0:02

Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. This show where you hear from amazing and inspiring wives sharing their struggles, triumphs and advice for this journey called marriage. Here’s your host belah rose

0:18

Haye and welcome. I hope that you are having a good day. Thank you for joining me and listening into the conversation that’s planned for today. If you are listening to this in real time, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas as that’s coming up on Sunday. I hope that you gather close with your friends and family and remember what this celebration is about that Jesus came to this earth for you and for me. So God bless you. I’m excited about that. But for today’s show, I’ve got Kim Ola, Shea on from proverb, wise.com, and she is a wife of 37 years. She’s got five kids, she has lived this life and a long time in marriage. And I love her perspective. I love that she clearly has such a close walk with the Lord. And you know, something came up in their marriage just in the last couple of years that took her and her husband for surprise. And if you’ve been married for any length of time, you know that things come up in marriage that surprise you. You can’t know your spouse completely. And every day in every year you learn new things and sometimes they’re hard sometimes they’re difficult things to learn. I want to just encourage your heart today. I think Kim has a great perspective. And I think we can learn from her.

1:56

Hello there and welcome to let your marriage listener. I am excited that you’re joining me thank you for being here. I have got Kim Ola Shea on the line. Welcome Kim.

2:07

I there Bella and I am very glad to be with you today.

2:10

I am very glad you are here as well. Now Kim has a website called proverb wise.com And we’re going to be talking about that. And Kim. Would you be willing to just kind of introduce yourself a little bit about your family and what your day to day life looks like.

2:26

Okay, well, I am a pastor’s wife. We’ve been in pastoral ministry for close to 35 years we’ve been married for 37. I’m a mom of five. And we have seven grandchildren. Six boys. And finally a few months ago, a precious little girl named Charisse. That was God’s grace to us. Harris means Oh, I love that. So that’s a little bit about our family. Our day to day, incredibly busy. I am an entrepreneur, entrepreneur and business owner of online bookkeeping solutions. I do a little bit of speaking and writing. And I just started the proper wise ministry this past year and look forward to adding a new component for pastors wives in 2017. I’m really excited about that. And I work part time in our church office. My days are very busy. We’re helping out with kids at various times, but nobody except our one son is local. And so my husband is very busy and in multiple Ministries as well besides being a pastor, and so is doing some traveling and so yeah, we are just busy. This is a very busy season, which we thought might have been a time where we slow down a bit, but it seems that God has other plans.

3:51

Hmm, yeah, it sounds like you were doing Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Yes. So tell us a little bit about your and your husband’s personalities. What are they like?

4:03

Okay, can you hear me cuz I’m getting a little on it. I can Okay, fine. Yeah, good. All right. Well, absolute complete opposite personality. I am. I am very much an administrator, the spiritual gift of administration. And he is much he’s very abstract. And what is what is the word I’m thinking random and abstract. And I am very great and sequential, if you want. We did a DISC personality profile many years ago when we were younger in ministry. And Dr. Sandy Culkin was actually the instructor and he’s the founder of that organization, and came up with the the instrument and we were in a group in Atlanta of about 100 and something people and we all had to take this assessment on a Friday night and then the next day we got together in the Morning, it was the day we were learning how to use the instrument. And he came up to us, Andy Kaufman came up to us that morning, he says, I need to meet with the two of you at lunch. And so we met with, why would he want to talk to us? And he came in, he says, I hate to tell you guys this, but you guys first profile matches that we have ever seen. And we are very concerned that you’re never going to make it. And we want to with us, like every week for the rest of your life. No, that didn’t happen. And we didn’t stay in touch. I actually thought I really should contact him and let him know we’re still together at some point, but we’re completely complete opposites. Well,

5:47

that is too funny. Okay, well, you know, this podcast is really about inspiring and empowering wives to live in wholehearted intimacy with their spouse. And so I want to kind of just get that inspirational ball rolling and wonder if you could share a scripture or a quote that has meant a lot to you over the years, or even recently,

6:10

wow, I’m in relation to marriage, I’m gonna I wasn’t really the one I had chosen. But when you’re talking about it in relation to marriage, and doing the doing the ministry of Proverbs wise, you know, I have to go back to there so many scriptures on what it means to be a wife, and what it means to be in biblical marriage. And in Proverbs, we see the marriage picture over and over, and the verses about being an excellent wife, a crown to your husband, and he finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor of the Lord. And I think, through my life, and then, you know, obviously the Proverbs 31 woman that we all think about. It’s like, wow, how do you live up to that? And, and I want to be that crown to him, I want to be the kind of wife that is considered a good thing. And so so in a way that would be that would be one, some scripture that has really impacted my life and my marriage.

