Blindsided by Divorce: Hard Lessons Learned

In this conversation, Tamala May shares her powerful journey. Fostering children brought joy and challenges to her family life.
Unraveling of her marriage was totally-unexpected and very painful.
Divorce was a taboo in her family, while continuing the generational curse her Ex-husband once swore to break.
Conversations with children about divorce requires hard-truths & honesty.
Lessons learned from marriage can guide other's future relationships.
*Bonus tip* 'Prayer' is essential for a strong marriage and overcoming challenges.



Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:43 Life as a Nurse and Mother
05:21 The Journey into Foster Care
07:55 The Unraveling of Marriage
10:44 Facing Divorce and Alcoholism
13:12 Lessons Learned from Heartbreak
15:31 Divorce Conversations with Children
18:21 The Importance of Marriage Maintenance
21:08 The Role of Faith in Healing
23:53 The Importance of Marriage in Family Dynamics
28:37 Understanding Love and Respect in Relationships
32:50 The Impact of Divorce on Children
40:10 Faith and Resilience in Marriage
46:22 Empowering Single Parents and Breaking Generational Curses

Transcript

0:00

welcome Tamela and I really appreciate, um, again, with us having just met each other, you coming on the podcast. I'm very, very interested to hear more about it from, for myself. I always like to. you know, have a little visit with my guests, especially people that I don't know well personally, but then I like to hear a lot of it fresh on the podcast so that that way all the reactions, all of my thoughts are gonna go flow naturally with it. So you have a very powerful story and if you want, just go ahead and share that with us. Well, thank you so much for having the opportunity to come on and share kind of my message. I am now a Christian author and speaker, but it was because of my story that I got to this point. This point was not where I ever planned to be. God takes us on crazy journeys. And a lot of times it comes through a story that isn't always a pretty story. I grew up in North Dakota in a rural town, about 3000 people. on a farm and if you're old enough to remember Little House on the Prairie or the Waltons, I've had people that said that my family made them look dysfunctional. So it was as traditional as they come. There's four girls in the family. I'm deviant number two child, a little bit of the wild hair in me. But all of us, because when you live on a farm, all of us have to be able to help out and to be able to pull your weight on the farm. A farm cannot run without kids a lot of times. So especially in those days now, it's a little bit different because of technology and stuff. But in those days, it required a lot of labor. So all four of us girls knew how to drive a tractor, round up or herd a cattle. We could do all of those things. so that was during the week. We were farm girls on Sunday morning. We were going to church in our Sunday best and all dressed up and we were treated like ladies. We prayed before every meal, didn't miss a Sunday at church. I came from a family where, you know, at church, grandma and grandpa are there and aunts and uncles are there and everybody kind of sits in their typical place. My life was exactly how it was supposed to be. Grew up very traditional. I graduated high school. The only thing I ever wanted to do was be a nurse. So when I was 16, I started working as a nursing assistant in the neighboring town in the nursing home. It was just, it was kind of when I found my niche. My older sister was extremely successful in school. I struggled a little bit more. So I just didn't really have that identity until I found that. I knew I was always going to be a nurse, graduated high school, went to college to get my degree in nursing. And there I met the gentleman that later became my husband. It was over a summer and I stayed in the college town and worked over the summer. I lived with a group of girls, he lived with a group of guys. One of the girls that I lived with and one of the guys that he lived with were engaged. So we had one of the most fun summers ever. We were grilling, we were playing. Pictionary was hot at that time, so that was one of the things we did. Spent hours, late hours, just having a lot of fun. And I found out that he wanted to date me. And I was like, no, he is not my type at all. But I knew at the end of the summer he was gonna be transferring and we got along super, super well. And so I'm like, you know what the heck, why not? You know, he's transferring in a couple of months. Well, about three and a half years later, I actually did end up marrying him and had graduated with my nursing degree. And I was very happy working as a nurse, being a wife a couple of years after we were married, had our first child, ended up having three children, two boys and a surprise little girl. She was kind of a blessing, but not one that we were really planning on. you know, kids were growing up, we were doing all of the parent things, know, all school activities, all of those things. Life was really good. As our kids got to later grade school, junior high age, we decided that we wanted to start fostering. We kind of felt like we had this parenting thing under control. So we started doing some foster care. I should back up a little bit and just say that my husband, great partner, the fact that we got along so well, it took me some time to learn that it wasn't just about attraction, that you date somebody, it's about having that communication thing and that best friend thing. And that served us extremely well. However, my husband was witty, he was super, super smart. but did things that just surprised all of us. You know, it's that kid that just is a little bit disheveled because they're so smart. That was kind of his personality. So you never knew what he was going to come up with. One year we had went across the state to where my parents live about almost 300 miles away and all of my sisters were there. We had a great holiday. We had laughed. We're on the drive back to where we lived. And I get a text from one of my sisters and they're like, what shoes does he have on? My husband had put on one of my brother-in-law's shoes. So he did these kinds of things. One day he told me he had went to the grocery store and he was gonna buy some groceries for us, but they had a book section and he loved to read. So he was going through some books, looking at what books might be interesting. he said, then I got up to the tool and the checkout lady looked at me really funny and was like, what are you doing? And I looked down and he said, and I had grabbed the cart with all of the clearance books instead of my grocery cart. So life was always an adventure with him. There was never very many days that there wasn't some humor, but we also were really good partners. It was one time his brother and his wife came to visit us. And with both of us working