30 Year Anniversary Part 1

[00:00:00] Well hello everyone and welcome to seeing God in the everyday outside. We are welcome to Florida. This is the beauty of Florida. Hi baby. This is nice. It is nice. For those of you in our listening audience who aren't seeing the video, it's a wonderful tropical

[00:00:42] beautiful with no grass and beautiful tropical plants and stuff everywhere. But we are having a special seeing God in the everyday because we are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Today very much today. Today is our anniversary. We are spending it with you. Yeah, we are.

[00:01:04] And so we are so excited to come to this week with seeing God in the everyday on our anniversary special. It's not our seeing God in the everyday anniversary special but it's our anniversary special.

[00:01:16] We thought that we would do just something different this week being outside is one of the things because it's just so stinking beautiful here in Florida and we'll be outside. And it's just it's evening time. So the sun's gone down.

[00:01:31] You get the nice glow in the background and stuff. And the screens to keep the mosquitoes out. Yes. It won't bad thing with Florida is mosquitoes obviously. And when we don't have a really harsh, harsh winter which we had a cold winter but it wasn't sustained though.

[00:01:49] And we didn't have any like real like freezing days. We had like one or two days where it got down below freezing but it was only for a couple hours. It's it was Florida cold not actual.

[00:02:00] Yeah, it's nice to have a good like hard freeze for a couple days and that kills off the mosquitoes and stuff but but they are thriving this year. Yeah, they are everywhere and we're in that in between times.

[00:02:14] So in Florida we spray from mosquitoes starting in the late spring but we're not there yet. So we're kind of in between so mosquitoes are going to be so. Thank goodness we have screens.

[00:02:27] But going back to why we're outside because it's beautiful and why we're doing something totally different is because of our anniversary.

[00:02:36] And we thought that we would have a special anniversary kind of special fun time but we want to kind of dive into a little bit of who Becky and I are.

[00:02:47] And how we came to be a couple and how we got married and how 30 years has just zip by and we cannot believe that we've been married 30 years. But when we look back it's been an awesome 30 years. It's been so much fun.

[00:03:04] So let's we're going to do this kind of differently and Becky has no idea kind of how we're going to fall with us. So which is normal. Yeah, so what I thought I do.

[00:03:15] Let's we're going to add I'm going to ask us some questions and we'll just kind of talk and banner with these questions and stuff is the first things first. You know, we already talked about this this afternoon is that you we don't remember when we first met. No.

[00:03:30] I do remember a little bit of when we first met because we were high school students. You were sophomore. I was a junior. I was the. I was the. The Devinier older guy, but. I was sitting in the bathroom. Yes, we were bandiques and I was. Brass.

[00:03:53] Yeah, he didn't was brass. I was percussion. So yeah, so we I mean we had the whole nine yards going down. We were there. So we're in our marching band. Preseason. Right.

[00:04:05] And I looked across the room and I saw this beautiful little red head in the percussion section. So I go to my best friend who was a trumpet player at the time. Ray Ray, and I go hey buddy, look at see that beautiful red head over there.

[00:04:20] I'm going to marry her. And he looked at me as like dude, you're you're insane. You're not going to marry that girl. I'm like, yeah, he's later Ray Ray was our best friend.

[00:04:30] So I was like, no, marrying her. And three years later Ray Ray stood next to me as my best man in our wedding. And it ever since that moment where we kind of got together and we kind of. We had a turbulent high school. It was high school.

[00:04:49] We did on again off again. Yeah, I was one of those things and I was the older guy and you know, we, I was stupid. Didn't know the Lord of the time. Didn't know it was good for me. And so we were on again off again.

[00:05:03] But then we started dating and then I said, hey, let's start dating again. And I'm going to go in the military. Right. So something that we've never really talked about is that when I left to go to the military, I kind of had, I was by myself.

[00:05:19] And you were the only person that I was really talking to. What were you thinking at that time when I was, this was before we were married and everything. What were you thinking like, what is this guy doing?

[00:05:30] He's writing me letters about the book of Leviticus and trying to say it. Yeah. After we were engaged. But what were you thinking is like this guy who's like, we're dating again now. He just leaves me. Well, it kind of wasn't like that.

[00:05:46] The one thing I do remember about when you left. So Dan graduated in May. And then he was on a bus to basic training on July 4th weekend. I will never forget that because I'm very patriotic. That's right.

[00:06:01] His mom and dad and I took him to the bus station and put him on a bus. And I remember handing you a letter. Letters were big in our dating years. Yes. It was, yeah, this is the early, 1989, 1989. Yeah. So long distance phone calls cost money. Y'all. Yeah.

[00:06:23] You write lots of letters. You write lots of letters. If you're like me, you can't write. You buy a little paper quarter that you would use, like college students would use to get, you know, for their lectures and you just talk into them for hours. And hours.

