Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
How They Held Their Marriage Together When Everything Else Fell Apart
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What happens to a marriage when life doesn’t just get hard—it breaks you?
In this deeply honest and emotional conversation, Cassia shares her and Cory’s journey of staying married while raising a medically fragile child, navigating grief after miscarriages, and confronting the realities of long-term caregiving. From ambulance rides every three weeks to learning how to love when there’s no guarantee of being loved back, their story is one of resilience, raw faith, and choosing to show up—day after day.
If you're parenting in hard circumstances, walking through suffering, or just wondering how couples stay connected in crisis, this episode is for you.
👉 Topics we cover:
Miscarriage and grief
Raising a child with severe disabilities
Faith in the middle of unanswered prayers
How marriage survives medical trauma
Learning to love in one direction
Practical ways to stay emotionally connected
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Kasia, I'm super excited to have you on. I admire you as a person to begin with, so I just know that the conversation we're going to have today is going to be impactful and important for several people. So happy to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's start with how long have you been married and how did you meet your husband, corey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have been married. And how did you meet your husband, corey? Yeah, so we have been married about 15 years It'll be 15 years in August, which is crazy.
Speaker 2:Congrats, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we met in college at North Park University in Chicago. We met like day three of school, like before classes even started, in the cafeteria. We both knew the same girl somehow and so plunked down next to her, on either side of her, and over the course of like a two hour conversation she had to get up and move because we were just like having this like really intense theological conversation.
Speaker 1:She was like I'm in the way.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the topic? Oh, we talked about different religions. We talked about um, it wasn't, it was kind of all over the place. I don't know if we were trying to outdo one another, but like it was a lot of like did, but did you consider so? Anyway, it was a lot of fun, um, but we got to be really good friends after that and um got married after our sophomore year. Yeah, which is young Um. Yeah, which I wouldn't recommend for most people, but it was really good for us.
Speaker 1:Um, and yeah, yeah. What was it that first attracted you to Corey?
Speaker 2:Um, honestly, that he loved Jesus, which is a very Christian answer. So please don't roll your eyes. I liked it. I liked a different guy in college and then just kind of realized that their faith backgrounds were taking two very different directions and so I just kind of like gravitated over to Corey and he was really intentional with me really early on. We just got to be really good friends, um, and yeah, started dating pretty quick, yeah, but you didn't friend zone them, you were friends without it was.
Speaker 2:It was all very quick, but like, yeah, there was probably about a three week period where I was like I'm not sure he's like I like you. I'm like, oh, okay, I'll think about it, I'll get back to you, I'm very busy, Um no, but we, we got, we just got to be really good friends. Like we had a group of us that would spend like on average four hours a day together. So it was like a relationship pressure cooker essentially just kind of forced you deep quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Um, so yeah, well, and I think also, getting married young forces you deep quick because you don't have stable jobs. You don't have like you were still had two more years of college we did, but you were married, which forced us into needing jobs real quick.
Speaker 2:I mean, the government smiles on people who get married young, apparently, like we were both eligible for a lot more in grants. So that was very helpful, but that's nice. But it also forced us into, you know, needing to get jobs quick. So I I wound up with an internship downtown Chicago. He wound up with a bunch of jobs around campus and we I don't know it it it definitely matured you a lot quicker than the normal college experience. Yeah, yeah, you made it work. Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really good. I know I feel I was, feel I was my. I mean, rob, my husband is two years older than me, but I was in the middle of my junior year, when we got married okay, so, and it was a little different because he what he did, he was a soldier, so he did have a job.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, that's right, so it was this whole thing.
Speaker 1:But I still feel like I grew up way quicker than my peers because I was married and I had to, like, figure out married stuff and all. No longer the support of my parents yeah, most, I mean they probably would have but I was like, no, we're going to figure it out, you know. Yeah, so you just kind of you figure it out, yeah.
Speaker 2:So y'all are married yeah.
Speaker 1:So y'all are married about five years before you started having kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we got married in 2010 and we actually had two miscarriages in like right before our oldest son. So our oldest son was born in 2015, but we'd had two miscarriages right before him 2015, but we'd had two miscarriages right before him. So, even up to the birth, both of us were kind of like I don't know if he makes it we were both just kind of walking into that, Like when, when Keller was born, he was purple and Corey was convinced he was dead for probably the first. You know how those first few minutes, like just everything seems so much longer. But, um, he was like, convinced that Keller was dead, Um, and we had had stillborn, you know, and I was like why aren't you like I'm crying Cause I just had a baby, Um, and he didn't do anything and he just stood there and I was like what is your deal? Like we just had a baby and it was cause he thought he had died.
