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062 | Marriage Episode 7: On Transitions
302 Plays3 years ago
In this episode Josh and Phy share a more personal look at our own marriage story and the succession of transitions we've been through:
- Unpredictable job schedules
- Job loss
- Financial setbacks
- Disease
- Surgery and more.
We talk about what we learned through the hardest years of our marriage and how God guides us through difficult transitions.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast and Honest Marriage Series
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcasts, you guys. I'm Felicia Masonheimer, and my husband Josh is with me for this series. Hello. And we are in our Honest Marriage series, which is part of the launch of The Flirtation Experiment, my co-authored book that launches on December 7th.
00:00:49
Speaker
So as a part of launching that book, I invited Josh to join me for this series, and it has been so fun to talk through these different topics and how we process those through the lens of biblical
Navigating Marriage Transitions
00:01:02
Speaker
marriage. Obviously, we're only speaking from one perspective and one marriage, but we hope that some of what we share is encouraging or thought-provoking for you and that you can customize it and apply it to your own relationship.
00:01:13
Speaker
And so for this particular episode, we're going to be talking about transitions and life transitions. We've been through quite a few as we'll get into in this episode. And we just want to encourage you as you are walking through transitions with your spouse.
00:01:31
Speaker
If you're listening to this marriage series, there's a good chance that you or someone you love is married. And that's fantastic because on December 7th, my brand new co-authored marriage book is launching into the world. It's called The Flirtation Experiment.
00:01:49
Speaker
And if that title intrigues you, good, because I can't wait for wives to pick this book up and be encouraged and equipped to pursue their husbands in ways they maybe never expected to do so. When I wrote this book, I was looking back on a year when I was really struggling to cultivate a relationship with Josh.
00:02:12
Speaker
I felt lonely, I felt disconnected, and I realized that I could wait for him to change it or I could make the change. And so I made a list of 30 flirtations, all different kinds of ways to show him that I loved him. And through this experiment, I found that I
00:02:30
Speaker
actually was changed. I co-authored this book with my friend Lisa Jacobson, who's been married 28 years to my eight years, and we alternate chapters showing you the ideas that we used to cultivate an intimate and fun, romantic, and flirtatious marriage.
00:02:48
Speaker
You can pre-order the book now anywhere books are sold, from Amazon to Barnes & Noble to Christian book, or you can go to theflortationexperiment.com to get two free chapters in the introduction and to be notified when the book launches.
Exploring Ecclesiastes and Early Marriage Challenges
00:03:03
Speaker
I hope you guys will grab it. We have some awesome bonuses for those who pre-order, and I'm excited to get this book into your hands.
00:03:11
Speaker
Our text for this episode is Ecclesiastes 7, 8 through 11, which says, better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools. Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.
00:03:41
Speaker
I chose this passage because I think it really exemplifies the heart attitude that's necessary when you go through multiple transitions, that patience of spirit and that willingness to say no to anger and ask for wisdom. I think those are all really important. Yeah. So I guess we'll start back at the beginning. We were married almost eight years ago. Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
The beginning in the beginning and we started out Just in I don't know it felt like a crazy whirlwind because you were looking for a job Yeah, so I want to get a job before we got married so when I graduated I was haunting for a job and got into the service technician job and then was able to pop the question and
00:04:36
Speaker
But that job, tell them about what that job was like though, like what it required of you. Well, it was funny because I traveled across the state. I almost always stayed in the state, but my boss said that after I get back from my honeymoon, I should kiss my wife goodbye.
00:05:01
Speaker
because I won't see much of her and he was very accurate on that because I did multiple training sessions, each one being a week long and those were out of state. So I was gone the whole week and sometimes the weeks were back to back and then I did. You were gone as soon as we got back from our honeymoon, you were gone for three weeks.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, I did have like a three week training session. And so we figured out that I was gone for like five of the first eight months that we were married. I think so. We were separated a total of six months, not not altogether, but like cumulative, cumulatively because of our jobs having travel.
