When Parents Get Busy but Marriage Still Matters

In the thick of parenthood, how can married couples stay connected and remain focused on their marriage? Lets talk about it!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Famology. We're Johnny and Amy Classen of GoFam Ministries. And we are here to answer your questions about marriage, parenting, family, anything that you can think of in that sphere, we would be happy to answer your questions. We are going to answer a specific question today about reconnecting as parents. Um, but if you have any other topics you want to hear about, you can just click on the link below and submit your question to us, and we'd be happy to do that.

SPEAKER_04 0:38

And your question might be, Dr. Johnny, why do you look so tan?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Oh, that'd be a good question.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

Isn't that a great question?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

So we just got back from a Caribbean cruise speaking of connecting with each other.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

However, we did bring our we did bring our two youngest children with us. Yes. Um, much to the chagrin of all their other siblings who have accused them of being quite spoiled. Yeah. Uh, this is a medical conference that they have on the cruise.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Um, so light on the medical, heavy on the cruise.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Yes, it was uh it was a lovely time uh and we enjoyed the warm weather. Yeah, so we went from about 85 degrees to about five below. That's 90 degrees difference just by flying north. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

A couple I thought we were on the planet of Hoth for any school that's fans out there.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

It was uh so we're back to back to the real world, yeah. But we had a great time. We did, and this podcast is about connection and enjoying one another. So here's the question is how can parents reconnect? That's the word. Yeah, how can parents reconnect when their lives are so busy? Amy and I always say busy is a four-letter word. Yeah, you know, uh, we don't love the word busy um because we believe that when you're intentional about what the Lord has called you to, it's not busyness. Um it's full. Yeah, it's also a four-letter word, I guess. But your life is full and you're doing what he's called you to do. Um but busyness for the sake of busyness is not always a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, but there, you know, life operates in 24-hour time constraints. And and we all have those same same constraints are placed on every human since the beginning of time.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

And and sleep, you know, no matter what, mothers try to convince themselves otherwise, it's still a necessary thing. And uh eventually our bodies succumb to needing some. And so learning to operate in those boundaries and learning to flourish in them is kind of a key to life, really.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

So I just want to say that this feels like a very simple question, but I I honestly believe it's one of the most important questions that our society is dealing with right now, because I believe if we're being honest, um society today, the culture of today, has minimized really the importance of our marriage relationship and has maximized the value or importance of our relationship with our children or our friends. Um, some of these what we'd consider to be um secondary relationships like friendships, our relationships with our children, our primary relationships. Um, however, I would still say that it's it's it's under uh even a second priority to a marriage relationship. So this is a critical question. Yeah, and so I love this question, and and we're we're gonna try to hit it wholeheartedly, hopefully. Um Amy and I never share our answers with each other, but um, but it's it's super, super important for our culture um that this relationship, this marriage relationship is the is I always say the priority priority, the primarist of all relationships, because everything else stems from the health of this relationship.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

I'm chuckling to myself because here's my the you know, the this question just feels like an intimate home kind of question. And my husband's going to the 7,000-foot view of culture of the whole world, which is I love that about you.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

It's true. It's crit it's critical. I I really feel strongly about that. And uh, you know, because because life does pass us by. We have this, we have this, as Amy just said, this period of time on this earth. And and I and I believe the key is if I can just start with this one key, is that the most important thing that we can do for our kids is to strengthen our marriage. Yeah, and so that that means not all the activities, not all of the the chaos that goes around with running around, not that those are inherently evil, it's just that the the the health of this relationship is so critically important to the health of your family, um, and your kids want this even more than they know. Yeah, um, that we that we provide attention to each other and and and contribute to that. So so if our lives are so busy that we have difficulty connecting with each other, then something is off and it actually has to be addressed.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, and I would say honestly, as a young mom, when I am our oldest, just turned 29. So it's been a long time since I've been a young mom. I'm still actively parenting, but back in the days, you know, when I was just figuring out how to handle the fresh responsibilities of motherhood, there were times that I would um figure that, you know, what Johnny needs is gonna have to take a backseat to what my kids need because he's a grown-up and they're you know what I mean, he's gonna just have to suck it up. And there are times when when we as parents have to be grown-ups. But if that's the continual mindset for the duration of parenting, um, that our husbands are just get the leftovers or the seconds um in 20 years, there and and statistics will back this up. The erosion of the relationship is sometimes taken more of a toll than it can rebound from. And it's not a d-un-da-da. It's just a let's let's be wise that relationships require two people to be actively involved in them.

