Episode 20. I Can Do This With Her!: Jim & Cheryl Hastings’ Story of Transcending Stress and Grief
In this episode we have two very special guests, Jim and Cheryl Hastings, who are dear friends of ours. We have been especially drawn to the way they navigate challenges in their marriage and family. Even amidst traumatic loss, they have an incredible ability to cope through leaning on each other. Jim and Cheryl share openly about having a daughter born with disabilities, losing their 18-year old daughter Zoe to homicide, and the ripple effects on their other children. We know their story will help anyone facing grief/trauma in relationships. We talk about the importance of allowing each other space to process differently, having an intimate friendship that predated the crises, the role of community support, and how faith shapes resilience. No marriage is perfect, but Jim and Cheryl model how couples can draw closer through painful times if they stay committed to "being in it together."
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We're in the doctor's office, right? Yeah.00:00:05
Hello, all you scintillating spouses out there. And welcome back to another episode, an exciting episode of Marriage IQ. Today, we have some great people in our studio here. This is the first time we've tried this, and they're awesome friends. Dear friends.00:00:29
They are the Hastings.00:00:34
And, yes, you didn't mistake that. It's the Hastings and the Hastings. And what's even more interesting is that they are in no way related to us. We just. We happen to meet them how many years ago now?00:00:52
Maybe, what, six years ago? Five. Six. Yeah. Yeah.00:00:56
And we hit it off like, they're great people. We met. I'm like. I'm not used to meeting other people with the last name Hastings, so I'm gonna. And, you know, they seem pretty interesting.00:01:09
And he has almost, like, this full beard. I'm like, that's so awesome. I want to meet this guy. So we met, and we got together. We started going out to dinner, just talking.00:01:22
And we've maintained this friendship for many years now. And we decided to invite them on to discuss some really important things. Right. We've been discussing lately stress and coping in marriage, and you all came to our mind. Your stories are incredible in how you've been able to navigate stress in your family in a way that you've been able to hold your marriage together rather than turning against each other.00:01:56
So let's just start out by letting you introduce yourselves. Jim and Cheryl Hastings. Go for it. So, I'm Jim Hastings. Cheryl and I have been married for 29 years.00:02:06
We have five kids, four daughters and one son. And we've lived in Dallas most of our marriage, except for a few years when I was at school in Kansas City. And I'm an artist and a teacher. Great, Cheryl. So I guess I'm the mom.00:02:27
But I also work full time as a nurse practitioner for our county hospital system. And, I don't know, we just have been through thick and thin, I guess, together, you know, starting out with him going to school full time and me working and kind of supporting him through that. And then he did the same for me alongside us raising our children, I guess, you know. So we have five kids. Our oldest would be 28.00:03:04
And then we have a 24 year old who has special needs, Hannah. And then we have Tristan, who is 21, and Ruby, who will be 18 in a couple weeks. And then Olive, who is eleven. So I guess one of the first obstacles outside of just being in school and moving to a new place and not having any family in Kansas City, where we lived for a few years. At the beginning of our marriage, we had a special needs daughter who, at first, we didn't know she was special needs.00:03:36
And so maybe a year into her development, when they started realizing she wasn't meeting milestones, that's when we realized there was more to what was going on. And so we had a geneticist and different specialists in our, I guess, path trying to help figure out how to take care of her and figure out what was going on and how to manage that and so. And were you working at that time in Jim and school? No. So after Hannah was born, it was four years into our marriage, I guess, and he started working as a teacher, and so I was able to stay home.00:04:13
And especially with Hannah being in and out of the hospital and doctor's offices, it was kind of almost crucial for one of us to be home with her. So I stopped working and kind of stayed home and raised kids for about ten years before I really started going back to school and pursuing my own career anyway. So that was probably when, outside of, like I said, moving away from family and starting fresh, that was probably our first obstacle as a couple, just having that, spending lots of time in hospitals and doctors offices and just the stress that comes with the unknown of a child. And was there a diagnosis ever with that? Just to be clear, Hannah's not mildly.00:04:56
Is disabled the right word? Yeah. I mean, she has some significant. Right. So she's diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and then she has hypothyroidism.00:05:06
But that was the easy answer. It's really more of a chromosomal disorder. And so a developmental pediatrician along the way gave her the diagnosis of cerebral palsy because it would qualify her more for services and insurance, different things. So we're talking more of, like, a rare chromosomal. Yeah, there's not.00:05:28