00:05:52
Speaker
We were separated a total of six months. And you were doing homeschool conferences. Yeah, so I was gone for a week at a time throughout the year and overnight here and there as well. And so a total of six months, our first year of marriage, we were separated.
00:06:09
Speaker
Honestly, I think it almost caused us to not deal with some of our issues because it still felt like we were dating. Right. It was like the vacation relationship. It suspended the honeymoon phase. Right. It did. And so we didn't actually deal with a lot of our
00:06:30
Speaker
issues. We weren't around each other long enough to really get under one another's skin.
Pregnancy, Job Changes, and Moving
00:06:36
Speaker
Right. And I think, you know, it just felt like, oh, we're setting up house and then you're gone and then you come back and his job was so erratic. I mean, you would be home one day at four or three even.
00:06:48
Speaker
And then we didn't know if you get called back out, but then other days he wouldn't get home until midnight or maybe he'd say, actually, I'm not coming home. I have to stay out at this job. It was, you never knew day to day. You never knew. So it was, it was rough. And then you were on call.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was always on call. Yeah, pretty much always on call. So it was rough. It was it was a sweet first year, but it was hard at the same time. And so we found out we were pregnant with Adeline on our one year anniversary.
00:07:22
Speaker
and had not dealt with a lot of stuff and I'm let me pause here because I think some people who maybe are newly married might think oh my gosh well I need to have you know x amount of years or time to get to know the other person
00:07:38
Speaker
before I have kids or my marriage will be rocky. That's not true. Kids just expose, like we talked about in the last episode, they just expose things in your marriage that were already there. They don't cause the problem. They expose the problem. And so don't delay children. Children are always a blessing from the Lord. They are a beautiful blessing, but I do think that, you know, be very intentional before you have kids in dealing with what's going on in your heart and in your marriage. Get counseling.
00:08:08
Speaker
I don't know how many times you've said that. We both have said it because counseling has helped us. So in year two, Adeline's born end of year two, and that's when you had another job transition. Yeah. Well, I had an opportunity to become a project engineer.
00:08:32
Speaker
and work on propane systems. And so it's kind of the break that I'd been looking for to move toward my degree of engineering. And, you know, I kind of wanted to get out of the service technician field as I couldn't see myself doing that till I was like 90. And we wanted better hours and a more stable job. That was the thought.
00:08:58
Speaker
Especially with a baby on the way. So, were you 37 weeks pregnant? Yeah, 37 weeks pregnant. Our dilemma was that the job I was offered was going into a busy season. So it was either I come up before the baby was born or after Phi had recovered enough to make the transition,
00:09:24
Speaker
which would be a few months later. And so they really wanted me to come up now for the busy season. And so we did it. And so we were in Virginia at the time, moving to Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he'd be commuting to Exeter, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour outside of Philadelphia or an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia.
00:09:45
Speaker
So we struggled to find a place to live. We finally found the place miraculously on Craigslist a week before we moved there. So we moved there a week later, and then a week after that, Fi had her baby out of line.
00:10:02
Speaker
It was wild. The Lord provided abundantly, but looking back, we had so much peace in this transition and that's one reason I love this passage in Ecclesiastes because I think it just shows that being patient in spirit and choosing to trust the Lord, all of our kids are talking right now because we're recording while they're still awake and we normally don't do that.
00:10:27
Speaker
But during that transition, I think we just, we had so much peace, even though if I now look back on it, I would never recommend that somebody do what we do. A week before we moved to a new state, we finally find housing and then, you know, we had a Christian landlord, they were great, but they also, none of the hospitals or birth centers would take me that late in pregnancy. So I had to switch last minute to a home birth and tell the landlord I'd be having a home birth in
00:10:54
Speaker
she kind of guessed at it. She's like, we're like, yeah, we're, you know, we're, we're unable to get to any hospitals or Berlin centers. She's like, so you having it here? And we asked her, are you okay? Yeah, is that fine? And she's like, yeah, that's fine. So it was like, the Lord is totally provided in such amazing ways. Adeline was born five days after we moved there. And
00:11:17
Speaker
Man, it just shows that the Lord was in that transition and leading us, but at the same time, it was extremely stressful on our marriage and it really revealed a lot of hurts and holes in our marriage that we had not dealt with yet. So basically, we were having a really hard time.
