0:00:00 – Speaker 1
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0:00:39 – Speaker 3
Welcome to nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim On AM630, the word. Mandy is the author of Talk and Kim is the director of nextTalk, a non-profit organization helping parents’ cyber parent through open communication. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, visit our video series and subscribe to our weekly podcast at NextTalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
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Today we want to share something that’s hard for most of us. Being wrong Not that I’ve ever experienced it, but I’ve heard about it.
0:01:11 – Speaker 2
I’ve heard about it right.
0:01:13 – Speaker 4
We want to talk to you about how being wrong can actually make things right and, yeah, this really applies to all parts of life.
0:01:21 – Speaker 2
This is going to be a jagged pill to swallow.
0:01:24 – Speaker 4
I’m already sweating, but today we’re going to focus on marriage and because of that I get to do the show with my wonderful husband, Charles. Welcome back.
0:01:35 – Speaker 2
Hey, thanks. Who’s always wrong at marriage? Oh stop, so this is a great.
0:01:40 – Speaker 4
You don’t have to tell them the truth. Charles is a middle school vice principal at a local San Antonio middle school. He has been in education for like 18 years now Around there.
0:01:54 – Speaker 2
yeah, that’s right.
0:01:55 – Speaker 4
We’re married for 37 years.
0:01:58 – Speaker 2
No 4,900. I forget him. Yes, and we have three. We’re coming up on 20 years of marriage as well.
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We are, we are and we have three amazing little kids.
0:02:08 – Speaker 2
We really do, we really do.
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So we are very blessed to be here. We’re learning along with you and this has been a huge turning point in our marriage that we wanted to share with you by kind of walking you through this struggle that has taken 20 years to evolve into truly a blessing, and it’s something recent. For us that has been a switch and a turn, so we thought let’s talk about it on the show. That’s what we’re all about. So here’s current day. The perceived problem in our marriage, charles is consistently stressed and concerned about our finances. I would agree with that.
Like right now and in the future. That was like current day. What our biggest struggle was right.
0:02:46 – Speaker 2
I’m sorry, I lost track. I was thinking about our finances, you were thinking about it and stressing about it. Sorry, I was just thinking about numbers, sorry.
0:02:53 – Speaker 4
So my belief through this over the past few years has been like Charles has got to let it go, he has to trust God, he’s got to relax. He’s just a stress ball Like Charles is the problem.
0:03:01 – Speaker 2
And I’m like, can you just get on board with me? Can you just like get crazy about it for like just a couple of years and have no life for a short amount of time while we fix some things?
0:03:13 – Speaker 4
Live in the car. That’s a nice car, do it.
0:03:16 – Speaker 2
We have a van the seats recline.
0:03:19 – Speaker 4
So I think what we need to do is rewind and see how we got here. How do we get to this point of this struggle? Point number one just because it makes sense on paper does not mean it’s God’s plan for you. I think we can apply this to all areas of our life once again, but specifically for this we want to share how we got here by believing that. So flashback to a million years ago when we got married. We’re newly wed. I’m a radio DJ, which means I get up at like four in the morning and I’m home, though, by like 11 am. No kids, not much else happening, so not much to do the rest of the afternoon, whereas you are a teacher. At the time you were going back to your masters in pastoral theology who had started classes there. You were doing other things on campus, so coaching. So all that to say you were busy, because I not as much. So on paper, looking at the pros and cons in our conversation, we were like it makes sense for me to do the finances.
0:04:20 – Speaker 2
Yeah, it did at the time, yeah.
0:04:21 – Speaker 4
I have time, I like doing it. It’s kind of fun yeah.
0:04:26 – Speaker 2
And you took something off of my plate that I didn’t really have time to really focus on. I was really trying to get my career started. I wanted to get into teaching as much as possible, really learn my craft, and so you taking that off of my plate was very welcome, yeah.
0:04:40 – Speaker 4
And now we can look back also and see why that made even more sense. I was raised by a single mom who was very business minded, but because she was a single mom, she had to do everything. She had to do the finances, she had to work, she had to run the household. She did it all Fixed the car, pta president. That was my mom and so subconsciously I always thought like that’s my job, like I got to do all the things.
0:05:04 – Speaker 2
My family never talked about money Never, never spoke of it. In fact, when I talked to my mom today about money and her finances, she physically gets ill. Yes, so that was the type of reaction that she gets now and that just never came up in our house.