full-time and kids that were very active, it was kind of crazy. Kids had baseball that night and so we always fed them at home. We didn't have a lot of extra money. So eating at the ballpark was extremely expensive, two and three nights a week. So we'd try to hurry up and feed them and get out the door, that kind of thing. So I got home within a half hour, we got kids fed, we got them dressed, we got them out the door. And my sister-in-law goes, wow, that was impressive. We just worked good as a team. So bringing in extra kids was just a pleasure for us. We just had... a joy in it. My husband, very, very gifted with kids. He actually went on to work for the Boy Scouts and it was just his niche. I'm very naturally a mother, so it just worked for us. You know, if you're looking at doing foster care, one of the things that's really nice is they always ask you about your placement before you accept it. It's not like you have to take every placement. And so we were really on the same page about what kids we would take, what that looked like, how that would affect our own children. all of that. So typically what would happen is my husband would get a call because he had more flexibility in his job to take those calls. And so social work, social services would call him and say, this is what our placement looks like. Are you able to take that? And then he'd call me and we'd talk about it and we'd decide if we could do that or not. So several years after we had been doing foster care, I decided to go back to school and get my nurse practitioner degree, my graduate degree. And so we hadn't been doing much foster care, but we got a call on a Friday to take a kid on Monday and we had actually done some respite with him. Cute little kid, six year old, just a lot of fun. And our life was really crazy at that point, but we just decided that we could probably handle this kid because we knew him. So that was on a Friday. Saturday came, my daughter was doing competitive dance. They needed a parent to be down at the dance studio to help with some stuff. So I went down there. My husband was working for the Scouts. Both of my boys were in Scout activities. And so they went to their Scout activity that day. My kids got home. I got home. And I was in my last semester of grad school. So I had a ton of homework. And the kids wanted to go do stuff with their friends. And I was like, yes, please go. Please go. Get out of my house. My homework. And my husband came home and he was kind of upset with me that I had let the kids go do activities before they had their homework done. Very typical arguments that spouses have with each other, not anything out of the ordinary. And then he proceeded to say, I don't want to be married anymore and I'm leaving. And I initially thought that this was going to blow over. This was just something weird that had happened. It seemed very, very surreal. Over the course of the next several weeks, I found out lots of things that were happening behind the scenes. He had become a phenomenally good closet drinker. I was with my husband for 23 and a half years, if you count the years that we dated, and I've never up to that point had seen him intoxicated. He drank to function. He was working from home, so he had managed to find a way in which he could drink and be able to still do his job and continue to work. And so his personality had changed. I would say that, you know, that two and a half years before this happened were more difficult years for us. Granted, I was going to grad school, money was a lot tighter. We had a lot going on. But My divorce was final less than a week before my 20th wedding anniversary. So over 20 years, we had had periods in our lives that were harder seasons. And those seasons kind of come and go. So would I say that we were at this great place in our marriage? No, but we had been there before and we were coming out of this season in that it was my last semester for grad school. But what I didn't realize is how much he was drinking. After I went to bed, he was nipping during the day when he wasn't working, those kinds of things. And I found myself very, very much in a tailspin. It was unbelievable because being divorced in my family is taboo. Divorces don't happen. That Walton's little house on the Prairie family, that doesn't happen there. So the bottom really fell out of my world. didn't know how, how was, how do you do this? This doesn't happen in my life. And, you know, regardless of what you have that happens in your life, that is a common theme that we want to say, this doesn't happen in my life, whether it's an illness, whether, you know, it's things like you have suffered with, you know, with infertility stuff, this doesn't happen in my life, but those things do happen in life. And this was just the thing that happened with me. And so several months went by and he decided he wanted to divorce and We had an uncontested divorce and found out through the course of this that there was also some extracurricular activity that was going on. And it was hard because this was a person that I trusted. We were a partnership for a long time. again, it wasn't this person that I was instantly attracted to that I married. It was this person that we got each other. We were great friends. Even when he left, he said, you're my best friend and we have a great relationship. It just doesn't make a marriage. And it took me a lot of years to realize that my husband had gotten very sick in his alcoholism. And that was what changed with him. While I came from this very traditional family, he came from generations of divorce after divorce after divorce. And when we married, his goal was to break that, to break that curse. to come out of that, to do what wasn't happening in his family. And yet he ended up succumbing to that as well. So it's been a crazy journey and had those things not happened, I would not be where I'm at in my faith. I would not be writing books. I would not be speaking on platforms. I would not be doing any of that. So regardless of what you deal with, there are some great things that can come out of it. In the midst of it, you don't see anything great. and all you see is the hurt and the pain and what I like to call the icky. So I have a grandson and so over the last several years, I've found myself saying icky and naughty and potty more than I ever have. But when those things happen, icky is just the word that describes it so well. I can give you all of the technical medical terms, but icky describes it really well. Yeah. No, and something you, you touched on there, which was going to be one of my questions was, now where you are, The lessons that you learned, you've now applied to your new life, right? And what, what this looks like going forward. I come from a very, very, very traditional family too. which is again, why I've never drank alcohol in my entire life in a land of all alcoholics and every job Marine Corps, you get drunk all day, every