138. 2025 Year End Podcast Update: Holiday Break, Big Dreams, New Year Plans

As 2025 comes to a close, Jay and Lauren sit down to reflect on a full and meaningful year—both personally and professionally. From holiday time with family, to celebrating their daughter’s engagement, to the launch of Lauren’s book, and the powerful impact of the BraveCo Rite of Passage event in Florida, this episode is an honest year-end update.

They also share what listeners can expect from the podcast in the new year—how their focus is evolving, what they’re excited to explore, and the kinds of conversations they feel most called to lead in the season ahead.

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Transcript

Welcome Back And Why We Paused

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We're the Balatons and we are passionate about people.

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Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.

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But that's not always what comes easiest.

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We know this because of our wide range of personal experience as well as our years of working with people.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family, and parenting to encourage, entertain, and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Welcome back, everyone, to dates, mates, and babies with the Valitons. Y'all, we uh missed you guys.

Family Milestones And A Full December

SPEAKER_02 0:31

It's been almost a month. We are realizing it has been almost a month. But listen, you guys get this. Life happens. It does. And today we are gonna give you an end-of-year update. We have absolutely been less consistent this last quarter of 2025. And I would say we're sorry, but we're not really that sorry because we're doing our absolute best.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Yeah, we're hanging on here.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Here's the spoiler alert. Spoiler alert is we are not done with this podcast. We are only just beginning. And actually, the last couple of years, this podcast has been such a fun project amidst some brewing work. Like we have been kind of the last couple of years ramping up to where I feel like we are today with Brave Co world and some of our marriage ministry world and some of our other projects. This podcast has run right alongside some of those other things that we were just working on, just beginning, really. And this last quarter, we hit a spot where there was so much momentum on a couple other things that were on our plate that we had to actually let something go. And so, unfortunately for you guys and us, honestly, we love doing this. Our podcast had to get less consistent for a couple of months. Um, but here we are, end of year. We're really excited to kind of tell you guys about some of the things going on in our world because we know a lot of you listen and follow and pay attention to the things that we're working on. So we want to kind of give you a heads up like what's going on in the Valetin world and kind of what to expect in the new year.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, it's great. Um, we hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas. So we should start there. Christmas for the Valatins. Merry Christmas was so awesome. It was one of our best years. We have a new baby added to the mix with my son. You guys know about that. Um, so that was just so precious. And then my daughter, Riley, got engaged to Logan. And so that's just so exciting.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah, Riley and Logan got engaged on the 20th of December. So um, pretty much from Thanksgiving on, we knew that Riley was gonna be getting engaged and that we would be planning some celebrations before Christmas.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Um, and then right after the engagement and engagement party, we celebrated Christmas with Jason's family and then with our family at home. So it was a very full week, a very full month, honestly. December was just absolutely packed. But we hope you guys had a really merry Christmas too. It was a sweet one.

Writing Past The Picket Fence

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Babe, why don't you tell them about your book?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Okay. So, first update. Last winter, I wrote a book. It took me from February to May. And I actually did uh a good friend of mine, Havela Cunnington, runs an author's school once a year. It starts in February, and so this is a good uh tip off for anybody that's ever thought about writing a book. I cannot recommend her author school more highly, especially for people like me who I knew I had great content, but I didn't know where to start. And it felt so overwhelming. Well, I did Havela's author school last February, and essentially she tells you, hey, if you do what I say, you'll write a book in three months. And I almost didn't believe it was 16 weeks. I guess it's four months. Um, I almost didn't believe it was possible, but I just gave it a whirl. And I'm telling you what, guys, if you stick to it, it works, you'll do it. It works. It was fantastic. So I I spent last winter waking up at 4 30 in the morning, about four days a week, probably on average. And I wrote my book between 4 30 a.m. and 6 30 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

In the closet.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

In my closet while the rest of my family slept. Those were my only uh working hours where I could be alone. So I wrote a book. It's called Past the Picket Fence, P-A-S-T, The Picket Fence. I don't know what the subtitle is yet. I'm working on that. Um, and I wrote it, it's I'll tell you what it is in a minute, but I'm gonna tell you where I am in the journey. So I wrote the book, first draft, then summertime hit, and wow, I needed a break. I thought I was gonna plow through the editing phase and get it out. We were gonna self-publish. Um, well, I needed a break for the summer, so I did not edit anything until early fall. And then finally finished my second draft in November. So, right now, current day, where I sit is um my book is in the hands of an amazing editor, and she is working on it. And then on January 26th, I begin the next phase, which is layout and design. And I'm hoping uh to have my book in readers' hands by mid-March. So we're kind of on a fast track to finishing up this self-publishing book project of mine. I'll tell you a little bit about it. Should I tell them?

unknown 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

Okay.