There wasn't even a name. If there's a name now, I don't know. But when she was diagnosed, it was, like, one of these things where the geneticist was like, I'm actually surprised that the genetics are the doctors who, I guess, who review the labs even caught it because it was like a small deletion of a chromosomal, and they don't have a record of anyone else with that same deletion, so it's pretty unique. I don't know. Anyways, I mean, she's 24, so, I mean, it may have changed in the last couple decades, but as a special young woman.00:06:00
So I think one of the reasons why we asked the Hastings other than their really awesome friends. And I love their last name, but I think one of the reasons we asked them to be here today is because of what they've been through, and it's capital t trauma. Right. Right. They've dealt with not only a daughter with severe disabilities, but also dealing with one of their daughters dying.00:06:39
And that's pretty traumatic for anyone that is. In fact, research shows that at least half of couples who are married that have a child die, end up in divorce. And we had many therapists, I should say not many. One therapist who kept telling us that right after she passed away, we had gone to therapy, and this therapist kept saying, you know, you guys, most people don't survive this kind of shared trauma. Right.00:07:09
And so we didn't stay with her very long. Would you share with us about Zoe's story that's been more recent and more intense even than having a child with severe disabilities is my assumption. Right. As much as you're wanting to. No, that's fine.00:07:31
So she was just. Zoe was almost 18 when. No, she was almost 19. Almost 19, that's right. So she had left the house and she had told us where she was going, and we would expect her back home around, you know, 7730 o'clock on a Sunday evening.00:07:49
And we got to that time of the evening, and we kind of started questioning, like, why isn't Zoe home? You know? And so we started calling friends and texting, like, her friends, thinking, well, maybe she just went out with some friends and just didn't tell us. And so kind of started, you know, figuring out where she had gone or why she wasn't home. And there was no.00:08:10
No one knew where she was. There was no response from her. And so. And then we filed. I think at that point, we kind of started thinking about maybe we need to file a police report and figure out, well, we spent a bunch of time trying to figure out where she was at.00:08:23
Like, we drove, so when she didn't show up for dinner, we kind of went around looking for. I went out with my brother in law, and we kind of drove to several different places we thought she might be, and she didn't show up. We kind of put the other kids to bed and. And then, you know, and then we spent, like, hours kind of looking for her, trying to contact her. She wasn't responding to us.00:08:48
And. And then we had called the police at one point and asked them, you know, told them that our daughter was out. And because of her age, you know, they were hesitant to file a missing persons report. Or anything because, you know, she's almost 19 years old. So around midnight, she had not gotten back yet.00:09:07
We knew that something was definitely wrong because she hadn't responded to us, and we really had no indication where she was at. And so I went to the police station and filed a report, and then we pretty much spent the rest of the night looking for her without any success. My brother and my sister came over, and they kind of just drove all over the city with us. And Cheryl stayed at home in case she came back. And we had our other kids at home in bed, too.00:09:33
Yeah, we had our other kids at home. So then in the morning, she still had not returned. And at that point, we had had some family that had put this information up on Facebook, and we started to get, like, family members calling us and friends and stuff. And so one of my cousins came over around 08:00 in the morning, and we had tried during the night to get her phone to ding, which it did not. For whatever reason, we couldn't get the find your iPhone app to work.00:10:02
And so he had come over and he got it working. And probably within about five minutes of him getting there, we knew where her phone was, at least. And so we piled into my brother's truck and we drove over there. And as we were driving up, we saw emergency vehicles and police, and, you know, there wasn't any police line or anything up like that. So Cheryl and I got out and we kind of ran because we saw our car.00:10:26
Actually, that was. It was halfway in a ditch, and they wouldn't let us come over and see what was going on. So, anyways, the kind of short of the story, I guess, is that the police were on the scene and they just told us to wait. So we did. And after, I'm not sure how much time, they came over and they told us that our daughter had been killed and that it was a homicidal situation.00:10:58
And. And so, you know, I mean, that was tough. I can't even imagine the stress, the physiological, the psychological, the emotional responses flooding you at that time. Yeah, it was horrible. And we had sent our kids off to school and trying to, I guess, preserve their innocence for as long as we could.00:11:24