day, same thing. law enforcement, that's how most people cope with that job and what you're doing, especially as a contractor overseas, you know? But if you were raised in a strict method and you stick to it, there are definite benefits to it. when you verbalize "We don't get a divorce." That's it is one of the reasons my wife and I are still married today I believe she would have left me. I would have left her. You mentioned the last two and a half years were a rough patch that you guys were going through, but again, nothing you had not already overcome. And I think that's one of the most. important lessons that for people that are out there looking for the right person or, know, they're about to get married. It's, something you pointed out too, is a, you weren't just immediately awestruck and this was the man and you just had to, had to be with him. You got along, you guys were able to have a partnership right out of the gate and it, and it wasn't based. just on how much money he made if he was six feet tall. Right. It wasn't just the main things everybody's putting into the apps these days to try to find true love. so having that realistic expectation of really not looking as much at the superficial, it usually is what I advise people. But that doesn't mean that if you went for the guy who wasn't as attractive and didn't, it wasn't six foot six figures, all those things. That doesn't mean that it's a guarantee that that person's just going to be this great, you know, amazing person through your entire life. And the fact that you guys made it almost 20 years is the, I think that's the hardest part for any of us. Cause we're coming up on 18 years in December. I mean, I can remember before getting married, hearing of those stories and And you hear of the preacher who runs off with one of the members of the church, right? you just hear about that and you just shake your head going, well, how does anybody make it? If these people are not making it, how does anybody make it? And I think it's very easy for people to just kind of have a very, you know, terrible look at marriage. But again, you got, you know, nearly 20 good years out of your marriage. And now you're in a place where. you learn life lessons that you're going to carry forward, but that you're going to teach your own children. And that's what you're sharing right now in a podcast. So for those kids that have gone through their parents dealing with this, what are some of the things that you conversations you've had with your children? once you found this out, once he says, I'm leaving, like, what was the conversations like between you and your children at that? So once I first figured it all out, because it took some time before I put the pieces together as to why this was happening, because again, why would you expect an alcoholism as the etiology of all of this if he was never getting drunk? That just didn't fit together. And once I figured it out, I sat the kids down and I said, you have to understand, this is not your dad. This is your dad being sick right now. this is your dad has developed this alcoholism and that is where this comes from. And so really displacing it and trying to take some of it off of who he is because I know that my kids would not be who they are today had he not been a great dad. And that's the part that's really hard in all of this because not only did he leave me and estranged me over the course of time, he's also estranged the kids to a certain extent as well. And I think that it's the battle that he's dealing with internally. And so I think a few things. So number one, alcohol. is so central in our world. I was driving home the other day past a liquor store and the bar and grills and I was just like, man has the enemy done some good work here because he has made something that is so poisoned to so many people such a central thing to our lives. There are so many people that think if I told them tomorrow, you can't have any more alcohol the rest of your life. that would be catastrophic for them. And when does that become something that is controlling you more than you're controlling it? And so I think there's that. I think that you need to be wise in looking for those red flags. I am still single to this day, 13 years later, and it's because I have wisdom now in seeing that. I am a nurse. You know what nurses are? oh really good co-dependence because we like to fix things and we like to make things better. And it took me sitting in Elanon for a while to realize how much without recognizing that my husband was an alcoholic, how much I was trying to fix things and correct things and that type of thing. So I know that in me, I have a predisposition to be attracted to that personality. And so there have been people that I've dated and I'm like, no, I've seen this before. I know what this looks like. And so being wise to that. One of the other things that you said that's really important because we get really hung up in the new love thing because it is one of the most exciting and one of the most fun things that you can possibly imagine. And so when that starts to wear off, then people are like, this marriage thing isn't fun like I thought it was going to be. And so you have to know that if you are going into marriage, It's not about being just fun and what you are experiencing in those early days. I tell people all the time, we do not celebrate people being married for 25, 30, 40, 50 years because it was easy. We celebrate it because it was hard and because they BOTH worked through it. Because I'm in healthcare, I get to talk to lots of people that are older in life. And one of the beautiful things that I can say is these people have a tremendous amount of wisdom. We look at them as old sometimes and we forget to invest in the wisdom that they are able to bestow on us so that we don't make those mistakes. And it's interesting because I'll have these cute couples come in and I'll kind of jokingly, you get these little lines that you use with patients. And one of the things I'll say is, and I bet you never fought a day in all of those 60 years. And they'll be like, there were a lot of days I didn't know if we'd make it. so it's learning that when you go into a marriage, It is not just about having fun and being in this fun love thing. It is gonna be work, it's gonna be hard, and there's gonna be days that you don't like it as much. You know that phrase that my dad would use, the grass is greener on the other side. That is what the enemy will tell you. And I personally believe that that's what my husband believed is that. I can get divorced from her, she'll be mad for a little while, and then we'll go on being good friends and it'll all be okay. That was not what happened. That was not what happened at all. And so the other thing that I think in the wisdom of walking this, as you look back, you reflect what could I have done different? And while I talk about my husband's alcoholism