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Remembering and Reminiscing-How Many "Saturdays" Have We Survived?
93 Plays1 year ago
In an episode recorded during a trip to celebrate their 30th anniversary, Chris and Wendy reflect on 30 years of marriage--and the many twists and turns in the road along the way--including a few that came right out of the gate.
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Transcript
Introduction to Surviving Saturday Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Surviving Saturday, a podcast about holding on to hope in the midst of life's difficulties, disappointments, and dark seasons.
The Significance of 'Saturday' in Faith
00:00:12
Speaker
Times like that remind us of the agony and despair the followers of Jesus felt on the Saturday of Easter weekend, in between the Friday on which he was crucified and the Sunday on which he rose from the dead.
00:00:23
Speaker
That someday forever changed the way that humans can relate to God. But what does it look like to be honest about the very real pain we experience in the in-between? To fervently cling to hope in the God who promised us his peace and his presence at times when he feels distant or even cruel.
Meet the Hosts: Wendy and Chris
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm Wendy Osborne, a licensed counselor in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm her husband, Chris, a marriage mediator, conflict resolution coach, and trauma-informed story work coach.
00:00:51
Speaker
Join us each episode for authentic conversations about how life not turning out as we'd expected has created the contextual soil for the growth of a tenacious hope in the resurrection and in a God who is still making all things new.
30 Years of Marriage: Celebrations and Reflections
00:01:09
Speaker
Hi, Chris. Hi there.
00:01:13
Speaker
We are currently in Bar Harbor, Maine. We are celebrating 30 years of marriage together. 30 years. We are a little bit overwhelmed. We cannot believe it's been that long. And as I was telling somebody, a friend recently, the higher that number gets, the less and less I take it for granted to have made it through this week. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's not for the week. No.
00:01:38
Speaker
So we were up in this part of the country about 28 years ago. 28 years ago, yes. We had an opportunity after I graduated from law school. You have a big chunk of time between taking the bar exam into July and starting your first job in September, typically, if you have your first job all lined up. And so during August, we were able to come up to New England. And what do we do?
00:02:04
Speaker
We spent a week or two biking end to end, which is remains one of my favorite things. So biking between bed and breakfast, carrying everything we needed in little painters on our bikes.
00:02:18
Speaker
We spent a week on a sailboat and were responsible for helping hoist the sails, take down the sails. They fed us like kings and queens every night. Yes, but they worked you during the day. They did. They basically got to learn how those big sails went up and what a jib was and how neither let the
00:02:40
Speaker
let it smack you in the head as it's coming over when you're tacking and all that. We brushed our teeth on the, um, on the, I dunno, what do you call the front main part of the boat? And we spit into the ocean. Forgot about that. Kind of took a little cup of water with you. Well, that's because if I recall correctly, there wasn't any room to stand in like the cabin, like a cabin that had like a bed in there and there was maybe a place to put your,
00:03:05
Speaker
whatever suitcase or gear we have, but there is no lounging or place to kind of hang out in your cabin. Yeah, you couldn't even really sit up in bed. They packed a lot of people on the boat. That's right. We have a picture actually that will probably be posted with this podcast somewhere where you can see us at that age sitting there with our books and we're just enjoying a week at sea. Yeah, we were probably 24 and five.
00:03:30
Speaker
That's right. At that point. That's right. Yes. So we've been married two years at the time. Um, it was about three years before we'd have any kids.
Life as Empty Nesters
00:03:41
Speaker
And now as we sit here, we are three years into an empty nest. And you know, I don't like that word. I don't accept the term empty nest because we're birds and we count.
00:03:52
Speaker
We do. I call it a less populated nest. That is very true. We're the birds that started it all. But we were struck as we were on this trip, just seeing some of it. We're doing some of the same things, not the exact same things. For one thing, we only did like two nights away from our car. I think we did more of those last time. We were a little on our bikes. Yes. And we are not doing the whole sailboat cruise. We are going to go out just on like a two hour, a two hour tour. I guess it's a three hour tour from Gibbons anyway.
00:04:21
Speaker
Um, but we were struck by just how different our, our mindset is really, as you're in, you know, entering the entering the fourth decade, I guess of a marriage. Um, that sounds weird to say it that way.