Speaker 2:So, um, I think I think that those, those two miscarriages early on also kind of helped move us deeper together, but also um, deeper with the Lord, faster, if that makes sense. Like we had to wrestle with things like God, I, you know, I asked you to keep my babies, babies, safe. I asked you to protect them, I asked you to help them grow and they're both dead. You know, like that that was a hard thing for me to process through and to wrestle through of like, definitely very gun shy those first few months, Like, okay, are you going to be okay? Like, are you?
Speaker 2:going to be, I think it was. He was the easiest, sweetest baby he was probably he was a good, a good starter, starter child. Does that make? Sense Can you call him that? Probably not. He's your kid, starter kid. But he he, yeah, was a good initiation into into parenting. He's a sweet boy.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people struggling with their fertility right now. Yeah, I'm hearing more. I have a dear friend they're trying so hard and she's had one miscarriage and so just I didn't even know that was part of your story. Yeah, how did you like? How did you reconcile? Through God, I prayed for these children and for them to be healthy, and why did this happen?
Speaker 2:I mean and I'd love to give you a nice little bow on top answer, and here's why it was fine that my children died Like. I don't have that. I think in the ways that the Lord has been walking me through these different, you know, problems around my kids, like, I think an earlier version of myself trusted God because of something. I trusted him to keep us safe. I trusted him to protect my children. I trusted him to, you know, x, y, z, and I think I think through these things, he's teaching me to trust him period, full stop, if that makes sense. It's not, um, because he has always made sure that everything has gone to the way that I expected or I wanted. But I've seen his goodness in those stories and in that heartbreak and I think that's kind of what's kept me on.
Speaker 2:After we had the two miscarriages, I was really angry with God, I was really frustrated and grieving a lot and, um, we would have people come up to us, you know cause. We didn't tell anybody, we didn't like miscarriage was still I don't know, people weren't talking about it, and I think that's still true now. Um, but we would have people come up and be like so when are you guys going to have kids. How come you aren't having any babies? I mean, it's been five years. I was working full time, corey was working full time. It was like what's going on and I remember that just being devastating. Like I don't know if I can, like I keep getting pregnant but I keep losing them, and so I got it in my head.
Speaker 2:Here's how I will solve this. I'm going to make a quilt, naturally. Naturally, this is not my skill set. I like making things like. Quilts have to be very perfect and it takes a lot of meticulous like lining up of things. This is not my skill set.
Speaker 2:But I my mom got me a sewing machine and I sat and I worked on a baby quilt. And I just use that time to like, like, give the whole situation back to the Lord, to like pray over this quilt, because I assumed I was going to be giving it away to somebody. I was praying for the mom under that was going to use it, the baby that would sleep under it, things like that, just that they would be cared for and would experience the goodness of God, and it was really healing. And that quilt turned out to be Keller's baby quilt. You know, it was just like a very sweet full circle, and he used that time of just sitting in the grief, sitting in the frustration. I think that has been a lot more of my story than God putting nice pretty bows on top of things. A lot of times he just leads me into seasons of sitting in the frustrations, sitting in that grief and not yeah, not putting a nice bow on top. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you had your two miscarriages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, keller Keller.
Speaker 1:And you got pregnant again. I got pregnant again with another boy.
Speaker 2:Did you want like girls and then kept getting pregnant with boys or I don't know. I think like so, this, this is a girl, we I don't know after three boys so I had, you know, keller, elin and Jojo, I don't know. I was like, okay, I'm done, like I'm a boy mom, the end End of story, and like I get boys. Boys make sense to me. Like fart is always funny in our house, hilarious, always funny, and so no, I don in our house, always funny, um, and so no, I don't feel like either of us had any like we need to have a girl by any means. Good boy parents, we're satisfied, very cheerful with our boys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what was it like to get pregnant the second time with elon? So now you'd have like keller was good keller was good.
Speaker 2:Keller was healthy, he started out easy, developed a very large personality, um, so he he's been, yeah, a sweetheart. He's been a lot of fun. Um, elon, I don't know. I remember right before we had elon um, thinking like god, things are too cushy. Things feel really easy right now.
