Welcome to Unshaken

kristy 0:06

Welcome to Unshaken, the podcast where unwavering faith meets real life. I'm Kristy, and together with my husband Tony, we dive into authentic conversations, offering biblical insights and sharing stories that inspire resilience, especially for families navigating the unique challenges of disabilities. Join us each week as we explore faith, family, and the journeys that keep us grounded in Christ. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let's stand firm together.

When Home Feels Like an Airport

kristy 0:39

Hi Unshaken family. This is Kristy, and I'm here with Tony. Today I would like to ask you to just envision something with me. Imagine a family, just super busy schedule where everyone's moving constantly. Different family members have different places to be. Maybe there's sports practices and dance classes, and then for the corresponding games and recitals that go with those, doctor appointments, hair appointments, maybe one of the parents or both travel for work. You can kind of see how a home like this could really start to look and function more like an airport than a home, with people coming and going and their takeoffs, their landings scheduled so that one kid gets dropped off on the way to the other kid's activity. And I think when you have chaos like that, it's easy to become a parent or even just a person who barks orders, who maybe is a little exasperated as baseline emotion. Maybe that's when we start to forget things. Cleats, lunches that you were supposed to bring the room mother stuff for the party in the littlest kids' classroom that day. And then from there, how easy it is for this to kind of turn into a proactive yelling at kids to hurry up, maybe ignoring a spouse or just missing the spouse who's looking for a kiss on the cheek on the way out the door, and so on. If you can imagine that family, and if maybe you can imagine yourself being part of that family, well, you're just like me. At the end of the day, in this situation, you you've you've kind of got are at a place where nobody's necessarily angry, but everybody's a little exasperated, we're frustrated, and that's just you know kind of how we start off the day.

When Activity Overload Changes the Tone at Home

Tony 2:31

I think in these cases we need to be very careful because if you do see yourself as part of this family, it's not that anyone is failing, it's not that anyone should be condemned or anything like that. It's that there is an overload of activity that can quietly train a home to sound more like an airport terminal more than a refuge, which is what our homes should feel like. Our homes should be the places where where we come because we're safe, it's peaceful, we know that we're loved here, it's gonna be a warm place, a happy place that we can get recharged and refueled for the next day out into the world, ultimately where everybody truly does love each other. And I think that's our intention, but because of the chaos that Kristy just described, it's easy to let things slip and slide unintentionally. What do these things sound like? What do these moments make the pressure rise? What does overstimulation feel like when we're looking inside a family? And what does task mode communication sound like in these situations? You know, a place to start is in the morning you get everybody talking at once. Mom is asking the little one, where are your shoes? Dad's like, Where are my car keys? The middle child is saying, Mom, I can't find my cleats. The oldest is like, ah, I gotta get out of here, I gotta I gotta get to first period. Everybody's running out the door, everybody's trying to leave on time, and then there's stuff that's forgotten, there's schedules that are being juggled, and one of the things that I have to guard against for me is is letting my work bleed into the time that I'm at home, taking a work haul, you know, before I've left the house or working on a work email while I'm home, you know, and it's oh it's just one more thing, just just one more email, just one more message, just one more text message where you intended five minutes, it becomes 15, it becomes 30, it becomes an hour, and before you know it, where did the time go? How does a loving family slowly start feeling emotionally exhausting to live inside?

Managing Logistics Without Losing the People

kristy 5:13

I think for me, probably the biggest two issues are one is that in my situations, there's always been one parent who's sort of the lead on managing kid stuff, kid activities, and the paraphernalia that goes with it for the jerseys, the cleats, the dance outfits, the permission slips, like all that kind of stuff. I think the piece that goes hand in hand with that is I have failed to be proactive. You know, if it would be, it's so easy to say, like, oh, we should lay all that stuff out the night before, like, oh, we should just stay organized. Every kid's got a basket, and you know, every kid should be keeping their stuff in their basket. That's so easy to say, but it's so hard to do the night before when you're tired, or if you're watching a movie and maybe the little ones are snuggly and you just don't want to get up, or it gets late, or it's hard to kind of manage those logistical things in order to manage the emotional things. And so I think for me, it's a matter of keeping my head and keeping the focus on the people and not the logistics, the activities in that next morning when things start to get crazy.

