Episode 79. What My Parents Got Right: Marriage Lessons From 60 Years Together

Aug 27

The Key to Lasting Love? A Shared Vision and Separate Dreams

This past month, I said goodbye to both of my parents, who passed away within two weeks of each other after nearly sixty years of marriage. Sitting in the chapel at their joint funeral, listening to bagpipes carry the weight of their love story, I found myself reflecting on what really makes a marriage last.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect. No one’s is. But it was whole—rich with resilience, shared dreams, and quiet sacrifices. As I’ve thought back over their life together, one theme has surfaced again and again: they built a shared vision without losing themselves in the process.

And that lesson has everything to do with how we create intimacy, connection, and meaning in our own marriages today.

Why a Shared Vision Matters

My parents never used the term “shared vision”—but they lived it.

From the beginning, they dreamed together. They wanted a large family, a home centered on faith, music, and service, and a life lived simply but intentionally. They talked about it, agreed on it, and then built their daily choices around that vision.

A shared vision matters because marriage isn’t just about loving someone—it’s about building a life together. When you and your spouse know where you’re going, small daily decisions suddenly make sense:

How you spend your time
How you handle money
What you prioritize as a family
Even how you navigate conflict

For my parents, their shared vision showed up everywhere. They grew a massive garden and canned fruit every summer, not because they loved sweating in the sun, but because they valued self-reliance and wanted their children to learn stewardship. They budgeted to the penny, not because they loved spreadsheets, but because they wanted the security to invest in what mattered most.

Shared vision is the anchor that holds you steady when life feels chaotic. Without it, you risk drifting into parallel lives under the same roof.

Supporting Each Other’s Dreams

Here’s the thing: a shared vision doesn’t mean sameness. My parents were wildly different people.

My dad was gentle, contemplative, and endlessly curious—he could name every tree by its leaf, recite poetry from memory, and lose himself in the quiet of a garden. My mom, on the other hand, was high-energy, social, and always dreaming of the next big thing. She wore bold jewelry, loved culture and art, and threw herself fully into every passion.

They didn’t try to make each other alike. They didn’t shrink to fit into each other’s worlds. They supported one another’s individuality.

When my dad developed a deep love for Native American and Tibetan cultures, my mom packed up the family for long trips to reservations and into rural Mexico, making his dreams her own. When she served on the local arts board to bring culture into our small rural town, my dad backed her wholeheartedly—even when he didn’t fully share her interests.

That balance—the ability to build something together without losing who they were as individuals—is one of the most overlooked keys to lasting intimacy.

In our own marriages, supporting each other’s dreams doesn’t just create deeper connection—it expands us. When we champion our spouse’s individuality, we both grow.

What This Means for Your Marriage

As I’ve reflected on my parents’ sixty years together, here are a few takeaways that might inspire your own relationship:

Talk about your future. Don’t assume you’re on the same page. Sit down together and dream out loud. What do you want your life to look like—five, ten, twenty years from now?
Name your non-negotiables. What matters most to each of you? Faith, family, travel, adventure, financial security? Understanding each other’s values keeps you aligned.
Support, don’t suppress. You don’t have to share every passion your spouse has, but you can celebrate it, make room for it, and even find ways to connect through it.
Revisit the vision often. A shared vision isn’t static—it evolves as you grow. Keep the conversation going.

Final Thoughts

Marriage isn’t just about staying together—it’s about growing together.

My parents taught me that love deepens when you combine a shared purpose with room for individuality. When you know where you’re headed and you make space for who each of you is becoming, you create a partnership built on both security and freedom.

Scott and I talk often about what our next chapter will look like—how we want to show up for each other, our family, and our work in the world. We don’t always have the answers, but we know this: having a shared vision helps us live with intention, and supporting each other’s dreams keeps us connected.

If you haven’t had this conversation lately, maybe now’s the time to start.