They were like, where's Zoe? Oh, she's just sleeping, you know, you guys just. Well, we didn't really know what had happened. We didn't know. No, we didn't know.00:11:31
So we just. We didn't want him to go to school worried. So we, you know, so, I mean, we lied to him and just kind of told him that she was okay. You know, she was in bed. And then we.00:11:41
When we finally did know what was going on, we did tell him that afternoon what had happened. Well, yeah. When the school started calling to say, you need to come get your kids. Because it became very rampant information. Yeah.00:11:52
People. Oh, wow. Yeah. Kids at their school were talking about it, so we had to go up there, and they had them in the counselor's office. And so it just.00:12:01
Yeah, it just was really in so many different ways, terrible, traumatic, whatever you want to call it. Just walking in and seeing the two kids there with the counselor and then having no clue what was going on and us having to tell them that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.00:12:20
No parent should have to do that. No, I've heard that story, I don't know, two or three times now. And every time it hits me, like, the first time, it's like, how do you even begin to deal with that? And on top of these other issues as well, in the family, I just. Wait.00:12:43
No, in the beginning, you just go through the motions. Right? I mean, like, it's funny. Cause when you look back, especially, I think, maybe, what, a year or so into our. After she passed away, I remember thinking back, thinking there was a point, I can't tell you, maybe six months or so, where it all kind of started settling a little bit, and you just kind of feel numb.00:13:09
I think in the very beginning, you just. Like I said, you're just kind of going through the motions. Like, you know what you need to do. You have these other kids you need to be taken care of, and you need to go to work and all these different things. Even though they were very understanding and we had, you know, sufficient time, I think, away from work and responsibilities, but.00:13:27
Yeah, but the numbness at the beginning actually helped a lot because you could still be productive. It was a protective factor. Yeah. I mean, you could kind of just. I mean.00:13:35
Cause there was a lot of stuff that had to be done after we found out what had happened and, you know, planning your funeral, which we had at the end of the week, you know, so we had so many people. I mean, I think both of us collectively just remember people being at the house almost twenty four seven. I mean, not 24/7 but it felt like there was always someone around either to come grab, you know, the little ones to take them to go do something fun so they weren't at home while we're trying to go through the planning of a funeral. And was that helpful? It was very helpful having kind of a community to support you and just be there.00:14:12
And we had this one lady who was just a longtime family friend who just kind of came and just sat like, she's like, I don't know what else to do, but I'm just going to be here. And so, you know, and I remember having, like, really close friends come and bring, like, big coolers full of water and, like. Like, those little naked drinks, you know, just. Just bringing food and just trying to do as much as they could so that we had a little less to be burdened with. And so definitely was able to get through that initial shock, I think, because of all the family and friends we had just right by our side.00:14:48
Yeah, we had a lot of help. Yeah. And shortly after that, you were having to deal with legal issues and. Yeah, I mean, took about two years. Well, and it took two weeks before they caught the guy that killed our daughter.00:15:05
So there was a lot of stress those two weeks where we really didn't know what had happened. We didn't. You know, we didn't know if somebody was, like, stalking our other children or. I mean, I think that that's a lot of reason that we had a lot of people around, because I think they were also scared that maybe our family was in danger still in some way. But we had really good police detectives that kept us updated on what was going on, and they checked in with us all the time.00:15:31
They were really great, too. Yeah, they were really good. And they, you know, and even before they arrested the guy, you know, I know that the detective that he was in charge, he called us the night before they went to go raid his house, and he says, hey, you know, we just want you to know we found who we think did it, and we're gonna go and arrest him in an early morning. And we want you to know, you know, we don't want you to tell anybody, but I. We want you to know that we think we've got him.00:16:00
And so once that happened, then that kind of alleviated some stress there, just like, knowing that they had the person in custody, and I think that they felt really confident it was the right person. And I think that we also felt like they had really done their work well. Even our neighborhood community, there was a. I don't know what you want to call it, a rally where they went out around, I think, hanging out flyers, trying to see if there was anyone who saw anything or knew anything. So we had lots of people.00:16:34