0:05:18 – Speaker 4
Right. So it really wasn’t a discussion, a healthy discussion. When we first got married it was just like, yeah, I’ll do it. That makes sense. And in my head I knew that I was supposed to do it because that’s what my mom did. And then I also my parents divorced when I was young and I would go and visit my dad once a year and that household wasn’t very healthy. But I didn’t want that to scare my mom. So I began this bad habit of protecting my mom from things that were happening in a different part of my life, and so that was. Another thing I brought into marriage was, if something is stressful or if something is hard, let me protect my husband from that. And so I saw that the finances could be considered stressful in hearts. I was like I will just do that, I’ll cover him and let him deal with other things and protect him.
0:06:08 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and I just kind of went with the flow. I just kind of figured that’s if she wanted to take charge of it. I was like man, I’m just that’s even great. I mean, it was fantastic that my wife wanted to kind of take over this responsibility and I didn’t have to worry about it so much.
0:06:19 – Speaker 4
Yeah, so here we are. This is looking at the past. That’s how we got into this situation. Great verse here about it making sense in the world basically Proverbs 16, nine the mind of man plants his way, but the Lord directs his step. I want to add to that, if you let him Like, we never sat down and prayed together and said, lord, what makes sense for our household? What do you want for our house and our finances? How do you see this working in our marriage? We never had that conversation or that prayer.
0:06:47 – Speaker 2
You know, and I think I don’t know, it’s just like we just got it. We just accepted the societal norms of you know, we were making enough money right and we were buying enough things and so on the outside, like what we had kind of fit our lifestyle and we really didn’t struggle right, we weren’t like you know, at least on the outside it didn’t seem like we were hurting. You know, we always lived in a nice or decent place, we always had nice cars to drive and we always had food on the table.
0:07:18 – Speaker 4
And that’s when complacency sneaks in, Because you look around, you’re like everything’s okay.
0:07:24 – Speaker 2
Everything’s fine.
0:07:25 – Speaker 4
You put it in neutral and glide through life and eventually you’re gonna hit a tree. When you go into neutral, when you get complacent about what God wants for your marriage and your life, you will crash and burn. It’s just a matter of time. And that’s kind of takes us in to. Oh, you know what? I wanna share this.
I was reading about this this morning, jeremiah 2911. We all know that verse, or at least most of us do, for I know the plans I have for you. But I read the message version this morning and I thought this is good. This is good for what we’re talking about. It’s God saying I know what I’m doing, I have it all planned out Plans to take care of you, not to abandon you. Plans to give you the future you hope for. And that goes back to that Proverbs verse. If we’re going to God in prayer over every little thing, even the things that seem easy, lord, you know the plan, you want what I want. You know, in other words, you know the desires of my heart, but you want what’s best for me and you want to use me in this way. If we’re going to him in that way, then he’s going to help us create that path, when we’re saying Lord, this is our path, could you please bless it. That’s when we’re doomed to hit the wall.
0:08:36 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and some. I don’t know if it’s necessarily like a crash and burn type of thing. I think, though, sometimes we just wake up and we realize that we’ve been on a course that has strayed so far away that you wake up and you’re like, wow, I mean God intended for us to be on a path like way, way over there. Like if you’re looking down at a map and you know, like your GPS is like that nice, pretty blue line, and you kind of went off track, and you look at like where your destination should have been, and it’s not so much you crash and burn, but you just go, wow, I mean, we’re nowhere near anywhere close to where we’re supposed to be right now.
And I think that’s sort of the realization that I had very recently, and I don’t know what it’s been about, like, you know, maybe turning 40 last year and you know, seeing our kids get into well, they’re not so much like little kids anymore. You know they’re starting to talk about what they want to be when they grow up, and now we’re really starting to think about, like, how are we going to help them with college, if anything? Or, you know, not just financially, but also being that really great steward and mentor for them to kind of pick the right school and to pick the right profession and to, you know, help them picking the right spouse, and you know, and these all these things are really coming at me and going like, oh, my goodness, are we are? We are we were supposed to be. This is where God wants us to be right now, and I kind of feel like we needed to make a huge correction, like a huge, you know, re-steering of the ship, so to speak.