[00:06:39] But I remember I had written you a long letter and handed it to you as you got on the bus. And I was like, this is it. I was head over heels. We were already before you ever went to basic training.

[00:06:51] That time we had only been together again for what? Three or four months. Yeah. Well, I think it was like, we started going back out like, It was at the end of March. Right. So first of April because the trip to Washington D.C.

[00:07:06] Yeah, it was a very long time. That was, that was when I showed my color. So I was actually starting to turn into a good guy. So we had only been together for a few months.

[00:07:16] But we were already talking that this was going to be lifelong for us. And so, yeah. So I sent you off with a letter and I think kind of in my heart and my mind it was, Well, we're just going to weather this.

[00:07:28] And, you know, we had already started talking about engagements in the American Jet That point. And I think the commitment was already there. So it wasn't so much your leaving as well. Well, we're just going to have to weather this and make it work.

[00:07:44] Letters and audio cassettes really became a big part of our courtship. And it was fun. We part of that that I think was good for us is that we had dated through high school. So we had kind of been around each other a lot. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:00] But even though you're around each other in classrooms and in hallways and in band activities and things like that, it's not the same as sharing all the nitty-gritty day to day. Right. Partly because you were so isolated from everybody.

[00:08:15] A lot of those audio cassette recordings were all about the really mundane everyday stuff. Yeah. Well, and I can remember in doing a lot of that is that, you know, I was talking to you about like the things from like,

[00:08:28] How do you shine your shoes and make the bed and stuff like that? Oh, I'm poor baby. Got an in-grown toning. Oh, and I watched me through the entire procedure. Yeah, because you have to do surgery on yourself, you know?

[00:08:41] Because you can't eat it when you're in the military. You can't have bad dogs. You've got to keep your dogs happy. It was so romantic y'all. Yeah. So moving forward and you still had another year of school yet. Right. So you had to finish high school and graduate.

[00:08:54] And then I get this great idea of, um, Okay. I'm going to go into war. Well, that wasn't really your idea. That was a idea. Well, let's get married. So we had planned to get married and then I go off to the Gulf War, The right.

[00:09:12] So we were supposed to, let's timeline it. We were supposed to. I do. We were supposed to get married in December of 90. Because I graduated. So we were supposed to get married in December of 90. But in October of 90, you were sent overseas. Right.

[00:09:31] For dessert, shield and desert storm. Right. So then that was a whole another thing because we were now separated. That's when Leviticus happened. Yeah. That's when it got, that's when it got serious. And so we had a lot of cool things that happened during then.

[00:09:46] Where I was kind of learning who I was being separated again. But I was basically when it came to my faith. And I was really starting to step into that because we were in a situation where I had to be real about it. And I couldn't hide.

[00:10:02] I couldn't, whatever. Cause you're in a tent with 14 other guys. Right. And it was just all out and you open. And so then I give you a phone call. The war's over.

[00:10:13] And I call and say, listen, I'm going to get on a plane here in the day or two. And then I'm going to, 30 days leave in April. We got to get married in April. Right. So I fly home, you know. While you're taking the fast track. Yeah.

[00:10:28] We get married. Well, and then we move from Florida to El Paso, Texas because I was stationed in El Paso, Texas in Fort Bliss. I was in the cab. So here's this young girl. Mm-hmm. Got married. You're 18 years old. Yeah. 18. 18. Or 12?

[00:10:49] Or 12 compared to depending on what people might have thought. Um, he got absolutely dressed down by a very protective older lady in our church in El Paso for stealing me away from my parents at 12 years of old. I don't know what they're doing. I just looked really young.

[00:11:04] Yeah. I don't know what they do in that state of yours but here in Texas, they don't marry that young. And I'm like, well, she's 18. You pack up everything. Right. You're getting married to this guy now that you've known for what?

[00:11:18] We've been dating on enough now almost five years. Right. And you move all the way across country. How did that feel? Can you go back and think about this? Okay, I'm going to start this new life at this guy. Head over heels of busy. Dash and the handsome.

[00:11:35] Absolutely. Great guy. But you had never really, you've been very attached to your family. Right. You were like, your cousins and your mom and dad. So I have a big family. Yeah. My mom is the oldest of five. We all kind of lived in the same town.

[00:11:54] Christmas's Thanksgiving's things like that all because it's got together. Yeah, it was very much culture shock. Yeah. So what was that like? Did you're going to pack up and now start a new home and new life and new house with some new guy? Well, not really new guy.

[00:12:11] Not really new. I kind of knew you pretty well by then. Yeah, there was definitely that that culture shock experience of it.

[00:12:19] The, oh my goodness, you know, there is nobody that we know and I'm not one of those people that just walks into a room and makes connections with lots and lots of people.

[00:12:31] I tend to be the person that walks into the room and observes for hours before all interact with anybody. You know, I don't really put myself out there a lot. So yeah, that part of it was a little scary. Yeah.

