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Hi there! Belah here. Today, I have with me Keelie Reason with lovehopeadventure.com. Have you had those times in your marriage where you feel kind of stuck? Maybe its because of external circumstances, but it just doesn’t seem to be working like it used to. Well, Keelie shares about a season in her life that caused her to have to figure out who she is and stop relying on her husband’s career for her identity. Find out how they moved through the most difficult season of their marriage and what she learned through it.
Scripture/Quote:
- This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 1 John 5:14
You’ll Discover:
- How developing your spouse’s interests may be a worthwhile pursuit
- Keelie had to realize that “all the sudden, we didn’t have the same plan for our lives” and what she did with that realization
- How we should treat our mates in the midst of challenging situations can be the deciding factor
- How we determine our identity and self-worth can make the difference in our circumstances and relationship with Christ
- What it feels like as a stay at home mom when your husband’s job takes a different turn
- How there will be seasons in your marriage where your spouse won’t meet your needs
Books & Resources Mentioned:
- Study about sticking with your marriage for just 5 years and it will be happy again, Meaning Of Marriage by Tim Keller
Tweetables:
- We all have those times in our lives when there is nothing left we can do. We can’t fix it. We just have to rely on God.
- When hard times come to your marriage, it takes a while to work through it.
- We have to deal with our spouse making their own decisions.
- There will be times in our lives that we have no clue how to handle it, but in those times we have to rely and trust in God.
- My biggest regret during that hard time, was that we were not working together.
- Draw your self-worth from Christ not other people.
Thanks for listening! I hope you are encouraged to live in wholehearted intimacy!
Love,
Belah
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Transcript
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
Hi there and welcome. This is belah rose. And I want to thank you so much for tuning in today to the delight your marriage Podcast. Today we are talking to a wife who has got wonderful insights about when the pressures on when there’s a lot of difficulty in a marriage, and how do you get through that, and she gives really wonderful insights. But I was talking to a friend who was asking me about the podcast, and I was sharing with her what the purpose is, for the podcast. And really, you know, I grew up without a good representation of marriage modeled for me by my parents. And they got divorced when I was just about 20. And the, you know, the, the marriage was really broken with lots of really bad patterns, far before they actually, you know, divorced. But so I didn’t have a good role model for marriage. And in fact, none of my friends had parents that had good marriages, I had one, basically role model of a marriage that I would aspire to have a relationship like they had, and they still have an amazing relationship, and they’re still great friends of mine, and I look up to them so much, but that’s just one. And so I think delight your marriage was, is really about understanding and peering into what a healthy relationship, lifelong commitment looks like, and how we can understand ourselves in someone else’s story, and relate to them and kind of figure out the way they’re thinking about things and how is that different from the way I’m thinking about things and, and how does their situation relate to my situation? And how can I change to be a little bit maybe make it a little bit more like them, because they’ve got things a little bit more figured out than me in this area. So again, today is not unlike that. And that’s really the purpose behind these podcasts. And I just thank you so much for taking the time to invest in yourself and in your marriage because ultimately, this is a lifelong endeavor. This is something that is not just a whim not just a fading fancy but something we want to really master and and that’s why I interview the people that I do people that are masters in these areas and they can teach us a lot so Kelly again is going to share with us Yeah, how to get through those difficult pressure filled times. So let’s go ahead and dive into what she has to say. All right, welcome back delight your marriage listener. I’m really happy that you are joining me today I’ve got an awesome guest. Her name is Keeley reason she’s from love hope adventure.com Welcome Keely. I’m so glad you’re here.
3:18
Thanks so much for having me.
3:20
Yeah, well, I’m really excited to have you. And I think this is going to be an awesome interview to hear your story and would you go ahead and share a little bit about yourself, your family and your day to day life?
3:33
Awesome. Yes, I am married to my high school sweetheart. We started dating when we were 16 Which I know isn’t really heard of very often. And we dated for five and a half years got married. We’ve been married now for 12 years. And I have three boys 10 Nine and four and I have been a stay at home mom since the oldest was about a year and I homeschool the the two older ones they’re in school right now but I homeschool the youngest and I’m bringing the two older ones home next year so pretty busy with everything going on. Yeah.
