Hans, Hubcaps and a Heads up to Husbands

LISTEN HERE SHOW SUMMARY Sometimes its hard for guys to just be tuned in. It’s not that they don’t love their wives but sometimes they are just not tuned in to “how do I do that.” "If you don't understand how you do it wrong, you'll never know how to do it right." That was the journey Hans and Donna took in writing "The Top Ten Ways to Love Your Wife." SHOW NOTES MOF_2010_02_10_HansDonna-web_nvr.mp3

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

JONATHAN FINLEY: Hi, this is Jonathan Finley. I want to welcome you to our radio program, Missions on the Frontline. It’s my pleasure to be your host today. Our website is WorldVenture.com. WorldVenture services over 1,000 mission projects and missionaries in 65 countries around the globe. We’ve been living out the Good News of Jesus Christ in diverse cultures since 1943. This radio program is part of our initiative to make you aware of how you can join us in pursuing God’s mission of love for this planet. We’ve got a very special Valentine’s Day show for you today. The reason that Hans Finzel, president of WorldVenture, could not be your host today is because he is our honored guest. Hans and his lovely wife, Donna Finzel, are here with me in the studio. Hans and Donna are co-authors of a celebrated book, THE TOP TEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR WIFE, published by Cook Communication Ministries in 2001. Donna, welcome to Missions on the Frontline. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have you as our guest.

DONNA FINZEL: Thanks, Jonathan.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Yeah, it’s so great to see you here. Hans, I want to thank you publicly for giving me the privilege of hosting your show. It’s great fun to have you as a guest on your own show.

HANS FINZEL: Aw, great to have you. I’m glad you are guest-hosting. You’re doing a fine job. Keep it up!

JONATHAN FINLEY: Thank you, sir. On this Valentine’s Day, we want to talk about marriage and we think it’s appropriate to talk about marriage on a show about world missions. The Apostle Paul asserts that a man’s love for his wife is a picture of Christ’s love for the church. And to quote the Apostle Paul he says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” That’s a high calling of Christian marriage. It’s a picture of Christ’s sacrificial love for the church. Even the mundane aspects of everyday marriage have eternal significance and that’s certainly relevant for a show about world missions and to the God who so loved this world. WorldVenture recognizes that strong marriages can only enhance our participation in God’s mission. Now I want to get to our guests. We’ll start, of course, with Donna. Now Donna you co-wrote a book on marriage with the author of THE TOP TEN MISTAKES LEADERS MAKE. Uh, I really want our listeners to hear the process of writing that book. Was that good for your marriage? Was that hard on the marriage? Tell us the story.

DONNA FINZEL: Well, it was great for our marriage. The way the book came about though was that Hans had published THE TOP TEN MISTAKES LEADERS MAKE and it launched beautifully and right around that time I went off to speak at a retreat in Iowa. It was right when cell phones came out and Hans’ cell phone was in my car because it was the only one in the family and he was off to Pennsylvania speaking. On my way home on a highway in the middle of nowhere I blew a tire; never had had that happen, didn’t even know that it occurred. A big long, traumatic story later it had to be towed back to Chicago about 3 ½ hours and when Hans got back home from his trip, he takes a look at me and sees I’m fine, of course, outwardly, and walks in the garage and sees that the hubcap had blown off and so he goes, “Where’s the hubcap?” And the last thing…

HANS FINZEL: I mean that’s a good story, uh, question for a guy. Do you know how much hubcaps cost?

JONATHAN FINLEY: The wife’s fine; she’s home.

HANS FINZEL: She looked great but the hubcaps missing.

JONATHAN FINLEY: You never even thought to look for it.

HANS FINZEL: Well, that’s what I asked her, “Did you look for it?” That’s when all heck broke loose.

JONATHAN FINLEY: And not even David the garage guy looked for it.

DONNA FINZEL: Well, I…

HANS FINZEL: So I asked you, uh…

DONNA FINZEL: So I looked…I said…I just completely could not believe he cared about the stupid hubcap when I could have been killed and it was this big trauma and I’m by myself in the middle of nowhere. And I said, “I’ve got a book for you! THE TOP TEN MISTAKES HUSBANDS MAKE!” And so the funny thing is that he mentioned to his publisher that that’s what his wife had said and they said, “Hey, it sounds like a great idea! Why don’t you write a book about it?” So obviously that’s too negative of a topic and so really what we ended up discovering through that process and that trauma was that we should write a book about how men can understand these complex creations that God made…

JONATHAN FINLEY: How men can communicate that their wives are far more important than hubcaps.

