A Firefighter’s Faith Journey Through PTSD And Marriage - Part 2

Your home doesn’t drift into health by accident, and your marriage doesn’t stay connected on leftover time. We sit down with Shannon and talk about the habits that keep a family grounded when life gets loud: scheduling “money talks,” protecting date nights, and using a simple goal-setting exercise to get on the same page about faith, family, fitness, finance, and fun. If you’ve ever felt like the calendar is running your house, this conversation gives you a clearer way to lead it.

We also get honest about priorities. Putting God first and your spouse second can sound countercultural, but we unpack why it matters, especially when kids’ sports and activities start demanding everything. Shannon shares what “non-negotiables” look like in real life, how to teach kids commitment without letting the team become the boss of your family, and why strong marriages don’t happen without intentional boundaries.

Then the tone shifts to parenting and reality. As a firefighter and veteran, Shannon has seen what many of us only hear about, including teenage suicide, and he challenges parents to stop candy coating life. We talk about trust, mental health conversations, and why kids don’t want to be lied to, even when the truth is uncomfortable. Finally, we zoom out to money, estate planning, and the question that frames legacy in a new way: do you want to leave a mess or a message?

If you want practical Christian marriage advice, parenting wisdom, and a stronger family foundation, listen now, share it with a friend, and subscribe and leave a review so more families can find it.

Ptsd: How Overcoming Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD Taught Me the Power of Pushing Toward Success Daily - By Shannon & Stephanie Lombard 

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome To Kingdom Chaos

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome to Kingdom Chaos, a podcast for anyone trying to live a purpose and faith-filled life in a loud and messy world. Jesus said his kingdom in another story, yet here we are navigating real life and real struggles. I'm not a guru, just someone learning that God's grace meets us even in the chaos. This is Kingdom Chaos where faith meets real life and purpose is still found in the mess. Hey,

Communication Rhythms That Actually Work

SPEAKER_02 0:36

welcome back to Kingdom Chaos. Let's jump into part two with Shannon as we left off with this question. Here we go. How do you communicate? How do you stay connected? Yeah. Are there certain things like, hey, we need to sit down to talk about XYZ? Yeah. Do y'all have scheduled like catch-up time or like I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Tell me how do you guys stay? We have certain things that we schedule on purpose. Like we schedule our money talks. Yeah. Right. Literally. Like you look up on my counter, you can type in money talk, and it'll just pull it right up. One exercise is goal setting. And here's how you set goals with your spouse. All right. You take one of those big, you know, poster board types. Okay. You fold it in half. Yeah. And this is what we do. We go, that's our five F's, right? So faith, family, fitness, finance, and fun. Yeah. Right. So normally we like faith, family, finance, fitness, we have a verse of the year. We have a word of the year. Okay. So at the top of the goals, you put your verse of the year. You write it out. Underneath that, you have your word of the year. And then underneath that, you have your five F's. Yeah. And you categorize it. And under each F you put three goals. Now the reason why you fold it in half is because one of you guys does it first. The other one does it on the blank side. Yeah. And then when you're done, you open it up. Yeah, see where you all are at. You see where you guys are at. Yeah. Yeah. So we're pretty much about 80 to 90% on track with all of our things, right? And that just goes into communication. We definitely schedule that. We 100% schedule dates. Kids are old enough. It's like we'll bring you leftovers. Date nights for sure. Especially those with kids, right? Those of us with kids. And it's not, you know, to talk crazy about the kids, but it's like, listen, if it wasn't for her, y'all wouldn't be here. Right. Yeah. So she's for her. Yeah. Has to be. Like, there's so many couples that get that wrong. Yeah. It's upside down. Yeah. It's kids, kids, kids. Next thing you know, kids are gone, then you're looking at you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I don't even know you. I haven't seen you for 25 years. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? So for us, that's huge, right? We make sure that we are together and then we incorporate the kids.