[00:12:44] But the part of it of moving cross country with you and starting life with you, that part was just one big massive adventure and I was so excited and so ready for it. Yeah. Probably a, no probably about it.

[00:13:00] Definitely a little bit naive about how much that was going to take work and how you know, it wasn't just going to all fall into place readily and easily.

[00:13:12] And I think one of the things, because we've talked about this, we've actually talked to other couples about this is that we look back and we said one of the greatest things that we had in our marriage was that moving across country and remember folks,

[00:13:27] This is back in 91 92 when you couldn't just pick up the phone and call because it was expensive. You know, long distance phone calls were expensive and no one had cell phones at the time. So it wasn't like that. But we had to figure things out on our own.

[00:13:45] And we had to figure things out together. And when we had arguments and disagreements and heated discussions. First little apartment was y'all always 500 square feet. It was a 500 square foot apartment. I was interested in the bedroom and see every corner of the living room.

[00:14:04] I will never forget the one fight we had. I don't remember even what it was about, but I do remember being serious with you over something and you were equally furious with me over some.

[00:14:13] And you were sitting on the couch and I was sitting in the bedroom and we weren't going to pay attention to each other. But we can still see.

[00:14:19] Yeah, we could still see each other because our apartment was so small that they go, we had to work it out. We had to figure things out because if we didn't there was no one there to really help us.

[00:14:33] So that was very interesting, but I think it was good and that was one of the things like I said we talked to young couples and we tell them you guys have to come together.

[00:14:43] You know, a new man and wife or a new couple, you guys had to come together and you guys learned how to figure things out on your own. Because that's how it's going to be. Right. You have to fight more each other, not one detail.

[00:14:58] Exactly. You got to be able to fight for your marriage and fight for your relationship. And I think being by ourselves all the way out on the coast basically, it helped us do that.

[00:15:10] I think one of the other things is that there was a sense of adventure for both of us. So we took advantage of that and this is something again. I would tell young couples, you don't have kids.

[00:15:23] You're madly in love with each other, you're exploring the world and any other, go have fun. Do this spontaneous crazy thing. Do those things. Yeah.

[00:15:33] And I think that's some of those trips that we took where we just packed up and drove to the Grand Canyon with no money. And an ATM card that didn't work on the west of the Mississippi. So we didn't know that though.

[00:15:44] Yeah. We had no idea our ATM card would not work. Again, there's 91. There weren't just ATMs everywhere and we're driving in the middle of nowhere. We have like $50. Adapt an overcome, right? We have no gas. We're trying to get a hotel. It was just, it was insane.

[00:16:02] We ended up going to the most sketchiest part of town in, where were we? Phoenix there is no, it was Flagstaff. We were in Flagstaff, Arizona. And they said, oh yeah. There's a, there's an empty shopping center that has an ATM that still works.

[00:16:19] There's no power. There's no lights on at all, but the ATM still works. That one might be good for you and sure enough that one had money for us. But we got to have our Grand Canyon adventure. We did.

[00:16:30] And so take advantage of those opportunities of when you're numering to be adventurous to do things that you wouldn't have done by yourself and now you're doing it with each other. So you're exploring those things, you're building those memories together

[00:16:45] And just have fun and realize, you know, if you stay in a sportsman's lodge where when you come up to the hotel there's basically more dogs out there. They're all tied out for the hunters. Because all the hunters are there with their dogs

[00:17:03] and beer cans are just covering the floor. And you get into your hotel room and at least it's comfortable bed in the shower's warm, you know? You're good to go. Yeah, enjoy those moments together because they are special. They are special.

[00:17:20] I think two of them things that helped us through that time period. Because as much as we very much believe in make sure that it's about you too.

[00:17:31] We also, one of the things that helped us with that process of making sure that it was about fighting for each other instead of with each other. Was that we did find a couple that was very much a mentor to us.

[00:17:45] They weren't mom and dad and they weren't grandparents but they were absolutely mentors to us. They kind of took us in. They made it safe for me who was very shy and very, you know, kind of just let me get to know you first. They didn't push.

[00:18:06] They just made us aware that they were available and they cared about us and they invited us into their home. And they actually, their daughter was a missionary in Japan at the time. And so they shared a lot of her things.

[00:18:21] They opened up their lives to us and made it safe for us to open our lives to them and more us enjoys where our people. Yeah, it was fun. We met them at church. So make it about you too.

[00:18:35] But make sure that you get around people that are going to support you being you too. Yes. Well, and that was definitely the next thing we talk about is that you're going to have to make connections.

[00:18:46] And you know, don't be afraid as a young couple to make connections with an older couple. Yeah. And that was something that we were doing. We did it and it was incredible blessing.

[00:18:58] It taught us a lot and it helped us and our time where we were learning and trying to figure things out. So so we spent a little bit of time in the military and we tried to go. We tried to go to Germany. So badly.