Yeah, there's a lot of looking for this guy. Yeah. That's nice to feel that support of the community, when you can hardly stand or even crawl yourselves to have them buoy you up like that? So what are some of the things during that time and during the aftermath that helped you navigate that grief, that suffering, unmet expectations of what your family would look like long term, all those experiences? How did you do that in a way that kept you together?00:17:07
I mean, I think one thing that we did initially is that we both kind of deal with stress in slightly different ways. And so I think we gave each other room to deal with the stress in our own way. Like, I remember when we first got to the crime scene where they had found the car, like, Cheryl was really upset. I'm like, she was mad upset, not, like, crying and stuff, but, like, mad because she, like, we knew that our daughter was over there, and they wouldn't let us go over, and she was just like. It was just really, you know, it was really interesting to see that.00:17:40
And I was really emotional and, like, you know, teary and stuff like that. So, I mean, we kind of dealt with it in different ways, and we've. We've always been like that. We're different people. So I think that just giving each other space to deal with it in our own ways, but still having each other to kind of lean on was really important.00:18:00
Not that I'm dealing with it this way, and you need to deal with it the same way I'm dealing with it, you know, but we kind of gave each other room to deal with it in our own way. I like that. So you were strong, flexible selves without actually knowing it. Right. It's a term we use a lot on our podcast.00:18:19
Yeah, we use that term a lot. I mean, that's very emotionally mature to give each other that space, because, I mean, that therapist is probably right. I mean, I think most marriages don't survive this, but you did, and you're thriving. And I think it seems to me that it might come kind of natural for both of you to. I think it's lucky, too, that we.00:18:47
I mean, so Zoe was almost 19 when she was killed. We had been married for almost 20 years at that point. And so I think that just the time we'd had together already before this happened was important in us being able to deal with it better. Maybe if we'd only been married for a couple years and this happened, I don't know how we would have dealt with it, but I think having had that almost two decade relationship of other types of stress. Yeah.00:19:17
And we had dealt with other things together up to that. Point that, you know, I think there's a lot of things along the way, including Hannah, which we talked about earlier, that kind of helped us see how the other one deals with stress and how to support each other during stressful times. And that's not to say that we did it well all the time or that we did it in any kind of perfect way, but I think that we felt strongly that we wanted to be together, and we had to figure out a way forward together. And. Well, and I think, too, just thinking back at our time together, it was kind of.00:19:56
We kind of made a point early on in our marriage to spend time, just the two of us, and developing a relationship with each other. So, you know, we went on weekly dates as much as we could, and then we tried to find other things that we enjoyed. Like, there was a pretty significant time where we did yoga classes together, you know, and we were. We would find different ways of just spending time together outside of either just date time or. Yeah, we do pilates, like, now.00:20:25
We go for walks several times a week, and it gives us just quiet time, the two of us, where we can talk about things. So I think that throughout our marriage, we've always found time to be alone together to develop that relationship. Yeah. So that's interesting that what I hear you saying is that intimacy is in large part what helped you cope with this traumatic circumstance. I think it definitely contributed to our ability to withstand that as a couple.00:20:55
Well, and the other thing, too, and we've talked about this as well, is that our religious beliefs have been really important in helping us to see past just the event of what's happening right now. And our belief system is that we'll see, like, our daughter again, we believe that our daughter, who is severely disabled, will not always be severely disabled when she goes from this life into the next one, that she'll have a perfect body and she'll, you know, she'll be able to talk to us, which she doesn't do now, you know, and I think that that affects our view of what's going on right now, that this is not just everything, you know, like, what's happening right now. This is not, you know, when this is over, there's nothing else. Right. So I think that having, like, a longer view has helped us in dealing with short term stresses, you know, because, I mean, even something like a child's death, it's a short term stress, relatively speaking, with long, long term effects.00:22:01