4:14
Wow three boys, huh?
4:15
Yes. No girl.
4:17
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I’ve got two boys and I feel like my husband and I are stopping with two. Yeah, even though I’m like oh, I kind of want to see if our third one would be a girl.
4:27
The same thing we got a girl I mean not a girl but a boy. Like right you want to try for the girl? I’m like we did and
4:39
and we got a lovely boy.
4:41
Got us. Another boy. Wonderful.
4:44
You know what I noticed Keeley with my guests. I noticed that a lot of the women that are ministering to women generally have boys. Oh really? Yeah. Like a lot of them. I don’t know if it’s something Like we’re you know, we, we have that desire to you know that passion for women and we’re just like, we don’t have women in our lives we need to minister to women.
5:09
I mean, I grew up with all brothers. So I’m the only girl my family. And I’m kind of used to it, I guess. Mm hmm. Wait.
5:18
Yeah, yeah, you would have to be used to it. How many boys in your family?
5:22
I have four older brothers.
5:25
Oh my gosh, that could work. You are a tough cookie. Says my mom. That’s true. I’m one to five. Also, I’ve got two brothers and two sisters, too. It’s a big family.
5:39
That’s awesome. And you get together at Christmas. It’s like, where are we gonna even hang out? Because I have any kids. There’s like 15 grandchildren.
5:48
Wow, that’s awesome. Oh, so tell us a little bit about your husband’s and your personalities?
5:55
Wow, well, I will be honest, we are absolute opposites. Really pretty funny. An introvert and I’m an extrovert, we don’t have a lot of the same interest. So it’s been pretty awesome. Because we’ve kind of had to develop the other person’s interest. So that’s, that’s always good, because you’re not interested in something but you do partake in it, because your spouse does. So it’s been pretty awesome to kind of expand and broaden our horizons. And probably the most funny thing about our personalities is that my husband is a food pantry director now. And it’s his job to get out in the community and tell everyone about the pantry and and work with people all day long people, people, people, he’s he interim pastor, too. So just people, people. And he’s such an introvert and I’m a huge stay at home. I work from home, everything I do is on the you know, internet. I’m in the online world. And I just think, Okay, God, you know why? It seems like personality wise, I would be better at this thing. And he’d be better at that. And sometimes I wonder if God put us here so that we would keep communicating and the way the other person likes it the most? Yeah, that we get a lot practicing the other person’s form of communication.
7:19
Yes, yes. I love that. So developing the other person’s interests. So what So as an example, what What things have you had to develop?
7:28
Well, my husband loves sci fi, and loves. I watched Star Trek with him. But we did just go to the new Star Wars movie. I did like a lot of shows, in science fiction, like on the Sci Fi Channel and stuff, and I’ve learned to like them more. Some of the old stuff, though, that’s just never gonna like that. That, you know.
7:55
Yeah, I agree. No offense to any sci fi fans out there.
8:02
Oh, it’s awesome. And I have several friends that love sci fi. So it does kind of helped me relate to them a little bit better to
8:10
Oh, there you go. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, I love I love the idea of developing your interest based on your spouse. I love that. And I want to ask you before we kind of dive into your your big story about a struggling in your marriage and how you’ve overcome that. This is all about inspiring wives to live wholehearted in their marriage and in intimacy. And would you share a scripture or quote that’s meant a lot to you over the years, or even recently?
8:37
Sure. My favorite Bible verse is first John 514. And it says, this is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything, according to His will, He hears us. And I mean, that’s been my favorite verse since probably being a teenager. And there have been so many things. In the last like three years, we’ve had a rough couple of years, that I just keep cleaning, clinging to that verse and remembering that we can have confidence in prayer and talking to God because the Bible tells us and I draw a lot of encouragement from that. Because we all have these times in our lives where we have nothing left we can do. I mean, we can’t fix it. We just have to rely on God. And we can have confidence in him because the Bible tells us that.