0:09:57 – Speaker 4
Well, and that kind of brings us to where we are now in the story. So that’s how we started with our finances and our life, and then fast forward to recently. Ongoing issues should alert us that it’s time to do the work. Yeah, and so this has been a struggle for many years, and I tell you what recently I have really been digging into the word about it because it’s gotten worse, like and it’s kind of what we were talking about because we were not aligned with what God wanted for our life and our finances. It’s been a struggle and it’s been culminating to this frustration and anger and dissension Something that I never thought of all the issues even though that’s a number one reason for divorce because we were just going with the flow. I thought that’s not us. You know, finances are not something we argue or disagree about. And then here we are, fast forward years and years later and it’s one of our biggest struggles.
0:10:52 – Speaker 2
It is a big. Well, yeah, it has been right.
0:10:54 – Speaker 4
It has been. So here’s this ongoing issue that’s getting worse. That kind of a thing should alert you, like I need to not continually say what is wrong with you. Why are you like this? Why won’t you change? But now I need to do the work Lord show me.
0:11:11 – Speaker 2
Yeah.
0:11:12 – Speaker 4
Make it known to me what is my role here.
0:11:15 – Speaker 2
Right and knowing a role I think is really important, because I think it’s not so much about admitting mistakes or asking for forgiveness. I think it’s just about a matter of being able to detach, like let’s take, you know, take an outside perspective and look at, like, what we’ve been doing and have I been doing my role as a husband and as a father? Have I been doing that the right way? And I’ll be honest with you, after I kind of detached and I looked back into our marriage, I wasn’t doing the right things and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
0:11:45 – Speaker 4
And it wasn’t on purpose.
0:11:46 – Speaker 2
Right, and it wasn’t on purpose. I just feel like we were kind of like on that autopilot mode for so long that I had forgotten or I just had never really thought about taking up the responsibilities that I needed to take. I let you handle too much of the burden of the finances and you were doing so much of it alone, mixed with your desire to really cover up messes and to protect and to kind of like shield me from bad yeah take stress off and shield me from bad news that here I am going.
Man, this is really not for you to burden all by yourself. You know I need to step in here and I need and I want to be a part of it. You know I can’t just be the one who’s worrying and stressing about money and then not really coming to terms with finding a solution with you.
0:12:28 – Speaker 4
Well, and here’s the beautiful thing about that Like I began digging into the word and that became my prayer Lord, show me what my role is here. Because I was blaming Charles in my head more than anything. But man, he’s really got to get it together. He’s so stressed about this. Why is he so stressed? And I literally felt like the Lord spoke into my heart. You play a big role here. And I was like, oh Lord, you’re wrong. Like, are you a crazy person? No, no, it’s not me. I’m doing my best, you know. I’m just trying to be helpful.
0:12:56 – Speaker 2
Right, all the things you know, but not letting me be that role, I think, and that’s so you, your role ended up being a lesser role.
0:13:04 – Speaker 4
Well, yeah, well, and being able to talk that through with you, going to you and saying you know what, all the stress that you’re feeling and the anxiety and the dissension between us, I think it’s because I’ve been trying to cover you and I’ve been trying to be. We’ve been out of sync in our role. Like you said, I’ve been trying to carry this burden. And let me make it clear here this may be a different struggle in your household. It doesn’t have to be money, it could be parenting, it could be your sex life, it could be all kinds of different things where there’s something’s not right and it’s an ongoing issue.
Whatever, it is the act of doing the work and getting in the word and praying and saying, lord, show me what my role is, and then being able to come to your spouse and saying, like I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I have been doing this thing all this time, thinking it was helping and it was really creating the stress because you didn’t know all the details. And also you know I want to make it clear we would discuss our budget every month, we’d go through it, you know all these things, but then I was Actually paying the bills and when things would come up. I would just fix it and not think it was a big deal.
0:14:11 – Speaker 2
Right and then big picture, things weren’t happening. So some of our bigger goals that just were never happening.
I’m like so what’s going on here? I thought you said this was happening. It’s not, you know. So we ended up having to really kind of have a nice, I Think it. Well, we’re still in the middle of part of that transition, but we’ve had a nice transition, I think, a pretty smooth one and sort of the role reversal here. Yeah, and it kind of admitting that I needed to take more responsibility. I was wrong and just assuming that you were just gonna go ahead and do this on your own, especially as life has changed for us since our newly wed days yes, right, and so you’re now, you know, with, with the three kids and you know nextTalk and doing so much in a much busier house and and my role as an administrator in public education, it’s, it’s almost like my workload has kind of stayed the same, even though the stressors are different. So it’s, it’s it’s time.