Early Marriage Expectations vs. Reality
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah. We had, I would say a youthful.
00:04:40
Speaker
naivete and enthusiasm and exuberance. We rafted the other day and we rafted the same river that we rafted 28 years ago. And at that point we rafted with a couple and their two young kids.
00:04:57
Speaker
And I remember us commenting, um, what a cute family. This is how we were going to be. I think that I was, you know, caught up in believing we're going to have a beautiful family. We're going to vacation all the time. I'm finally going to believe I'm beautiful. We're gonna like live in this beautifully happy place, just
00:05:23
Speaker
expanded by two kids. Yeah, we both finished grad school at that point. And we had, I think, a pretty, in some ways, idyllic, you know, grad school journey. You were working, I was finishing up law school, I think I had my job lined up. And we were able to just, you know, really, that was the first time we had lived in the same town together. Since dating. Yeah, we had lived together as friends, like in the same town as friends. Yes, not the same apartment.
00:05:51
Speaker
And we'll talk about probably on another episode, that initial adjustment to married life had been really difficult because I think we were naive coming into it really. We had been friends and best friends for several years before we dated and we'd known each other 10 years by the time we got married. And so when conflict had hit, I think part of why we were celebrating in
00:06:13
Speaker
in that post-partum, we had been married just two years. And we had at least gotten over the hurdle of, oh, there's going to be conflict. Nobody prepared us for that, even when people said, we're like, yeah, but we've been best friends, so ha, ha, ha. But we at least had started, we were out of school and starting work and renting our first house in our first town. And it looked like things were going to be going in a better direction.
Facing Unexpected Life Challenges
00:06:39
Speaker
Yep. And so even thinking back to all the things that have happened in those 30 years, um, the list is really full. Oh gosh. Yes. Um, we have between us buried three parents and one sibling. Yes. My sister passed away in 2014, uh, after a battle with metastatic breast cancer. Yeah. So we've had quite a bit of cancer in our family. We've lost.
00:07:09
Speaker
A handful of friends, some to cancer, one to suicide. Places we never thought life would have taken us. It's not at all what we thought of when we stood at the altar in August of 93. 93, right. Well, and when you started off, you were already a speech language pathologist. That was your first career. And how did that sort of, that's changed every time, right? Yeah. So I was taking my boards.
00:07:38
Speaker
about six months after we got married and then got a job at the hospital in Charlottesville working at what was then a children's rehab hospital.
Career Transitions and Personal Growth
00:07:51
Speaker
It probably to this day remains my favorite job in that industry. Um, so I did that while you finished your last year and a half of law school.
00:08:03
Speaker
That's right. And then you went on to do different things. Yeah. Yeah. So we had kids about five years in and when we had our first, I, she slept so much, I was bored. And so I started a small private speech pathology practice from home and had, um, former colleagues and
00:08:33
Speaker
kids to me who needed extra services. And then we, I guess I did that till we were due with our second child. And then I was home with them and then I homeschooled for nine or 10 years.
00:08:49
Speaker
That had not been on the radar. That was not at all on the radar, not at all on the radar. And there were days, you know, I would have had anyone in a moving vehicle pick them up, but most of the days I loved it. Um, and then I started a nonprofit, um, for women, um, more around pure counseling with some friends.
00:09:16
Speaker
did that for four years or so. Then I went back briefly to the speech pathology world. And then I went and got a master's in counseling. Well, and I think that's one of the places where life sort of derailed plans because you had started fixing our eyes with the ministry. We had a board and you were really doing some good work. And I think it was the death of my sister in 2014.
00:09:43
Speaker
Followed by the death of your father within like a few weeks each. Yeah, they were two weeks apart my dad and then your sister two weeks later And I remember that just sort of being kind of you were tapped out Yeah, that was the end kind of of being able to fundraise being able to support you were just kind of like I need to just back off
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah. I had gotten clearly to the end of my own strength and I had nothing else that I could give and I needed to recover and to just be and to let quite frankly, Jesus just pour into me. And so I felt like I was like figuratively speaking kind of comatose. I was just sort of hobbling at that point. Yeah. And you went back to work.