0:04
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse.
I'm Doctor Heidi Hastings.
And I'm Doctor Scott Hastings.
We are two doctors, 2 researchers, 2 spouses, 2 lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little.
0:32
Fun.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Marriage IQ.
We have been really busy lately.
A lot of things that we've been doing behind the scenes.
Today's episode is going to be a little bit different and we're going to kind of put away the research, the studies that we normally do, and we're going to get really personal.
1:00
You're right, Scott.
So in the last month, I've lost both of my parents who'd been married for nearly 60 years.
We just had a joint funeral for them earlier this week.
Their love story wasn't perfect and no marriages, but they were so loyal and faithful to each other.
1:19
And as I've reflected on their relationship, especially the last couple of weeks, I see so many lessons that I have learned at their feet that have shaped the way I see relationships.
Yeah.
You know, I think this is a great way to honor your parents, to devote a full episode on things that you've learned from them their many years.
1:42
You know, I, I found it really actually touching that your dad, who'd been suffering with dementia for years, held on just long enough until your mom passed.
And then he waited two weeks, so two weeks to the day he passed.
2:00
And so we ended up doing a double funeral.
Right.
Yeah.
It's kind of hard to watch 2 caskets with the bagpipes they're playing and all of their family and posterity and relatives.
But also really, really beautiful and and so filled with love, but just as such a blessing over the last month as I focused on the things I learned at their feet that were really beautiful through the thick and the thin.
2:37
My parents were really committed to making their marriage work as were yours.
Yours have been married over 60 years and feel free to add in anything you want about yours.
But it's really fresh on my mind to talk about my parents right now.
So that's.
As it should be.
My parents are still living.
2:54
They are definitely getting older.
Yeah, but.
Your parents have passed away and this is about them today, Yeah.
So I want to share what I've learned from watching my parents love of and struggle and forgive and grow over six decades.
And my hope is that their story not only honors their memory, but gives all of you, our listeners, something meaningful to consider for your own marriages as well. 6 decades, That's amazing.
3:22
That's crazy.
That's a lot of years.
It is.
We're almost halfway there.
In just a few months, we'll be halfway there.
Can you believe it?
I just want to keep going with you.
This is awesome.
It's great, it's fun, and bring it on.
3:43
Well, let's start by letting me share a little bit about my parents story, if that's OK.
My mom was an Idaho potato farmer's daughter who later lived in New York City for a while and was involved in the World's Fair there before she got married and then eventually settled down as a secretary to a famous scientist at a university back again in the West.
4:05
She's definitely older for a single person then in the 60s.
Back then anyway, right?
Then in the 60s when people got married, she was 26, I believe that my dad was 31, which those were considered an old maid and an old bachelor that maybe we're even a menace to society, I don't know.
4:24
But my mom was a really classy dresser and always concerned about her appearance.
She was really very refined and knew how to work hard and so full of energy.
So that's where you get that from.
I do like you wanting to look nice.
4:43
Thank you SO.
Yeah, but yes, your mom was very much into that.
I even more than I was she always wore big Native American jewelry and.
She was bigger than life.
She was in about 100 lbs, teeny tiny, and when she passed many, many pounds less than that, but she still, I think probably the day she died, was putting on mascara and lipstick before she would see anybody.
5:12
My dad, after having served in the military, got a master's degree in social work and he dedicated his career to helping minority populations, specifically Native Americans at the time.
That's why their house is filled with Native American decoration.
5:29
It could be a museum.
Yeah.
My dad first saw my mom at church and after they met, I don't think anything really came from that.
But when he then moved to the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona, where he worked with the Navajo tribe, and one of my mom's friends was really interested in him, I think maybe they dated a little bit or something.
5:56
And so she asked my mom if she would take this long road trip with her to travel to go see my dad.
And she didn't want to travel long.
So so they went together.
And as it turned out, while my mom's friend was in the kitchen trying to impress my dad by cooking and cleaning, my mom was dancing with my dad in the living room.
6:20
Which?
Scandalous.
Totally won over his heart.
So like I said, my dad was nearly 31 and my mom was 26.
All's fair in love and war.
Yep, and they fell in love very quickly, got married and my mom moved away from the city to the Indian Reservation.
6:39
He must have really been in love.
I know that.
Can you imagine?
That would be very shocking culturally for that big.
Change.