Putting God First Then Your Spouse

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah. So let's touch on that because I totally agree. Amy and I almost got divorced because of that specific reason. Like there was other things that went into it, but the the root cause was we were putting the kids first. God wasn't in the picture at all. And then as far as spouse, I don't even know if we were second. Where were we? Where on the list were you? Yeah. So talk about uh because you touched on you know God first, then spouse, and then the kids come. How do you incorporate, how do you keep your spouse first? Well, not first, second, I guess. Yeah. But uh, but then how do you incorporate your kids in that? Like to make sure that yeah, you are part of this family, yeah, you are important, but stuff comes before you do. Yeah, so how how do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I know for us it a lot of it has to do with scheduling. Yeah, okay. And here's what I say right now, we're sports, fine arts, instruments, you know, things like that, right? So there's been a few times, you know, where it's just like, all right, I know you guys have this, but we had this originally. Yeah, we're not going to deviate. There's just certain non-negotiables. Yeah. I I don't want to sound like that kind of dad, but I'm like, dude, you're not going to Juilliard. Yeah, right, right. Tomorrow. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Your SATs aren't tomorrow. Yeah. You know? So it's going to be okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Right. I think too many people think, oh, my kid's going to be an NFL player. Tomorrow. I got to shut my life down. And it's all about this.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

That's crazy. That's crazy. You know? And they're in eighth grade. They're in eighth grade. You're just like, dude, like, and it's funny because we played, you know, we had another year Little League with Shannon. And we're looking at it, and I'm like, dude, we're starting practice at 8 30 at night. Yeah. On a Wednesday. Yeah. That's nuts to me. So there are plenty of times we're like, hey dude, you're not going to practice tonight. Because every Wednesday we have family game night scheduled. Every Wednesday, family game night. You're not going to practice. You know? And he's like, okay. Or, hey kid, you're not going to, you know, volleyball practice this Sunday because we're going to go out and we're going to, we had a, you know, after church, we're going to go hang out. We had restaurant plans. We had this, we had that. You know? We want them to understand what flexibility looks like, you know, but at the same time, commit when you can commit. Right. Our commitment is to each other first. Yeah. Then the team. You know? And if you look at me like you're crazy as a coach, sorry, dude. You know, but my kids come first, not the team. Yeah.

Parenting With Real Talk Not Bubble Wrap

SPEAKER_02 5:04

All right, man. So let's move into some parenting stuff. I know we kind of we've touched on a lot of parenting, marriage, kind of combination stuff. So one thing that I know that we've talked over the years that I love the way you guys parent is talking about incorporating your parent, your kids into the family, is that as a firefighter and as a vet, you've seen a lot of stuff. Yeah. And uh as a firefighter, you've gone to homes with teenage suicide and had to see just stuff most of us have hopefully we'll never see. Yeah. Uh, and and had to deal with that stuff. So going home um and talking to your kids in an appropriate way, kind of hey, this is reality. Yeah. How do you do that? How do you not only for your mental health to stay sane in and seeing stuff like that, but also bringing it home and being able to communicate with your kids what you know, real life? Hey, this this kid was 17 years old, and and on the outside, what we talked about looks like he has everything. You got everything. Yeah, and and then, but on the inside, we don't know what's going on with him, and this happened. So tell tell me how how do you go about communicating with your kids, not just teen suicide, but I mean like life in general.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, yeah. I'm a very straightforward, like I don't I don't like the candy coat stuff. I don't candy coat things for my kids. Yeah, right. Yeah, because when you start doing that, then they start getting a false sense of reality. Yeah, right. I know for Stephanie and I, we have we kind of got a cheat code because we could come, we don't necessarily have to come at it as a parent. I could come at it as a professional, and she can too, yeah, right, as a nurse. One thing that I, you know, I like to tell people is like kids don't like to be lied to. There are very tough conversations that need to be had with kids, but parents don't address it, and they just hope that the kids learn it on their own. And that is devastating in a lot of ways, you know. It's devastating because you miss an opportunity as a parent to get to know your kid. You miss an opportunity to build trust with your kid, you know. Now, don't get me wrong, the kids ain't gonna like it. Yeah, they're not gonna listen. They were like, Oh my gosh, can we talk about something else? Yeah, as soon as I say this last thing, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's important though that you just you gotta look your kids in the eye, and you gotta be brutally honest. Because you get to that point, and I mean, pray to God it doesn't happen to you, but if it does, the immediate thing you're gonna do is you're gonna play the what if game. In that game, you will lose every single time. What if, what if, what if. You need to have that thought process and you need to have that confidence in yourself. Like, I don't know what else that I could have done. I don't know what else I could have said, I don't know how much more I could have tried to talk through them, you know. You have to be really careful about that helicopter, you know. You have to be really careful about you know, the kid in the bubble, you know what I'm saying? Like building that bubble around him, right? Like, oh, it's nice and cozy, and all of a sudden they're 18. Yeah, and they're in the world.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