Structure Is Not the Enemy

Tony 6:25

And I think it's important to just kind of say this out loud that structure is not the enemy. Please don't hear that from us in the very beginning of the of this episode. That we're not saying if you have that kind of structure and you have, you know, those things where, okay, everybody, you know, put your stuff in the in the baskets and hey, do you have your stuff laid out? If you have a system and that structure is working for your family, great. Structure can be a very loving thing when it's done well. It's when the structure starts to make everything emotionally overwhelming. Then the structure becomes the barking parent, the emotional overload and the and the overstimulation because the structure becomes kind of the ruler, it becomes that slave master.

kristy 7:19

I think we lose the joy.

Tony 7:20

Right.

kristy 7:21

It stops stuff stops being fun, it stops feeding you, and it starts being like what you're chasing, so you can knock it out instead of so that you can experience it.

Tony 7:31

There's

Asking, “How Can I Best Support You?”

Tony 7:32

gotta be that kind of flexibility because life happens, right? There just has to be that sense of grace. We've talked about many times on this podcast that hey, you're struggling today. How can I help you? I don't do this often enough, so please hear me when I say this. There are many days where I look at Kristy and I say, How can I best support you in this moment? And again, I don't do this enough, but there are moments that I can look at Kristy and I can see that she's overwhelmed, that she's overstimulated, that she's just over her head, and I stop whatever I'm doing, I'm like, how can I best support you? Because in that, Kristy is then able to give me a clear, this is what I need right now. And then I can say, got it. And then it's it's my responsibility at that point to then meet that need and then go forward, then figure out the emotional piece afterward.

kristy 8:30

Tony, he underestimates himself first of all, because he's really good about that, actually. And sometimes it is like, here, take this basket of clothes that just came out of the dryer and find my white t-shirt or whatever it might be. But honestly, more often than that, he says something kind like that, how can I best support you? And I just crumble and go to his arms and get a hug. And most of the time a reset is really what I need more than functional stuff. And I would hypothesize that maybe a lot of us are like that. By the time we get to that place where it's just gone on for too long, where the logistics have been the leader for that long, we just have to bring back some emotionality and and sort of restore the peace.

Responsibility Without Harshness

Tony 9:17

There's a difference between the responsibility that each member of the family has versus harshness. As a family, we all have things that we have to do to pull our own weight to keep the family moving, to keep everything going in the right direction, when there is a failure in those things, it's not wrong to call that out. It's not wrong to say, hey, you messed up here, but when we do call that out, we need to make sure that we're not harsh. And we need to make sure that we're doing that in a loving way. And I think we've got stories that we can tell that kind of illustrate that point.

kristy 9:56

When those

Proactive Yelling and Background Noise

kristy 9:57

sorts of things become proactive yelling, right? If the kid isn't late yet, if the kid has not yet said, I can't find my shoes, but we're yelling, you better get down here. You got five minutes before you're late. I don't know how helpful that always is, right? The kid knows. They know what the mornings are like and they're doing their best. And maybe what one parent could do might be to go up there and be like, hey, let me help you. Let's get this together, you know, and go down. And maybe we can avoid that sort of proactive, potentially unnecessary, the constant reminders and the barking of instructions and all of those, like, hurry up, we're gonna be late, that just become background noise at some point. Reacting to those things before we connect to the person as a person, especially when the person is little, it can be tough. I can speak from experience that like sometimes you just start to feel more like the manager of a baseball team of cats than a parent. It can be really tough.

Tony 11:04

I think it's important too that there are those pieces where when there is like a last-minute project, or there's oh, there's one more thing that I just forgot, and it's the 11th hour, and those are really pivotal moments where it can go one way or the other, just depending on how parents react and how we react as a family, and how we can come together as a family in those moments too.