9:33
Yeah, that’s so true. I love that. Yep. And yeah, I would love to dive into your story about a struggle or a season that you know, stretched you guys and was a challenge and how how you overcame that?
9:49
Well, I’ll tell you, I had a hard time really coming up with what I wanted to share because I’ll just go ahead and put this out there. I haven’t been real open about this difficult time in our marriage because It happened only about two years ago. And it just when, when big things happen and, and hard times come through marriage, it takes a while, you know, to work through it, that’s actually really, really been starting to work through in the last year, just what what we went through. And I was surprised my husband and I, we had been married for probably almost 10 years, and you say, by then you’ve got figured out, right? I’ve been forever. Yeah, you didn’t have a whole ton of big issues prior to that. But then, we had, like, the most difficult season of our life. And my husband, he had been a pastor, associate pastor for probably 889 years. And he just hit burnout, he needed to step out of that. And I will go ahead and be an I was not at all supportive of him abandoning that career, because we, you know, we did this together, we had been doing it for a long time together. And it was what we wanted to do, it was what we worked toward, we, you know, he’s in school for like seven years for this. So it was very difficult to watch him make that decision, knowing how much it would affect our family, you know, backing your career that you’ve been working towards, for so long, it just, you know, it brings a lot of stress into the family, because we weren’t sure what he was going to do to replace that income. And less than excited, was very hard for me. And I think in every marriage, everyone deals with this same situation, we have to deal with our spouse making their own decisions. And and maybe it’s something as simple as you don’t like that your spouse doesn’t clean up after themselves. Or maybe you wish, your spouse would be more motivated and do this thing or that thing. So there’s so many like practice implications to the situation that I dealt with, because this was a huge, huge decision that made a lot of changes in our family. And I think I was surprised at how horrible I acted. Because I felt like our marriage was very strong. And I I guess just the right amount of pressure had never been placed on us. To us. I think I’ve had so many friends whose marriages have, they’ve had a long term marriage, and then the right amount of pressure came on. And it was like, Oh, my gosh, I can’t take this and make it through this. And this was probably the first time I ever asked that in my marriage, because all of a sudden, we did not have the same plan for our life. That was very hard to get through that into. It wasn’t just me not trusting my husband more than anything. I didn’t trust God. And that happens so much. In our marriages, we want to put it all on our spouse. But yeah, it’s just are not trusting the Lord in a situation. I spent a lot of time like wanting to blame him for making these choices. But he was doing what he knew he had to and I didn’t make it easy on him. So I was really awful. It was it was tough. And how did we pull out of it? Well, I’ll tell you, it was just again, one of those times where I was talking about with the scripture that we we will have those times in our life where we don’t know how to handle it. We have no clue, the right decisions to make, we really have to trust in God and rely on him. And my husband got very busy with his work. He took on two jobs and basically worked around the clock. I picked up a lot of freelance writing, I was homeschooling my boys. I have three kids home and I was working all the time. No, the problems kind of resolved themselves because we just didn’t even have the time to like talk to each other. Enough time gets passed. And you you’re frustrated, but you can’t even have the conversations because you’re so busy. That a lot. Mm
14:40
hmm. I actually really love that because I think sometimes there’s a statistic out there that says, you know, and I can link it on the show notes once I find it, find it again. But it basically says that if if marriages will just hang on during the hard times for even just five years. You get past that and it’s 100 Marriage again in five years. Almost like regardless of the circumstances, it’s amazing that just hanging on and saying, I’m not giving up yet, or I’m just going to, you know, hold tight for now. And then seeing what God does in the in the midst. So I just want to encourage anyone who’s out there who’s who’s understanding what Keeley is saying and saying, Yes, I understand that pressure. I’m having pressure right now in my marriage right now. I think it’s a really good takeaway to think, why not just hang on? Why not just spend your time, however, you want to just stick with the marriage?
15:36
Absolutely. And I mean, I wasn’t really, like, I’m going to leave my husband over this. But I did have that thought, go through my mind. How are we going to get back on the same page? Again? Very scary place to be in marriage.