00:10:29
Speaker
Partly because I think it was something your dad had said before he passed away about, Hey, you could get your license back. There was some kind of timing on getting your speech license back where if you did it by a certain time, you wouldn't have to take a certain test or something. And so in the spring of 2015, you go back into, um, being a speech therapist, kind of working for, I think you did outpatient, um, in house or in, in, in home for a little while, and then got a great place with, with CMC.
00:10:58
Speaker
During that time, I had been a work hands-on lawyer.
00:11:02
Speaker
had more job changes than I expected to in that period. Certainly, I started with a very small law firm and then got to clerk for a judge for a couple years, which was fantastic. Went to another small law firm for a very brief stint. That did not end well, actually. We'll probably talk about that on another episode. But I found myself with two kids, the second one just had been born, looking for work. And landing at a great law firm where I ended up staying for
00:11:30
Speaker
11 years becoming a partner and enjoying the people I worked with there. There was a good season there, but I also discovered during that time that I really loved teaching and I started an education business on the side called Real-Time Creative Learning Experiences.
00:11:45
Speaker
And that sort of woke me up to, I actually like this teaching stuff. Something about that is more appealing, more life-giving than just being a lawyer. And that turned into getting to teach at the Charlotte School of Law, which we had for a little while. That may be a whole episode series unto itself another time. But so as in that spring of 2015, you go back into doing speech, you're doing that a little bit, adding some money to the cash flow while I'm teaching.
00:12:12
Speaker
And then that summer was when I had to make the decision of whether or not to leave the law school, um, and keep going with that. And so this is, I guess that would be 12 years into the marriage at that point. We're in, in, you know, 2000 and wait, no, that's more than that, isn't it? I think it's more than that. We can't really do math right now. We're on vacation. That's right. Vacation brain. Sorry. Um, but to 2015, that's right. I've been 20 years into marriage, 23 years. Yeah.
00:12:43
Speaker
But notice, I mean, just the constant theme of there was so much more change. We didn't expect to change jobs that much. We haven't moved towns that much, but we live in, I guess, I think we were counting five different houses in Charlotte, as of most recently.
00:12:58
Speaker
And so that there's a lot, that's a lot of changes. And maybe say a little bit about what, what, as far as educating our kids, you start, we started with homeschooling, but where else did we come with that? We originally had one school picked out and Savannah got waitlisted.
00:13:14
Speaker
And we thought we were just filling one year. So we decided to homeschool so we didn't get her plugged into one school just to move her. But then ended up that we really loved the community that got built around our homeschooling friends. And so we did that for, like I said, nine or 10 years. And then we kind of opened the floodgates and between three kids did a little of everything. So we did
00:13:43
Speaker
public elementary school, public middle school, public high school, charter middle school, Christian private high school, Catholic private high school, middle college, arts high school. We kind of did everything. Again, something we never would have guessed. It was very different than the educational career you and I had both had.
00:14:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I went to one school from sixth grade through twelfth grade, the same, you know, it was a private school in South Georgia. My mom had taught there. There's no reason I got to go there. But I had constancy. You were in the public school system. You moved around several schools just because it was elementary, middle and high. And they were kind of changing the zoning. But I was in the same system with most of the same kids the whole way.
00:14:26
Speaker
And I remember people giving us the freedom that, oh, you don't have to do the same thing for each child or for each child at each stage of life. And that was really helpful, but it was so different from anything we expected. And those transitions were challenging for each of our kids as those things happen. And again, there was just so much more change than constancy during that whole time. It was really, I think we were,
00:14:51
Speaker
well into it before we realize this change and disruption and things not going according to plan, that's actually more to be expected. Yeah, and it was just very different, I think, from what we had known in life. My family had had a lot of stability. I grew up in mainly two different houses for most of my life and my parents had the same jobs and I went to school with most of the same kids.
00:15:21
Speaker
And so it was just, it was different than what I had had in mind. Yeah.