The Last-Minute Faux Fur Stole

kristy 11:35

Our oldest was the champion of this, like middle school for that kid. Just a tough time. A lot of you know, emotional stuff going on, and she was really, really not good at remembering to be proactive and telling me stuff. Like it's we were every meme about like the last-minute science project or you know, all of those kinds of things. There was one night, I'm gonna say this, and you guys aren't even gonna believe it. The kid comes to me, it's after eight o'clock at night, and she says to me, Mom, don't be mad, but I need something for school tomorrow. And I'm like, okay, what is it? I'm thinking like a poster board, she says to me, I need a faux fur stole. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And as it worked out, she was going to be one of the three blind mice in her school's production of Shrek, and she needed a faux fur stole to go around her shoulders. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Like, everything closes in an hour. Like, what are you thinking? So I'm like, okay, I don't even know what to do. Like, I I couldn't not try, you know. So I'm like, all right, get your shoes on. And so kids get their shoes on. And the only thing I could think of is like for something so like campy and cheesy, the only place I could think of was Ross. So we went there and we walk in. One of the first things that I saw is a white faux fur stole. Short of a miracle. I couldn't tell you. This was like a zero percent, like a needle in a haystack where the haystack got blown away by a hurricane kind of a thing. I couldn't believe it. And in that moment, I was like, thank you so much, God. Like I was overwhelmed with gratitude for having the thing, and so that my kid wasn't let down and she could have what she needed. But wow, what a God save that was. Um, you know, but that was like such a typical thing for us in that period of time. And that incident was the genesis of a new structure for us, and it was the remind Felicity and Mommy calendar. So we got back in the car with this stupid, awful, horrible-looking thing. I said, listen, kid, like I love you with all my heart. This happens way too much. We got so lucky tonight, and we have to figure this out. Like, this cannot continue to happen. So if I said you are now responsible to create an iPhone calendar, because we're an iPhone family, and I don't care what you call it, I don't care how you manage it, I don't care what color it is or anything like that, but you are old enough to be responsible to put your stuff on that calendar. If it's for practices, if it is something you're gonna need, or the due date of a project, like I don't care what you put on there, you can put everything on there. And if you put it on the calendar and we miss it, that's on me. But if you don't put it on the calendar and we miss it, that's on you. And so she made this calendar remind Felicity and Mommy, it's green on my phone, and she's 25 years old, and we still use it. There have been times where you know we bought concert tickets like 18 months in advance or something, and sure enough, she puts it right on the calendar. And then that carried to the youngest when that kid got old enough to be having those projects and whatever. Then we had a another remind calendar. It's been awesome. But I think the win there was sharing the responsibility, right? The kiddo is big enough. This kid is like 12 years old, big enough to have responsibility for her stuff and for her projects, but also still young enough to not necessarily know how to build a structure on our own, you know, that would accomplish that. And so it's one of those things that just worked out for us. Had we done this sooner, had I thought of it sooner, I think we would have had a lot fewer frantic evenings and fewer stressed-out, you know, situations and last minute projects and whatever. But at the end of the day, I mean, it was just like healthy structure. It reduced the panic, it gave her a mechanism and me a mechanism to plan ahead. It gave us some peace, gave us advanced notice on things so we could get the supplies together, we could, I mean, we could do creative projects, we could have some trial and error instead of just having to turn in whatever she could do the night before. The biggest win was that it took away this stress and it let us start enjoying each other and those evenings and those projects again instead of having to scramble at the last minute.

Tony 16:16

There's

Gentle Structure and Shared Responsibility

Tony 16:17

an important practical thing to take away from that because I I remember those nights. Kristy coming home and like breathing a sigh of relief that things worked out, but it's very stressful. I love the way that it ultimately ended up because we're able to be gentle without removing responsibility. So in this case, Kristy gave responsibility for maintaining this new calendar, and that removed so much stress and tension from future projects and schedules and everything else that the kid was involved with. That's a win. That's why I said in the very beginning, like structure is not the enemy, right? Structure provided a blessing for our oldest and Kristy to experience going forward.

kristy 17:18

None of us, nobody is their best version of self under that kind of pressure at the last minute, especially when it's been not just that it's the last minute, but that you had to to have that the scurrying to get everything together and you know, the stress of not knowing if you had what you needed or having to get it, like it just takes all the chill out of the entire, the whole evening, the whole, not just the project, but like the whole night. It makes a situation where you're not treating a person that you love so so much. And that is, I mean, in this case, she's a kid. Like I said, I mean, she's like 11, 12 years old, but she's a kid and she's already stressed and she already feels terrible. Like she knew she should have remembered sooner. And by that point, there's nothing she could do except just say what happened. And I hate the way that feels to not be able to be the version of myself that says, like, you know, it's okay, like we got this, we're gonna handle it together. And like Tony said, I think a little bit of structure there and the sort of the delegation of the responsibility and like who actually holds that, I think it was a good thing. And I think she was big enough to start learning these things and that that's gonna carry into adulthood for her.