15:52
Yeah, especially since you had so many goals and dreams. And you were you were focused on this certain dream for so long. And then all of a sudden, your husband is like, No, I have a different dream all of a sudden. I mean, that’s got to be hard.
16:05
It is. And, you know, now that we are two years down the road, and yeah, a lot of things have resolved in our life, we’re in a much better place than we probably have ever been, like mentally, spiritually, financially. God opened up a lot of doors, it was not quick, it wasn’t quick fix, it was a lot of hard work on both of our parts. And, you know, my biggest regrets from that year, where we were just working around the clock and stuff was that we did not work together as a team. And not very hard. Because when your spouse is doing things that you don’t agree with, or maybe you don’t like their, like their life choices and stuff, it’s so easy to start seeing them as your opponent and not your teammates. And you treat them that way different than you do a teammate. Mm hmm. So
17:05
yeah, that’s awesome. I so agree with that. Because you are on the same side I, I like something my brother says is when they’re having an argument, he and his wife, you know, maybe there’ll be a lull in the conversation. And he’ll be like, well, listen, let’s just remember, we’re on the same team. Yeah. And like with that perspective, when things shift, and you’re like, wait a second, it’s not me versus you. It’s not who’s gonna win. It’s, we’re fighting this out together, we’re on the same side. I love that insight. So I want to ask, you know, in the site, because I think income difficulties is like financial difficulties is one of the well, it’s one of the chief reasons for divorce, first of all, but it’s just a huge stressor in people’s lives. And, you know, going through that, and when it seems like your husband is the one that’s making everything insecure financially, I mean, how was that for you?
17:57
Well, I’ll tell you, we’ve, we’ve had our difficulties in our finances for a lot of years. And we knew that we would have to live on less because my husband was the full time ministry. So I don’t think the financial insecurity really bothered me quite as bad as the uncertainty of what we would be doing with our lives from then on. And I just, I’ve always trusted that guy was going to take care of us financially. Yeah, I didn’t know how he was going to do it. I was definitely frustrated that we were kind of like, taken a step back and some of our finances, but I don’t know, I could deal with that a lot more than I could just, I went through a huge crisis in my life, because I had always thought I was supposed to be a pastor’s wife. And when my husband said he didn’t want to do that anymore, it was like, Well, what am I supposed to do now? Where is my role in this world? If that’s what my role is, and I realized, honestly, that in that moment, I had a lot of my, like, self worth wrapped up in his job or who he is or whatever. Yeah. I always said, I wouldn’t do that. But our identity comes in Christ, not our spouse and our kids. So, yeah, our financial insecurity. I know a lot of couples struggle with that. It just really caused me to get much more aggressive about my writing, and, and working from home. So honestly, it was the motivation I needed to do to do my job better to be more proactive in that. So really, it was a good thing for us. Wow. You know, because we both got much, much more aggressive about, you know, earning and, like coming up with more creative ways to earn money, versus we’re just going to rely on this one and Haven’t sourced and if that and then we don’t have anything. So the truth is we actually have more financial security now than we did when he was working just one job.
20:11
Hmm. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really cool. I feel like that’s a big takeaway for anyone who might be in financial challenge right now is that, you know, diversifying your income is really important. And so that’s a really smart thing. And the fact that you kind of poured yourself into your passion, your ambition, your worker, instead of just stewing on oh, gosh, this isn’t fair, I’m not doing what I wish I could have done or something. I really love the other thing that you said, a lot of my self worth was in maybe my spouse’s occupation, or who he is or who, who I thought he was or something. I think that’s a really key point. Because I think a lot of times, that is what we do, even when we pick our spouse, we’re picking him for maybe how it’s gonna make me look, in some ways, like in some maybe subconscious level, I think a lot of times we are like, oh, this person measures up to the ideal person that I want to be seen with kind of a deal. And then to think about, as, as you’re walking alongside your spouse, what he’s doing, is that identity, something you’re relying on, I think that’s a good question to ask ourselves, do you think?
