What the Heart Is Really Saying: Emotions as Sacred Clues
Emotions are often seen as obstacles to faith or reason, but in reality, they are sacred messengers of the soul.
Barry & Paula Davis
Barry and Paula Davis live in Sydney, Australia, have been married for over four decades and have two adult children who live with their families nearby. Barry worked as a chartered accountant in private practice. He also has a theology degree and was involved in pastoring and church planting. In recent years his vocation has centred on developing relational tools for men as they explore their inner worlds.
Paula is a clinical counsellor, supervisor and lecturer in counselling. Her doctoral thesis emerged from working with traumatised couples in post-war developing countries, exploring the transferability of Western developed psychological trauma concepts to collective societies. She has been a guest lecturer in higher education in Uganda, India and Sri Lanka.
Together, Barry and Paula have been designing relational tools for married couples since the late 1980s and have conducted marriage workshops in Australia, East Africa, Sri Lanka, India and Europe. However, they believe they are an ordinary couple living through the highs and lows of married life. They wear the label “passionate about relationships” as a badge of honour and are enthusiastic about sharing their journey because they believe their story offers hope to others.
Barry and Paula are acutely sensitive to unfairness and injustice in all societies.
They possess an unshakeable desire to keep pushing the boundaries of learning to love well and to share that learning with others. Nevertheless, they enjoy lingering over a good coffee and can be found utterly absorbed in fun activities in the great outdoors. Challenge and risk attract them and they have had a go at skydiving, great white shark cage-diving, walking with African lions and zip-lining across a magnificent gorge.
When Love Leads: Unravelling Power, Holding Tenderness
Love, when truly embodied, is not passive or weak. It is a force that holds and heals, guides and shapes, leading with both tenderness and strength. Yet in a world that often equates love with submission or passivity, we are invited to explore the deeper, more complex dynamic between power and tenderness in relationships.
What My Body Remembered Part 5
I am discovering that healing does not require me to abandon the frightened child I once was. Instead, I can bring her with me into the safety of the present and the compassionate presence of God.
Guarded Hearts – Part 4
The word Paul uses for guard is a military term. It evokes the image of soldiers standing watch at the gates of a city, protecting something precious from harm. Peace, in this passage, is not a fleeting feeling or passive emotion. It is an active, protective presence.
Coming Home with Different Eyes – Part 3
Was it worth it? The question still reverberates.
The Answer I Wasn’t Expecting – Part 2
For weeks after returning home from Sri Lanka, one question keeps surfacing. "Lord... was it worth it?" It isn't really about my fractured wrist, or the surgery, or the panic, or the sleepless nights or the loss of my wedding and engagement rings. Those were simply the final chapter of a much longer story.
When the One Who Has Been Carrying Everyone Else Falls – Part 1
As we flew out of Sri Lanka, I felt as though I had been torn away before I was ready. There had been no proper goodbye and no sense of closure. As the plane lifted over the palm trees and lush green landscape, a message arrived from a dear friend. "In a few moments you will be off the shores of Sri Lanka. Thank you, my friends, for the investment in our lives. Only heaven will tell you the impact you've had."
The Crack in the Cup: Healing the Sacred Between Us
Love was never meant to pour endlessly from a broken cup. Yet many of us have tried, exhausting ourselves, hoping our efforts would be enough to fill another, or to silence our own emptiness. But marriage, like all human relationships, was never meant to replace the love that only God can give. It is not a solution to our brokenness, but a sacred space where our brokenness is revealed, and redeemed.
Back Where It All Began: The Garden Echoes Still
There is a quiet mystery in marriage, where joy and sorrow mingle, and our deepest desires are laid bare. We come with our hands full of hope and leave with hearts shaped by grace. In the ordinary moments of pain and tenderness, God invites us to see each other anew, not as fixers or saviours, but as fellow pilgrims learning how to love.
A Man Reimagined: Beyond the Armor and Into the Heart
True Biblical manhood is about carrying strength with restraint, exercising authority with humility, and wielding power with self-sacrificing love, the kind of manhood embodied perfectly by Jesus.