We've been to several Indian reservations living in Arizona, and I can say that is a culture shock.
Yeah, I've never.
Been there, very different.
6:55
Within four months after they got married they adopted my sister, a one month old Navajo Indian baby which wow bam that's fast.
And then had me just ten months later.
By the time my next sister came sixteen months later, they had three babies in diapers.
7:17
My mom no longer was a career woman but a full time mother, and my dad and mom started their life together like that.
By the time they've been married 15 years, they had 7 girls and three boys.
7:33
That's really busy.
Yeah, and that included not only my Navajo Indian sister, but also my 2 Korean adopted brothers.
So we had a house full.
Yeah, a multinational, multicultural family.
7:49
Yeah, and it seemed so normal to me.
It didn't seem anything different.
You know, school friends would make comments about it and stuff, but we didn't see that.
That was just the way it was.
Yeah, well, I think that's cool though.
Very unusual.
8:05
Yeah, very unusual.
I like it.
Yeah, family was really such a big part of my parents.
Marriage of their children and family was so important.
Telling their story actually brings back so many memories.
8:21
Lots of long road trips that included singing for part harmony wherever we went, picking weeds in a huge organic garden every night during the summer, going to family reunions.
And didn't she used to dress you up in matching dresses?
8:39
Yes, my mom was a great seamstress and like.
The von Trapps.
Yep, and you would sing.
Yep, for Christmas, Easter and even the 4th of July she would make 7 matching dresses for the girls.
And I remember looking at those photos of.
8:55
You.
It's fun.
Well, it's not for me.
I don't know.
I don't think it was very fun for her.
I can.
I just say that very adorable.
One year my dad, when we were working in the garden, he labeled the Rose not just by like carrot, squash, whatever, but he did it all in Spanish.
9:17
So we all had to learn all of the.
Parts Spanish.
Words, yeah.
And he didn't speak Spanish, but he wanted to learn and he wanted us to learn.
And so just so many memories.
There's so many stories I could tell.
I'll throw a few in here and there.
But I do wanted to share with you some of the core lessons that I've learned about marriage from my parents is I've really pondered that over the last couple of days, especially.
9:44
The first big thing that comes from me thinking about my parents marriage was that they truly had a shared vision.
I think it was episode 23 where we're talking about marriage retreats.
10:00
We talked a lot about having a shared vision.
Shared vision, yeah.
I don't recall them using those words, but that's exactly what they had.
Once they met and talked about what they wanted out of life, they both agreed they wanted a really large family.
10:18
And my dad was known sometimes when people would comment on what a large family we had, when we would go places, he would say, well, my wife wanted 20, but she's agreed to stop at 10, stop at 10.
10:35
So that was always a shared vision that they had that guided really the rest of their lives.
My parents had agreed that because they wanted such a large family, my dad would work outside the home and my mom would be a stay home mom, which that was fairly common for that era.
10:57
But I'm really glad that was something that they agreed on.
They had shared faith that was so important to them and values which so much of their life centered around that shared faith and gave them extra commitment to each other.
11:13
I think even when things weren't hard because they felt like they'd made covenants with each other to make the marriage a priority.
Yes, yeah, I do recall that being a very big part of their life.
Yeah, my dad especially loved music.
11:30
He loved to sing.
He'd always been in choirs.
He'd come in our bedroom early in the morning singing so loud that it was like our alarm clock.
But my mom also loved music, and they would sing together.
She would sing the melody and he'd sing the harmony, and they decided that was part of the shared vision they wanted for our family.
11:53
They also had decided it was really important for them to live within their means.
They didn't want to be in debt for things.
I don't recall ever using credit cards.
I'm not even sure they took out loans for cars, maybe, but they bought an old granary and restored it, I don't know, for hardly anything, but made it very beautiful with very nice furniture.
12:21
They loved traditional architecture together.
They wanted to live off the land.
So they, like I said, they grew this large organic garden.
They had orchards filled with trees and they would take all of us every summer to several different Peach orchards, apricot orchards, cherry orchards, all the different fruit orchards, and then they'd work together to can all of the fruits and vegetables.
12:49
So during the winter we had food to live on.
So your mom didn't work and your dad worked for underserved the Native American?
Yeah, he didn't make a lot of money.
He.
Didn't make a lot, and so that was something that they really were able to produce a lot with the little that they made.
13:11
That to me is very inspiring.
Right.
How much they were able to accomplish with little money.
They taught us a lot about budgeting and being responsible for our stewardships in life, money, our six acres, lots of other things that they've been given stewardship over.