00:11:40
Speaker
in this transition and Josh was home for maybe five days and then you went back. Yeah. Well, they wanted me to like check on the printer. So like three days. Yeah. Really fast back to work. That's when I discovered I had a pregnancy induced auto immune disease. So I was covered in blisters and he was gone and you were gone like all the time. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like eight to 22 hours a day.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, he had to leave by 6 a.m. If he was after six, he couldn't our commute. Yeah, to beat the Philly traffic. And he would usually get home around six on a good day. But generally, it could be eight, nine, midnight. It could be, sorry, I'm gone out of town. In other words, it was no different than the other job.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, or worse even. It was worse, yeah, because then we had the baby. It was hardly hours when at least. And I was alone. Yeah, it was just really, really hard for us to go through that. But now fast forward, we moved to Michigan, so there was a transition. We can't handle the job. Yeah, and we realized that with no family around, like,
00:12:51
Speaker
Like in Africa, there's so many families, everyone has a family. We felt like the odd man out without a family. And it made us pine for one, especially with kids. So when we moved, we decided to move up a year later to be with Felicia's side of the family. And that made a huge difference. Like Adeline got to see her grandmother growing up and they spent a lot of time together.
Financial Struggles and Family Support
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's how we ended up back in Michigan, where I grew up, was we moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania. And then a year after we moved to Pennsylvania, we moved to Michigan for Josh to take an engineering job here.
00:13:34
Speaker
Which again, we were just like desperate for stable hours, which is what this offered. It offered a nine to five job. Yeah, which was wonderful. So, and it was an engineering job as well. So it just, it worked out really well. Yeah. Seemed to be perfect. We made this whirlwind. We delivered my parents for six weeks while we tried to find a house. My parents are builders, so they helped us.
00:14:00
Speaker
buy a house, but there was a mortgage situation where we had to wait to actually sign on our mortgage. And because we had family members who helped us buy the house and we were using the mortgage to pay them back. Well, at that point I was pregnant with Eva. So I was what six months pregnant with Eva. Yeah. And it was the day after we signed the mortgage on our house. So we finally had a real mortgage payment on our new house in Michigan. And I, it was like 10 a.m.
00:14:28
Speaker
my boss called me into his office and said, we're, um, you know, in the state of Michigan, like we have a no fault cause. So we can just fire you without telling you and you're fired. Yep. You'll let go. You're done. Yeah. So we'd been in Michigan, what? I don't, a year. Yeah. Well, nine months even.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, nine months, and he's let go from this job. And where we live in Michigan, there aren't a ton of engineering positions. Like it's not just, it's not an industrial hub. We're very far north.
00:15:01
Speaker
So scary. I was, yes, we lost our insurance or in a house with a mortgage payment and I'm pregnant with a toddler. And that was when I had just started writing eBooks and I was going to launch Christian Cosmo, my very first ebook. And that was what made me push up the launch. I was like, I'm going to launch this and we're going to hope for the best and hope that it pays our bills. And it did. It provided for us until he got a job took two and a half months for Josh to find a job. Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
So it was, which isn't that long compared to other people, but for us, you know, we were down to the last, what, $500, I think we were pretty. It was getting tight. I mean, you're, you definitely pushed your young living and Christian Cosmo and like, it definitely really helped to pay the bills.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, that was scary. So two pregnancies, obviously with major life transitions and my autoimmune disease at that point was pretty awful in 2019. So two years later, I broke my leg while Josh was working at the job that he got and he got after he lost his job. And so broken leg, my sister had to come take care of the kids cause I was in a wheelchair and I couldn't
00:16:20
Speaker
carry anything or lift anything. I had surgery. I have a plate and eight screws in my leg. And so that was a really hard time on you. Yeah. You were taking care of me. It was kind of like another like postpartum event. It was. He was caring for me for six, eight weeks. Yeah. We were sleeping in twin beds in our master bedroom because we couldn't, I couldn't get in and out of a full size bed.