Speaker 2:Like we were just in this really sweet season of, like I was working part-time and Corey was working full-time at a church and you know, we had our sweet little boy. We had just moved into this beautiful little home in Elgin, illinois and, yeah, things were just really good. And I just remember getting very existential and being like God, are you going to have I just bought into the suburban dream, like, are you going to do anything with me? Like, what, what's your plan? Call me, let's go, let's go to a jungle somewhere and I will leave this. I will leave pregnant with my, you know, toddlers. This is going to be so good, what a great plan I have. Um, and just feeling restless, like what, what is your plan? Um, and little did I know like I was cooking Elin and Elin Um, yeah, I don't wonder if that wasn't part of the answer to that, like God, putting an anticipation on your heart of something about to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:And then what happened?
Speaker 2:So Elin was full term. We brought him home with us. He's born at 39 weeks. We didn't do any time in the NICU. He was, by all accounts, healthy pregnancy.
Speaker 2:The only thing they noticed in the hospital was that he kept failing his hearing test, which is super common because babies get fluid behind their ears, and so they were like, oh, it's okay, you know, like I had dropped a fork near him and he'd startled. Real bad. So we're like he can hear, like um. But then over the next few months, like he just kept failing hearing tests and they were getting more robust and um, at about at about three months, um, we noticed like he still wasn't tracking. Like my friend had a baby about three weeks before me and I remember sitting with her and her little girl and she's just looking at her and baby is looking right at mom and I was like man, elan doesn't do that even a little bit, like I don't think he can see my face. Um, and right about then I took him to the doctor. They were running a bunch of tests and the doctor noticed that his soft spot on top of his head had fully closed, which it shouldn't do at three months. You know, we need more time for the brain to grow. So about about this time, I think. So he was born in October.
Speaker 2:This was like January. Three different doctors called in MRIs Um, so we went downtown Chicago to Lurie children's hospital and we did two separate MRIs on him Um, and that was in the end of January. And two weeks into February we went in to meet with a neurologist Um and she showed us like she had a screen like this, and she showed us um pictures of Elin's brain Um, and it was even from like a layman's perspective. It was like, oh, there's a lot of black there, like you could see the tissue, but there was a lot of water, there wasn't a lot of brain there. And so she told us that in utero Elin had had a very specific malformation to a very specific gene. So this gene is like responsible for, like the development of the tissue. If you think of it like the scaffolding for the brain tissue to develop that had had a malformation. So the brain tissue had never developed. Like you and I, our brains look like spaghetti. So there's a lot of surface area, but he has whole patches that are smooth because that tissue never developed or um, sections within his brain are is just water because the tissue never developed.
Speaker 2:And so while we were sitting there having this conversation with her, she all of a sudden picks up the phone and starts calling somebody because he had apparently had a really dangerous kind of seizure in her office. It's called infantile spasms, that's a whole thing, but anyway. So she immediately sent us to have an EEG done which is like a full brain scan. I'm like handing my four month old over to a technician so she can hook him up with a bunch of wires and goop and then wrap him up and um, they're trying to check and see if he in fact did have the specific um electrical signature for infantile spasms, which he did. Um, so he's immediately put on a bunch of seizure medications. Um.
Speaker 2:So we came home that was um mid February. In March I was sitting upstairs in our attic working. He was right next to me and I noticed that it was like somebody had taken their pinky in his mouth and just kept pulling it to the side over and over again, like involuntary. He's doing like this over and over. So we called the neurology team and they're like you must come in, we need to see what's happening. And and we spent about a week in the hospital and realized that he'd lost his ability to swallow, probably from those seizures, um, I think. Over time we realized that when he would have these epileptic epileptic events, um, he'd lose his ability to swallow. So while we were there, they immediately put a tube into his nose. He wasn't allowed to breastfeed anymore, wasn't allowed to nurse, um, we had to do everything via his nose, um, from that point forward from that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's still a hundred percent Now. It's out of his nose, it's in his belly. He's got a port, so he's a hundred percent G tube fed belly. He's got a port, so he's a hundred percent G tube fed. Um. So yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:It was rough. Like over those two appointments we learned that what had been our sweet baby right, like he's got microcephaly, he's got epilepsy, he's functionally blind. Um, he's got something called CVI, so his optic nerves are about a third of the size they should be. He's got something called CVI, so his optic nerves are about a third the size they should be. He's got bilateral hearing loss, not entirely, but he's missing hearing in both ears.
Speaker 2:They couldn't tell us at that time but they're like he probably will be nonverbal or will have very limited communication. He has never developed the ability to sit or roll or anything. Everything about him has to be somebody doing it for him. And yeah, it was a really dark season of trying, like we thought this was bad. Oh wait, there's so much more. Oh wait, there's so much more, oh wait. You know, it was just like, yeah, we just kept finding out more and more things like about, about his situation and obviously like that's going to cause stress on any individual, let alone a young couple trying to like a hundred percent, trying to trying to navigate it.