13:31
We relied on a lot of cousins passing down hand me downs and thought that was the best thing ever.
But.
No one talked about how you just were too poor to get clothes.
No clothes, right?
Just just the thing you did.
13:47
Right.
We'd maybe get an outfit or two a year and they would spend the little money they had to get the best shoes they could.
So they would last for six months or so, and we only had one pair of shoes each that we would wear to church and to school.
14:03
But my mom did sew us some outfits, so that was fun too.
I think another area of shared vision that they had was their love for people.
They saw people that others didn't, and it was very important to them to reach out to and show love for widows, for vulnerable youth.
14:25
Both of them worked with troubled youth, vulnerable youth, and made them feel so loved.
They loved traveling among and working with minority populations, with the elderly, and they really, really loved their large extended families on both sides.
14:44
So in other words, they hung out with people that a lot of other people didn't want to hang out.
With and just made them feel so loved at their funerals.
So many people came saying your parents made such a difference in the trajectory of our lives and told us many ways that they did that, but they took us along with them.
15:03
It wasn't isolating us, it was it was along with us.
They loved healthy eating.
I remember as little kids going to health food stores with them, and we didn't eat sugar very often.
15:19
And we had our own chickens and it was very important to them to eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains.
And I kind of felt gypped as a kid because our friends got cold cereal.
I think you may be and.
Rebelled a little.
15:35
I did later when.
You left home right with your diet anyway, which is funny because now you've come around back to eating like them.
I have my dad used to go hiking.
Exercise was really important to them.
15:52
Staying physically fit.
Like I said, prioritizing our family above money because my dad was one of the only people in the small rural town we lived in that had a graduate degree.
They really emphasized the importance of getting a college education.
16:09
And I think my mom kind of, she was very intelligent and I think she may have regretted a little bit that she only ever got to 1 semester of college.
But they did tell us that we would be going to college and we would be graduating.
Well, you know, those are all awesome traits.
16:30
I'm trying to remember them all.
Let me see if I can remember some of them.
They both valued standing up for the disadvantaged to being friends with them.
They valued music.
They valued the importance of family togetherness, the importance of thrift and being productive.
16:50
Living off the land, living within your means, making faith a big part of their their journey together.
Did I miss?
Nope.
Those are big ones, those.
Are, and I'm sure there are more, those are just some things that come to the top of my mind as we're talking.
17:08
But for those who are wondering about how to create a shared vision, there are some ideas for you.
Maybe sports is something that's part of your shared vision.
That was not, I mean, well, exercise was big, nature was big, the earth was big.
That wasn't really a huge part of our life until I had brothers, which was at the very end.
17:30
But it was just important for them to have in their mind what they wanted in their marriage and their family and work together towards that.
I think it's important to note, too, that they weren't the same person.
They were quite different from each other in a lot of ways, and that's the beauty of marriage, coming together and just trying to make it all work.
17:50
Like the game of Tetris, right?
Or something, you know, these two different, totally different people.
Yeah, I love that you brought that up.
And I've also thought about how as individuals, they had their own interests and they respected each other and they had this partnership that honored each other's interests.
18:12
A cousin reached out with several things she remembered about my parents, and she said that my mom was just so full of energy and she was so determined.
My dad really never suppressed that.
He encouraged it sometimes.
18:28
It was probably a lot.
That's why he would.
Your mom was definitely spunky.
Yeah.
You would get up early and have his meditation and prayer and scripture study early in the morning, and he probably needed that to remain very mindful to, to kind of be more patient with some of the spunk.
18:50
But she also was very supportive of his dreams and helping his dreams come true.
Like you said, they were very different from each other.
My dad was gentle, happy, calm, serene.
He loved to be still in the early mornings.
19:07
He loved to read.
He loved poetry.
My mom, again, very different, very high energy, like the Energizer Bunny, very social, very determined.
They were actually both really social, but she was driving a lot of that.
19:25
I can't imagine your mom sitting down and meditating.
Nope, I tried to get her to do that a few times in the last years and she could not.
She was just move, move, move all.
The intelligent spouse knows that meditation is very important part of life.
19:40
I tried.