It’s time it’s time for us to kind of admit that maybe we need to be shifting. We need to start doing some things and this might sound like very traditional norms for a lot of people out there, but, believe it or not, kind of going back to a more traditional norms where I took the responsibility of the day-to-day Kind of finances and, well, big picture and the day-to-day, but you also kind of having a say in it, has really kind of helped alleviate a lot of that stress if you’re just now tuning in, this is nextTalk radio at 2 pm On a m6 30.
0:15:36 – Speaker 4
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0:15:58 – Speaker 3
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0:16:18 – Speaker 4
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Today, my husband Charles joins me Mandy is off at the spa, not really and we are talking about how being wrong can make things right, and we’re walking you through one of the biggest struggles of our marriage.
How it began in our marriage with just something that made sense on paper I’m going to do the finances because I have the time but that didn’t mean it was God’s plan for our marriage, and so it began to become more of a stressor and an issue as time has gone by, and so then that brought us to point to ongoing issues should alert us that it’s time to do the work, like get in there, pray about it, ask God to show you, really examine your life and think about what is my role in this, and I honestly, over the last 20 years, never would have thought any of this had to do with me doing something wrong or not doing something right, and so it was a really like come to Jesus moment for me when I felt like I was saying hey, kim, the way you’re handling this is not right and it is causing your husband stress, anxiety and fear, and that’s never something I want to do, and so it was really one of those times where I had to just be completely open to letting God show me what I could do differently.
0:17:43 – Speaker 2
And I think this might be a challenge to a lot of the men out there who were very fortunate, like myself, to marry some spouse who really likes to take on issues and problems, because you’re much of very much a problem solver and you very much like to take an active role in solving a lot of our problems. Yeah, you’re a great fixer, and I think a lot of times what happens to guys and this me included is that we end up becoming kind of passive with some of the whatever issues are going on. So we become sort of passive in the raising of our kids, we become sort of passive in the day to day ins and outs of like normal house stuff. Or we become passive in the money side of things. Or we end up just kind of becoming passive, passive, passive.
And next thing, you know we don’t really have an active role in our own marriage and so we end up just sort of being passive and just doing whatever our wives want. But that’s really not what my wife wants. My wife does want to fix things, but she also and I don’t want to speak for you here, but I think you want me to have a more active role in everything that we’re doing and since we’ve kind of taken on more, or since I’ve been taken on more of an active role in this, it’s really allowed, I think, a little bit more balance into our lives and has allowed me to kind of reexamine some other things that I maybe need to take a little bit more of an active role in, you know, and not to take any of that away from you, but to do it together.
Share the role appropriately Right, Share the role appropriately right. We don’t want marriage to be like, okay, you do the dishes, I do the grass, kind of thing. I’m not doing that, you know. I’m just talking about like on the bigger things, like what can I do? Well, how can I be a more active participant in this? And to accept the fact that maybe I was a little too passive in that role, which is wrong I want to have a more active participation in the way that our kids are being raised. I want them to know me. I want them to really enjoy their dad. I want my wife to really enjoy her husband and to know that, you know we are equally yoked here and that it’s not just her like running around like a crazy person and then when I come home, you know it’s just like another mouth to feed or something like that.
So I really want to make sure that I’m doing everything that I can, that God has really charged all the husbands out there to be, you know, is an active participant in the house. An active participant and not just bringing home finances and and bringing home the bacon, so to speak, but just everything right.
0:19:52 – Speaker 4
So true and there’s such a covering with that. I will tell you, folks, the moment that we had this realization and we both realized our role in this problem and we’re able to talk about it and talk through it, and we made a decision and a correction and implemented that, it was like I could see a physical weight lifted from my husband. That has been there for the last how many years. The stress and anxiety. It’s not that he’s not still concerned about our finances or that it’s not still a big part of what we’re working towards changing, but the anxiety, the stress, the not knowing. It was just like a new day and that’s the. Being wrong can make things right. Like us. Being able to be wrong together in a respectful way has really made things right and it’s such a cool thing to see.
0:20:43 – Speaker 2
When I really enjoy, not just like taking that burden off of you, but I actually enjoy looking at those numbers and really kind of taking that responsibility. Maybe I should have been doing this all along, but at the time I was just like, oh, I don’t really know what I’m doing and Kim wants to do it so great. And over the years it’s like, well, you know, maybe I should have more of an active role in this, and it ends up turning out to be quite a great switch for both of us and hopefully our family together, right, kind of going forward.
I, you know this only took us 18 years to figure it out.