[00:19:13] I had put in to transfer but no avail. But then I got out and got it called us to the ministry, but we felt we needed to go college first. So we're going to jump ahead. We came home for a while did some college.

[00:19:30] Then we went to Northern Florida went to college there. Then we went to Liberty University. Right. And Lynchburg Virginia, which is gorgeous. I still tell everybody in place we've ever lived. That's right.

[00:19:44] If I have a place to retire, it is going to be somewhere in the mountains of Virginia because It is just beautiful. I love it up there. That's where we started to really come into our own of not just ministry of who we are, but as a couple.

[00:19:59] And also this is where our first child comes. It's right. As we get pregnant with Benjamin and have our first child there and Lynchburg. And that was a whole other change. All the other things because now we were not just Becky and I just doing our thing

[00:20:18] and going to college and now we had Benjamin, we had the child. We had to think of that extra person everything we were doing. And it made everything a little more serious for me. I'll say, you know like getting that job and making sure you're paying before.

[00:20:34] It was like, eh, we'll pay our bills. We'll get out of the scratch and then store and just find some cans to eat food or whatever. But now when you got a child, oh, you're paying a picture there, baby.

[00:20:46] For a little while it was kind of that way. North Florida was a little bit like that but you know, now we had to be a little more serious. Had to put those things in perspective. But it wasn't bad. It was good. As I look at it,

[00:21:02] honestly, we're starting getting really difficult. It was only made that jump to Texas. So after I graduated college, decided to go to seminary, right? Which if you're called to go to seminary, go to seminary, if you're not called to go to seminary, don't need it.

[00:21:19] You don't go trust me. It's you don't need it. Those of you who want to send me bad comments. If you're a counselor. Yeah, don't. But if you're called to go to seminary, go if you are not, don't feel like you have to go.

[00:21:34] Don't be pushed into it from somebody else's expectations. But God did use that time. Yes and we learned the law. You learned the law. It doesn't waste anything. Right. So I looked back at that time when we went to seminary in Texas as that. It was so difficult.

[00:21:50] I was very sick because I had gotten sick because I was working three jobs. Going to school for some time. Had a new child. It was difficult. It was really hard. Love the Dallas Fort Worth area. Absolutely. I don't have any ill against Dallas Fort Worth.

[00:22:07] I think Dallas Fort Worth area is like an amazing place. I would move back there. Maybe not to the neighborhood we moved into. No, probably not there since no one would deliver us even pizza in our neighborhood that we lived in.

[00:22:20] That experience did teach us a lot because again, it was that thing that it just kept growing us to not only rely on each other. We were starting to learn this thing of relying on God.

[00:22:33] To intertwine him more and more in our relationship and our family and everything that we were doing. And it was it was a growing time even though it was a difficult time. Well, and I think that's been true of all kinds of in retrospect.

[00:22:49] It's nice that we've been together long enough now that it's easier to see it in the hard moment to go, oh, I see how God's using this or I'm already a place where I can trust God to use this back then

[00:23:03] what we had only been married seven or eight years at that point. Yeah, well no, it would have been more like six years, six or seven years.

[00:23:12] So at that point it was more a thing of kind of getting through it and hoping that we knew that God was going to get us on it.

[00:23:19] And then we were able to look back and go, oh wow, okay, so here and here and here he really did take care of us. But those were hard times. We had a lot of decisions to make.

[00:23:30] We had to decide, you know, am I going to stay home? Yeah. And because early on we had discussed that whenever we had children, I was going to stay home with the kids and Dan was going to work.

[00:23:43] But when you're also going to school full time, that becomes a stress or financially. Yeah, it was hard. And also you were working three jobs and go into school. And you know, I still say that half of that degree is mine but so do you too.

[00:23:58] Because every homework assignment, every paper that was written in those years, every project that was turned in. And we did that together and it was all you doing the research and putting it together. But when it came to compiling things and typing things out and doing the proofing.

[00:24:18] That was us together as a team. So we it really did solidify that teamwork stuff and I think it helped because not only were we doing the school work together.

[00:24:27] You were doing the working. I was doing all of the household stuff made sure that you had food to eat made sure that you know all those things were taken care of.

[00:24:35] And then the baby was very much a tag team effort, you know, Ben was was both the bars because everything in our life had to be both of ours at the time.

[00:24:48] Yeah and that was there was no surviving if it was that's your venue and this is my venue, you know.

[00:24:54] Well and I can remember I mean there were times when I would do all the research I would do all the stuff but then I would just be exhausted to write the paper.

[00:25:03] So I would do baby duty or hold the baby or feed the baby and then dictate to you. So I type in.

[00:25:09] You would type while I'm you know feeding the baby and stuff so we learned how to work together and how to intertwine our lives together so that we were complementary each other with what we were strong at.