7:17

Yeah. Yeah, I think that so often, when we think about the wife that, you know, that ideal wife, where she’s traveling around and buying fields, and, you know, her husband, honors her, and she’s a woman of valor, and all these things. You know, it’s easy to be looking at the gap of where we are, and where we want to be. But I think that also inspires us and helps us to move forward and to see, you know, God wants all these things for us as wives to be a crown, to our husbands. And so, you know, I also kind of think that, you know, as we go through life, there’s different seasons, where different aspects of ourselves are more pronounced. And, and it Yeah, and we’re not all things all the time, but we are certain things at certain seasons. And so, so yeah, I, you know, I want to kind of talk about a difficult season and struggle in your marriage where, you know, we learn the most in the in the most difficult times. And so, I wonder if you could take us there to that story of a difficult season for your marriage.

8:28

Sure, yeah. We we do we want to live up to what God’s standard is for marriage? And sometimes it just seems so overwhelming, like, how do I ever do this out away? You know, I’ve been to so many women’s events, and, you know, they in teaching on on marriage, and what the wife is supposed to be in it. As a young wife, I was very insecure and all of that, but, um, and, and still very often I am, as well. But one of the times, then one of the most difficult things is something that, that just in the last five years or so, we have been working through. And when I, I always used to say to my husband, I think you have ADHD or something. I used to say this all the time. And then when I got into teaching, I was working on my Master’s and I was taking a course, and in students with learning disabilities, and when we got to the topic of ADHD, I’m like, it’s true. That’s really what he has. And he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to deal with it. At first, he just be like, you know, just kind of like, I don’t want to talk about this. But I really began to understand that yes, that is a major issue and frustration that we have had in our marriage over the years with we’re so busy with ministry, raising kids and all those things. You just really don’t. You don’t always have time to even process that we we started our family fairly quickly. We only been married less than two years when our first one came in then five kids over 12 years and it just, we just you know, it was like I just was so About the kids that I don’t think I picked up on some of the things I just really didn’t have time to process, it really didn’t have the educational background to understand it. But as as we thought about AI, it’s probably been close to five years ago, I found this article actually in the AARP magazine as we were reaching this age, and it was just a little short bulleted list of symptoms of adult ADHD, that if I said, Honey, you need to read this, he would have never looked at but I just kind of left it on the dining room table. And I’m like, Oh, would you look at this, me and he has this kind of interesting. And he calls me he’s like, I can’t believe this. Exactly describes me. So we went through the process of getting an official diagnosis, which took over a year of test and brain tests, and all of this, and the doctors kept saying, we don’t understand he has a PhD, how did he get a PhD. But But through that, we found that he really has it extremely bad. Wow, that’s will absolutely magnify the situation to a point where sometimes I feel like I’m dealing with everything by myself, because I am, because he forgets because he doesn’t think of it, or it gets distracted, and he goes off and does something else. And I’m kind of left holding everything. So that’s probably been one of the most difficult seasons, as we’ve worked through that process. Because not only do you have the process of, of learning of the diagnosis, then all of a sudden, it becomes Okay, we have to accept this. So it’s almost like you go through this grieving process, like you do with a child with disabilities, or like you do with other disappointments in life. And it’s not that we’re disappointed in each other. It’s just that all of a sudden, we realize we can’t fix this, it’s going to be something we struggle with. So we went through a period of about a lot of a lot of frustration, a lot of arguing a lot of what you need to deal with it now that you know about and a lot of you don’t understand, and sometimes using it as an excuse, and sometimes using it as a blame on both of our sides, you know, so that’s been a very, I talked to him about he knows I’m sharing this, I asked him because we’ve talked about maybe we need to come up with a seminar or something on this, because it’s really tough. It’s really, really tough. But we’re working on that. And, and God’s brought us through that. And it’s it’s now we’re communicating better, actually, I think because now I understand why he has responded over the years, certain ways. He understands why I’ve responded. So when you add in personality differences, and this disability, it really makes a lot of things clear. On some of the struggles we had through the through the years.