Speaker 1:How did you navigate it Like? How did you navigate it Like? How did you navigate it with your marriage? Did it increase stress and increase like disagreements?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean because you know, when I think, as soon as you add kids to any relationship, like's already gonna be like a. Well, I wouldn't do it that way. I don't like how you, why did you, you know?
Speaker 2:But when you add somebody who's so, um, fragile and like chaotic in their how, how they display their disability, like that first year man, we had the ambulance at our house every three weeks. You, just because it was like he'd go into these 18 minute seizures, our, our seizure plan required, after we'd given so much rescue medication, we had to have EMTs involved, just because we didn't know how his body would respond to that much rescue medication. And so it was like we're both trying to also balance jobs. Corey was in the middle of a job change when all of this happened, like he was at the same church but he was moving to a different campus. And I'm trying to. I had just taken this like maternity leave from my job and it was like I'm back Also, everything's exploding job. And it was like I'm back also, everything's exploding, um. So thankfully, they were super gracious with me and like let me go take my thousands of appointments to figure out stuff with elin.
Speaker 2:So, anyway that that definitely added a lot of stress and I think in that season we had to figure out, like, what our philosophy of care was like. We learned that for me I I still believed very wholeheartedly that there was a magic doctor wand. All we had to do is take the sick child to the doctor, the doctor would wave the wand, the child would be better. So my, my MO is always like we've got to go to the hospital, we've got to go to the doctor, and Corey's like they're not going to do anything, like we've been to the ER several times now and all they do is say let us know if it gets worse, and they send us home, you know, and that just kept happening over and over again. So like trying to align on like ER level decisions every three weeks like that, that can cause some tension for sure.
Speaker 1:I can imagine. I mean, I can't imagine, but I can think that, or I. It would seem like when couples experience this, there's going to be the couples that it makes them stronger and there's going to be the couples that this tears them apart. And maybe you've seen it in some of the circles that you've, that you've been in Cause you're like way more in those spheres. Yeah, way more in those spheres. What kept y'all from pulling apart?
Speaker 2:Um, and I honestly I think there's a lot of grace in our story.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I think we I don't know that just was never an option. We'd fight, we'd have big blow up fights, but like separating or divorce was not one of those like well, how are we going to? How are we going to, you know, move forward together. It was like, well, how are we going to? How are we going to? You know, move forward together. And I don't know that's because any amount of like willpower on our part or just we're just so in love, I feel like just a lot of like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:The Lord was really gracious with us and like gave us what we needed for that day to um, to, to work through those different decisions, and kept us together, kept us at the table. Um, I think we we learned early on in our marriage like to stay in the same room, to not just like. I remember trying to storm off one time and was like no, no, this doesn't work for healthy marriage. I think keeping keeping short accounts has been really helpful for us. Um, not letting things fester, not letting things linger. I'm not necessarily saying like let's figure it out at bedtime, when everybody's tired and grouchy, but not letting things go more than like 24 hours before you've like talked about it, addressed it again, tried to see the other person's viewpoint, and that's just little.
Speaker 2:Little things like that have been really helpful for us to try and like. We still disagree. We disagree on a lot of things, but I think that's helped us kind of navigate through those. Okay, what you're saying makes sense. I guess I'll go with what you want to do you know, learn to compromise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can imagine, with the amount of the stress and emotions involved with with all of this, that there's temptation for like escapism behaviors.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How have y'all kept? And I thought of this when you said like we come back to it, instead of like escaping, or instead of leaving, or instead of whatever, like we come back to it. How have you like? Have you? Have there been any? Was that a part of your story where it was like man, it would be so much easier to do this thing, to escape whatever. That is yeah, but no, I'm going to make this intentional decision to like go do the hard thing.
Speaker 2:Um, I wish I could take credit. I really do. Um, I think I think it speaks to Corey's skill sets around this. I am very much the brooder. I will sit and feel icy for a long time, I'll hold on to things, and he's always been really good about coming alongside me and being like hey, you seem upset, let's talk, let's talk. You know we we had a couple in our church teach us. Have you talked about Fano F-A-N-O? So it's an evening check-in or do it every day. We've we fall in and out of this, but Fano has been a really sweet way to just clear the air. So it's feelings affirm need own.