DONNA FINZEL: Than hubcaps…

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now Hans, this may be an opportunity for you to defend yourself.

HANS FINZEL: Uh, no…

JONATHAN FINLEY: I know the book starts out with Donna telling this story which kind of sets the tone for the rest of the books.

HANS FINZEL: You know it’s interesting, I don’t think there’s a need for a book for women, THE TOP TEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR HUSBANDS. Paul told husbands, “Husbands, love your wives.” He never told the wives to love their husbands. I think it’s… I think husbands can generally be jerks; be self-centered. And we felt we probably need to help husbands understand how you love your wife because I think it’s sometimes hard for guys to just. Just to be tuned in. It’s not that they don’t love their wives but sometimes they are just not tuned in to “how do I do that?” So that was the journey we took.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Well help us understand the premise of the book, Hans. Uh, to quote you or your principle, uh, you wrote, “If you don’t know how to do it wrong, you’ll never know how to do it right.” How did you land on this approach to growing as a husband?

HANS FINZEL: Well it came out of my book, TOP TEN MISTAKES LEADERS MAKE, because I believe that there are leadership pitfalls. And you can be 95% great as a leader but you have a blind spot, a weakness in your leadership, that kind of negates your power as a leader and I think the same thing is true for husbands so we kind of decided, what are the top mistakes that husbands make that perhaps make it hard for them to be good husbands? So as you look through the chapter titles, uh, you know, that’s really what the chapter titles were all about. We turned them into a positive like, “SPEAK NO EVIL”. You know the fact that it’s hard for a woman to hear criticism. You have to be very careful as a husband about how you would ever try to correct or criticize your wife because it can just… Whereas a guy can take a lot more criticism but yet it’s a delicate matter. I guess the point is I would not criticize my wife or try to give her any word of corrective (I’m digging myself into a hole here) as I would YOU as a guy.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Oh yeah…

HANS FINZEL: You know guys talk to each other…

JONATHAN FINLEY: You’d tell me straight out.

HANS FINZEL: The point of that chapter is don’t talk to your wife the way you talk to the guys. You know…

JONATHAN FINLEY: I would have gone back and looked for the hubcap.

HANS FINZEL: Do you know how much hubcaps cost?

JONATHAN FINLEY: Oh yeah! I understand. I understand. All right, well listen, I think that you must have been working on this, on the revision of the book anyways, while you were still in the Chicago area, before moving to Colorado. That’s almost ten years ago. The current version of the book was published in 2001. That means that you’ve lived another ten years together, uh, here in beautiful Colorado. Many things must have changed. Uh, I wonder what you would revise in the book now. Maybe we can start with Donna.

DONNA FINZEL: Well I would definitely say that the stages of marriage…The stages of life affect a marriage. And you know we have just recently gone through the empty nest. Our four kids are all grown and…

JONATHAN FINLEY: How long have you been married?

DONNA FINZEL: Thirty-four years; thirty-four and a half. And we, uh, you know you start off…Really, any marriage is the bringing together of two cultures. Of course, a man and a woman alone are dramatically different, but in our case Hans was raised in a German home and a family that was not actively following the Lord. I was the child of a pastor and his wife and grew up in a godly home. We brought that together at that point and the journey of trying to figure out how to love each other and have a marriage early on, um, your marriage continues to grow through the years. Mentors are huge in a marriage. I don’t think there’s really any time in your marriage where you don’t need mentors. Early on in our marriage Linda Dillow, who has written many books on marriage, was a huge mentor for us in giving us the encouragement to put our marriage ahead of our children. And that was an exciting thing that we did early on that we talk about in the book that dating each other continually through the years of our marriage. We continue right to this day. We take a couple weekends a year, even now that our kids are grown or we go away and we look at our calendar and we always make sure that our marriage is a priority. So some things have carried on through the years but at this point in our marriage, obviously the empty nest is a stage where I am very grateful that Hans has been sensitive to how I feel about that. Hans might want to say how he has just been like, Woo-hoo; dancing in the streets! The kids are gone and we get to have more time for each other…

HANS FINZEL: Well, we have learned…

DONNA FINZEL: …but for me it’s been tough.