I tried to teach her that my dad, like I said, loved Native American Indians, and then he loved Mexicans, and then he loved Tibetans and then he loved Africans.
And with each of these new emerging loves that he had, my mom supported his dreams in traveling to some of these locations, in inviting some people from some of these countries to live in our home at times.
20:10
And she really organized.
Our family trips driving in our 12 passenger van to Mexico, we'd.
Go.
I remember those stories.
Yeah, we'd go for a month each time, three different times.
Living in a van.
She would take enough food and water for a month because she didn't want us to get Montezuma's revenge.
20:29
Yeah.
These trips to Mexico were not plush.
Yeah, that is true.
We'd sleep in the van even for the first year or two.
And then finally we started getting hotels.
But my mom, on the other hand, loved culture, refinement, art.
20:45
My dad grew really to love all of those things too.
But he was really supportive of her when she served on a cultural board to bring the arts to the small rural county that we lived in.
And she was really passionate about helping bring refinement and culture to our community.
21:07
He supported that so much.
My dad loved raising fancy breeds of chicken and cactus.
He could tell you every tree by the leaf.
He loved rocks and gardening, and she didn't hold him back from those.
21:24
She was supportive of that.
He had libraries and she even put a little library in the bathroom so when he needed a little escape, he could just go in there and read his books.
But they did support each other in their own interests.
21:41
And he loved a lot of English literature, poetry, right?
My mom was the financial Wizard of the two of them and she could make a dollar stretch further than anybody I've ever met.
She wanted to buy.
I remember at one point a very expensive back then piece of property in university where they wanted us all to go.
22:05
It was across the street from the university and I guess she wanted to be there with her kids thinking that we'd all go to college there, which some of us did, but not all of us.
And she was really determined to do that.
And my dad, I think they must have counseled together behind doors.
22:22
She came up with a plan.
She went and knocked on the guy's door.
He said I'll sell it to you, but it has to be paid over payments over three years.
And in the small amount of money that we had, that wasn't possible.
So she made a plan that she would go back to work at a detention center with troubled youth and she also substitute taught in the schools and was able to pay that off and make that possible for them to later build a house and move there.
22:50
So I love that they supported each other's dreams.
You know, it's interesting just hearing you go through all this.
They came together.
They're their own person.
They had their own individual visions and dreams.
Then they came together and made shared visions and dreams.
They talked about it.
23:05
They were intentional about it.
And then they supported each other in their own individual dreams and their own individual values.
And then they learned how to support each other further.
And that is very heartwarming to hear that, that over the years, just learning how to change and grow together in new and beautiful ways.
23:29
You know, Heidi, it sounds like such a beautiful life together.
It's.
Crazy too.
Come on, we had ten children in 15 years. 14 years maybe.
About it sounds like the idyllic life, the idyllic marriage, that it's beautiful and wonderful.
23:46
Yeah, there were so many parts of it.
We're that way, but there are also challenges.
There's a lot of challenges, right?
There are a lot of challenges.
It's probably important to talk about challenges and not get people thinking that everything's just going to be hunky Dory.
Rosy, right?
24:02
Absolutely, absolutely.
I think a couple of the internal challenges that as a child I maybe didn't see as much initially, but there were a lot of financial constraints from my dad choosing to be a social worker and then my parents choosing to have 10 children.
24:22
My mom would sit at the table for hours with her little 10 key adding machine.
She budgeted to the penny.
My dad was not quite as on board with that and she had to take a lot of the responsibility for that.
24:38
Some decisions they definitely made together, but.
You can see how that could cause a lot of friction if you're really, really, really tight with money.
Yeah.
And you know, he was good, like I said, to garden.
But yeah, that was that was a challenge.
24:56
Sometimes I think another challenge worth noting.
And maybe if I would have said this 20 years ago, it would have sounded critical.
But I think I want to normalize it is that I think there was an element of mental health struggles with my mom.
25:15
Part of it may have come from genetics or hormones.
I mean, consider being pregnant that many times with those huge hormone shifts.
And then, you know, the fact that we would fight and we would squabble and we weren't always obedient probably was really hard.
25:35
And there were times when my dad would travel some to the Indian reservations with his work or when he was in leadership positions in our church that he wouldn't be around very much.
And I think she did an incredible, amazing job, but I really feel like mental health was probably a struggle that we didn't talk about then so didn't get help for.