Yeah, it certainly has long term effects, and it affects the other kids, and there's a lot of things that come out of that. But I think that those religious beliefs that we have help us to look past, like, what's happening right now and recognize that there's hope that we will see our daughter again and that we'll be with her and that there's some other plan and play that maybe we just don't understand all of what's going on. I love that. It's really beautiful. You know, I think, too, we also have been really lucky to have had healthy relationships modeled for us.00:22:37
Like, both of us have parents who were married for decades as well. And I think we were surrounded by other people who were in similar situations. So I think having that modeled also kind of affects how you view a marriage or a relationship with someone. Yeah, that's a really good point. I like that.00:22:58
So my assumption is, with all of this traumatic stress, research at least shows that often pile up stresses are an outgrowth of that from other, you know, this stress then leads to other stresses. Did you experience any of that pile up stress with this that made it feel, even though you were starting to move through that shock period, that then other things arose that still made it difficult? I think it was probably our kids at that point. Kind of the ripple effect of it had it on our children, like our son, really. Not to say that the girls were not affected by it, but he was definitely.00:23:38
He kind of put up these barriers or boundaries that he didn't want anyone pass because that was his coping mechanism with his traumatic event in his life, and that was his way of dealing with it. And I think also, like with us, I don't know that. I mean, I think that, again, just being married for the amount of time that we've been married, that we recognize that if one person's acting out of the ordinary, there's probably other stresses that are contributing to that. You know, like, if we're talking about something and. And then I blow up over something that's really small as opposed to, I think that we can recognize that.00:24:22
Hey, is there something else going on? Has work been really stressful today? Are you worried about something that I don't know about that kind of thing? Again, we kind of talk about those things. I don't think that we have ever just let things lay.00:24:39
We may for, like, a short period of time, but we'll go back to it and go, hey, you know, what was going on earlier this week? You know, I mean, why. Why were you upset in this way or why, you know, what was bothering you? That kind of thing. So I think that we try not to have things pile up because it's just like anything, you know, it's like if you allow one stress to happen and then you let another stress come and sit on top of that first stress, and then you have a third stress, come sit on top of those first and second stresses, I mean, it just doesn't get any better.00:25:10
And so I think that we've made it a point to kind of address things as they come up. To me, they're talking about curiosity. Well, you're talking about so many wonderful things. Practicing the principles. Yeah.00:25:22
That we teach that curiosity. Just being curious instead of getting mad at somebody for acting out the way they do, being able to say, I'm just curious what's behind that. I think there might be something more than we're recognizing right off. Yeah. Is a really peaceful approach to navigate really difficult things.00:25:45
Right. And I think that, you know, where Cheryl was going with our son is that he did not do that a lot. Like, he. Things definitely piled up with him, and they just piled and piled and piled until it just, I think, felt really overwhelming for him. And so he's gone through years of, like, you know, sadness and depression and really heavy stress.00:26:06
I think part of that's just because he was never able to unpack some of the stuff that was going on along the way at his age as well, I think. In his age. Yeah. I mean, it's just. Yeah.00:26:15
Certainly being, like, developmentally not at a stage to be curious or to unpack or communicate or trust us enough to maybe even talk to us about it, I feel like. Right, okay, so research shows that two of the most important elements of a family's ability to be resilient from a traumatic circumstance are being able to access resources and being able to make meaning from that experience. You've alluded to both of those just a little bit. But are there any other resources that you found to be helpful that made a difference in your ability to cope and what meaning? Well, let's recap the ones they have described.00:27:01
Okay. The resources that really stood out to me was friends and family, community. Just really. Just being there and supporting them and the police force. Yeah.00:27:14
At least short term, maybe long term as well. But. And it sounds to me that they have resources in each other. Like, they've already just established these really healthy communication patterns. Right.00:27:29
Anything else? I think in the beginning, like, I know, like we mentioned a little bit, we went to therapy, and it was interesting because that we, after the first therapist and we were like, this isn't working for us because we had to keep explaining to her fundamental things about us that she didn't quite understand because she wasn't in the same place we were. And so we kind of shopped around a little bit and found another therapist who was on the same level as us, I suppose. And so she had the same religious beliefs as us, so we didn't have to keep. We didn't have to keep re explaining why certain beliefs were important to us.00:28:07