00:16:46
Speaker
I had to get up every hour to give you your medicine. Yeah. He was getting up every two hours to make sure I took the right medicine the first three weeks after I had the plate put in my leg. And then of course we had a baby and a toddler and, and he was working full time.
00:17:02
Speaker
and on call because he was a manager. So once again, we were in the situation of being on call. And so, you know, when we look back on our marriage, like, yes, our marriage had some really, really hard years, but so much of what we've gone through was just this utter and complete refining by our life circumstances, bringing all this sin to the surface. Yeah. Wouldn't you say? There was lots of sin brought to us.
00:17:32
Speaker
Lots of it. And so, I don't know, I feel like we're just telling our life story right now, but I don't think it comes through on Instagram or on the blog even. I don't
Joining Forces in Business and Community Support
00:17:43
Speaker
think people know just the amount of transition and difficulty that we've been through between job loss and transitioning across states and moving away from family and moving near to family and buying a house and then selling that house.
00:17:59
Speaker
And you, like you breaking your leg though, is what led us to take scenic rides down through the farmlands. And we'd often pass the house we currently have. And you're like, Oh, like God, we'd love to live there. You know, it'd be so amazing. Something like that. Yeah. So it's neat how like the Lord used these super painful times, like my broken leg and us take, cause we couldn't,
00:18:24
Speaker
couldn't do anything except drive in the car with the kids because my leg was broken. We couldn't really go for a walk. Yeah, we couldn't. You were pushing me in the wheelchair and the kids were too young. They needed a stroller and you couldn't do both. So, we would drive in the car with ice cream and we did. We passed this house, this farmhouse we're in now and that was how we
00:18:45
Speaker
I thought to look it up while still in a wheelchair. I do not recommend this. This was stupid, but I was in a wheelchair and I went on realtor.com and I found this house and I was like, I think we should maybe look into that.
00:18:59
Speaker
So that's the whole, that's a story we won't tell in this episode, but yet again, like getting a house ready, you know, to sell and then showing it for a week and, you know, getting this house, just the Lord opening those doors. But I think that at that point in our marriage,
00:19:16
Speaker
We'd been through so many transitions in hard things and we'd learn to listen for God's leading and God's peace and to talk to each other about it. That we knew we weren't crazy to try this new thing together, even though the timing didn't seem good. I think for me, like when you are down for the count, whether it's pregnancy or broken legs or
00:19:44
Speaker
autoimmune disease. Yeah, it it kind of empowers me to be like your your nurse and that's like just something that comes more natural to me and he's a very good nurse makes me feel needed so I kind of seize the opportunity to be your caretaker and
00:20:07
Speaker
He's great. If you are ever injured or sick, you want Josh to be taking care of you. He's very, very good at it. He gets it from his mom, I think.
00:20:15
Speaker
But yes, you were awesome in those times. And I think, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong. Actually, I should let you tell this part. But when we're in really difficult job, like job issues, difficult, like our financial setback when you lost your job and I was pregnant, that's when I feel like I bring my skillset because
00:20:41
Speaker
You bring your skillset when I need someone to take care of me and I'm incapacitated. And when you're discouraged or you have this huge setback, like a job, I feel like that's where I bring my skillset to say, okay, we'll find a way to like make ends meet. You're a doer. So you go into overdrive when it comes to financial demise.