[00:25:23] Right and we saw that just continue to grow and to grow and to grow and to grow and to what we're doing now. And again it's all these little milestone things as you look back. Right.

[00:25:34] And you go wow those were those were the things that got us to this point that got us to this point. Yeah. It got us to this point so that we're doing what we're doing now.

[00:25:42] Well and I do you know one of the things over the years we've had a lot of people look at us and go, how do you guys I mean we'll have whole conversations without talking. Right.

[00:25:53] I mean we can look across the room and there's this whole interchange that goes on and we know exactly what's going on and people around us see it and they go, how do you get there?

[00:26:01] How did you get to where you know each other so well that words don't even have to be spoken and it's because of stuff like that. It's because we had to get to know each other really well. We had to depend on each other. Yeah.

[00:26:17] So yeah so we chose this. We were actually going through this and it helped because we were working it out. You know we talked about it last week where we said that you know you've got to work on your marriage.

[00:26:30] You've got to make sure that you're doing those things investing in those things in your marriage and we were actively doing that even from a young age and a young I guess stage in our marriage.

[00:26:44] And part of that too, you know we talked about Morris and Joyce and what an incredible mentorship that was in our lives. Even before that you know when you had called and said hey we're going to get married in this month. Our pastor, who married us, brother Jim.

[00:26:59] Yeah. Good to Jim. He led us through some pre-marital counseling and one of the things that he absolutely emphasized was guys it's not going to be easy. So when you commit to this, you need to commit to this. This is a no way out situation. Right.

[00:27:16] You've got to make it through. Yeah. And you've got to work hard. Right. And I think that was one of the things that we took very, very seriously from the very beginning and so when it got hard there, we just kept reconfirming sometimes every single day. Yep.

[00:27:30] That I'm choosing this. Yeah. I'm choosing you again today. Yeah. And I think there was also during that time we started to have those things that affect you like some tragedy stuff and some really hard things.

[00:27:44] We had a blessing where my mom and dad actually came out to Texas. Yeah. And when we were such a guy thing, all together. And my parents bought this huge house that we moved in together which was a huge help for us financially. Right. They had downstairs.

[00:28:01] We had upstairs. Right. And my mom actually was diagnosed with breast cancer. Very soon there. During, yeah, it was within the first year that they were there. And so we had to go through that ordeal and that struggle.

[00:28:17] Some of this stuff we got to see in my mom and dad go through that and you helped my mom out a lot because you went with our decino and stuff. And so we got to learn from these things that we were going through.

[00:28:30] And we weren't tragedies to us. They weren't, you know, something with like the not having the money and working the multiple jobs. And all of us, we never looked at them as tragedies and stuff.

[00:28:41] They were difficult but we kept learning from those things and we kept growing on those things. And I think again, it's the seeing God in the everyday. It's what is God doing in this? Where is he working in this? Where is he showing us? Where is he leading?

[00:28:56] And what is he doing to equip us to make it through it? Where is he giving us strength when we don't have it anymore? Right. You know, the time when your mom was going through chemo, you know,

[00:29:07] not only was the house of blessing to us because we all, we were looking at low rent apartments at that point. Like I said, like we couldn't get anyone to deliver any food to our apartment. So no one.

[00:29:22] So it was a blessing to us financially but having us there not only to help cook and clean and care for her and all Benjamin was 3.5 at that point. So they had little anybody adorable blonde hair, light of the life,

[00:29:39] grandson living there just being a constant source of fun and encouragement in order to get them to stay. Come look down the stairs. You can throw in hot wheels cars over the stairs. Yeah. Yeah. It was fantastic. It was God's provision at the time and it was good.

[00:29:56] Yeah. You know, it was hard but it was good. Yeah. And then to continue moving forward through our 30 years extravaganza is I gave a full-time position ministry position and a little place called Neeterland Texas, which is down southeast Texas. It's right on the border with Louisiana.

[00:30:16] It's my first position as a full-time minister pastor youth pastor. And it's a church in transition. It's a church who just had all their staff change over. And let's be honest, we were in a bit of transition too because we had just been through some serious church. Yeah.

[00:30:33] And we are... Which we will not go into. We already had a situation there where we were in Burlus in Texas up in the Fort Worth area, which was very difficult. Right. But we go down to New Zealand and things just... Explode. Things just really take off.

[00:30:51] The ministries taking off. The church is taking off. Our marriage is doing well. We are now blessed with another child. And then another one. And then another one. Well, we're not there yet. We're going to pause for just a moment on that second one. Okay, it's one.

[00:31:10] I didn't know the program for today. Because I did a thing. Oh, you did a thing. So what happened was is the church owned two houses. You're going to tell everybody about this? The church? Well, hang on.

[00:31:24] The church wanted us to move from one house to the other house. Well, Becky was nine months pregnant at the time. And I'm like, that's not happening. Somebody was afraid to tell a volatile pregnant redhead about this. Yeah. But she was moving a month before she was due.