SPEAKER_04 6:10

I think the word you use, mindset, is the absolute right word. I think that's the answer to this question is how do you reconnect? Well, you have the mindset that that this is the most important thing. Yeah. And and that that means that you that your actions then follow. But I believe it's not only our mindset, I believe it's it's the father's mindset. Yeah. If I can go three thousand three thousand feet in the air again, taking up the father's mindset that he would establish husbands and wives as the as the anchor point of a home, so that when when that's healthy and that's thriving, everybody else is healthy and thriving as well. So so we're on this cruise. Um, and you know, there's you're probably gonna hear me talking about you know hot tub, hot tub environments as being the best place for conversation. So you're on these cruise and you meet all these different people um from all over the world. It's it's incredible. Very few of them actually speak English as their native language, you can tell. Um, but you could connect with them, and and our kids have even connected with some um other teenagers and different things on this cruise ship. And and at some point out of the blue, we were just walking down the down the hallway, and and my son said, you know, thank you for being so in love with each other, because that is pretty rare these days. And and he was just hearing the conversations of these other teenagers in homes where that's not the case. Yeah, and so even as Amy and I are making googly eyes at each other on a on a cruise ship with our two youngest children, um insert comment here, yeah. Um, not quite the same. Um, but that that brings such security into their lives by seeing that because they know that that's going to be there tomorrow and be there forever, over 30 years for us. It's nothing, nothing's gonna change as far as that goes. Doesn't mean we don't have our good days and our bad days, and that marriage can be hard. Um, however, it's it's that security that kids are looking for that so few kids have today because of this, yeah, because of the loss of priority about this relationship.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah, and an overemphasis, and this is gonna like you hear my heart in this. Um, the overemphasis of our role as parent that almost supersedes our role as spouse. And in our culture, everybody wants to put full guns on being a good parent. Um, it doesn't always execute well, however, that would be something that nobody would argue with. But spending time and and focusing on a marriage sometimes can be understandably set on the back burner and just practical things that we have done over time. Uh we as young broke parents, because we we started parenting at about half a year and a half into our marriage, we became parents, and uh we became the champion of date nights in the house. And our kids would go to bed. And if you talk to any of our older children, they were going to bed at eight o'clock, way later than most kids. And we will grumble about it now, but it was for us because that was our sacred time where we knew that we could spend time together, we could have a conversation uh consecutively. Um, we did a lot of uh kataba juice and appetizer dinners and a movie after our kids went into bed. And we we crafted these date nights with each other, and though I still we we can't do those as much anymore. The kids stay up too late, the teenagers. Um but I'll stop with that. I know. We'll get back to them eventually. We'll do those again. We will, uh, you know, but that's that's a great thing. However, not to be neglected is also that time that you carve out of your day just for the two of you to go off and have a conversation while all your children are watching. Right. You know, and we have a we have a back porch and we have a a swing out there. And many, many times after dinner, the children would be left in the house to clean the house or clean the kitchen after we eat dinner. And Johnny and I would make, I almost called you dad.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

And Johnny and I would make the announcement to them dad and I are gonna go out and talk on the porch. Please do not interrupt us. We'll come in, you know, in a half an hour, but this is our time. And that's also very important for our kids to see the priority.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

I think we'd say something like, unless there's a fire or you're or you're bleeding.

unknown 10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I think we'd say something like it has to be almost dripping blood because a paper cut, I don't want to hear about it.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

But message sent. Yeah. That's the message sent, and they love it. They might they might roll their eyes, um, but that's actually it creates an incredible amount of security in them. Yeah. Um, knowing that, you know, and and even you know, well-placed public displays of affection where they roll their eyes, and I I'm, you know, I'm being real about this, like not to be weird. Yeah, you know what I mean? But when I kiss their mother in front of them and they roll their eyes, you know, I usually say, you like it, you know you do, because they do deep down in their heart, that's that makes them feel secure and it makes them feel loved in that regard. And so it's it's not it's not an either or. We don't ever want to say, you know, it's either all in on this relationship or all in on your kids, or or if we concentrate on our marriage and we'll be abandoning our kids, right? It's a both and it's a trickle-down effect. Yeah, and so as this is healthy, they're seeing health, they're they're receiving that love. We're we're able to give more because we're we're we're healthy here, yeah. And uh, and so everything everybody wins from that standpoint. Yeah, and so Amy and I do you know, we do marriage retreats um four times a three times a year, three times a year. Yeah, um at least that at the Wilderness Fellowship, just on the other side of the border of Minnesota in Wisconsin. Yeah, um, so if any of you who are listening can join us.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

In fact, we have one not this coming weekend, but the last weekend of January. So like in a week and a half.