Integrating Faith and Life
00:15:27
Speaker
And I think through there, I mean, faith was a constant force, but faith was a journey that we were on as well. Yes. A definite journey. Yeah. So what about that? So I knew a lot of theology in my head, a lot of scripture. It was during the time that
00:15:46
Speaker
I think it was between our first and second child being born, but I was in a women's Bible study and there was an emphasis on scripture memory. And there was even this program that we purchased. I think it was called Memlock System.
00:16:03
Speaker
and some older women. Yeah, it had like this plastic binder. You open it up and it had all these like cassette tapes in it. And you would listen to scripture and memorize passages and a new passage every week. And then on Friday you would rehearse all the ones you had been memorizing. And so there were people who were, you know, had committed whole Psalms to memory or whole passages of Romans.
00:16:31
Speaker
Um, and so I got really into this and I remember I was told, you know, your mind is the Holy Spirit's toolbox. And so fill it with scripture that the Holy Spirit that can then can use on your behalf. And so that made perfect sense to me. And so I bought into this program for as long as I could and committed a lot of scripture to memory. And that was pretty new to me.
00:16:58
Speaker
And it was indeed really helpful. But as I went through what I would now say are dark nights, just painful places in life where I couldn't locate Jesus, the scripture that I had memorized wasn't always able to speak to exactly what I needed. And I came to realize much later
00:17:21
Speaker
It was because the Scripture was appealing to my left logical brain, which was beautiful when my left logical brain was online. But when I was triggered, I was operating out of my right brain, which is the emotions that really got consolidated when I had gone through painful experiences when I was young.
00:17:45
Speaker
And so it was like trying to talk, my mind trying to talk my body out of what it believed to be true. And it just wouldn't work. How much was my mind trying to talk to your body? Well, that too. That too and that didn't work any better. And so the scripture memory was great, but it has helped me more the more that I've healed.
00:18:07
Speaker
Well, that's what I was gonna ask. What's your, you know, kind of now from the sort of the 30 years looking back perspective, what's your relationship with sort of scripture of faith as, you know, how does it integrate in your life differently now where you are?
00:18:23
Speaker
Oh, so I think for one, it's not a cognitive exercise. I think that for much of my life, I read scripture like I was reading a lab report and like I was trying to find the main point.
00:18:38
Speaker
And I was trying to solve almost a mystery and get what the passage was about singularly speaking. And now I've had to grapple with who the real Jesus is in the midst of my real life, whether I'm in a
00:18:57
Speaker
high place or a low place. And so I've had to use scripture in context and not pull things out of context. I'm not a seminarian, so I look to people who are, but I try to not use scripture as a weapon against my own self or my own suffering or that of others.
00:19:17
Speaker
And I'd say I mainly have grown in letting scripture just hold me as a beloved child of God and not as a set of mandates that I have to master in order to get him to be pleased with me. And even though nobody was telling me that, there was a lot about the way that I got formed that said there are certain ways I had to be in order to be pleasing.
00:19:46
Speaker
And so in the context of being a Christian, then it to me made sense that it would look like me behaving or thinking certain ways. So this topic is on my mind because I mentioned earlier, maybe it was in the trailer, but I'm on a journey of shifting gears to becoming a counselor. Yes, to join me. To join you in this work. We've gotten the privilege of doing some intensives with some couples and
00:20:11
Speaker
we've gotten I've started working with couples doing conflict resolution coaching but one of the questions on my mind because I'm studying and thinking about it is so how would you say then faith comes into play when you are working with your clients that come in?
00:20:28
Speaker
Uh, and what I mean by that is, you know, you are a person of faith and it's important to you. And yet, um, your, your clients probably come in from all different places. Talk about kind of what faith integration means or what your approach is. How does that come into play? Yeah. So I am always holding a Christian perspective over anything that walks into my counseling room. So by that, I mean, I deeply believe that God is always at work.
00:20:58
Speaker
in very specific and particular ways, and so is evil.
00:21:04
Speaker
And so I tend to think of there being a raging battle between the two forces over the heads of every one of us. And so I will speak directly to that as much as the client is interested in. I won't force that on them. But I will hold their stories and hold their struggles within that perspective. When I use scripture, which I frequently do,
00:21:30
Speaker
I take care to make sure that it is used safely. And I mean by that, a lot of people have had scripture used in ways that have felt coercive or controlling. And I don't want that to be the presence of Jesus that I offer them.