as the root cause of our divorce, I am by no means saying I did not make mistakes and there were things that I could have done differently. We need to be very honest about ourselves and look at ourselves and the things that we could do differently. But the other thing that happens when you get married and you're in that fun love stage, you just feel so confident in that and it's almost a false sense of security that you get out of that joy. And so then you just over time get busy with your job and then the kids and all of those things. can keep. soon you're not feeding and taking care of the marriage. What I like to say is that a marriage is a living, breathing thing. If you do not feed it and you do not take care of it every day, it will start to die. And so you start getting busy with all of these other things and you forget to take care of each other because "You're good" is what you say. And I think that that's one of the mistakes that my husband and I made is we felt so solid in those early years. that we were like, no, we're good, we're good, we're good. We don't need to do marriage retreats. We don't need to do any of those kinds of things. We're good, we're good. And we, until one day when we weren't. So I think those are all really important lessons as you look for that partner. You want somebody who you know is gonna fight. And that isn't somebody who gives up easily because you're gonna need that over the course of the years. Now the passion that you're talking about right there, which is, which I think is key. What you said too, as far as, you know, it's a living, breathing thing, two things, and this is, I'm not going to bring politics into this. One of the things that Donald Trump, so when I was preaching, I used to use Donald Trump quotes as a negative because he said some really dumb things, but he, didn't realize it when he said this. And this is one of them. about a marriage, he said, they asked him, you're marrying her, this is your, I forget what it was, fourth, fifth marriage, and what do you think is gonna be different about this? And again, this is before he was ever in politics or anything like that, and he said, well, the other marriages were work. I would come home and now I need to work on my marriage. I already work hard enough at work. I don't want to have to come home and work on my marriage. It was one of those moments where even as somebody who at that point, you know, was newly married, I knew the exact same thing you just said. Your marriage is incrementally, and that's the part that people have a hard time grasping it's incrementally growing or dying. It's getting better. or it's getting worse and there is no flat line. You may feel like you guys just kind of chill like yesterday. We just kind of hung out. We did went did the ultrasound in the morning. We found out we have a little little boy on the way. We got to see him. We listened to the heartbeat. That was that that was a very powerful thing. We just the rest of the day we're just going to hang out. That doesn't seem like much to the outside. And even to me, I almost felt like, shouldn't we be doing something? Maybe I should do something else for you. she just wanted to hang out. We're just staying home. We're just hanging out. And I think that people can often think your marriage is only growing if you're going to get her flowers, if you're surprising her with a dinner, But in reality, what I've learned through my marriage and almost 18 years now being done with what I need to do today. And I'm going to leave my phone and I'm just going to hang out with her. And we're going to have conversations about what's bothering her. What's going great for her. What, what's going on with Archer. If there's something new that's that right there is helping to move your marriage forward. And it's those things that you don't overlook that and just think that you need to take her on a trip to Europe. in order for your marriage to be, or like you say, going on weekends, right? I think those things are great. You definitely need to take weekends to where it's just you. You have grandma watch the kids and you guys focus on your marriage. But I think it's very easy for people to overlook that and to assume that you've got to spend money in order for your marriage to be moving forward or otherwise it's moving backwards. You know, and something I would say also, if you really want to feed into your marriage is get praying together. Because the enemy understands that if he attacks a marriage, the amount of damage he can do to so many people, because the downfall will go to your children and it may go generations to generations. In addition to that, my parents were affected by it. My siblings were affected by it. mean, it's a big kill shot. if you want to look at it from that perspective. And so you talk about the pastors and that type of thing. So the enemy is going to go for where he can get the biggest bang for his buck. And I spend a lot of time when I minister talking about looking at our military. You know, we don't teach our military people to shoot at arms and legs. We want something that's going to be destructive. The enemy wants that too. What is the thing that is gonna cause the most destruction to this family? And that is gonna be the marriage. If he can destroy the marriage, he will cause insult to the kids, he will cause insult to the people involved in it. So it's huge. And so you need to make sure that you are protected in that. And if you find a spouse that you can pray with, boy, you are armoring up that marriage so strong. And that is so incredibly important. And that's why you have to feed it daily because the enemy, you know, in scripture it says that he will be in sheep's clothes, you know, he's gonna masquerade himself. So it doesn't happen like you wake up one day and things aren't good in your marriage. It is very, very, very subtle. And then you'll hear people say, well, we just fell out of love. No, you didn't, you quit feeding your marriage. You quit taking care of it. And the thing that's really important when you feed that marriage is also understanding that men and women want different things. There's a great book called Love and Respect, and don't ask me for the author right off hand, because I can't remember. But one of the things that we do is we give our spouse what we want. And our spouse doesn't need what we want. Men need respect. For men, respect is on the top of the hierarchy. For women, that is love. So a man tends to give the woman respect when she wants love. The woman is giving the man love when he needs respect. And not that both of those aren't important for both pieces, but you have to understand the hierarchy of those things when it comes to your partner. So it's not about just doing what you want and what fills your cup. It's understanding what they need that may be entirely different from what you Amen. So just like you said, it's, it can seem