SPEAKER_04 11:57

We we've seen marriages restored, um, we've seen people just become on fire. Uh, it's been it's been really fruitful. And so we're going to keep doing it until the Lord tells us to stop. But um, but I always start out the session by just thanking people because that's the key. Like I'm so grateful that you're willing to stop the rest of your life, come out to a retreat center, focus on your marriage, uh, because that's where things you know become healed and restored and things become back into right alignment.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yeah, that's good, honey. So, you know, time is a funny thing because we also can be extremely busy at wasting our time.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

And so to to take a hardcore look at our life, and um if you can find time to scroll on Facebook, you can find time for a conversation with your husband. It's just how we prioritize the use of our time. And sometimes I am guilty of this. Sometimes I can do very, very uh productive delay tactics where I can be organizing a closet or I can be um spending time cleaning this, that, or the other thing, which is a you know, a good use of my time. But really, what the Lord's asking me to do is maybe go in there and write a chapter of a book or go, you know what I mean? But that's not what I want to do because it's harder. And so I find myself occupying with these, these really good lesser things, you know, time fillers that appear like I'm spending my time wisely, but maybe I'm not. And so I'm sure I'm not the only one that does that. And so, really, if you're finding that you have you have a desire to spend time with your husband, to have some quality time, maybe number one, don't only think that a trip to the Caribbean counts because an hour conversation is a marvelous thing. Yeah, find the time to do those one hour things by choosing not to do the lesser important things and and and call yourself busy.

SPEAKER_04 13:57

Yeah. And this is the tough love answer to this question, you know, busy being a four-letter word, is sometimes we do have to evaluate our lives and say, are we doing the things that are bearing fruit? Yeah. And boy, you know, we Amy and I know it doesn't take long before the activities of this world, um, of sports, of of you know, community involvement, of church activities, all of these things um become consuming. Yeah, and and if it is to the point where you know you feel exhausted by the end of the day, then you may need to just re-evaluate your life. Yeah. If if it's if you're having problems connecting, really because you're too busy, yeah. Um, if that's really the case, then sometimes you have to take a step back and say, what are the priorities? Um, hey, this is really tough love. So, you know, it's it's pretty unlikely that your son's gonna make the NBA. I don't I don't know your son, I don't know your kids, so maybe I'm wrong about that, but percentages will say that's probably not true. They're probably not gonna make a career out of their sports, yeah, or you know, those kind of things. And so we have to prioritize some of those things too. Where does it really matter? I I love sports, nobody loves sports more than I do, and so I love watching them, I love my kids participating in them, so they aren't inherently evil. However, when they are consuming, consuming to them, consuming to us, consuming so that our lives so that we can't actually process a healthy family, then there's something that's gotta change and gotta shift. Yeah, um, we didn't we did much less sports when our kids were older, or when our older kids entered into the sports age because we had eight. Yeah, it would it would have been insanity, honestly. When our kid when we got down to three, four, um, then it was maybe a little bit more doable and we and we re- considered it. Um, but that's because that was a choice.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Life shifted a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

And and we were fine, and they were fine, and everybody was okay with that because family was healthy, and so that's what that's really what we're after. Yeah, right, sweetie?

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yep, that is what we're after.

SPEAKER_04 15:56

Yeah, so you know, evaluate your life and prioritize the things that are the most important. Yeah, and and as far as human relationships goes, this is number one. Yeah, this is it, that's the way the Lord created it to be, and we need to put all our firepower towards that.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, and I mean my last parting comment, unless you have another last parting comment, is that be okay with simplicity in your marriage relationship too, because taking the time for those conversations and connecting heart to heart is really the most valuable thing. And so going out and doing and spending money and taking time for date nights, all that's great. But without the day-to-day time with one another, where you share hearts and you you truly know each other, the rest of it feels like you're just trying to like, you know, shotgun in all the events of the last week and we have to um be okay with simplicity in the connective time. Yeah instead of instead of setting the bar right here and always falling short and being dissatisfied, be set the bar at let's every day have time for a face-to-face chat. Let's just find the time for that. And then the other parts are the additional, but your relationship is on that strong, steady state where you're you're living in a steady state. That's good instead of uh trying to attain to some I don't know, Instagram ideal of what date nights look like or you know. Yeah. So that's good.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