Speaker 2:So you come in to the conversation. It can be 15 minutes. This is what I'm feeling Like. I'm feeling frustrated because my boss was an absolute jerk today and screamed at me. I'm feeling tightly wound right now Just kind of helps disarm the other person.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, you're not mad at me, you're carrying something else into this conversation. What can I affirm about something in you? Like? I affirm that you sat and played you know, go fish with jojo last night. Thank you for taking time for him. What do I need?
Speaker 2:I need to sit on the couch and be left alone for a little bit, like I just need, or I need you to help with the kids, or I need help with dishes or something and I own whatever, like where I know I've been wrong. And having him come to me and say here's what I need to own and he can say it better than I was rehearsing it in my head, just deescalates the situation for me. Almost every time where it's like, oh no, you do understand. I don't need to explain to you the 18 ways you've made me angry. You already see it and you've owned it and it just takes the temperature way down. So that was something that we I think there was an elder couple in our last church that taught us that and that's been really helpful for keeping those short accounts, keeping those regular conversations yeah, those regular check-ins, so things can't fester I love that it's really good, it's really good.
Speaker 1:I was talking with my dad today about felt security, as we do which is the you guys sound fun, super fun we're talking about attachment theory, okay and um, but it's what you're describing, which is we, like humans, are made to depend on someone else, like it's how God created us at the beginning, like I'm going to make a helper for you, so we're designed to need someone else, not like more than God, but like this is what this is what marriage is.
Speaker 1:But we need to know that that person is going to be there for us no matter what. So when cory comes to you and is like here's what I'll own, you feel seen and like he's there for you no matter what, so it's in.
Speaker 2:So it's just like increasing your security in the relationship and same when you do that to him, like it's increasing your security which right makes you stronger and allows you to like endure more chaos and storms yeah, it just helps you give more benefit of the doubt for the next time where it's like okay I can trust you to be self-aware, to see when you've done something wrong. You can also trust you that you see when I'm working extra hard in that like affirmation portion, like you see it so it just, it just keeps building that foundation of trust so that when he does something and I'm like, how could you?
Speaker 2:it's not, and I mean I still struggle with like giving him the benefit of the doubt, I have not arrived.
Speaker 1:But like.
Speaker 2:I think it definitely helps. Yeah For the next, the next fight. Yeah For the next, the next fight.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so now Elan is seven and a half, yeah, and you have Jojo, your four year old, and you're pregnant.
Speaker 2:Surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1:How, like, as you've processed through knowing the diagnosis and parenting and I mean now this is just your normal rhythm of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How I mean. What's your relationship been like with God, where it went from God I? Why didn't you like, why didn't you give me my first two babies? Oh God, thank you so much for my amazing first kid, yeah, next two babies, yeah, and then so it's like and why like God? Why this? Were you mad at God?
Speaker 2:I think so, I think so, and there's I mean it's in seasons, right, like I'll go through seasons of where it's like okay, this is just our norm, and you compartmentalize and you go um. But there are other seasons where it's like to what end? Like how long are we gonna do this? Like he's he's drooling himself, he's peeing to his knees or he's pooping to his armpits, like he's having seizures every single day. You know, like, at some point you're just like this is the good plan, this like it, it. It definitely ebbs and flows, and I think I went through one of those seasons at the beginning of this year where it was just like what's your plan here, man? Like what, what are we doing? Um, and again, like I don't have this beautiful bow on top. Where he's like and here's the master plan? Um, he hasn't shown me that yet. I'm still sitting in a lot of the already, but not yet.
Speaker 2:I'm watching him though, like, meet me in this season. He's surrounded us with people and with care and with support. He brought us to Tennessee. I had, you know, a medical team. I had an amazing educational team, like his school team. I had, um, everything set up in Illinois, and he just uprooted our family and brought us here, and in that process about two years ago he met us in ways that and so it's like, okay, god, you, you have us here, you have Elan still with us.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't have a, a nice, and here's why, like we're, we're still sitting in the in it, and maybe it's for stuff like this, maybe it's to walk alongside other families.
Speaker 2:Again, that feels trite to just be, like it's so I can shepherd the next crew you know like, but yeah, but he's also been steady and faithful in in the minute, in the um, not the minute details, but like he's not fixing the big hairy, audacious thing in the minute, in the um, not the minute details, but like he's not fixing the big hairy, audacious thing in the middle.