21:27
I think so? Yeah. And, and my mom always told me, Kelly, you draw your self worth in God in Christ, not in other people. So. And here’s the thing about that situation, my husband making that choice, but he knew he had to make for our family, it was very hard for him, it was not easy, he did not enjoy making the choice. He knew that we were going to have to go through a lot together because of it. So like, it wasn’t simple. But, you know, because he did that, because that was the catalyst, it really started revealing to me, weaknesses in our marriage weaknesses on my own part, because, like I said, I had relied on his ability to do his job to get my self worth. Yeah. And also just, I wasn’t letting him be who he needed to be. I was trying to, like, micromanage that and dictate that because his success and his job and stuff, man, that was direct reflection on me. I took it, and how many times as why do we do that? Because I mean, if you have your own job, is probably very different. But if you’re staying at home, and it’s like, okay, I’m staying at home, and my husband is our sole provider. Yeah, if he can’t be successful on this, then it’s a bad reflection on me. And you have a lot of ready to, for him being successful or doing things. So yeah, I started seeing all kinds of terrible habits that I had built in our marriage, because I put my self worth on his job, my identity was wrapped up in his successes. And it’s kind of like that same idea of living through your children. It was the same kind of thing. I was living out my life through his ability to do things.
23:32
Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s something that we need to be careful of as wives, and to realize that we need to get our identity in Christ. And you know, when the pressure comes, it says, In the Bible, if we build our house on the rock, then when the pressure comes, when the when the storms, the you know, hurricanes come in life, and they do, our foundation will not be shaken, but if it’s built on the sand will immediately be washed away. And I guess I want to ask, you know, when that pressure comes in life, how can a wife be? I mean, you know, it’s great to be theoretical about this, but how practically, can she be building her house on the rock?
24:13
Well, I think that, you know, some of the daily habits that I had to create during that time was I had to focus on other things. I had to have things that were my things, things that I did every day that I could feel accomplished in and that is so hard when you are a stay at home mom, you hardly ever see anybody you got kids No, are pooping everywhere and it’s so hard to be this like constant caretaker. And it’s like, I look and feel like I have wasted my day because you come into my house and it the kids are losing their minds and I have spent the entire day screaming at everybody and
25:02
you know, how if you just what you mean,
25:05
this supposed to be like making a difference in the world? How, by this, when I’m definitely like feeling like I’m failing at every turn in my home.
25:17
Right, right. Yeah. Any, any mother knows just what you’re talking about?
25:21
Oh, yeah, it’s like your husband comes home and he’s had this awesome day where he’s been stilts all day, and he probably got no real lunch. And you’re so and you’re like, you know, I think I’ve had two bites of food and my car, on the microwave. So for me, the thing that really helped pull me out of that was to find what I was passionate about, and focus on that because for so long, my passion was what my husband did. And I do have a passion for youth ministry, I really do. I stayed in youth ministry for up until a couple months ago after he had to step out. And I just really found the things that could be mine that I could put my attention and my focus on and that took so much pressure off of my husband, because I was younger, like nagging him as much, I shouldn’t have anything to nag him over. Because I was so focused on the things that I felt passionate about. And this is not the same thing as investing in your kids. Not saying don’t be passionate about investing in your children are passionate about investing in your husband. But figure what that thing is you can do every day, or every couple of days that you can invest in yourself. And for me, writing is definitely a passion. Like I’ve wanted to share since I was a kid, I didn’t even know about this whole blogging thing. You know, I didn’t even know anything about the whole internet and the world of that. And I thought if you’re going to be a writer, you got to write a book. You know, anything, like, but now I can pursue that passion and pursue your mom. I know how hard it is, you’ve got babies and diapers, and you’re like, I don’t have time to put into anything but the kids. I could go back and do it over again, I would have definitely been incorporating more of my own passion during the those years because I see so many women who have stayed at home with their kids for 10 years. And all of a sudden, all of them are in school. And it’s like, alright, well I’ve invested in them. I’ve invested in my husband. Now I don’t have an identity. Yeah, yeah. I’m not the only mom hitting that crisis. Lots of in my life have I have seen that hit that same crisis. It’s like, oh, my gosh, Nobody needs me anymore. What’s my role in life?