[00:31:40] We're not moving a month before the baby comes. And so I came up with this plan with my youth leaders and everyone else. Is that we would move our house when Becky goes to the hospital to have Reefs, our second child. So we're going to the hospital.

[00:32:06] I literally had to step out. Call one of my youth workers and say, They've told me they're definitely there. The babies come in. We are staying. It's definitely happening. We need, you know, plan zero needs to happen right now. You know, you know, D-Day needs to happen.

[00:32:27] So what happens is an army of people going to our house. We had not packed. We had not done anything. Because one of us didn't know we were moving. We had to get on the ferret and, you know, ferrets are just little bit. They're adorable. They're very messy.

[00:32:46] But they're very messy. And you just have to keep cleaning them all the time. If you kind of let it go for a couple days. You pay for it. And these say we'd let it go for a couple days because nine months pregnant.

[00:32:59] And so we moved the whole house, the whole thing, whatever. So Becky has no idea. We come home from the hospital. So I got car, whatever. Becky's parents came in our now here. We're driving in. I drive by our house and she's like, wait, there's our house.

[00:33:18] I go, oh, wait. I got a surprise for her. Yeah. I still haven't told her yet. Number one. I was a little bit afraid. That's a lot of afraid. But she did a bit. But I was like going, this house is so much nicer in my mind.

[00:33:30] And I was like, it was nice. It was like I had already nested. Seriously nested in the other house. It was ready for a baby to come home to and y'all. I'm a little bit, um, yeah. Organization is a thing for me. And things are in their place.

[00:33:46] And things have a place to be in. And I'm coming home with a new baby and I knew where everything was. I thought so we come into this new house. And I say, here we are. We're home. This is our new house. And she was very gracious.

[00:34:02] And that was only because my mom and dad were there. And I was like, we go into the house. We go into the house. We move into the house. We move into the house. And it was, let's just say it was a struggle. Emotionally, spiritually.

[00:34:17] I could not find my face soap. I had been in the hospital with their face soap. And I wanted my face soap. And it was nowhere to be found. And that was the breaking point. So, but I looked back at all these things.

[00:34:38] And we again, one of those things of continuing working through it. And we did continue to work through that. And it was rough. And I admit my mistake. It was me without my knowledge. I was like, it was wrong. I got bad advice. Like whatever it was wrong.

[00:34:59] But we had two more beautiful children there at that house. So it wasn't too bad. We survived. But we were leading into kind of one of the toughest times of our marriage and one of the toughest times of our life.

[00:35:16] Because what you had is we had a situation where again, a successful church, successful ministry. I've got three young children at home and a seven year old. You know, eight year old. No, he would have been. See Benjamin was six.

[00:35:35] When Reese was born, and then he was seven when Michael was born. And then he was nine when Nicole was born. Yes. So there was a lot of stress and pressure of what was happening at home. Then there was a lot of things that started happening where

[00:35:54] we started to do the quote unquote protection game. Yeah. And it started a couple years prior to this, but this is where it got really started getting bad because I was seeing your struggles and what you were going through at home with the kids and stuff.

[00:36:13] And then my job in my ministry job was taking so much time. You know, I was leaving at eight in the morning. And I went home to 10, 11 o'clock at night on some nights, most nights.

[00:36:25] Well, and overarching all of it was the fact that this was a very nice, beautiful home that he had moved us into. It was also immediately on church property was a personage. So those of y'all that have experienced living in a personage,

[00:36:42] you will commissarate a little bit here. Yeah. Another one of my advice to young married couples if you're in ministry. Have your own house. I'm just going to say this. You know, I'm not being ugly. Don't live in a personage on church property.

[00:36:57] It's because your home is not your own. Your home is not your own. And part of the weight that was causing my stress was knowing what the expectations were from everybody in the church about every aspect of my life.

[00:37:14] There was not just an expectation around the ministry portion of my life. There was an expectation around my house keeping. There was expectation around my parenting. There was expectation around how I decorated and planted flowers in my home.

[00:37:28] You know, people would stop by it all hours and just expect us to have the door open because I mean this, this is the church. It's a personage. It was never our home. Right. And so there was that expectation on top of some pretty unrealistic

[00:37:46] expectations that what ministry should be and what ministers should provide. Right. And it got to a point where it was, it was a huge struggle. Yeah. And both of us were starting to not only pull away from each other

[00:38:04] because now I had my ministry that I was doing a new head in the house. And I was the happy home maker. And what's doing it? Yeah. It was actually, I believe it or not. And I'm saying this is honest as we can be.

[00:38:19] The church was literally pulling us apart because of the expectations being put on our family that I had to be there for every event because I lived there. So if anybody wanted to do something on Saturday, my door. We had keys. Yeah.