Yeah, that sounds like wisdom, babe. Anyway, so Father, we we just bless all those who are listening to this podcast and we we're thankful for uh the opportunity through Famology to just share our hearts about the about health because you want us healthy, you want our souls to prosper, and you want our families and our and our home situation to be to be healthy and whole and fun and and purposeful. And so, Lord, uh we just we we lay our our agendas down to you, we lay our schedules over to you. We ask, Holy Spirit, that you would examine those in all of our lives so that we're in the center of what you have us to do, not peripheral things, not distracted things, yeah. Um, not that we're moving away, Lord, from your perfect will, but that we're in the center of it. Yeah, that might be front lines, that might be maybe even say busy, um, full life, uh, because there's ebbs and flows and seasons to all the things that you call us to, but we want to hear your voice that we want to do the things that you called us to. So, Lord, I bless every marriage here and I pray for connection, uh though that deep connection that brings health and wholeness to these homes. And I pray that in your holy name, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I am going to like break all protocol. I just have one more thing that I feel like I'm supposed to share. I um so I'm trying to figure out what time frame this would be. I think we had seven children at the time of this story, and we had gone on vacation, uh, a road trip actually, and we were taking with us a 14-year-old, 12-year-old, 10-year-old, eight-year-old, six-year-old, four-year-old, two-year-old, and baby, I think. It might have just been a like a one year, I don't know. Anyway, seven in that age range from from tiny tiny to 14, 13 or 14. And uh we bought a pop-up camper, and we thought that would be great because we could spend time together with the family. And on this vacation, and on this vacation that was never a vacation for me because I was needing to get laundry done. Cause you can't pack for nine people into a pop up for a two week vacation. You we don't have that many clothes. So we were needing to do laundry, we were uh making meals at an Airbnb kind of thing. We got to our first campsite that night at like 11 30 at night, and we're setting up our camp our pop up with seven children waiting for us. You know, it was extremely stressful for me. And I was juggling a lot, like homeschooling all the kids, vacation that didn't feel like a vacation. It just felt like labor and work. And I remember that we got into a pretty big argument on that vacation about the amount of stress that I was carrying. And um, and I remember during this season that the Lord began to speak to me about rest. And that, and I was like, what are you talking about? I don't have time to rest. Have you looked at you know the size of my family and how much food I have to make every single day and what I need to do to get homeschooling done? And then how hard it is to get out the door and plan and pack and organize a vacation that's not vacation, it's just a new place to work. And I just was feeling kind of overwhelmed, kind of bitter in this place. And the Lord began to talk to me about the fact that rest is actually something that we step into in Him. It's not a physical activity of our bodies. Like I was, I was longing for a like a beach chair on a beach by myself where nobody talked to me for a little bit, because that was what I thought I needed. I thought I needed that physical place of rest. But actually, what the Lord was telling me is that in the midst of my full life, he was inviting me into his place of rest. And I feel like that's an invitation that he wants to begin marinating over every person that's listening here, that the busy mom, the busy father, the busy family, that he actually wants us to learn to step into a place of rest. And it's been something that he's been talking to me freshly about now because being a grandma and and still with our children and now adding in through marriage and then our beautiful grandchildren, life continues to be very full. But he wants us to come to him with our days and step into a place of rest where our emotions actually come into alignment with his. And it's not stress, it's not anxiety, it's not like a fretful, how is this all gonna get done, when it when we can step into him? And that's that's all I'm saying is there's a place of stepping into his rest in the midst of busy parenting that allows for relationships to flourish. It allows you to step into them as a peaceful parent, not because it's like it's just perfect peace and you're sitting on a beach by yourself, but because his peace has descended and allowed you to walk in that rest. And so that I'm gonna add that to the end of your prayer, that each and every one of us who are hearing these words today, myself included, that you would just anoint us with your rest, that you're awakened that inside of us, that it would just explode inside of us as we uh go a bit about the very full parts of our days. You want to walk with us and teach us how to feel. We love you.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Amen.

unknown 23:17

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

If you would like to submit a question for Johnny and Amy to answer on a future episode, head over to the FAMology page on our website at gofam.org or simply click the link in the caption below. And if you're enjoying the show, be sure to leave a review or a comment wherever you listen or watch. It really helps us out. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.