Themes Of Becoming And Surrender

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Give them the reader's digital. So past the piggy fence. Reader's digest version is I think most adults, but my book is definitely geared towards women, a lot of women get to a phase of life where you've had a lot of dreams and a lot of ideas about what your life is going to be like. And around the age of 30, earlier for some, later for others, you get to a spot where you just have this realization that life does not go as planned often. It's not that it's worse, maybe it's even better, but different. It never goes as planned. And I think as a woman, especially I'll speak from my own, I'm only a woman, so I only know this part. From a woman's standpoint, I think it can be quite disorienting to reach that spot where you go, wow, nothing about my life has gone as I imagined. What do I do with some of those dreams that I've carried since I was little? Do I let them die? Do I let them go? Do I let them transform and morph into something new and different? What do I do with it? And how do I walk with God integrously and hope-filled in a season where some things feel like they're falling apart? And I think a lot of women hit that space in their 30s. And so I did a little uh, we're gonna call it like a quarter life memoir, a half-life memoir. And I have I'm really excited about it. Uh, it's largely to do with my journey of motherhood, but I think that book will translate to women who are even in different seasons of life. Um, anyways, that's the premise of the book. It's gonna be out mid-March, but that has taken quite a bit of my mental energy. And even in the next couple of months, it'll be getting a lot of my time as we're kind of finishing out the editing process.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

The process of becoming, becoming who God's called you to become and stepping into um the place in which God wants to stretch you and grow you and build you. Uh, I think for all of us, whether it's a man or a woman, that's such a challenging journey. Yeah, but a necessary one. And you did such a great job in the book, just walking people through the process and the journey of becoming and learning how to deal with grief and learning how to have hope and partner with faith and get through hard times and seward good times. And so this is really gonna help a lot of women.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, it's really it is the process of acknowledging, recognizing, and carrying dreams, becoming who God's called you to be in order for those things to actually come to pass. And but ultimately getting to a place of maturity where we we aren't afraid to surrender and let go.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Ooh, I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Surrender and let go. It's awesome. Um, that's been a big, a big part of our process, and you guys will hear a bunch more about it. Yeah, we'll do some podcasts about it coming up, uh, and then of course a book launch. And uh so I'm coming soon. Yeah, really excited about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Spring 2026.

Building A Rite Of Passage Movement

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah. Um I have been working on a rite of passage.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah, why don't you give the backstory?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Um, well, every year we do our Brave Co conference in June. And uh here in Reading attached to our Brave Co conference, a part of our Brave Co conference is this rite of passage for young men 12 to 18 years old, um, or 19 really. And it's the most powerful thing that we do. We have uh it's a 3.1 mile tough mutter course. So it's 30 obstacles that these young men run around. And really what it is, is it's a welcoming young men into manhood.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, you know, the an initiation.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

The greatest gift that a father can give a son is a clear pathway into manhood, right? Yeah, because we believe that no young man should stumble his way into manhood. Unfortunately, so many do. And if you don't mark if you don't give a young man a path or mark uh uh a journey for him, then he tries to find that his own way, in his own path. And we all look we've seen just millions of examples of that. So, anyways, our rite of passage is so incredibly powerful. Imagine five, six hundred grown men uh surrounding this course and these young men running it, and just these these young men just getting cheered on and championed, and the stories are so wild. Every year, they are just unreal. So powerful grown men crying, these young men like I have this young man, his name's Caleb. He was the last guy to to finish this last year, and he wrote us uh three months later and said, uh, doing the rite of passage absolutely changed my life. Um, he was throwing up while he was doing it, he didn't want to quit. He had all these men surrounding him, loving on him.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