Okay. And that was really helpful because I think. I think we went with her for. At least I was with her for a few months and kind of worked through some things that I was struggling with. But then Jim, his time with her was much longer.00:28:22
He had a lot more things that he was dealing with. So I think just having that mental health counselor. That's good. Also helped work through some things that we. I guess that's an important.00:28:33
And again, I think that Cheryl, you know, she got out of it what she needed quicker than I did, and I. And I needed just more time, you know? And so I think just kind of not being critical of each other about, you know, like, she didn't. She never said, why are you still going to her? You know?00:28:49
Yeah. Like, this took me a couple months, and I was done, you know? Yeah. I mean, but she just was understanding of the fact that I was in a different place than she was, and I needed it longer than she did. And it wasn't like something where I ever felt like it was going to be for the rest of my life.00:29:04
It was just, I think that therapy, for me especially, is that I had a lot of emotions and feelings after our daughter's death that I was scared weren't normal. Like, I just, you know, like, I had some really violent thoughts towards the person that killed our daughter, you know, and I've never really felt that way towards anyone, you know? And so for me, it was really disturbing. I, you know, I was like, why is this coming into my head? You know, why am I thinking about hurting this person?00:29:37
You know, I don't normally sit around thinking about hurting people. And I think that, you know, being able to talk to a, you know, professional counselor and kind of explaining some of those things that I was thinking about and then having them say, you know, to me, at least, you know, this is normal. You know, people that have been in your situation, this is something that they've also thought about that they've, you know, it's. It's kind of. It creates a validation.00:30:04
Yeah, it is validating. Yeah. So I was just. Because of who I am, I was working through different stuff than Cheryl was. And even though it was the same shared kind of trauma, we.00:30:15
We dealt with it in different ways because of our own personal backgrounds and just who we are as individuals. Well, and it makes me wonder if, in part, your response was because your core identity value as a person, protector, and provider of your family was attacked. Now, for our listeners, you're a big guy. You're very strong. You're very big.00:30:36
And you would have had no problem protecting your daughter if you'd been given the opportunity. But I think sometimes when those internal core values of ours are attacked, it causes responses that are hard to wrap our heads. That's probably why he had those thoughts of hurting someone and she didn't, because that's not. Because nurturing might be more hurtful. Fundamental value.00:31:02
I want to get back to meaning, too. Yeah. And I want to recap a little bit on that. Like, what meaning did you bring out of this? And the biggest thing that I'm getting out of it is that fundamentally, you believe in something bigger than yourself, something outside of yourself, something that's.00:31:22
That gives you meaning for life. Right. Yeah. And that's really inspiring. Yeah.00:31:32
Well, because why else would you be doing this, right, if you didn't have a reason? So here's like, I don't like. It is a little odd to think that, okay, there's just nothing out there. When I die, everything's. There's nothing.00:31:47
Or that we spontaneously just popped up. Right. Yeah. So I would love to have those conversations with evolutionists and get them. Pin them down on.00:32:01
Okay, where does this happen scientifically? Because right now all they have is a theory. And we have a theory, too, a belief. But ours is something of just something bigger and greater than ourselves. Yeah.00:32:16
And I really like that, what you said about that. Yeah, well, and I think that, you know, an interesting thing is that the same day that our daughter was killed, in fact, the same morning that we found our daughter, there was another man that was killed 4 miles away from our daughter. Wow. And the police were actually sent to both locations. The man that died, he was just jogging out by White Rock lake and had a person who had some mental health issues attacked him with a machete and killed him on the thing.00:32:48
And it was this man, him and his wife. They didn't have any kids. It was just them. His wife was just so heartbroken at his death. We ran into her a few times when we were at the police station.00:33:05
Anyways, it was. The reason I bring this up is because, you know, we were. I mean, I'm not saying that we were going through the same thing, but we were going through similar experiences in some way. And two weeks after her husband died, she committed suicide. Oh, my God.00:33:22
Are you serious? Yeah. And that's so sad. And I just. I think that, you know, I mean, obviously, I'm sure that there's lots of things that went into that decision that she.00:33:32