12:51

Yes, yes, yes, yes, I can resonate that with that so much in terms of the grieving that you find out that, you know, this is what the rest of your life looks like. And this is what, how it’s going to be. And you know, sometimes, even though there’s, you know, there’s always this, you know, without knowing I’m sure you had so many difficulties, because you didn’t know about this, right. So you probably just, you know, went through life with with so much heartache, because you were like, well, why isn’t he helping? Man? I can only imagine five kids where he’s not support. Yeah, my goodness. Yeah. And

13:30

he and he is, the thing is, there was always the struggle of, you know, I know he loves me dearly. And his kids adore their dad, they me now as adults mean they call Dad whenever they have a, you know, anything that they need counsel on. But the day today, everyday things were hard. For example, one, hey, we had decided to homeschool this one year, I was not really all for and he’s like, Oh, I’ll help you. This is going to be great. Well, the kids and I we have a family. Like it’s like we all laugh every time because his helping we had, you know five kids that were like all different ages. So he says, Well, I’ll do a science lesson because he taught science one year. And so he decides he’s going to teach them on sound waves. So he takes him out to the creek and he’s you know, throws a rock and showing them how the water goes. And that’s how the sound waves go. And so it’s like, that’s the only day all year he helped me on that one. Now we laugh they’re like, Yeah, do you remember when dad taught us the one day? The whole year you’ve got out of it. Back to school the next year?

14:40

Yeah, right. I can only imagine. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I’m one of five kids to actually and my mom homeschooled us for a couple years up until we could read actually and and it was there. Yeah, my dad was not part of the the homeschooling at all so? And I, I don’t think it was add, but I think it was other things but yeah, that’s what it is so so, you know, when you found out or, you know, going through these, you know, I guess that was about 3032 years of marriage without knowing about this diagnosis. I mean, yeah, what was what were the biggest challenges that you face throughout that?

15:26

Wow. Um, well, I remember when he, you know, when he came to understand that after reading that list, we were getting ready for our daughter youngest daughter’s wedding was only that we decided actually to wait on the going to the doctor until after the wedding because it was just, you know, not at time where we really could focus on that. But I remember into I don’t know, ACM or something looking for stuff for the wedding. And he went to Barnes and Nobles, because he loves books. So he’s over there. And he calls me while I’m in the store. And he’s like, sobbing. He’s like, I am so sorry. Because I did. He goes, I didn’t know I was doing this to you. And he had picked up a book that was written by the wife of a man who had a severe case of ADHD. And what she and she, they’ve been married, she’s actually considered an expert. I did not bring that information. So I don’t remember the name of the book. But, but working through that grieving, and then working through it, you know, then he would get he would get angry, because it’s like, why am I like this? Why did I let this happen? And it’d be a pastor, and so you’re dealing with his kind of on your own. And I think working through that, that process of acceptance, and him being able to be transparent about that, you know, like, even with his board, like, how do you tell them that’s why sometimes you forget real important stuff. I try to stay on topic, but I’m always feel like I’m juggling stuff. But now I understand better that he can’t. It’s not that he’s it’s not that he’s being negligent or lazy. He can’t. And so that’s been a challenge of medications, finding something that will work that doesn’t have side effects that affected his preaching, that was very distressing. Because he found, he found a medication that was incredible. I could see, like, it was huge. It was like day and night, in within an hour the first time he took the dose. And then he gets up to preach. And it gave him dry mouth so bad that he literally could not do public speaking and take his medication. And that was it was a huge frustration. And because we really haven’t found anything, we’ve tried natural stuff, and some of it helps we tried gluten free. And that seems to help on some level. But it’s like nothing really does what that one medication did. And so now there’s just this frustration, we’re going to we’re still in process, we’re going back, he’s got a he’s got high blood pressure as well. So that’s been an issue because they don’t want to give him the kinds of medications you have to take for ADHD, unless his blood pressure is really under control. So we’ve had to deal with that. So we’re back in the let’s try it again. And we can do and then there’s costs, it’s huge, expensive. The diagnosis, the medications, everything’s very expensive. And you have insurance issues. I mean, there’s just like this whole realm of things to deal with. And, and yet, yet God’s using it. And it’s it’s all okay. Yeah. But we’ve had to work through a lot of those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, nothing’s gonna fix it. It’s still something we have to manage, but never fix.