0:21:10 – Speaker 4
Yeah, you know, I tell you marriage is an everyday decision. One of my favorite verses in marriage that I go to a lot, and lately it’s just been really blessing me James five, 16,. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Because, guess what? God wants your marriage to be fruitful and blessed and healed. And he gives us the gift of marriage as the earthly blessing of closest thing of what it’s like for his, his love for us, just being able to be known and loved. There’s nothing like that. And when we’re able to, in a safe place, confess our sins to each other and work through our problems, healing comes, and that’s incredible.
0:21:55 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and being vulnerable with your spouse and just let them know. Like you know, I don’t think I’m doing a very good job at whatever. X, y, z. Could you pray for me on this, or could you maybe help out in this way and just come to them humbly and just say, look, I might have been able. I was doing this for years. I thought I had a good handle on it, but I want to make sure that I’m leading my family, or our family, the right way. Could you take a look at this with me?
You know, and so it’s really kind of nice. I always feel bad sometimes, like when I come home and the kids will ask me a question and I’ll be like, yeah, sure, go ahead and do it. And then one of the three will be like but mom said that we couldn’t until this and this and this was done because I didn’t know. We didn’t communicate that little. The kids are really good about who to ask, right, they know exactly. Hey, dad didn’t know that there are certain parameters in place for us to play video games today. Maybe he’ll let us play and I’m like sure, go for it, it’s Saturday, go for it. Sounds great, yeah, you’re never. And then you’ll come down and be like why are you guys on the video game? And dad let us you know, and that we weren’t on the same page and that sort of thing.
So those, those things are little tiny things that are like obviously, don’t worry so much about those things, because those are like little, acute, little things that kind of happen along the way. But we’re talking more of like the big things. Come to each other humbly, come to each other and and and try to receive your spouse with the grace that that God has given you All right. And so just return that grace and just think about, like how much courage and strength it takes for your spouse to come to you and just sort of in total weakness and in total vulnerability, just say I don’t think I’m doing a good enough job with this. Can you help me out with this? Can you do this with me? You know, and then you know, true love and a true spouse will then lift each other up, right, just like James says.
0:23:34 – Speaker 4
It’s so true and I I want to. I want to say that one of the things that blessed me the most in this process of working through this like 20 year problem and having this realization, was when I came to you and said I am really sorry, I think I’ve been doing this thing, I think I’ve been trying to protect and cover and haven’t done a good job with these, and we got to make this right. You could have easily been like what, what, what, and you could have put me down. You could have made me feel ashamed, you could have done a lot of different things, which would be honest reactions, but instead you received my apology graciously. You then turned around essentially and said Lord, what’s my role here? So you didn’t just say you blame me and say you’re right, it’s been all your fault. We need a new norm.
0:24:32 – Speaker 2
Yeah, well, how could I if I wasn’t doing the right thing either, right?
0:24:34 – Speaker 4
Well, yeah, but you that’s what I’m saying. Like, in a marriage, a healthy marriage, creating a safe place means not just accepting an apology and going with it and being like, yeah, you’re right, you’ve been wrong, but looking at your role in it also, praying through that, letting God heal that, and then being able to come to a new norm that blesses your marriage moving forward. And that’s that full circle moment. That’s just such an incredible thing, not only for a marriage but to model for your kids.
I mean, that’s just yeah it doesn’t get much better than that.
0:25:05 – Speaker 2
It’s been a good one.
0:25:07 – Speaker 4
So another verse that I think is really great here is 1st Peter 4, 8. Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins, and that’s kind of what you were saying. Like love in a marriage, when you’re able to come to your spouse and just be completely transparent and humble, it kind of washes away all of those feelings.
0:25:29 – Speaker 2
I’m just moving forward from here on out. It’s not about what we did in the past and not about, you know, doing something wrong. It’s just about doing this together right, and just accepting like, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s try this new plan, let’s try the new path and let’s let’s re re examine our roles here and see if we could come up with a better solution working ourselves together. Yeah, absolutely.
0:25:50 – Speaker 4
So I would say that I never thought I would say this because I like to be right, but being wrong really can make things right in the context of what God has planned for your marriage. Thanks for being on the show again today.
0:26:01 – Speaker 2
Oh, you’re welcome, Always fun.
0:26:02 – Speaker 4
Thank you.
0:26:04 – Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim on AM 630, the Word. You are not alone, trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. Find our video series and podcast at nexttalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
0:26:53 – Speaker 5
Let us lead you through this difficult time. Go to iltexasvsorg. That’s iltexasvsorg.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