He came without a dad, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Uh without a dad, and he has club feet really bad. And anyways, it was the hardest challenge that he'd ever done, but he finished it and completed it. And he said, After that, um, like this last year I got straight A's of high school, and it's been the greatest like champion and change in my life, which is so I mean, golly. You just cry like watching it and listening to it. Yeah. And so, anyways, I I really wanted to take it on the road. Um, because I just I just so want to create a movement where fathers, uh, pastors, leaders, coaches are going, Man, how do I how do I give this gift to a man? How do we welcome our young men in? And so, long story short, I built a partnership through the grace of God with Spartan Races. And Spartan is the premier um outdoor obstacle course. Um and so they have a million people come to their races a year. They have 270 races a year, all over the country, all over the world. Yep. So they said anywhere that we have a race, you guys can come do it. We'll support it, we'll sponsor it, uh, we'll do all the setup, all the teardown, which was crazy. And um so Jacksonville, Florida, February 28th, y'all. Listen, we are going to do a two-day event. Basically, it's uh um a Saturday to Sunday. We're going to walk young men through our seven pillars of initiation. We're gonna break a wild horse in an arena. Todd Pierce is gonna do it, it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Um riding high ministries.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yep. We will um well on Sunday, all the young men will run the Spartan race. We got sponsored by SOG Knives. So every young man that runs will get a knife. It's part of um pillar number six, you're responsible for your strength.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

So we talk about what do you mean by pillars?

Sponsors, Curriculum, And Event Details

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Um, our seven pillars of initiation. So number six is you're responsible for your strength, right? There's these pillars that every man needs to know as he's growing into becoming a man. And so um the knife represents your ability to protect yourself and provide for yourself, and so we do a whole thing around the knife. Well, SOG Knives stepped up and was like, we want to sponsor this event. So cool. Gatorade sponsored us. We had someone cater the whole event for free. So, fathers and moms, if you're looking for a place for your husband, mentors, youth pastors, gosh. Yep, if you're a pastor, if you want to take a moment, a weekend, and go initiate a young man in your life and do it with all these other men and young men, there's gonna be no better place. So um, that's Jacksonville, Florida. But the best part of all of this is that when we are done with this race, pastors, leaders, fathers, mentors, they all get access to our seven pillars of initiation curriculum. It's a seven-week curriculum that we built, it's incredible, and you get it for free. So it just comes with the registration. Registration price is$179 for a father and son, for a mentor and mentee. We are losing$50,000 on this event, literally, just because we wanted to make it cheap enough that everyone could afford it. So I'm super stoked about this. Uh, if you're interested in bringing someone or telling someone, um, they can go to braveco.org. Or honestly, if you want to connect somebody to me, if you're if you're a pastor and you want to know more about it, um, we have lots of pastors coming from all over the place. Uh, you could just email me, jason at braveco.org, and I'd love to connect with you. So if you're gonna, if you want to bring a group, um every son and well, every young man is in a group of 50 with leaders and co-leaders. We can put all of your men in a group together. So it's really exciting. I can't wait for it. It is.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, it's kind of the pilot flagship event for right of passage on the road. And Spartan Races was trying to get Jason to sign up for what seven events in a year.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Well, they have eight, eight other events that they want us to go to every year.

A Surprising Pull Toward New York City

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah. Um we're like, wow, let's try one first and see how it goes. It's gonna be incredible. It's gonna be amazing. The favor and the momentum on this. Here's here's the deal is when I as I think about it, it feels like a perfect setup for where we are at in history today. Like what is needed right now is that a generation of boys would be fathered into manhood to bring solution, change, hope to a society in desperate need of leadership. Desperate need of good leadership. We don't get good leadership in our nation unless sons and daughters are raised to become incredible leaders.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

It's true. So um, I guess I should say my dad's gonna be down there, he's gonna speak. Um Steve Weatherford, NFL champion for the uh New York Giants, Super Bowl champion. Uh, he'll be there to speak. We have the Helzers, so Jonathan and Melissa Helzer. Sorry, not Melissa, Jonathan Helzer and the Cageless Birds will be there to lead worship. Um, it's gonna be an outrageous, outrageous event.