like those things are still important. And although we could use a new blender, you don't want to give that to me and give the sniper rifle to my wife. Well, my wife was in the Marine, so you could scratch that. But yes, like you, you give the person what it is that they want because that's what fulfills them. If my wife gives me like respect or shows me respect in some way that That motivates me, that gives me the biggest boost to be that much better of a husband to her than anything possibly could. There's no, you know, a check in the mail came from whatever and it was an extra thousand dollars we weren't expecting from the insurance we overpaid. know, there's great things that happen and you're like, that would be great. No, your wife, you know, making some some telling you, having a surprise party for you. Showing you love in a way and being respectful to you as a man means so much more than women are being taught, unfortunately. And there's this divisiveness that I'm seeing online, which is where children are growing up, unfortunately, is just using screens to grow up. And there's this back and forth where it's women want you to check these boxes. to be a man and you're not even considered a man if you don't have the right amount of money, if you're not a certain height, all these things. And then on the men's side, it's the virtuous things that the women assume that the men want the same things that the men that they're looking for out of a man. So the women are going out to try to get six figures. They don't worry about being six foot tall, but All these things that they want is not what the man wants. And I heard that yesterday on a podcast and it blew this girl's mind because this guy said, of the things women want in looking for a partner, the two most important for all women is the height of the man and the amount of money he makes. The two least important things about a woman that a man is looking for is what her height is and how much money she makes. They do not matter. Those two things. unless it's like extremely short and they could be completely dead broke. Those things don't matter to men. And so I think what you said to about prayer is a hundred percent on point. And that was something I was going to get to as well because you're a person of faith. And the only reason that we are still married is because of our faith. And that doesn't necessarily mean that again, it's going to carry you everywhere because it's two people. So if my wife had not, you know, had not stuck it out, being with me, it was our faith that we were able to fall back on though. We were able to look at God through the Bible, His word and go, we didn't get married to each other. We got married. It's a three point marriage. You're marrying this person, but you're promising to God. that you're gonna do everything you can to make it through this marriage. And it's tragic when someone doesn't want to keep fighting. And like your story, that's why it was so powerful to me. was just like, you're a person of faith and you come from this same background like I come from. Nobody gets a divorce that's absolutely not accepted. And there you are though. You don't get to just make everybody's choices for them. And the generational thing that you pointed out is, what I think is very, very underrated. So many people don't realize that if they get a divorce, one of the consequences is their children. Yeah. They get to air quotes, be happy, more happy in the moment because every new relationship brings that whole new freshness of, okay, I get to start over. everything's so new with you. And, I don't like what you're doing here and you don't like what I'm doing there, but that's fine. And then. two years later, now they're getting a divorce because those little things added up and now it's work again. And as Donald Trump points out, not everybody wants to work when they get home from work. Right? And so unfortunately that's just, you know, that's just not the reality. The reality is you're not just staying married for you, for you, your children and the legacy that's coming after somebody in his family tree was the first person to divorce. Nobody else was getting a divorce back, back in the days. people weren't just getting a divorce willy-nilly. And that one person started a chain reaction where the next kid and the next kid and the next kid thought that that was a better option. And again, we're not gonna go back into everybody's situation and figure it all out, but you can see the trickle down effect that if you come from, and it applies to almost everything bad. If you come from a family with multiple suicides in your family, as mine does, you're at a higher risk. If you're a family tree, you have alcoholics that are in your lineage. My grandfather was an alcoholic and committed suicide. So that's double on me, right? The things that we're making decisions on, whether to feed our marriage or not, to focus on what makes us happy, what makes us more money, what makes us fulfilled in our career in some company that doesn't care about you. Everybody's finally learning that now, me included. You know, we're learning so many of these life lessons that I really hope that the audience pays attention to what actually happened to you in real life. This isn't just some thing on Reddit somewhere, right? This is you, a living person who had to actually suffer through and live through this and your children. Unfortunately, as you already pointed out, like your husband didn't just divorce you, he now has become estranged to them. And I think that's one of the biggest tragedies of divorce. is because these children, they didn't decide to have you as their parents. You don't get to choose your family, as my family used to say all the time. But this is who we are. You're stuck with us. Alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, you know, it is what it is. Whoever you were born into is where you're born. And you have to suffer for their poor decisions. And when you get older, you can try to break that mold, but... You know, it's how much more of a hill are you giving your child to climb to get back to a place where the future of your family lineage is happily married, fighting through the struggling, not just giving up or giving into addictions, which I think is the thing that nobody wants to really focus on because that goes to personal responsibility. And nobody wants to, you know, to admit that they're actually at fault. They want to blame it on society. Blame it on this, blame it on that. I have this condition, but in reality, your husband wasn't drinking to just stay blackout drunk. He was drinking to cope with something that he dealt with, but he already had the roadmap that everybody that came before him had given up on their marriages. So he was just gonna do the easy thing. It's going back to what you learn, and that's what he had learned. But my one son, very wisely, spent a lot of time in counseling. He was extremely close to his dad. there was some burden that he had in all of this. won't give anything. 