Speaker 2:But gosh, he's been. He's been so active in the periphery around that he's been surrounding us as we carry this big you know elan burden, um, that I don't know. I'm curious to see how he moves us through it and what the other side does look like, whether that's Elin healed and well and like miraculously gets to be one of our boys, or we do lose him and we walk through the grief of losing him, but he is made well on the other side of this life. You know, like, where he gets to experience what is good and what is whole um, you know, before the rest of us do like I don't, yeah, I don't have that um buttoned up yet yeah, but do you and cory process some of that?
Speaker 1:at times y'all like talk about that. Yeah, all of the like.
Speaker 2:I don't even know all of it like, like, what, what, what do you mean?
Speaker 1:like, what is our like, what is the future with elan and how are we going to navigate through these next stages and certain things.
Speaker 2:I'm so frightened of puberty that was one of the first things we saw when we came into this world was a mom and her daughter and they had her on the daughter on puberty blockers because it was trashing her epilepsy as soon as, like it's like a full restart for some of these kids where you'd had them on these different medications and you know whatever. So like that, I think that frightens me. I think it is a daunting idea and it like it feels horrible. But like to care for a fully immobilized, fully disabled adult. Like there's so much more support right now, like from the state, from the school system, from whatever for children, um, like I get I get in-home nursing at night, which has been an absolute game changer. That's one of the ways the lord's been really caring for us in this season is like we get to sleep at night eland doesn't sleep great, um, and as soon as they turn, I think it's like 18 or 21, your hours get cut. For a lot of these kids they don't, or then they're adults. You know what I mean. Like just the support.
Speaker 2:The support drops way off and so like I was talking to a mom who had a son very much like Elin a few days ago actually, and she lost him when he was nine and she was like I ache for him, I would do anything to be able to like hold him and kiss his little cheeks again and like love him. But just like we can't like keep people captive, you know, like our children, like you can't leave my house because I love you so much, like that's not good. She's like I don't wish him back for his own sake. I don't wish him back into a chair, 24, seven, unable to see, unable to speak, unable to or having seizures all the time. She's like I do love him and because I love him, I'm thankful that he's free from you know what he had been living in. And like that's a that's a really hard thing to wrestle with as a mom, cause you're supposed to be like no, no, I will fight until the very end. But there's like that, yeah Well, where you just start holding things a lot more open-handedly to be like, okay, god, like I I don't want that, but also I love him and I don't want him to be as miserable as as he. Well, he's not miserable, I shouldn't say it that way but like I want what's good for him, I want him to be well and to be whole and things. So, yeah, it definitely leads you into some more existential conversations, um, and we do talk about that stuff and I I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:About Corey, that he's I think he's probably 10 steps ahead of me usually when we have these conversations and it takes it just takes me longer to kind of parse through a lot of those thoughts and feelings and like, okay, now, what do we do with that? He's a lot more spockish than I am. I married spock. It's great, um, but that's that's been really helpful, like to, yeah, to be married to somebody who, who I don't know, can just get like parsed through that a lot quicker. I don't know he's, he's been much more the leader in this like emotional journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which has been really good.
Speaker 1:How has having Elan and loving Elan changed what you think about love?
Speaker 2:Hmm, I think, kind of like, like what I was saying, what my friend said before, where it's like love is so at least love for elan, looks a lot different than for my other kids. For my other kids that love is reciprocal. I get those, you know, dopamine hits of them saying mom, I love you, or like hugs or kisses. But for Elon, so much of our love is very one way. He doesn't know my face, he knows my voice and he'll semi respond to it.
Speaker 2:But that love, like seeing, seeing the Imago Dei in Elon, I think is what kind of pushes us forward to fight hard for him. You know, and we adore him, he is the sweetest little guy. He, he's probably my most obedient child, 100, um, he's, yeah, a delight. But I think I think that is something that we've learned in having him is like oh, oh, love, love isn't always reciprocal. Sometimes love is very one way and it's kind of like a good image of the way the father loves us, you know, way Christ loves us. It's like there's a lot of one way love, um, that we don't reciprocate back, that we don't reciprocate back Um, and yeah, I think he's, he's kind of drawn us into that, that picture a little bit more deeply.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that I. That's super powerful. I don't know that there's any person in my life that I could say like I've had a one way love towards them. Right, yeah. There's always something reciprocal about them, right, yeah, there's always something reciprocal about yeah, right, right, how beautiful, though I think that unlocks a deeper level of love, like you probably know how to love in a way different way than I know how to love, because you've done it with no, without expecting anything back necessarily from it.
Speaker 2:But, like.
