. I have to tell you why I had to fast, though. It was because I was such a painful talker. I have talked too much and too unkindly. I have had people say to me, "You've just walked over my throat with a cleat and haven't even come back to wipe up the blood." David, of course, was the recipient of most of that.

I liked to do what I think our culture does, and blame my parents for it. Do you think I could get away with that? I didn't learn to trust anybody. When I was growing up, I didn't learn how to deal with people. I didn't know anything about relationships. Can I use all of that, Elisabeth, for an excuse? No, huh?

Elisabeth Elliot: It's not going to wash.

Donna Otto: It won't work, especially with you!

Elisabeth Elliot: It will not wash. Now this fast, was this food?

Donna Otto: Well, I had some experiences with fasting of food. My husband taught a class on fasting, period. He suggested to the young men in their class that they fast from TV to make more time for their wives. That stuck in my heart. I meditated on it. The Lord really came to me in my quiet hour one morning, saying, "What you need is to fast from saying anything critical to David."

I didn't laugh out loud, but I thought, "That is impossible." Not that I'm a critical person. I don't think of myself as a critical person, but I want things done a certain way. I have certain ways to do everything and I'd like to let you know about it, if you don't do it that way. Of course, David again is the recipient of that.

But I did give it some strong thought and I prayed about it for a week or ten days. I really believe-and I told no one. I told no one, not even David. Oh, he was the last person. Actually, he didn't know I had done it until after two years had passed. I thought he would be suspicious of me then. I thought he would be waiting for me to say the critical thing or suspicious of my motive. Besides, it was something between God and myself. I certainly wasn't going to say anything. So I didn't.

Elisabeth Elliot: So you went through all that, and he didn't even notice.

Donna Otto: He did, but that was the wonderful part. First of all, I had to develop some little techniques. So I made the vow. I really believe a woman should be a woman of her word. So once I made the vow, I was gangbusters. Then I decided there were two things I was going to have to do. One of them was to learn when I was talking, or having a dialog with David, to put my index finger literally over my two lips. Now I'm sorry, but that's the kind of help I needed.

The second was the passage where he says in Ephesians, "Let no unwholesome word." Now I know that verse in my head intellectually, but I stopped with "Let no." Let no. I thought, "That's it." That's all I needed to know. If I "let no," which meant, "nothing critical, nothing, just don't go on to the rest of the verse, just stop right there," I could do this.

So I began. I'll tell you, Elisabeth, within thirty days I noticed a difference in David. In David, in David's response to me, in our home. Our home is not a home like some of the homes that you and I hear about from women in day-to-day encounters. Our home is a good, warm, loving home. The difference was measurable.

One of the specific things that the Lord came to me in that time to understand-He brought to my understanding-was what this truly was was acceptance. What this truly was was that I was handing to David complete acceptance. Whatever he said, however he did it, whatever wrong road he took. The messages he didn't return on the day I thought he should return them. If you get a telephone message, you should return it. It would sit there and he wouldn't return it. I didn't say a word.

I saw David's measure of acceptance from me played out in his life in the most incredible ways. In thirty days, really, in thirty days I could see the difference. So it's the first time I've said that aloud, publicly aloud. I think that I would caution women from just hearing another tool. Maybe that is something God would call them to do. But I would encourage them to be prayerful, if that's what God called them to do. Certainly it is not difficult for me to say to any woman, "You should not be critical of your mate. It demeans and demoralizes the relationship."

I believe that David is my best teacher. I believe that, aside from God. I believe that because he is the human being I trust, or should trust, the most. Someone I trust is someone I learn from. Period.

Elisabeth Elliot: And he is the man who was assigned to take you on as his wife, and so he is the man that God assigned for you to submit you.

Donna Otto: Exactly. I also, though, I really believe that I'm David's best teacher. I think that goes both ways, because I am the human being he trusts the most. What I saw evolve out of that year of fasting was that there was a greater level of trust. What is the epitome of submission is that my husband would stop at my study and say, "What do you think about this?"

Well, I think something about everything. Did you ever read Chuck Snyder's book, OTHER THAN THAT, I HAVE NO OPINION. I should have written that book myself.

Elisabeth Elliot: No, I don't know that one.