18:49

We don’t know why there’s an element of suffering. Right, in this life, you know, there just is there’s, there just is, and, and, you know, it’s interesting, you know, as, as listeners are in every season of marriage, whether they’re newlyweds or engaged, and thinking, you know, getting married or, or they’ve been married for years or whatever. We don’t know what we’re getting into when we say I do. I mean, we don’t know, you didn’t know, you didn’t know what was gonna happen

19:19

and actually know and when we actually when we got married, I went into this MIT, we were very young. I was not quite 19. And he was not quite 23. I always say no children to my kids. That’s just not mean you get married when you’re my age. You’re that young. It was a little different era of time. And I had graduated from high school early so I had two years of college by this time and living away from home. So it was a little bit different. But But anyway, I went into this marriage, he had been diagnosed with a kidney disease, and they didn’t expect his kidneys to last two years.

19:56

Oh my gosh,

19:57

and wow, probably part of the reason And I went into like that is I was very young. And But yet God was so good and has so blessed and doctors to this day shake their head and we don’t we don’t understand why they your kidneys never got worse. Oh my god they did. And he either doesn’t have it or it’s in remission or whatever and other than blood pressure. That’s not even. That’s not even in there. But we, but yeah, when we marry some really understand what it could mean to our lives. Yeah. But you know, it’s when we go into it with with the Lord. He has plans and and he uses all those things.

20:34

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean it’s just amazing. So you said your husband has a PhD? Yes, he does. Yes, yes. And he’s done this work of ADD. I mean, he’s lived with ADD for his whole life,

20:49

his whole life. Yeah, there wasn’t even such a thing. I mean, they didn’t even have a name for it. When he was growing up. He just remembers that he would run into stuff and break stuff a lot. And he just remembers his mom going all the time, just shaking her head and saying, oh, Joe. So, you know, they dealt with it. He he attributes a lot of his success in school and everything, because his dad was a pastor, and everything was, you know, there was there were there was discipline, and expectations. And his parents are very gentle, loving, gracious people. I love them dearly. But, but there was a lot less. I think that one of the things that’s magnified, the ATD is particularly as we’ve gotten older is the increase in the use of technology. I mean, computers, cell phones, everything that seems to make it worse. Yeah, so I think that on some level, some of the the other the way we used to live in our culture, and the way we live now has really magnified that issue. But a lot of it, yeah, he got his PhD actually. And I’m trying to remember the year I, we both we’d go back and forth, we share one he got his master’s, then he got his PhD, and I got my master’s, we went back and forth. In that, that many years, maybe 10. Okay. Um, he got his PhD. So I mean, I live with him through those years. And it was really difficult. And he was very focused. He was one of the people that has ADHD that hyper focuses. And so his hyper focus was his schoolwork. And so really, that was it. That was what he did. And that’s, you know, that, but, but that’s how he did it, he would not have been able to do that. If I hadn’t been covering of other things. Wow.

22:43

Yeah, absolutely. But we

22:45

did it. I mean, we’re through it. Right.

22:49

Well, what do you think I mean, it, you know, just thinking about those that are listening, that are like, Yes, I get this whole married to a person with disabilities. I mean, what would you kind of tell her who’s listening? What kind of advice would you give, and someone who’s in the throes of figuring this thing out?

23:09

Um, well, I was praying, like, Lord, give me something to say, because I don’t have answers. The only thing I can say is that it takes an incredible amount of patience, which I don’t always have. But, but I think it takes a constant, constant state of prayer, like just asking God for grace for that day, for that moment. It’s really no different than when you have a child with a disability that requires care. And you have to step in, we’re all weak in some way. We all have things that that are issues in our life, and the Lord can help us through all of those things. So accepting, they’re recognizing, I think, with things like ADHD and other things that are sort of hidden and not necessarily something everybody else might even recognize is happening. But we have to accept that that it is a disability, it is something that you have to work through. And that that person is not the disability. It’s just something it is their thing that they have to deal with. But that’s not all of them. And with my husband, I think what I hung on to and I knew about him is that he is the most godly person I know. I’ve watched his life. He is he spends time with the Lord every day he prays he has been an incredible dad, he loves his kids, he loves me. And we’re, you know, us and ministry and God are his life. And he’s been faithful to that since the day we were married. And so I know who he is. And then what he has is this other this disability, that all sometimes impacts how he feels It impacts him not following through on things. It’s not because he means to not follow through, is just because of the situation. And so if I can help him in that way, or if I can cover for him in that way, support him in that way. It’s just what I have to do. I mean, and I’m not gonna say it’s easy, because some days, it is incredibly frustrating. And you feel like quitting, and you feel like saying, this is just insane. Why is this happening? You know, but you, but it’s not ever going to be 5050. It’s going to always be 100 100, he gives 100%. But he just can’t do it in the ways that sometimes I feel like I need. So I have to give 100% I have to just do what I have to do. He has to he does what he has to do. And and we just need to respect and honor one another because that’s, that’s the person God gave us, man. And we need to love them as Jesus loved us. It’s no different than we’re supposed to love others in the world. We just need to respect that person. So it’s a struggle. But I think we can be really blessed. And God can use that disability to impact the lives of other people. Because we can relate and we can, we can sympathize with them. You know, when God says, We comfort others with the comfort He gives us. And so he allows that so that we have a better understanding of other people. And we can minister in ways that we couldn’t have ministered. Had we not gone through that ourselves.