Speaker 1:You do it daily, consistently. You want to like. You do it daily consistently.
Speaker 2:You want to like, and you do it because you want to, not because you have to, and that's, I think that's well, and please hear me, elan is magnetic, like he goes nowhere without people being like you are amazing, we get, he's got quite the following. We've got this little facebook page for him and people just like they've never met him before and they already adore him, you know. So it's, it is both and he is. He is a darling.
Speaker 1:Yes yes, he is, but also yeah, sure, yeah, yes, but also you are doing hard things too, thank you. How do you make time for yourself and for your marriage with all the kids, so many kids?
Speaker 2:So many kids, so many of them More coming. More, dear Lord.
Speaker 1:There's so many you have like neighbor kids that I see you hauling around sometimes.
Speaker 2:Oh my, goodness, it's a farm, do you have?
Speaker 1:chickens.
Speaker 2:Do you have chickens? I have chickens. I have a dog, I have a cat. If you want a dog or a cat, I will. We just offloaded nine hens and two roosters. How do you do it? Six hens and two?
Speaker 1:roosters. Okay, now really, how do you do all this?
Speaker 2:No, it's great fun. I recommend chickens to everybody. They're so low maintenance and they eat all of your kitchen scraps. They eat all of your uh kitchen scraps.
Speaker 2:They're just like little garbage disposals and they're like your compost and they're snuggly. There's one of our chickens no, please hear me, one of our chickens is very snuggly. Anytime cory comes home, she comes running up on the deck. Just put, just to him, not to the rest of us, just him. She'll come running up onto the deck and like ask to be picked up. It is the trippiest thing anyway. That is amazing, baby. The chicken is um, just the best. Uh, yeah, no, I don't know it's. I was very nice getting rid of the roosters to a kind farm, yes, where they're living their best life, right, no one has eaten them, nobody's eaten them. They're very fine, it's okay. All is good all is good.
Speaker 1:What was your question? How do you take, how do you have the time? Oh sure care of yourself and your marriage um yeah, I mean there's a lot of factors there.
Speaker 2:I think cory and I are both homebodies so we do like two things we work and we have our kids and it's pretty much it. There's not like golf and shopping and things. You know, like we're we're kind of just, we've kept things pretty close to home, um, and I think we just cory and I specifically like we just enjoy each other's company, like he is my best friend. I tell him everything, he tells me. I think everything like we, we just love to sit and talk to each other, which really helps, like I want to spend time with him Honestly, like part of God's immense grace to us in this move is we've gotten our backyard neighbors have become like surrogate grandparents to and like nobody's replacing their regular grandparents please hear me, but of course, but gosh, they're the ones watching my kids right now so I can be here you know they love elin, they ask for elin, they ask for the other boys to come visit.
Speaker 2:You know, like so, we never had that. In Illinois I had a young woman who would nanny for me and she, if she wasn't available, like I, I wasn't available. You know, um, our cause, our moms were out of state in Illinois too. Sometimes my mom would drive down from Wisconsin. But, like so, I think I think, having those people in our life who are fighting for us to have a date night, fighting for us to go away, being creative about date nights where it's not like I have to leave the house and I have to do X, y, z, it's like, well, maybe this week date night is, put the kids to bed and we have a glass of wine. Well, had a glass of wine, a glass of water, a glass of water, but the wine, but yeah, or you know we'll, we'll do stuff like that. Try and be intentional. The Fano has been super helpful. Um, we recently have started doing screen-free nights with the kids where it's like, okay, mondays and Wednesdays we're screen-free.
Speaker 2:So last night was Monday and we sat and Corey and Jojo played go fish and I worked on this baby's quilt and Keller done a quilt for every baby, yeah, when you sit and you pray over. It's been so good. It's been so good. I'm getting better at quilting. Keller's was pretty bad. You've had four. This is your fourth one. This is my fourth quilt, so you know it's still a B minus, but you know we're making improvements. So I was doing that and Keller was bopping around and Elin was sitting by. It was just really sweet family time.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, just keeping our sphere small, keeping few irons in the fire I think has been really helpful for us to juggle the chickens and the chickens and the kids and the jobs and the things you know.
Speaker 1:And the dog and the cat.
Speaker 2:Well, we might just, if you want, again very cheerfully give you the dog and the cat you are looking to offload.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense Like do less things better and what's more important than your family yeah. It's been really helpful In all of this. Have you ever doubted that God existed?