HANS FINZEL: …the transition of the empty nest is very different for a husband than for a wife. And for me, yeah, I’ve been celebrating the freedom of being done with 25 years of raising kids.

JONATHAN FINLEY: With all due respect for your children…

HANS FINZEL: Yeah, now I have the house back and my tools stay where they belong and I have my garage back from all those years when the boys worked on their cars. So I’m kind of like loving the freedom plus I’m an introvert so I enjoy quiet and solitude but for Donna, a woman, a mom raising four children, a lot of your identity and need in the world and place is wrapped up in being mom and all of a sudden they are gone.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Donna, is that?

DONNA FINZEL: Yeah, and interestingly enough, for the last ten years I’ve had a very exciting and challenging career so I didn’t really expect…And plus, because we worked on our marriage through the years and made it a priority, I didn’t really expect… I sort of thought I would get, you know, pass out of the empty nest being an issue for me but there is so much of your identity as a woman, um, that has children that is tied up with your children and even relating to other people as a mom from day-to-day and how that affects your relationships. And when that’s gone it’s a big adjustment that is tough on a woman.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Since the topic of the book is how to better love your wife in this new phase, this empty nest phase, what are ways that Hans can love you better in your current situation?

DONNA FINZEL: I think he’s done a really good job of letting me grieve the times when I’ve needed to just, you know, have a good cry. Our daughter just headed off across the world again and it’s taken me by surprise how it affects me and I think my favorite chapter on this topic is, FIND HER FREQUENCY.

JONATHAN FINLEY: That’s chapter four in the book.

DONNA FINZEL: Chapter four. And one thing that, you know, through the years I’m really grateful for that Hans has learned to really listen. I don’t want him to fix the fact that I’m hurting about being, you know my kids being gone. It’s not something he can fix; only the Lord can really meet the needs of my heart and so, you know, but I need to be heard. My favorite section even is where it says on pages 73 and 74 on LISTENING AND OTHER RARE EXOTIC HABITS and at the bottom of page 74 I say, “Well I, Donna, am going to share a news flash with all you men out there who care to listen. Women don’t want to hear your advice. They don’t want solutions to their crisis; they just want an arm around their shoulders and a soft spoken, “I understand” if you do. Or “I hear you and I care about your feelings” if you don’t. Women want to see that you care about their interests; feel your closeness and love and know that you have truly heard them.” I just would say that that is something Hans has gotten better at through the years and I’m really grateful for that. So I don’t know if there’s anything that he could do better. I’m thankful for him…

HANS FINZEL: I think our daughter leaving is a great example. I know it’s really hit Donna very, very hard. She’s 22; she’s now in Africa for the year and the Middle East and I can’t fix it. I can’t say, “Get over it.” I can’t bring her back so she’s in the house so really, what I need to do is give Donna compassion and acknowledge that she’s suffering and feeling the loss.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Hans, it must be great for you to hear that you’ve made progress in this area.

HANS FINZEL: Yeah!

JONATHAN FINLEY: Are you yourself able to see that progress?

HANS FINZEL: Well, she… Back to the beginning I grew up in a cold, impersonal German home that was all about productivity and non-communication. She grew up in a home where everybody had all their feelings out on their sleeves. I mean, everybody talked at once at the dinner table…

JONATHAN FINLEY: I grew up in one of those homes, too…

HANS FINZEL: …at my dinner table? Nobody talked. And so for the first five or ten years it was pure culture shock when I would go to her home. Uh, but I…

DONNA FINZEL: And vice-versa.

HANS FINZEL: Vice-versa! Poor Donna. She was like, “How come your family doesn’t talk?” But anyway, it’s been… You know what happens when two people get married – you blend into a new culture that is neither her culture or her family or my culture or my family. We hope we took the strengths out of both families for our family.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now, Hans, you are known as a leader and as an expert in leadership studies and as a leader. What would you say is at least one area you’ve developed as a leader thanks to your marriage?

HANS FINZEL: Oh my gosh. Uh, people skills. You know, Donna is… Has consummate, wonderful, strong people skills and I’ve learned a lot from her to stop and take the time to stop and listen to people. Because she is the last person who ever leaves church because if there’s a person to talk to, she’s talking to them. And whereas me, I’m waiting out in the car waiting for her because I got done talking to people a long time ago. But I’ve learned from her; she’s really taught me because I believe that people skills are so hugely important to be an effective leader. She’s taught me a lot more about compassion. She has such a compassionate heart for people and I love that about her. It’s one of the things that drew me to her and so she’s help me to be a better people person.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now with this new phase in your marriage, can we expect another revision of the book possibly?