00:21:51
Speaker
And so I want to offer scripture in a way that allows them to rest and not feel like they've got to please me by signing off on something. I can hold that God may be doing some work now and other work in that context of leaning on scripture in a visible way later. And so I'm willing to trust Him
00:22:18
Speaker
to work in his timing. I don't have to do that. I can offer it. And then I can let the client accept it or say I'm not ready.
00:22:27
Speaker
That's one of the things that's been fun as we've looked back over 30 years and even just noticing how we now operate differently. It's not always perfect still, but it's much different in that. There's things we've learned, but they came over 30 years. There's been dribbles and trickles and sometimes floods and flows.
00:22:52
Speaker
everything we've learned and are trying to operate out of now and what we're trying to bring anybody else came over like 30 years. It's not like year 17 we got all this and everything was fixed from there. It's slowly been progressive wouldn't you say? Oh yeah and we're still learning things about each other and we're still growing now 30 years in together and I told somebody recently I hope I am in counseling as long as my body and mind can attend.
00:23:20
Speaker
Like I hope that I am always growing until I'm finally fully grown when I meet Jesus.
Empathy through Shared Experiences
00:23:27
Speaker
Well, that's one of the things that I've found really enjoyable about as we've entered in to doing our intensives and working with couples. I love getting to sit with people who are in those various stages where we were, where they still got the small kids at home, the wheels are falling off in terms of how they communicate and deal with one another. They are, I mean, God bless them, they hardly have any time for one another. Yeah, it's rough.
00:23:54
Speaker
They're raising kids. Their kids have needs because they're supposed to. That's how kids work. And I've loved this idea of we're at a life stage now where we can bring compassion and kindness. And we're like, there's nothing anybody can bring that we don't say, oh my gosh, we felt something similar, maybe not the exact thing. But gosh, yes, it's hard. Yes, of course, you're missing each other.
00:24:17
Speaker
during this incredibly busy stage. Yes. To be able to give some hope and say, hey look, if you can hang with each other through this time, if you can try to find each other and you have to carve out time for each other, it is so, so stinking difficult.
00:24:33
Speaker
As you do that in these little ways, you get these little handholds, these little, I think you referred to it under these bits of light, that was enough light to go forward the next few feet. I wish Jesus showed up with kind of, at least I say this, I wish he showed up with a flood light and illuminated the path for it. Yeah, he'd probably run away if he did. He could not handle that. I probably wouldn't go farther.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, if you got played at a wedding, if you got played the preview of, hey, by the way, this is what's in store for you. Nobody would go through with it. Yeah, humans would die off the face of the art. Here's how many times you're going to be in the ER together or in the ER with a relative or in the ER with a kid or because of a kid. You're just not thinking of those. There's something beautiful to the naivete and the lack of awareness that you come in with.
Marriage: Beauty and Challenges
00:25:22
Speaker
and it's difficult because then you run into trouble, you run into, wait a minute, you are not the person I thought you were under stress or without rest or whatever. You just don't know a person until you're really trying to do life with them.
00:25:36
Speaker
So next time we're going to stop here because we are off to get a really good dinner and to see the Barbie movie in the next episode, we're going to talk about a convergence of events that happened two years after we were in this geographical part of the country.
00:25:56
Speaker
last time. And so that involves some health issues, pregnancy, birth of a child, a bunch of things that came together that we had to navigate and we really didn't know what we were doing. So we will go there and unpack what it was like then and what we can see now as we look back. Yes. So thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode.
Nurture Counseling Services Introduction
00:26:27
Speaker
The Surviving Saturday podcast is brought to you by Nurture Counseling PLLC, a counseling teaching and training center based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We help families flourish one story at a time. Nurture Counseling provides counseling, counseling intensive for couples, conflict resolution coaching, story work groups, seminars, workshops, and retreats to provide a safe and welcoming context for exploring the agonizing experiences of pain, brokenness, and evil that disrupt our lives.
00:26:54
Speaker
and that God often uses to nurture deeper trust and intimacy with Him and with each other. You can find us online at www.nurturecounseling.net