You just like how you know you didn't tell me about like life. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

That first day they hit a college campus or something, they're gonna lose their mind.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Yeah, it goes from that bubble to complete freedom, yeah, it's way too much. You you look there's no structure. We talk about professional athletes coming out of out of college having been completely broke, and now you have millions in the bank. Yes, and tomorrow yeah, life just falls apart because of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, tomorrow, you know. It's not necessarily that they can't handle it, they just weren't taught how to handle it. So, you know, you have to have honest conversations with your kids, man. You know, it's not easy, yeah. But it's imperative, really is. Otherwise, you're gonna you're you're gonna lose them fast to society, to the internet.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Yeah, I I talked a few episodes about somebody's influencing your kids. Who do you want it to be? You or that teacher or that friend or that stranger, like yeah, right. Somebody's gonna have them. Who's

Money Wisdom And Planning Ahead

SPEAKER_02 9:06

it gonna be? If you can think of something you would tell your younger self, what would you tell your younger self that you'd want to know that you know now? Be smart with money.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

In our current climate, you can't outpace inflation. Right? Be smart with your money, protect it right now, being married, having the kids, it's extremely important that we protect the assets that we have, right? So we have the living will, we've got our trust set up, right? Same with my parents, same with her parents. Because at the end of the day, every single last person on this earth is gonna perish, right? Do you want to leave a mess or do you want to leave a message? Yeah. Two different things, right? Plenty of people leave messes, right? Not too not enough people leave a message, right? And when I say leave a message, I mean this is the least that I could do to help you and your future generation be smart with money and at the same time enjoy it. Finances, man, it's the number one killer of marriages, yeah, right. So you have to be honest about what money means to you, not only to yourself, right, but to your spouse. You know what I'm saying? This is what money means to me, right? Like people look at money, they look at, oh, I'm okay with debt, you know, and there's people on the other end that look at it like I need cash. You know what I'm saying? Me and Steph came together, that was us. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, you got what? You know what I'm saying? She's like, You have what? Right. You know what I mean? It's like you have to be, you have to be honest with each other, especially when it comes to you're not just merging your life, you know, you're merging so many things, and finances is a huge part.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yeah. A hundred years from now, like you're you're done and gone, and maybe your kids are older and they've got kids and blah blah blah. Yeah. Um, what do you want them to say about you and Steph? Like what on y'all's life, looking back, uh, I don't like the word legacy. I like the word you said message. What message are you sending? Yeah, so what what message do you want them to think about? About you're like, hey, um grandpa, uh Shannon and Steph and Steph, they were like, this is them. Yes, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

We've we've had this conversation since before we were married. Yeah. Okay. We are here to set up the next seven generations in all aspects. I want my great-great-great-great-great-grandkids to know that they were able to accomplish this because of the foundation we allowed we built to give them something to stand on. Right. So they say, like, I have the foundation that I have right now in life, not just finances, but spiritually, mentally, emotionally.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the dinners that you guys I mean that that's the foundation that you're setting.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

That's the foundation I'm saying. Right. That's what I want them to know. Like, this foundation is here because my grandparents were born in the 1900s. My great-great great great parents who were born in the 1900s.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, allow me in the 2200s to do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah, that's that's the message that I want them to know, you know. And it and it has nothing to do with, oh, look at us. Yeah, right. You know that. It's it's not no, it's not that. But we are here because we are planning for seven generations down the road. Yeah, and that's it, that's minimum. Yeah, you know, yeah. I'm I love that you guys talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Oh, yeah, that's that's up front front, man.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Oh, yeah, that's a big deal. And it's and in our mind, we're already on the third generation, yeah. Okay, because my parents, you know, they're building their legacy. Her parents are building theirs, right? Yeah, so now instead of us being first generation, now we're gonna be second. Yeah, you know, and then the kids are already third, yeah, right? Yeah, so we have a potential of seeing at least five of the generations of the seven that we're looking to build. Yeah.