HANS FINZEL: Maybe.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Maybe?

HANS FINZEL: You know one thing that she and I… One reason we wrote the book, which I don’t even know if we mentioned it (it is, by the way, dedicated to our parents and we may want to talk about that just a little bit) were both, interestingly enough, our parents and our whole extended family on both sides, there has never been any divorce. It’s pretty amazing.

DONNA FINZEL: It is.

HANS FINZEL: My siblings have stayed married. Her siblings have stayed married. Both of our parents stayed married and that’s pretty cool. And one of the reasons we wrote the book and one of the goals of our marriage is to show our children – two of our four kids are now married – you can be married and happy your whole life. You don’t have to bail on this thing because so many people are bailing on it.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now in the book, you say that you encourage your sons to grow in the life-long study of the feminine nature. Uh, can you give us two new insights? Two new insights. Your sons are listening, I hope. I’m listening. What are two new insights into the mystery of the feminine nature?

HANS FINZEL: Well one thing I have learned is that you can never, in your whole life; figure out a woman as a man.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Okay.

HANS FINZEL: Women will always be a mystery. That’s why I say make it your life-long pursuit. I’ve probably, since I wrote the book and these last 10 years, have come back around to understand on a whole deeper level what Donna just shared, is about the fact that women don’t want husbands to fix their problems. They want us to just sit and suffer with them and listen and have a caring heart. I know that one thing I’ve learned when I come home at night… Well, we’ve had the luxuries these years of going on and the kids have grown and gone, we often meet for coffee at Starbucks at the end of the day just so we can talk. I know I’ve learned that really means a lot to her. Actually, it means a lot to me, too, because I know this person more than anybody in the universe really cares how my day was and I really care how her day was. We also still date. We have a standing date every Friday night at a particular restaurant that we always go to. We don’t allow other people to join us and unless we are traveling, we have a date every Friday night. And that’s a real anchor to our relationship.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now throughout the book you mention, uh, couple mentors that you’ve had that have helped you in each of the different stages. Now, as you advance in years of marriage – you said thirty-five years of marriage?

DONNA FINZEL: Thirty-four and a half.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Almost thirty-five. Just as mentoring in leadership, the further along you in life you get the harder it is find mentors. Do you have mentors now? People who are speaking into your lives in this new empty nest stage?

DONNA FINZEL: Well I would just like to share about my parents. My mom and dad, Mark and Anita Bubeck, uh, have been married sixty years and my mom has Alzheimer’s and my dad is taking care of my mom full-time and the last three years he’s had very little life outside the home. And yet, he is… It’s a joy to him and they have been such an example to us in the earlier years before my mom’s disease took her away from being able to impact us; watching their love for each other and their commitment to their marriage was definitely, you know, a mentor relationship for us. And I wanted to mention LIVING BY VOWS by Robertson McQuilkin (and I believe we mentioned it in our book as well) it, at least at one time, was the most reprinted ever from CHRISTIANITY TODAY and my dad has actually used this article as kind of a guideline for him in caring for my mom. Robertson McQuilkin, the former president of Columbia International University, was our president of our college where Hans and I met. To watch him care for his wife who also died of Alzheimer’s was a real powerful thing for us and… Do you have any other mentors who…

HANS FINZEL: No, I can’t think of any….

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now McQuilkin you cite in the very first chapter as the hero husband. Every chapter ends with a story of a hero husband and he certainly is one and now you have the privilege of seeing your father, your own father, walk in those same footsteps.

DONNA FINZEL: In joy! I mean it blows me away. What he has to do caring for my mom as if she were a young baby and his joy in that is very powerful. And it’s affecting now only his own three daughters and all their grandchildren but many other people who are watching that faithful love and his joy! He just recently had a… My sister put up a picture of… They met at Moody and she put a picture up on Facebook of them in the cafeteria where they worked and you know, people from all over the country were commenting on that and what an impact they had on their lives; how much they love them. So…

JONATHAN FINLEY: Now you started the interview telling us the story about Hans and hubcap chasing and some lack of communication there. Uh, you know I don’t think Hans figures as the hero husband in any one of the chapters of the current version of the book. Do you think you could come up with a hero husband story on Hans for our listeners?