[00:38:35] They knocked on my door to open up the church so that I could turn the light into a church and do this instead of for them. And this was not a small church. This was a church that ran about 600 people. Right. So this was not a small place.

[00:38:46] It was a pretty big place. And let's do think that we are blaming everything on the church. No. Please don't hear that. This was what was happening. And in part, what we came to understand through a lot of talking it out. Right.

[00:38:58] And a lot of praying it through is that there was a foundational issue with this with us because we didn't set a boundary around our marriage. We didn't set a boundary around our home and go, you know what? This is important.

[00:39:13] You know, early on we said, you know, we separated from mom and dad and went halfway across the country. And it was us. Right. We had to be us.

[00:39:21] Well at some point along the way, there were so many voices from other people that we started listening to more than we were listening to each other. Right. And we started taking on expectations or perceiving expectations that weren't necessarily there.

[00:39:39] And and jump being coming willing to jump through those who circle fill all kinds of expectations without looking at what was God actually asking of us and what was protecting the marriage from the family first. Right.

[00:39:55] And so we completely owned and are aware of our role in this. Yeah. Well, and so we had started actually pull apart looking back at the you know the stages where we worked hard at the beginning. Right. You know, maybe we thought we would arrive or something.

[00:40:11] And we had to continue working hard. I think our focus became so much on ministry and raising children that we forgot. This was a marriage first. Right. Well, and we forgot the the partnership. Right. And it has to happen where marriages of partnership. It's a union.

[00:40:30] It has to be worked at it has to be something that you're willing to spend time on. And if you get lazy on it, it's like everything else. If you get lazy on, it's going to start decaying. It's going to start falling apart.

[00:40:42] And sometimes it doesn't feel like you're getting lazy. It feels like you're working your butt off. Right. But you're working your butt off in all these other tangential things. And we were working our butts off. Absolutely. I was working, you know, six days a week.

[00:40:55] If not seven days a week, you were working nonstop with children because we had four little ones at the house. And I would teach in preschool at the time. It was just yeah, it was crazy what we were doing. But we weren't spending enough time with each other.

[00:41:11] We weren't working on what we have. We weren't working on our marriage. We weren't growing in our marriage. And we started to actually pull away from each other. And you know, you be here. That's a lot in ministry. You know, that ministry became my mistress.

[00:41:28] You know, it became the other woman because I was spending so much time there. And again, I'm going to keep saying these things. But if you're young married and you're in ministry, you've got to put boundaries up. You've got to protect yourself because it's going to destroy you.

[00:41:44] There's always another opportunity. There's always somebody else who needs you. The world's hurting, the world's dying, the world needs people to love on them. And if you're going to just completely empty yourself to do that, you're going to lose everything else.

[00:42:05] And if you're already married, you have your wife that you have to take care of. You have to minister to you. You have to be the leader of. You have to work together to have that marriage work. Again, Paul going back to saying, hey, man, you know,

[00:42:20] better be single. Very single. Very single. But if you get married, you better make sure that you make sure that marriage and that wife is taken care of. And absolutely, you know, pour yourself out and sacrifice everything for what God's telling you to do.

[00:42:35] But be very, very careful that you have the discernment to know the difference between what God's telling you to do and what people are asking of you in a ministry setting. There's tons of good stuff. There's lots of hurting people you can pour yourself into. Right.

[00:42:49] If God's not telling you to make a sacrifice here and if you and your spouse are not on the same page about that sacrifice that you're making, yeah, it's not. Don't. Yeah. And that's again, that's where lessons learned.

[00:43:05] We are definitely, we've learned the lessons the wrong way in the hard way. It's why we now can say no, so easily. And so freely because it's like we know what saying yes will do sometimes. We don't say no every time, but sometimes you just got to.

[00:43:24] In the middle of this hard time that we're having, the church starts to go through a little turmoil. Right. The pastor gets very sick. Right. There's some issues that start happening. There's some accusations that start getting thrown around. There's some attacks that start happening on our family.

[00:43:45] They've got to leave. There's some attacks that happen on me personally. Some of which I didn't know about at the time. Yeah. Guys, this goes back to the whole partnership thing. If you're under attack, if there's something coming against you and you don't share it with your spouse,

[00:44:01] you're not working together. Right. And there were some of those things where I was quote unquote protecting her. But what it did is it just made it heavier and heavier on me. Built in some resentment, built in some pain.

[00:44:17] And on my end, I was sitting there going, he won't share this stuff with me. He doesn't trust me. He just sees me as Susie homemaker now. I'm just the mom of his kids. Yeah.

[00:44:30] But I don't want to hurt him because I know he's under pressure and stress. So I'm not telling him where I'm coming from because I want to protect him. Yeah. No. We were idiots. It was a difficult time. Now we had already been married at this point.