Speaker 2:Oh, not existed, maybe his kindness for sure. There've been times where I'm like, what are we even doing here? Like, but I think he he'll let me have my tantrum, you know, like punch a wall, kick a floor, like he'll let me scream my things and then he'll usher me very kindly back into his grace, very kindly back into his goodness In some way. It is rarely him fixing the big ugly thing that I'm screaming about, but he'll meet me again in that periphery, in the things surrounding that, saying I've, I've cared for everything around you. Trust me with the big hairy thing too.
Speaker 1:Do you ever still have that like vision or anticipation or longing of, like God, what's next? I'll move.
Speaker 2:Like, let's just move. Elizabeth Elliott and I were just caught through the world. Um, I do. I did actually this last summer. I was, you know, my youngest is coming up on four on preschool. I've got you know, my older two are in full-time school. I was, you know, I'm an accountant by trade. So I was like man, I'd love to do something else. And so I was like God, what do you want to do with me? What's next? Like, will I start writing about Elan? Will I start doing you know? Know, like, what do you want for me? So, like, seems to be a thing, I know, I know I keep being like god, I'm gonna do these big things for you. And then, like, like kids, yeah, but I think I think he ushered me very tenderly back into motherhood, you know. I think I was ready to move on to the next stage, where my kids were a little bit more independent, and he was like nope.
Speaker 2:I'm going to keep you very squarely in in this sphere with a very new baby, elin's functionally a six month old, you know. But I think my kids are still little and they do still need me and this has been him kind of gently redirecting me and I still get to do fun stuff like this where, like, I get to um um, talk about Elin and like, hopefully encourage other other families that are walking through things a similar story, um, but in this next season I'm not going to be working anymore, just going to be mom and I'm. I'm actually excited about that now. I think last summer me was like I will write and I will do things and, yeah, I'm excited for this next season of just being mom.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah. What are the key things you would tell someone listening who is also parenting with a difficult situation like a special needs child? They feel overwhelmed, tired, unheard.
Speaker 2:Does.
Speaker 1:God, see me. What would you say to that person?
Speaker 2:I would say I'm so sorry, the same thing that somebody said to me I'm so sorry that you're part of this club. There are a lot of amazing people in the club but nobody wants to be here. There are a lot of amazing people in the club but nobody wants to be here. I think it's really easy in this sphere to go like racing ahead and I know people always say take it one day at a time. But genuinely, we get grace for today. We don't get grace for three years from now. Take today, live in today, make decisions for today. We don't get grace for three years from now. Take today, live in today, make decisions for today.
Speaker 2:Um, I think where I get the most existential or angry or agitated is when I'm like running into all the different hypotheticals, like, what if this happens? What if this happens? What if he can't? What if he won't? What if they don't? Um, and I don't need to be making those decisions. I don't need to be going through those emotional exercises of like, what ifs? I need to deal with what is and I need to stay there now, like, please hear me, you need to. There are things you do need to plan in advance for and you do need to like, actually, you know, figure out what school you're going to go to and things, but giving those those things down the road, any emotional energy before they actually exist, I think, is what drains people in this world. Living in that fear, living in the unknowns.
Speaker 2:So, just remembering to keep yourself emotionally in today, and only today, and to remember that I think a lot of times, especially in the West, we are promised a very different bill of goods than what God actually promises. I think a lot of times we come into this going like God is for me and therefore he's going to do what I want him to do and therefore things are going to go well for me. And sometimes that is true, things do go well for us and things are good and it's because of his goodness and kindness. But sometimes he walks us through dark, dark seasons. Um, and that is very much part of the Christian story, it is not just from mountaintop to mountaintop.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of valley time, um, and remembering that, like his, his goodness goes with us. It doesn't save us from things, it goes with us. His presence is what matters. Um, yeah, that's. I think that's what I would encourage people with. And find people, find people who are walking it with you, like I think that this community has always been so welcoming to me, like I found people on Instagram, cause those were the only people walking through stuff like this that I could find and those relationships have actually turned out to be really healing. They, they get it. Yeah, yeah, don't do it alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent yeah.
Speaker 2:I just always love talking to you. Yeah, this is fun.
Speaker 1:I always go away from it Like I have learned so much and laughed so hard, and I think the combination is what makes you such a wonderful person. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Brian I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it's really this episode, I believe, is really going to help a lot of people who need it. And I appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it's really this episode, I believe, is really going to help a lot of people who need it. And I appreciate you sharing, being vulnerable, being open, seeing hope in the situation and wanting to share that with others. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me Appreciate it.
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