12, 14, 16. So. But he spent a lot of time in counseling and wisely he said to me one time, if I don't take care of this now and figure this out, it will continue to haunt me. My husband had some trauma from when he was young that I believe he never dealt with and that's what resurfaced. know, single for 13 years, some people will be saying, well, there's gotta be something wrong with her. She hasn't gotten married. I could have gotten married. There's been relationships that I've been in that I could have gotten married. but I saw that this was not gonna be good and I saw where that was at. But the single years have also allowed me to heal. It's allowed me to grow. It's allowed me to evolve into a much better person than I ever was before. The first time I ever spoke as a Christian speaker, I wasn't planning on saying it, but the words just came out of my mouth after I gave my testimony. And I said, would I ever choose to go through this again? Absolutely not. Would I ever choose to be the person that I was before this? Absolutely not. But you have to do the hard work. And the knee-jerk response, When somebody leaves you, is that hurt and pain is so bad. And that gaping hole that is there, you wanna fill that with whatever you can as fast as you can and plug that hole so that the water that's coming in and drowning your boat stops. And a lot of times when people start to do that, they make bad decisions and end up in relationships that after the honeymoon phase are worse than where they were before they started this. So I think that's really important. One of the other things that I was gonna say as we were talking about the difference with men and women, and because I've been a nurse practitioner for a lot of years, I work oncology now, but I used to do primary care, and I get a lot of these women in that are 30, 40s, 50s, know, I don't feel like sex anymore. That's just not important to me. I think it's important that people understand how their spouses are made. You don't understand that if you start denying your husband that because men are wired for that very innately, then you're not gonna get the I love yous. You're not gonna get the things that you need. know, in healthcare, when somebody is really short of breath, we talk about this cycle that they get in. They get short of breath, they get more anxious, they get more short of breath, and they get in this horrible cycle. Well, that's what happens sometimes when you stop. having sex, when you stop telling each other you love each other, you get in this horrible cycle and I haven't heard that so now I'm not giving him this and then he's not giving you that and you it's got to be broken. You've got to give each other what each other needs even on days that you don't feel like it. And that's something that as a police officer, I think I had mentioned to you before, I worked the, I always worked the, the 4pm to 1am. We called it the domestic shift where I did, because that's, you're dealing with, you know, you're dealing with a lot of wrecks, but then after that, pretty much the rest of your night is all domestic disputes. And especially on the holidays when everybody's showing up and uncle so-and-so can't get along with, you know, cousin so-and-so. You just have all of these arguments that people can't take care of themselves. And then you get to come in and be everybody's babysitter and you get to sit here and try to tell 40, 50, 60, 70 year old people how to be adults and how to behave with each other. And I think that's one of the most frustrating parts is what you just described is every time that I was dealing with people going through divorce and their, or, you know, their common law to where they've lived together for. you know, multiple years, which has became more and more common. at the longer I was in law enforcement, now it's becoming much, much more common. And it's always the same thing. It's that tit for tat. It's that you did this, so I'm not doing that and you're not doing that. So I'm not doing this. Well, if you're not going to do that, then I'm not going to do it. And you're literally having a war in your own home where you're not going to help them do anything and they're not going to help you do anything. And nobody at any point wants to sit back and go, and this is benefiting me. How? And then you see the people who actually try to make it work. And it's very rare, of course, but you go to a domestic and they're fighting and then you as a cop have to separate them. And then I go over and I have to be a counselor. I haven't been trained, but I am an absolutely a great counselor. I go over and I just start talking logical. like, Hey, you're upset. She broke your lamp. Get it, my wife broke my lamp last week. Here's the deal, it didn't help me to really be upset at her and stop talking to her and I'm not gonna do any of the dishes and I'm I'm just telling you man, this is what I see, this is what I've been through. If you are the one who's the bigger man and you actually start doing nice things for her, the chances that she's going to return that with evil, or breaking things or getting worse is almost zero because humans aren't wired that way. You guys are married for a reason. You used to like each other. And I guarantee you somewhere down there, she still likes you and you still like her. And if you guys are able to do that, and I'm going to go tell her to do the exact same thing to you. I'm not telling you that I'm fixing your marriage right now, but I'm telling you that if you follow this advice, it won't get worse. At least it won't get worse. And every once in a while I would go out on a domestic and I would see that and I would talk to these people. And then they were frequent customers. And then it would, it would finally happen. And so then you would stop getting calls there, but you would see them because you'd still take calls in the neighborhood and you would see them and they're married and they're not getting domestic calls all the time and they're still sticking it out. I think that was one of the most rewarding. And I think that's why I had to stick on that shift because I got to really be there for the people. that are going through the worst day, specifically where them and their spouse and the kids are seeing it and the neighbors are seeing it. And it's so bad that the police have to get involved. And now at your most vulnerable time, somebody's trying to be reasonable with you and just trying to help you to literally, I'm not here to check a box. I'm getting paid by the hour, but I really am invested in your marriage because your marriage means your kids. are less likely to grow up to be criminals and are going to be, less likely to end up having teenage pregnancies and be addicted to drugs and all the coping because their parents hated each other and