DONNA FINZEL: I think I’m very… Well, I’d have to say that I’m so grateful for Hans probably because he grew up in a German home. He knows how to walk away from his responsibilities here at WorldVenture and that’s been something Howard Hendricks... When we were at Dallas Seminary, he taught the guys all… He said when he would go home from work every day he had a certain bridge where he would toss off the bridge whatever his cares were for the day and he would go home and be with his family and focus on them. And since the early days of our marriage, when we were at Dallas Seminary, Hans made that a focus. But I do think also, you know there’s some studies that American men don’t really know how to have vacation and really, like, turn the computer off, turn the cell phone off and I’m just grateful that not only on vacation a few times a year when we go away together, but on the weekends and when he’s not traveling, Hans is present with me. And as a woman, that is huge and that would make him a hero.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Absolutely

HANS FINZEL: Aw, thank-you. Aw.

JONATHAN FINLEY: I think most men realize that it is hard to be fully present when they’ve got the various concerns of their professions on their minds.

HANS FINZEL: Well, and the problem is back in those days when Howard Hendricks talked about that, there was no Internet and no email.

JONATHAN FINLEY: That’s right.

HANS FINZEL: Now, EVERYTHING comes to my iPhone. Every email, every piece of work can interrupt you 24/7.

JONATHAN FINLEY: Do you turn it off sometimes?

DONNA FINZEL: Oh yeah!

HANS FINZEL: I do. I mute it and I ignore it.

JONATHAN FINLEY: All right. Good for you. We’ve got just a few minutes left. Now, Hans, I want our listeners to know how much I’ve benefited from your mentoring. We’re in a mentoring relationship this year in the president’s office here at WorldVenture. And I want to thank you publicly for giving me space to grow; to become a better listener.

HANS FINZEL: It’s a blast.

JONATHAN FINLEY: One of the subjects that you and I are talking about and was part of this show – so you can’t talk about listening -- but I want to give the chance to mentor me right here for our radio listeners. What is the most important advice – we’ve already talked about listening – that you would give me as a husband on how to better love my wife?

HANS FINZEL: That’s easy. Uh, keep your relationship. Keep dating your wife and keep the romance alive because remember one day those kids will be gone and it will be back to just the two of you where you started. And most marriages end at that point when the empty nest happens and they look at each other and realize, “We don’t have a relationship anymore. It became all about the kids.” So don’t let it be all about the kids. Don’t let the touchpoint between you and Karen be all about the children. It’s the temptation and we see that all the time. It’s like that’s what they argue about; it’s what they talk about and then one day the kids are gone and they stare at each other and they look at a stranger. So keep the romance alive; keep dating your wife.

JONATHAN FINLEY: That’s a good thing to hear from my boss. So you won’t mind when I call in for a personal day so that I can date my wife, right?

HANS FINZEL: Hey, by the way, we want to remind the listeners that the name of the book is THE TOP TEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR WIFE and you can Google that and get it on Amazon.com and everywhere else, THE TOP TEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR WIFE.

JONATHAN FINLEY: That’s right. Now, thank you, Hans and Donna, for your transparency; your candor. Ah, your humor about marriage. I think it’s been a good show and really, marriage needs to be our primary human relationship. It strikes me that when your marriage relationship is strong, even if the rest of your life is in chaos; you confront your world from a position of strength. And if it’s the opposite -- if your marriage is a mess, even if everything else is going right, you really enter into your world from a position of weakness. Ah, that must be what Paul meant when he said, “He who loves his wife loves himself.” So, thanks again, Hans and Donna, for being with us. This has been Missions on the Frontline. We want to thank our listeners for tuning in. We’re here to expand your vision and make you aware of new and exciting ways you can be involved in missions around the world. Remembering today that our marriages are to be a picture of Jesus’ sacrificial love for the church. For more information about the ministries of WorldVenture please visit WorldVenture.com. And don’t forget to drop us a note. We need your feedback and we’d love to hear from you. You can email us at Frontline@WorldVenture.com This has been Jonathan Finley filling in for Hans Finzel, president of WorldVenture. Hans will be back with you next week with more exciting interviews with mission leaders from around the world.