26:00
They navigated it the best they could, but it was still a struggle.
And I really appreciate that my dad didn't give up on her.
I remember one time that they'd been arguing, which was always super stressful as a child, and my mom was so upset she just went to her room and got in bed, which she didn't do that a lot.
26:22
But my dad later gathered all of us children and brought us to the foot of the bed and had all of us listen while he told the story of their courting relationship, of their engagement, basically their love story in great detail.
26:43
And as children, that brought a lot of comfort to us when there'd been contention to know that they still loved each other.
At the end, my mom's heart was really softened and she felt better, and as as children just expressed our love and appreciation to her and all that she did.
27:02
It left us feeling a lot more secure and helping us know that our parents truly did love each other.
I think it's universal.
As a child, I, I was a child a long time ago, but I think it's universal.
Child needs to feel that security of both those parents.
27:21
I they just, they need to and if that's broken, it's huge.
Very traumatic.
Very traumatic.
It can actually cause some.
I, I remember, I mean my parents, I think any good marriage has their really, really weak points.
And I remember where I thought my parents might split up, feeling that crushing blow inside of me, just crushing.
27:43
As a child, I didn't know what to do with these feelings.
And I think you probably had the same.
And it is really hard, a very traumatic on a child.
It is so for him to do that.
It was so wise.
Very wise.
27:58
Very wise.
And another thing he would often do is we did family slideshows all the time.
We didn't have an 8mm camera or anything like your family did, but my dad took lots of pictures.
And when things are a little tense, he'd say family movie night and we would pull out the slides from different parts of life and just go through our history as family and start remembering things.
28:22
And you're really good at that.
You are so nostalgic like my dad.
But just doing that brought a sense of family, commitment, community and helped us revisit the good, happy memories.
28:38
And I think in doing so, really minimized some of the difficult things that we were experiencing years later when, you know, they kind of navigated those years with the kids at home.
But then when they became empty nesters, their relationship really took off and I saw it flourish more than I ever had.
28:59
They had so much fun together and from then on through the rest of their lives, they were really inseparable.
But several years ago they had a car accident where they were leaving a cemetery and somebody T boned them running a stop sign and.
29:18
Realized we're never the same after.
That no, my mom had two hangman fractures in her neck.
Should have probably killed her.
She broke her back in several places.
Her pelvis, just like this teeny little 100 LB woman was broken from head to toe and was in the hospital for several weeks and then wore one of those Halos for a year or so in a turtle shell while her body was trying to recuperate.
29:48
Huge.
She was in pain.
Really the rest of her life.
She never complained about being in pain, but Dad had to step up.
She had cared for the home mostly throughout my childhood.
Dad always changed diapers, always vacuumed, always did dishes, always did chores around the house, always helped with the kids.
30:11
But now he had to do everything for about a year, I think he cared so tenderly, so well for her and nursed her back to health.
And then several years later, again, she had a stroke and he had to do similar things for her during those times.
30:34
So really, and it's interesting, as he started to decline, she stepped up and.
Yeah, just.
Took it on.
Even though she had the pain, even though maybe her emotions were more elevated from the stroke, she for more than five years became his caregiver until the very end.
30:57
And if any of you have ever taken care of a parent or spouse with dementia, you know what we're talking about.
Sometimes they get mean, sometimes they try to escape.
It's.
Hard.
It's very, very difficult.
Yeah, there's so much grief there in losing the person.
31:16
And in fact, up until the very end, she insisted that he could hear what she was saying.
He knew what was going on, he just couldn't speak.
Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.
I think there's some truth to it because of the timing of both of their deaths.
31:34
I think, yeah, he knew she was gone.
I think he.
Knew.
But she would do puzzles with him every day to try to keep his mind active.
She would have him fold laundry, almost like occupational therapy or something.
She would have him do the dishes for as long as he could.
31:51
She'd have him go through photo albums and name who each person was.
She'd have whenever the kids would call.
She would have us talk to him too, even when he couldn't speak very much, trying to keep him speaking.
And she, I think, extended his life single handedly by many years by trying every way she possibly could to care for him.
32:15
And luckily a couple of my sisters lived close by and really, really helped a lot.
But for the most part, up until the last few months, she did everything, and really at the expense of her own health, which eventually led to, yeah, to her death.