neither of you cared about the kids in their mind, whether they, do or not. And so they split. And so I just think that, all that to say, I've, I've seen what happens on people's worst days. And I've seen people that have, turned that around. but nothing will turn things around as fast as if you both, if you're starting to pray together, if you start being the one who worries about your eternal souls, and if you're a Christian and you believe that, that's the easiest way for me to reach through to somebody. If I see they're wearing a cross necklace, I can just come out and be like, sorry, you're a Christian. But if I saw things, it would be pretty easy to figure that out. And I'd be like, you know, your kids are going through this, they're seeing this. And I would reason that from that angle though too. important because it's a three strand cord. Oftentimes in marriage, you're gonna feel like you're giving 110 % and the other person isn't giving anything. And so it works great when one of you feels that way and the other, and one is pulling more than the other. but there's gonna be times that both of you are not pulling what you need to. And that's why you need that three strand cord. I read something recently and it said, are you getting married? because you want something out of it? Or are you getting married to serve the other person? Because if you're getting married to serve the other person, that's a marriage that's gonna work. We tend to wanna be self. mean, look at all of our selfies, all of the things we do to promote ourself. We get very self-centered, but if we can change our focus and be very focused on our partner, that can change that perspective a lot. You know, one of the things that my counselor had said, because yes, I did some counseling for a while after all of this, but he was talking and he said, when one person turns it to the off switch, there's nothing you can do. And for somebody who's a really, really good codependent, that's a hard thing to hear because I fix things. I take care of things. I make them better. you know, sometimes you can't, but you can't just stop trusting. You know, there's going to be times no matter what. you do, there's going to be times that have a story like mine. And I think it's important to know that God will take and he will make something good out of that if you push through those hard things. Amen. And so, and I do want to make sure and get to this before I forget because we keep going off on tangents. But I want to know now where you're at. You mentioned you've been single now for 13 years. You're focused on, you know, spreading this message and helping others to not have to go through what you had to go through. And I think that's more important than most people realize. And the reason why I even got into podcasting because when I, Bear with me for a second. went into the federal prison system. And one of the very first things I learned was that we're learning from ground level. I'm a police officer, I know some things, but now I'm going into a prison and there I'm having to learn from the ground up. I have to learn my own lessons. But prisoners do the opposite. They all have a collective hive mind. They all have this wisdom that has been passed down from each other to each other to each other. And it stayed, the wisdom and the knowledge has stayed in the building, if that makes sense. so this prison I was at had been built in the 1930s. It's one of the older prisons in existence. And those inmates are still passing down the same information and the same wisdom and growing and building. So when somebody, new inmate shows up, if he clicks up with a gang, if he clicks up with this network, they're sharing with him all of these things. Obviously some, they're not masterful teachers per se, but they have this amount of wisdom that is automatically something that you better pay attention to because this could save your life. And I really wish that we as a society and as Christians were able to reach to those young people that are going through things and share this wisdom. that you've been through, so that they can at least have that in the back of their mind and pay attention to the red flags. Because as you talked about, he wasn't this drunk getting DUIs all the time in and out of court and you're still trying to fix him and all these things. There were different signs that must have been there. But without faith, without having trust and faith in your partner, you don't have a marriage. That's what marriage is. The second you start following your spouse, you know, putting trackers on their vehicles, checking their phone constantly and all those things, that's not a marriage. Now, this is somebody who you're holding captive and you're waiting for them to make a screw up. you know, that's a terrible scenario If you're with someone that you feel like you need to do all those things with, then you need to recognize that that's not the type of person you need to marry, and if somebody's doing that to you, the exact same thing, because that's not gonna be healthy at all. The only reason you are able to struggle through the hard times is because there's that trust. Even if you don't like him at that moment, even if... Tip for tat goes back and forth. You didn't do this, I didn't do that. You did this, I did this. You still have the respect for each other, the love for each other, even if it's not being shown at that moment. you your story and what you're being able to share with people now is powerful so that they don't have to go through what you went through. So your husband having the red flag will say of having a history of their family of divorce. That's, this is a key lesson that I think every young person should pay attention to. When you are vetting a person for a long-term relationship and especially for marriage, you should really get to know their family. And I think that's one of the things sitcoms laughs off and everybody just kind of disregards. Nobody likes their mother-in-law. You know, that's not good. That's not normal. And one of the wisest pieces of advice I've ever received in my life. was from my mother when I was trying to decide who I should seek in a long-term relationship. And my mom said about a future wife, you shouldn't look for a girl that you love and then get to know her family. You should look for a family you love and find out if they have a daughter. when she said that, that stuck in my brain and it's been there ever since And that's exactly what happened. I ended up marrying a woman who I really did love her family and I still do. they built her to who she is. And I have that great relationship with, And if you do that, you're going to see a lot of those red flags that you would have otherwise not even known about. If that makes sense. Yeah, so right now I am working as a Christian author and speaker. I still work full time as a nurse practitioner. you know, because I just, I'm