26:38

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that you said that’s the person God gave us. And we did love them as Jesus loves us. You know, it disabilities in all difficulties in all whatever it is. I love also you said, you know, you know who he is. And this ADD is what he has. And those are two different things. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I love that. And the other thing, you know, again, with with my disability this summer has been, you know, grace for that day has been huge for me. I mean, it’s just been waking up every morning and just being like, God, I need your grace for just today. Just just right now, just today. Yeah, can you can you talk about that a little bit more? I mean, how do we how do we do that? How do we live with that? That I guess the the realization that God gives us grace for right now.

27:45

Well, my my, the verse that has been on my heart this whole year. As we we’ve gone, we’re going through some transitions and in our life and our ministry, some real struggles in ministry. And some some really difficult things with our kids. Our daughter’s was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year. And she’s got three little ones and just some of those kinds of things that we’re going through with on a personal level. And the verse that just, I don’t know, it pops into my head all the time actually wrote it down for my husband this morning, fixing your eyes on Jesus, just that part of that verse from Hebrews. Because if we don’t look at life, through Christ, then we’re going to get really pulled down. And we’re going to face like, we were going to suffer, we’re going to face battles, Jesus never said it was gonna be easy. Yeah, I’m in this life. But but this isn’t, this isn’t the end of all things. This is only we’re just passing through this life. This is this is the transition. And we need to if when our eyes are really on Christ, every minute, anytime that we turn, and we look at Christ, we’re not gonna, everything else is gonna kind of down. And it’s not going to seem so huge, because he’s going to be the one we’re focused on. And I think that’s really what the grace part is about. He’s going to give us grace. For that day, he’s going to give us sufficient grace. He’s going to give us abundant grace, for whatever we face on any given day, but he’s not going to give it to us until we need it. So when we wake up in the morning, you know, some days, we don’t really think that much about it, but other days are really, really hard. And if we don’t stay focused on Christ, we don’t stay in his word. And really, really stay in constant communication with him. We’re going to really fall apart real fast. So I think it’s only the only way we’re going to experience that grace is to keep our eyes on Him and sometimes we’re going to look away because because we’re human, the quicker we turn back everything else in the perspective that he would have us look at our circumstances.

30:12

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. We’re gonna look away because we’re human. But the quicker we turn back, that’s that’s the key is to turn back to turn back to turn back over and over and over and over again. That’s right. Like you said, not to get downtrodden not to get downcast. But these struggles are temporary, we are just passing through. I just love that. So true. Well, I believe that some of you listening know all too well, what it’s like to have a spouse that has disabilities, or you yourself has a disability. And obviously, it affects your marriage. I just believe that God wants you to know that one, you’re not alone. And this world, I mean, that’s, that’s what God says, you know, in His Word, it says, In this world, you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world. You know, after this life is over. It’s going to matter the way you treated your spouse, the way your attitude was towards them, the way you treated yourself during that time. I mean, it matters ultimately, in eternity, I really do believe that God puts us together with a spouse on purpose and the sufferings that we have our sufferings that matter. It’s not an accident. It’s not because life is unfair, or God wants to punish you or whatever, that there’s a purpose in it. You know that we’re joining in Christ’s sufferings for some reason. There’s a purpose in it. And I so I just want to encourage you and I will be talking to you next Tuesday, for the rest of Kim’s interview. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there. So I hope that you’ll join me again. God bless you. I love you praying for you, your marriage and your walk with Christ. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.

32:07

Thanks for joining. If you’ve been inspired by this show, would you help spread the word? If you take a moment to review and subscribe others can find us more easily. Find out how to delight your marriage.com forward slash iTunes. Until next time, live with love, wisdom impassion