Welcome to the Awesome Marriage Podcast, a place for honest conversations about marriage and how to have the relationship that God has designed for you.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson.

On the show will be our host, Dr. Kim Kimberling and Nill Smith.

To engage with the Awesome Marriage podcast, use the hashtag Awesome Marriage.

This is part two of a three-part special podcast series with Grammy Award winner Russ staff and his wife Tori. Russ's story of childhood trauma, addiction and fame is powerful as God

pulled Russ up, gave him hope, and built a marriage they both thought could never happen.

Now let's go to part two. I tell you, Kim,

when you don't know how to love and you don't love yourself, you can't love anyone, but I would

watch people and see how they did it. And I would just mimic that, you know, bring flowers,

take her to dinner, you know, show her this and show her that.

And inside, I was getting nothing back because it couldn't get through to me.

But, you know, when I was in my early, I guess I was 12, something like that,

they voted my dad out of the church because he'd relapsed again.

But by that time, I was singing, you know, all the services.

I would do a song and, but they threw dad out of the church. And mom made me go down there and sit through the meeting and voting him out.

And I just sat there and cried because they were talking about my dad that I loved.

And I went home and told mom.

And years later, I'm thinking, what in the world was I doing there?

But she just needed information.

So I went to church the next Sunday, carrying my acoustic.

Dad was voted out.

But as I walked into the church, my uncle stopped me.

...