32:34
Before him, she just wore out.
So that's a great life of your parents.
Hard, very hard life.
I think that all of us have our own idiosyncrasies, but you know.
But you're so good and supportive.
32:50
You know, I just love your parents so much and going over this story today, it just really fills me with so much more love for who they were, just the people that they were and they what they represented, just beautiful people, beautiful lives, and I'm grateful that I was part of it.
33:10
Thank you, me too.
So just some personal reflections I've had.
In summary, my parents were fiercely dedicated to their family.
This was the most important thing in their lives besides their faith.
I realized how progressive my parents actually were in marriage.
33:29
They had shared power, shared vision, ideas about health and eating and exercise were quite progressive.
Their love for all people, for marginalized people, for people of all races and ages, that was very, very progressive.
33:45
And I'm so grateful that I've learned that and been able to implement that into our marriage, into our life that.
Was pretty unusual for that.
Right.
Their passion for learning was quite progressive and impactful and really kept us out of trouble.
34:05
I think of my nine siblings and I8 of us have bachelor's degrees, 5 master's degrees and then me with a PhD.
And that's so far.
Some of my adult siblings are still going back to school, and one just this week is starting her master's degree.
34:22
And so the love of learning definitely came from both my parents in different ways, but those are some of the big beautiful things that they gave us.
From all this today, Heidi, about your parents, what are some takeaways that some of our audience members can learn from the lives of your parents?
34:41
That's a really great question.
Probably a big one would be loyalty and commitment to each other through the very beautiful, wonderful things and through the really, really excruciatingly difficult things.
I did notice they had rituals of connection.
34:58
We've talked about that in an episode before.
Every morning they had prayer together.
Every night before bed, they had prayer together.
They told each other that they loved each other.
They read scriptures together every day and one of the really beautiful things until the very end, they sang to each other before bed.
35:21
I remember for sure this happening after my mom's accident and it may have happened when we were younger and we just didn't see their bedtime routines.
But as we came in to help, we saw my dad every night would sing the song a You're Adorable for my mom.
35:39
And then when he couldn't sing anymore, when he couldn't remember most of the words, she would sing it to him every night till the very end.
Every single night.
Those rituals of connection are so important.
They were resilient and conflict.
35:58
I wish I would have been more aware of how that occurred behind doors, but but I loved what I saw.
You know, remembering the good things and and being nostalgic is a great way to overcome conflict and build resilience.
36:18
And then again, reading that shared vision, things that you're both working on together.
In conclusion, I just want to say as I think about my parents marriage in terms of what we talked about our four cornerstones, identity, intentionality, insight and intimacy, I realize that their story wasn't just about two people.
36:40
It was about the qualities that make a marriage last.
Their identity as individuals never disappeared, but it helped them become stronger together because they chose to support each other and important parts of their identity.
36:58
They lived with intention.
Oh my goodness.
So much intention making daily choices in both marriage and parenting that help them build trust and stability.
They gained insights from mistakes that they made and they had to ask forgiveness from each other and they never stopped learning.
37:17
And then intimacy.
They were intimate emotionally, spiritually, physically, had to have been somewhat sexually to have that many children, I think.
But even through tender touch and song at the very end, that's such deep intimacy that carried them throughout the hardest parts and seasons of their life.
37:40
These 4 cornerstones of Marriage IQ weren't just ideas for them.
In fact, I don't even know that my mom listened to Marriage IQ to find out what they were.
But they were a way of life for them.
Well, that's beautiful.
That is so beautiful.
37:56
What a tribute to your parents.
Thanks for allowing me to do this today.
Oh well, you're the boss, so.
I think it's a lot of closure for me.
Yeah.
Or the beginning of a new era.
Well, let's have it be both.
38:14
OK, we'll do.
We'll keep the good parts going and we'll learn from the parts that we're a struggle.
That sounds like a plan.
All right, everybody.
Thanks so much for being with us and allowing me this possibility to talk about my parents today and.
38:31
We just want to let you all know that because you're part of our family now, we love you and share the word.
Let your friends and family know about marriage IQ.
And until next time to have a scintillating marriage that first requires a change in yourself.
38:53
And we look forward to you to seeing you next on another episode of.
Marriage IQ.

Heidi Hastings https://www.drheidihastings.com