[00:44:47] We're very 10, 15 years. Yeah. Because Benjamin would have been 9 or 10. Yeah. So yeah. We would have been 13 years long. Yeah. So we've been doing this for a while and we were struggling. Yeah. The ministry started this struggle. The our church relationships started this struggle.

[00:45:09] People we were having relationship within the church or struggling. My relationship with the pastor was falling apart. The pastor ends up leaving. Not because of me. I want to make that say, I did not make him leave.

[00:45:22] But the pastor leaves and it just turned into even more turmoil. Because now there was a battle between some of the leadership in the church. And me and some of the staff. It was just it was very hard. And we were hurt. We were hurt from the church.

[00:45:38] We were hurt from each other. Yeah. Because we weren't working on our relationship with each other. We felt very lonely. We felt very much on the out. It was a us against the world type thing. But individually, we weren't even to us.

[00:45:55] It was me and her against the world. And we walked away. We left the ministry. We left the church. Yep. We moved to Florida. We said, we signed up for pouring ourselves out and possibly being destroyed to serve the Lord. But politics and power games. Yeah.

[00:46:20] We're not willing to destroy ourselves over. Yeah. And I'm not a, I don't play. So we had a real problem. Yeah. We were just like done. Yeah. And so we walked away. And we walked away from the church. We moved back to Florida. And guess what?

[00:46:40] We're going to stop right there. So what we thought we were going to do or what we're going to do is we're going to actually have a part two of this next week. Right. See what we did there. See what we did.

[00:46:56] We're going to be there next week. We are going to be some other exotic location. Sure. Why not? And we might take you to the living room. Yeah. We know this. But we're, we're going to go somewhere else. And we're going to do part two of this.

[00:47:11] We're going to talk about how when we hit our absolute low. The things that we did that help build us up out of this. How to get the point where we are today. So we're going to be looking forward that you know 30 years is just the beginning.

[00:47:27] And just to give you, give you a little bit of, you know, it's probably obvious we're still sitting here. But guys, it was bad. It was bad. We were done with the church. We were done with relationships. Done with people.

[00:47:44] We were on the edge of calling it done with each other. Kind of the only thing at that point was what are we going to do with these four little kids? Yeah. If we split, that was it. That was, that was it. Yeah.

[00:47:59] Basically, yeah, at that point it was just what we're done. What's up with the kids? And yeah, we were hurting and it was bad. But you guys see where we are now. So you know there's been restoration. So don't go away like, down. That's right. That's right.

[00:48:17] We'll have a good ending in part two. It's a happy story. But I hope you guys are enjoying this. We were enjoying doing this. We love doing the seeing God in the everyday. Again, this is a little bit different. But you know, 30 years.

[00:48:31] Well, and if you haven't been able to tell yet what we've done, maybe the same thing twice in a row. Yeah. Yeah. We like different that whole adventure spirit we talked to you about when we first started dating and marriage. We just loved doing it.

[00:48:46] It's still kind of us. We like different stuff. So if you're watching on YouTube, thank you. Please like and subscribe. And let other people know, share it. Let other people know that this is something that you're enjoying. Maybe they'll enjoy it too.

[00:49:04] Maybe you have a young couple that's just got married or think about getting married. And this might be something that helps them out. That's why we're doing this. Listening on the podcast. Thank you so much for listening on the podcast. We love doing the podcast as well.

[00:49:20] And it's just fantastic to know that people from all over the world, because we are actually getting downloads from all over places in the world on the podcast. So thank you so much. Please again like subscribe.

[00:49:34] Let other people know about the podcast and hopefully it might be a blessing to them. The other thing I want to mention is every week we do our Becky does a blog. And it is so exciting.

[00:49:48] People were seeing hundreds of people every week that are reading the blogs and getting questions. Yeah, so if you haven't seen our blog yet, right now the only way you can read them is go to the Facebook,

[00:50:02] go to Facebook slash seeing God in the everyday or Facebook at seeing God in the everyday. And every Monday or Tuesday. So pretty much every Monday.

[00:50:13] The blog goes up right from Becky's heart of experiences that she's seeing and that we're seeing together with God and some history of some other things that we can go in more depth with. And it is, it's a characteristics of God is what you're focusing on this year.

[00:50:31] And so they're just focusing on the different things that different characteristics of who God is and in our everyday lives.

[00:50:40] So go to Facebook, seeing God in the everyday if you type that in, you'll find it like the page and you'll be able to see that blog every Monday. So that's where we're at this week that's how we're going to leave you on a cliff anger.

[00:50:56] Okay, and I'll be back next week for seeing God in the everyday as we conclude the next 15 years of our marriage. That was the halfway point. Yeah, kind of worked out good. Wow. So I didn't even plan that part of it. So worked out good.

[00:51:11] So thank you guys again for listening and watching and we love you all so much. Like and subscribe and keep seeing God in your everyday. Okay? All right. Love you all.