Donna Otto: OTHER THAN THAT, I HAVE NO OPINION. So if David is stopping at my study or calling me on the phone to say, "What do you think?" I believe that I have fulfilled my job. That is that my husband would trust his heart with me. That's my job. That is my work. How I do that is differently than how you do it with Lars. But it is the task. For me, that was an enormous boost.

Elisabeth Elliot: Undoubtedly, you've touched on a clue to one of the questions-one of the things that women complain most about to me. "My husband doesn't share." Undoubtedly, they are afraid to share, because as soon as they open their mouths, they're going to get a rejoinder or a rebuttal of some sort, from somebody like me. I don't know why it took me so long to see that that's what I was doing. I was being extremely critical and just wanting to correct and amend virtually everything my husband said.

Donna Otto: Well, fix it. I'm the great fixer. After all, doesn't everyone want Donna Otto to fix them up? I mean, that's as silly as I can be. But I wanted to fix him. David got to the place in our relationship where he would say to me, "Oh, this hurts me to even say it. I'm so ashamed of it." But he would say, "Now Donna, this is a clay pigeon. I don't want you to shoot it down." Oh! But that was what he knew I would do. It was because I had an answer and because I was going to fix whatever. All he wanted to do was talk to me and tell me how he felt.

Elisabeth Elliot: We've been talking for several days about older women teaching younger women. Now you and I have been sharing some pretty intimate stuff about what goes on in our respective marriages. I hope that there are younger women out there who have been listening to us two older women here, because what we're doing, even in our conversation together over this table, is to share some of the things that God has been teaching us.

And I know both you and I are very much in earnest about the fact that we do not want to be considered paragons. We have not arrived. We have been given every opportunity to have arrived, but we're not there yet. So we've been talking about the kinds of things that you talk about in your books and the things that you share with women when you have an opportunity to speak to them.

Donna Otto: You used the phrase, "arrived." I want you to know in my heart of hearts, occasionally I want God to let me look like I've arrived. I do. Even occasionally, I will say, "Well, is it today, Lord? Could I just for a few minutes?"

I was speaking in Memphis, Tennessee not long ago. A beautiful church, everything done beautifully in mauve and purples. It was just gorgeous. On Friday evening, I spoke and I did an okay job. But I got to my hotel room and I thought I'd spilled coffee on my shirt before I spoke. I put my suit jacket over it and it didn't hurt. But there I just spilled coffee on my shirt and I didn't speak very well. I said, "Lord, in the morning, couldn't I, please, just for a few minutes in the morning, look like I was profound or a paragon? Couldn't I just for a few moments?"

I promise you, Elisabeth, I walked up the stairs and fell down the stairs on the platform. I thought, "Okay, Lord. So much for that." But you know, that always makes me think that younger women don't want to run into someone who has arrived. Do you feel comfortable with a woman who has arrived? You can't tell your heart to someone who has arrived. They want to run into someone who has survived.

The Lord reminds me of that so often, because I do want to occasionally look like I've arrived. You know? I have it together here. This is a meal I can serve well. Or this is a speech I can give well. But I'm just surviving. I'm a little older, but I'm just surviving. I think it's God's picture. Even the woman's physical body, what happens to a woman when she gets older and certain portions of her upper anatomy begin to change positions and they become a little softer than they used to be? What a wonderful place to bury your head, on the bosom of Abraham, perhaps, or the bosom of a woman who is soft, not only in heart, but of body. I think that's the older woman who has survived.

Elisabeth Elliot: And I would hope that day by day, the Lord is teaching us the meaning of love from 1 Corinthians 13, and Paul's list of the virtues: "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Very few of us would be able to say that we have arrived on any of those things, and yet there they are, clearly in black and white, simple. The Lord is saying, "Trust Me."

We want to end on the note, "The Lord God will help me" (Isaiah 50:7). "Therefore, shall I not be confounded; therefore, have I set my face like a flint and I know that I shall not be ashamed."

Donna Otto: Amen.

Lisa Barry: As we close for today, here's a quick run-down of the books Donna has written: BETWEEN WOMEN OF GOD, which is about women encouraging women; THE GENTLE ART OF MENTORING, and MENTORING FOR MOTHERS, which is curriculum for starting a mentoring program at your church.

Find out more by calling us toll free: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Or you can write to us at Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow Elisabeth and Donna wrap up this series with an overview of her book entitled, GET MORE DONE IN LESS TIME. That's right here on Gateway To Joy.