What It Means To Be Godly

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Tell me what it means to you to be a godly man. We kind of touched on being a man in society right now, but like specifically being that godly husband, yeah, uh being that godly father, leading your family, um, and and even uh just in in public, people saying, okay, he's a Christian, they're gonna look at you and they're gonna judge Christianity off of you as a man, you as a person, you as a human being, and gonna judge God off of what they see from you, 100%. Uh, which is not the way to live. There's not the way to live. But that's what they're gonna do. Um so uh what does it mean to be a godly man?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

It is extremely rewarding and extremely difficult at the same time. Yeah, because at the end of the day, you're still a man and you still have like those moments where you're just like you know what I'm saying, right? You still want to run them off the road, you know what I mean? Without sounding like that, right? Right, like you still want to have that, you know, you still have that visceral reaction, and you can say, Oh, I prayed about all this, those man. Like at the end of the day, like you're still a man. If you're if you are what God puts you in that spot to be, right? So if you are the provider, if you are the protector, if you are that guy, you gotta be prepared to take everything, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Flaming darts, arrows, all of it, okay, in your back and in the front. You gotta be ready for that. You know, I got a son. This is what it looks like to you know, humble yourself. This is what it looks like to pray through it. This is what it looks like to struggle, you know. This is what it looks like to hit a mountaintop. Yeah, it's hard, dude. You know, it's hard, yeah, right? Because you are the minority as a Christian in the world, you're a minority. One of the prayers that that was another thing too that I want I wanted to touch on, just real quick when it comes to the kids. Yeah, every night, you know, that I'm home and we're not on that I'm not on shift. One of the main things, one of our biggest things that we always do is dinner together. Summertime we kind of switched it up with the schedule, but we 100% absolutely pray together every single night as a family. Yeah, right. Like that's non-negotiable. Even on my work, you know, they'll FaceTime me. You have to establish certain things within your own home, and you have to protect and you have to build your home before you can even go out in the world. Yeah, you know what I mean? You have to, right? You take care of home, and then from there it's easier to be in the world, and it's easier to take those darts, and it's easier to take those arrows because you're like, I know what my house looks like. Right, you know, I know the foundation that I'm able to build within my four walls. Right. I know I can control that. Everything on the outside, different story, you know? It gives you more strength, it gives you more confidence when you know that home is good.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah, so everything we've talked about is based around foundation. Yeah, man. It doesn't matter if it's at home, if it's God, if it's everything in the foundation, yeah. Everything, man.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

You have to have a solid foundation and a solid understanding, you know? Yeah, not just doing it because it's Monday, doing it because this Monday is going to get you to that Monday. Right. And then that Monday is gonna look different than the next Monday. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you you absolutely have to have that foundation. Yeah. Because man, when home's good, man, things are good. I don't know. I think I think this is my personal opinion. I think if people focus more on home, that we would have a lot different a climate outside. You take care of home, you tithe and see where things go. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely, absolutely see where it goes, right? That's just my challenge to people, right? That's fantastic. Don't try it, just do it. Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

All right, man.

Book Mention And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_02 16:54

So we're gonna close this out, but um, I know that you, like you said, you said you're an author. I'm gonna leave a link. Uh and so people can go check out your book. It's uh PTSD, anxiety, depression, just mental health in general, and how to just surrender daily, right? It's a daily process. And so I'll leave a link if anybody wants to you know read up about a little bit more about Shannon's life and what he went through and how he got through it and yeah, all that good stuff. That'd be awesome. So I'll make sure that's in there. But I appreciate you coming on, and next time we'll definitely get Steph on and Amy and Oh, yeah, we got a part three, four, five, and six.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

We'll just chat, man. We got bites.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

I had I had uh I don't know if it was organized, but I knew coming into this just from our talks, like we just go on some just different things, and so yeah, um it yeah, my organization didn't work out, but I think I think this went great, but um, yeah, it is just so you know, as we only got through like one eighth of the question. Exactly, exactly. Cool. All right, man. Let me pray this out. Yeah, let's go. Uh Lord, I just thank you so much. I pray that uh this podcast, this episode goes out, and uh the people that need to hear it, hear it, and the uh the people that needs to help that you speak through us in that, that they hear what they need to hear and uh really make their family, uh you uh a priority in their home. I know we talked about the, you know, if if we can make home a priority and make sure we've got a good foundation there, uh it all leads from biblical principles and and uh morality through you and how to lead our family well. And uh I just pray people hear that message, that they hear that, man, it's just it's not about uh just me. It's about you and what we leave for our kids, the message that we leave them through our actions that we do, talking about having dinner at the table and and leading them well and having them involved in the family, but they are not the family. Uh that it's it's about you first, our spouse and kids. I I just pray that this message is heard uh throughout the world. Um I pray for everybody that's gonna listen to this message. They are blessed to be a blessing to other people. We just thank you so much for this community in Jesus' name. Thank you, man.