That she finally took her life. I don't think that for us, that was ever really.00:33:39
For me, it wasn't even a thought. You know, I didn't. I never thought about that. I think that I had this feeling that we're gonna see our daughter again and maybe for a while. And I don't know, you know, I don't know how that experience will play out, but I know that it will play out.00:33:54
And so I think kind of having that belief and something greater was really important for me. I know it was important for Cheryl, but it was really important for us in dealing with it. Inspiring. So what have you learned from this experience? From these experiences?00:34:14
You're talking multiple experiences throughout your marriage. What specifically have you learned that you would like to share with our listeners?00:34:27
I think commitment to each other creates another reason why I think if you.00:34:36
It makes it easier to keep plunging forward when you know that you're both in it all the way. Like, it's not like I'm working really hard and he's trying to figure things out still, but we're both in it.00:34:53
Yeah. I mean, I think that we realized that we could handle more than we thought we could. I mean, I don't think any parents like looking forward this kind of situation in their life, but I think most parents kind of fear it. And just like anything else, you don't really know how you're going to handle a situation until it happens. But I think that.00:35:17
But we recognize that we can handle more than we thought we could handle. And we also recognized that stresses weren't going to drive us apart like, we're there for each other. I think that central to our lives is our marriage and our commitment to each other. And so when we have these stresses that happen in life, we're going to deal with them, but we're, you know, we always try to deal with them in a way where we're together in it. You know, we're not like, you go do your own thing, and I'll go do my own thing, and, you know, and maybe we'll come back together at some point?00:36:02
Well, I think we like each other, too. Yeah. We're friends, you know, we enjoy hanging out with each other. We have some more similarities and things that we find to be equally enjoyable. Well, we like hanging out with you guys, too.00:36:19
And it's time for another dinner. Yes. This time we're going to come to you, though. Do you have any last thoughts before we close? If you'd like just anything, but if you want to share advice for couples going through really difficult circumstances or if you want to share just anything, what thoughts do you have that you'd like to share in closing?00:36:38
Final thoughts? I think we've kind of, I've kind of said this, but I think just making time for each other and continuing that courtship that you started out with, that you brought you together to begin with, I think if you continue that and make that a priority, even if you don't have a lot of money or you have a little bit of time, just finding something that you can do together to keep that spark going, that's great. Yeah. How about you too? I mean, I've always felt kind of dependent on Cheryl.00:37:11
Like, she's, she's helped me to deal with lots of things in life. And so, I mean, I, you know, I've told the story before to friends, but when we moved to Kansas City, we had been married for two weeks and I started school there. And so we got there and it was the first time, aside from my time as a missionary, that I had really lived away from home, away from my family. And we went to this apartment. It was a one bedroom apartment, one bathroom in a high rise apartment building.00:37:43
And I just, I got there. Neither one of us had jobs when we got there. I had gotten accepted into school and had paid my tuition and stuff for the first semester, but really didn't know how we were going to pay the bills, really didn't know what was going to happen next in our lives. And I just remember, like, laying on the floor in our living room and because we didn't have a couch, we didn't have a couch, we had very little furniture at all. And I looked into the bathroom and Cheryl's in there, like, hanging shower curtains and like, you know, getting things organized.00:38:18
Nesting. Yeah, nesting, yeah. And I thought, you know, I can do this with her, you know, and I think that I've continued to feel that way, that I can do things if she's with me. I love that. Me too.00:38:34
And I love, I think Kansas City for grad school is also where we learn to really depend on each other, although we'd been married a year, I think. But that helped, too. I think at the beginning of our marriage, being removed from family, family and chatter and depending on each other, having to lean on each other was a big, huge deal. Yeah. This has been amazing.00:38:56
Now, all of our listeners know why when we're thinking about a couple who has navigated stress and trauma in a way that brings them closer together instead of driving them apart, you're the first ones that came to your mind. We're so grateful that you joined us today, and thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you. We just want to say we love both of you, too.00:39:21
Yeah. Consider you very good friends equally. Yeah, definitely. So until next time. All righty.