very type A, so I don't sit still very well. uh But I released a 30 day Christian devotional a couple of years ago. Last year I released one book called Overcoming When It Hurts. And then this fall I will be releasing my second devotional that's in the devotional series. I'll give you a little hint that the picture on the book evolves over the series. So it's going to be a three-part series. Never, never, never thought I would be writing a book that is not my mojo, but God just laid that on my heart and that's what I've been doing. I am doing more speaking, doing some really exciting things with that. But the other thing that God really laid on my heart is coming from a family where there was really strong families and a little bit about what you talked about is strong families tend to produce strong families that tend to produce strong families. Broken families tend to produce broken families tend to produce broken families. It's a generational curse and with God that can all be broken. I am absolutely 100 % convinced of that. I think had my husband been more committed in his relationship with the Lord, that may have been possible because I think he had strong feelings about breaking that. And I think he just got deceived by the enemy. So I got to be a single mom. And I say got to because I love my kids dearly and they are absolutely the joy of my life. We kind of became a partnership, So if you ever saw us together, some people joke, cause my sons will sometimes call me by my first name and people will be like, that is so disrespectful. And I'll be like, no, it's cause we're a partnership. had to, cause I worked a lot of hours when my husband left, I had a college debt. We didn't have a lot of money. I was digging out of a lot of things. So it was hard for a lot of years. And everybody had to do their share to be able to make this family run. So we have a little bit of a unique relationship in that. But I went from being the strong family where you just go, you know, these broken people, all they need to do is X, Y, and Z to being on the side of being on the broken people and going, it's not that easy at all. So I've had a heart for single parents, particularly single moms for a long time. And I've always wanted to do something and starting last fall, God just really gave me a vision to start a single parent ministry. So I am excited to say that last week I got accepted by one of the organizations in town to come under their umbrella. So I will be having a nonprofit ability to fundraise and start building this ministry. So I'm building a mentoring program with that. God is just continuing to open doors and it is absolutely amazing because if children, particularly children that come from single mom households, now there's 20 % of single parent households that are men, their statistics are not quite as bad as the ones that come from single moms, but we see higher rates of suicide and depression. We see higher rates of addiction. We see higher rates of incarceration, higher rates of. failure in school and not going on to get higher education. So we have all of these programs that treat all of these symptoms that come out of these single mom households, but we aren't really doing a lot to treat what's happening with that single mom as she's trying to raise these children. I say, you know, it's like me in healthcare. If I got somebody with pneumonia and I try to give them a cough syrup to help their cough and Tylenol to help their fever, but never give them the antibiotic to treat the cause, we're not getting back to the basics. And so I've really just been passionate about starting something that really helps foster and mentor that single mom along so that she raises kids that will be able to break this generational curse. And it was interesting because this morning as I was doing my Bible reading, I was reading the 10 commandments and Deuteronomy. And so it's ironic that this came up today as I had just read this this morning. But one of the things that sticks out and that people who've read the Bible have probably heard that he will curse generations for second and third generations. But did you read the next part of it? Because the next part of it is what is amazing. He says, for those that are faithful, He will bless you to thousands of generations. His curse only goes in that to two or three generation, but he will bless those that are faithful for thousands of generations. I'm like, that is amazing. We need to break the curse so that we're going down thousands of generations of great and amazing things happening because God can break this generational curse and he can change it and transform it. So I'm really calling on Christians to step up here. and be the hands and feet of Jesus to change this trajectory of what's happening in these homes. And not saying that every kid that comes out of a single parent home is not gonna do well, but we know the statistics and we know that it's hard for a single parent to be able to raise these kids and to make all the money in the household and to do the laundry and the grocery shopping and all of those things. It was never meant to be as a single person. And so I say that that single parent is kind of like a widow and an orphan in scripture. It's who the church needs to be called out to help. And with God's help, it's amazing what could happen. Amen to that. I really appreciate all the wisdom that you've been sharing. again, with your books, I definitely want to provide those links. I'll make sure and get those from you. And yeah, it's been great having you on. We're going to go and wrap it up. And any other things that people ask me, might pass that on to you and get some other answers. And yeah, maybe a little bit of time has passed and I know you've got a lot on your plate. You could come back and give us another update and kind of where you're at with your books and, you know, and with your ministry. So I really appreciate, having you on this podcast today. Well, it has been an honor and a total privilege. The one closing thing that I like to finish off when I do podcasts is if you are going through a hard time right now, there was a word of wisdom that a counselor gave me and it just, it was so simple and yet it was so profound. And I just want anybody who's struggling right now to hear the words because right now, when you're in the middle of it, you feel like it is never going to end, but it will. It will, if you do the work, it will end. Amen to that as well. Everything is for a time. Everything is for a season and you will get through it. And that's what we want marriages to do. That's what we want these young kids that are struggling. That's what we want everybody to do because when you're on the other side and you're being blessed by God, you're focused on Him and focused on doing the right things, you would be amazed how many blessings that you're able to give out to other people and share. Couldn't agree more.