27:57
Mm hm. And that’s a really hard, that’s a really hard place to come to.
28:03
It is. So in addition to my husband, going through his own hurts, and crisis and struggles, I was also going through my own set of crisis and struggles. And this was a time in our marriage, where neither one of us could meet the other person’s needs, we just weren’t capable. And when you with, you know, just stick it out for a couple of years. And that’s really, that’s a great piece of advice, because those change, but there will just be times in your marriage, where neither one of you can meet the other one to me. Yeah, that’s hard, because you are going meet my needs meet my needs, and they are just incapable of doing it. Wow.
28:50
That’s really, really good. Because I think you’re right, I think our expectation is for that to happen. And if that’s not happening, well, then the marriage is broken, and we need to, you know, move on. But to realize that there might be a season and there probably will be a season maybe to just expect seasons that you really are incapable of meeting each other’s needs.
29:13
Oh, yeah. And every time you tried and meet the spouse’s needs, it just doesn’t seem to work for whatever reason, and when it isn’t working, it’s mainly because they’ve got a real issue inside of themselves. They got to work through it, and you’re not gonna be able to fix it for them. So you’re just gonna get mad because you’re like, Well, I’m trying care.
29:38
Yep, yep. No, that’s good. I think that’s something you know if if that’s not ringing true for you right now. Listener? I think that might be something to kind of think about a little bit is this is this a season where we’re just in a rough spot, meeting each other’s needs? This doesn’t mean a forever thing. This isn’t like something that’s going to go on for years and And might just be right now you’re both kind of in crisis. And in the midst of that, how do you stay on each other’s team? How do you still work together to help each other? So I really love that. I guess my last question in this arena is about finding your passion. So if a wife is like, I’ve heard that before, I’ve heard people say, find what you’re passionate about. But I really don’t know. I have no idea what I’m passionate about. So where would someone start figuring that out?
30:30
Well, I think what happened for me and what helped me was I just tried a lot of different things. Yeah. And over the course of the years, I’ve tried a lot of different things like I have done crafting, and I have done embroidery and I have set up my booths at craft shows. And I have tried. I’ve tried so so many things. Yeah. Over the course of the years, and I fell into the situation with writing, because I was just like, on the list of 50 things I was trying. And I think, Okay, if you don’t know where to start, if you don’t have a passion in mind, you just have to get involved and do things. So get a part of a mom’s group or start, you know, looking for things you can do, of course, it’s going to be limited because of your children, but they’re not going to be babies forever. They’re going to grow up, they’re going to become contributing adults are not adults, but contributing children to the house. So yeah, just make it a priority, and, and start getting involved in stuff, whatever that stuff is, whether it’s something at your church, maybe it’s a local community center. And, like, if you don’t have a direction, you will likely just fall into it. I mean, that’s how most people get jobs anyway. They Yeah, kind of just fall into it.
31:55
Yeah, I love that. And now what if? What do you think about passions changing?
32:00
Oh, they’re definitely gonna change, I think, okay, and mine do. I mean, I was all about crafting for a while. And that was something I could put my heart into. It was it was short lived. I’ve definitely put my passions into certain ministries at church. And those things, they ended, for whatever reason, whether we had to move or the ministry fizzled out. In Yeah, passions are gonna change. I mean, you just have to be willing to do what God brings you to, and he will bring you to things. And just when he brings it before you, and gives you the opportunity, if you’re looking for the opportunities, you’ll see it and then you can put your time and your life into it.
32:50
Well, I hope that you have been inspired to really dig in when those difficult seasons come and figure out what your passions are and figure out, you know, how you can move forward through this because God makes away he’s going to make away he is for your marriage. And I just believe that and encourage you to press on today. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. Talk to you on Tuesday. Bye bye.
33:17
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 and passion