Saying Yes Without Perfect Clarity

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, over the top. So you'll probably hear more about that. That's top of the mind for us. Huge update in our world, taking loads of Jason and his team's energy and time, but my gosh, worth it. Like we just have so much anticipation over that. So, another thing that I feel like we should let you guys know about, just I mean, you never know. It's funny how God works. Sometimes you know, we went into 2025 with a lot of anticipation. We knew it was gonna be a big year. We knew that it was gonna be an exciting year. We felt like if in 2023 when my mom died, and 2024, as we were kind of moving through a grief process and trying to re-establish life after tragedy. 2025 felt like a shift. We knew it was gonna feel like that. There was a lot of celebration in 2025, a lot of milestones, a lot of life, a lot of new movement, which we needed. We were ready for that. And it was that one of the things that came out of 2025 was a kind of a surprise assignment, might be the wrong word, because we're still looking for a lot of clarity, but a surprise heart, I would say. Yeah, I'll tell you about that, but kind of a surprise mission field that got dropped in our lap uh to New York City. So I'll tell you what happened. I had a dream in February of 2025 that Jason and I were supposed to quote live in New York City for a month. And when I woke up from the dream, I felt like it was from the Lord and that it was an invitation to explore spending time in New York City this year. So in October, we took our two little kids for two weeks to New York City. And we have we have really good friends who live in Manhattan. Uh our Bethel Church has a a church plant in New York City. Uh, Bethel, New York is there, pastored by Joel and Sarah Power and uh Rebecca Cooper. And so we have friends and family that are in New York City, but we had never gone with more than the goal to visit. We'd gone to visit, we'd ministered in some other churches there before, other than a season in my life when I felt really called to New York City before I lived in California. Anyways, long story short, I had this dream and we felt like we were really supposed to take God up on it. We didn't have a huge plan for what to do while we were there, other than to be connected to the people that we know and love that live there. But when we were there in October, it became really clear that as a family, we there's a there's a sense of assignment to New York City and a lot of vision for what God is doing in that city, a lot of a lot of heart and vision to support our friends who are leading our church plant in New York City. And so while we were there, we really felt challenged to take on a mission of sorts. We kind of feel to be there quarterly in 2026. And so this is really in alignment with my heart for the city that I had since I was a kid. You know, before Jason and I got married, I said, listen, I know that I'm supposed to live in New York City at some point in my life. I don't know when, and I'm not in a rush, but you need to know that because he's not historically been a big city guy. Um, but here we are in 2025. And it's funny, our two little kids who, you know, have never known anything except for Northern California. California and the mountains and the woods fell in love with New York City. They talk about it all the time. They have a sense of ownership over this assignment too. So we are headed there in January for about a week. And that will, in a calendar year, that will round out our third week in New York City this year. Here we go. So, anyways, that's another funny little update. Kind of looking for I said to somebody the other day, I'm still asking God for clarity about that assignment. Like, what does it actually mean? Why are we supposed to be there? What's the strategy? Uh, so we're looking for clarity, but have gotten a lot of confirmation just over and over again. Like, yes, this is something for us this year.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, I think overall it just feels like we're in a season right now where we're doing our best to say yes to God to the adventures, right? From the rite of passage is just a giant risk. Writing a book is a giant investment, yeah, and risk. And um, I think pouring out all this time and effort and energy going to a city that's across the country.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

But without a ton of clarity. I just uh I think we the older we are getting and the more we're on this journey, like saying yes to the places and the things that God is breathing on, leaning on without even perfect clarity is the best adventure to be on. It's so fun and so scary at the same time. And so I think as as we're all coming into the new year, like maybe the question is what's God leading you into?

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

You know, what are the areas that He's challenging you to step out? That's good and and to partner with Him that's that are kind of scary, you know, that are uh feels like a risk. Yeah, and when you don't have tons and tons and tons of clarity. Um so I know that for us it's both exciting and uh a bit nerve-wracking, a little intimidating, and then can can constantly forcing us back into community and then I think back into Lord, what are you doing? Are we on the right path? Um, you know, how do we do this? But it really is the best adventure. It's made for it made for a great 2025. And yeah, starting out this new year, I'm really excited.

What To Expect In 2026

SPEAKER_02 22:18

So yeah, we are too. We are too. Well, that's a that's a little bit of a Valetin update for you. Let me tell you what you can expect moving forward. Here's our ambition. Our ambition is to get into a great rhythm again of releasing weekly podcasts on Wednesdays. That has been a wonderful rhythm for the last couple years. We'd love to see that continue into 2026. Uh, if we skip a week here or there, you can just know that it's because we are working overtime to keep it all together over here and um that we're stewarding all that God's put in our hands this season. But that would be our hope and our dream. We love that we're able to take you guys on this journey. And honestly, you know, the the topics surrounding relational and emotional health are still our absolute foundation. That relationship, health and community, health and family, health internally with God, that is the foundation for a beautiful life. And so, you know, never straying from those core topics, but taking you on this journey of our own family and our own journey of following God into unknown places. That's I think what you can expect for 2026. But stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Well, guys, have an incredible week. We love you, we will see you next week.