00:21:09
Speaker
I'm driven a little bit by security. But I mean, I think that was something the Lord taught me was like, well, you can't be driven by security because transitions like this are unpredictable and only I can be your provider. And we've had to realize that with health insurance, pregnancy, all of it jobs that he's our provider. And so our final transition, the most recent one was once again, while I was pregnant,
00:21:36
Speaker
with Ivan this time, our third pregnancy. Last summer, we won't get into the circumstances, but Josh had to quit his job, no fault of his own. And it was a very last minute thing. It was not what we originally hoped.
00:21:52
Speaker
was our five-year plan. Yeah, it was our five-year plan that had to happen in three months. Really disheartening and discouraging how it happened, but the Lord really used it to bring Josh home and make him the chief operating officer of every woman at theologian, which is what he does now. And
00:22:14
Speaker
It really allowed the business to balloon because you were making it what it was on like four hours a week, uninterrupted. Yeah, like, yeah, uninterrupted. Sure. Yeah. And, and then I was able to come in and help with childcare and.
00:22:33
Speaker
I think the first couple of weeks you put like 80 hours in. I worked, you know, it might be 80 hours because when he quit his job in last June to come home, we were not sure how it was going to go. We were pretty nervous. We had some savings, but we're like, okay, we're going to try this self-employed thing and see how it goes. He'll take over the shot part. And that's when you, yeah, for two weeks straight, he watched the kids pretty much.
00:23:01
Speaker
You worked till the cows came home. I did. So we have cows behind our house, and at the end of the day, they walk back up the path and go into the barn. So I literally did work till the cows came home. But it was fun. It was interesting because you did everything for the kids for those two weeks so I could work 12-hour days to write theology basics. And so it was a repeat of what happened when I was pregnant with Eva
00:23:26
Speaker
we launched another ebook and that's what paid our bills. And so I do want to say on that front, thank you to all of you who shop with us and who buy our eBooks because it was you buying a $10 ebook that actually helped us make ends meet into the fall and allowed us to live, to make an income to live and pay for our insurance because we lost our insurance the day Josh had to quit his job. And I was pregnant.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so it was just really scary and the Lord just provided through you and shopping with us and it allowed us to become fully self-employed with every woman a theologian shop and what it is today. So I guess to just conclude this episode, Josh, what was one thing you would encourage people who are going through really hard life transitions?
00:24:15
Speaker
that it's definitely not the end of the world. God has a goal in mind for you, and we may plan our paths, but He directs our steps. So it's a lot of faith, prayer and supplication, and then just knowing that you're doing the right thing and following God, and He will provide for you.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah. And I would say to piggyback on that, that like, don't try your very best not to pull away from your spouse during a transition, but to pull together with your spouse. It's going to be very hard, but you need each other so much.
Reflecting on a Year of Jubilee
00:25:00
Speaker
I mean, two are more gathered together in prayer. Yeah.
00:25:04
Speaker
That's when like God's grace just shines. Yeah, I think you do. You see the Lord more clearly in those stressful times. And so Josh and I kind of joke that this we're wrapping up our eighth year or we're coming up on earth.
00:25:19
Speaker
eight year anniversary, which means eight years married. So our eighth year, we call it our Jubilee year kind of because it's been like so much stress and transition in our marriage, like piled into the first seven years. And it's just such a blessing to kind of have this
00:25:40
Speaker
Sabbath year or Jubilee year, whatever you want to call it. And I just want to encourage you that eventually there will be a reprieve. There will be a time of rest. Sometimes you just have to put your head down for months, weeks, and years. But if you walk with the Lord and with your spouse, he will see it through.
00:25:59
Speaker
Do you agree? Yeah, I do. Okay. Awesome, you guys. We will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to Verity podcast. And as always, you can find us on FeliciaMasonHeimer.com, which is also where the Every Woman a Theologian Shop is. And don't forget this whole series is part of the launch of The Flirtation Experiment, my new marriage book that's coming out December 7th. If you pre-order, you can get special behind the scenes interviews with me and Josh and my coauthor, Lisa and her husband, as well as a free chapter of the workbook. We will see you next week.
00:26:29
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.