Welcome to the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast. My name is Pete Scuzeiro and it's great to be with you today.

Our topic this week is growing in differentiation. Growing in differentiation actually part one.

I got started in this and really kicking and screaming in January of 1996 when Jerry, my wife, came to me and informed me that she

was quitting the church that I was pastoring, lead pastoring. And she wasn't angry. She wasn't

yelling. She was actually quite calm and without anxiety and resolute and she simply said

i'm not going to participate in so many words she said they're not going to participate in your

leadership anymore uh because you don't have the uh basically the guts the courage to do some of the things that need to be done.

And I don't want to participate in this system anymore. And so I'm leaving and I'm going to another church.

I was furious. She wasn't leaving me or marriage, but she did leave the church. And we had four children, small girls at the time. And she said, listen, if you want to take the kids on Sunday, you're welcome to or I'll take them.

We can talk about that. But she said, I quit no more.

And needless to say, God really had my attention.

In that moment, she was differentiating from me and a system that we've been functioning in as a married couple

for the previous seven and a half or eight years.

And she was forcing me to grow up.

Now, out of that, God met us, God met me.

We ended up going away for probably about four to six weeks later to meet with two Christian

counselors for a week, and I went there to straighten her out.

They would straighten her out, and she went there to straighten the church out, and God

went there to meet both of us and ended up working on our marriage.

But most importantly, God, I know, met me, and I think introduced me to this concept of differentiation for the first time without me even knowing the term.

And what's so interesting is Jerry, for years, had carried a lot of anger for all the things that were wrong in our church, especially the leadership, that I didn't want to confront or I don't want to deal with conflict or say difficult things.

In fact, I used to pride myself in the fact that I was never angry.

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