Preventable Urgency and Overstructure

Tony 18:36

And I think a lot of families live in a constant preventable urgency because of in some cases a lack of structure, but it also is it's a line of two extremes. You can get to this place from a lack of structure, but you can also get to the same place with overstructure, where the structure, like we said before, becomes that ruler.

kristy 19:04

Absolutely.

Tony 19:05

When you're

When Chaos Becomes Normal

Tony 19:06

in that place, the emotional tone like shifts. When you're under pressure, you're not thinking in terms of like grace and love. When I'm in a hurry, when I'm stressed, and I should be loving my wife, and I should be gentle with what I say to her, and and the phrasing that that I use with her, it doesn't always come out that way. I have to own that, and I have to come back to Kristy and say, I'm sorry. In those moments, you're not yourself. How we respond and and how repeated chaos can almost become normal if you don't get a handle on what's causing the chaos, right? So, like, we're in this situation a lot. Why is that, right? So can Kristy and I take a step back when we're not in that situation and say, hey, last weekend that really stunk. What happened, and what can we do better the next time we're in that situation? But it takes humility on on my part and it takes humility on on Kristy's part as well to be able to figure that out together and and say, This is why that happened.

Naming the Need Instead of Building Resentment

kristy 20:30

In addition to kind of having to brainstorm why, the piece that comes behind that is then the ability to put words to it and then the willingness to tell the other person. I'll tell you what, stressed out Kristy is rude. I never want to be like that. I want to be with like that with my kids or certainly not with my husband. But there are moments, and just being real here, I'm doing something and whatever, and I'm thinking in my head, he's just sitting there. He's just sitting there in that chair. Why does he not see that I am scrambling like a lunatic? Why does he not get up and help me? Why don't I ask him for help? The intelligent, able to see what I need and ask for help, Kristy, just flies away. It's in that talking afterward, Tony's right, where it's like, how did we get to this place where it got like this? And it's only then that I'm able to say, like, I needed help and I should have asked for it. I didn't, it didn't even occur to me to ask for it. I was just mad that I didn't get it.

Guarding Marriage from Becoming Transactional

Tony 21:29

When we're talking about the environment between a husband and wife, one of the things that we have to be very intentional about guarding against is becoming completely transactional. So, this is where this happens for me a lot. We're constantly working on various elements of Unshaken. You know, whether it be the podcast, whether it be a blog, whether it be you know, other writing projects that we're working on. There's a lot of elements. And so there's a lot of loose threads that we're constantly pulling on and trying to pull together from day to day, week to week, you know, what have you. It's all good stuff. What I have to guard against is I have to guard against making sure that I don't see Kristy as solely my business partner. Where every interaction that I'm having with her is about the podcast, is about the nonprofit. How do we make this thing go? I have to make sure that I take care of her as my wife. And I have to make sure that I see her. And on top of the fact that she's my wife and that I love her and that I I get to spend my life with this beautiful woman. I also get to do ministry with her. Unshaken has to be icing. When it comes to our relationship and our marriage, it can't be the main focus. That's something that I have to constantly remind myself that she's not just there in a transactional way. There's a person that I love that is behind all this that I need to love and take care of.

kristy 23:12

First of all, that goes both ways. But I think that's any situation, right? I mean, like we, Tony and I have more togetherness, I think, than a lot of couples do just because of the ministry. But I think it's also the other parent is more than just the other driver, the the other taxi driver, you know what I mean? Or more than just the one who was supposed to have dinner ready and it isn't quite there yet, but we gotta go. Like that's a person. And when I think when these fail points come, the first focus has to be around the person and what they're experiencing in that moment. Because, first of all, like we don't drop the ball on purpose. So whatever caused that is going on, and also how they feel about it. By the time something like that's happened, the other person already feels terrible. Like there's nothing to be gained by piling in on, well, now we have to go, and you were supposed to have dinner ready, or like you were gonna get the jersey through the laundry, and here we are, you know, there's nothing to be gained by that. But somehow I think we all get to that place sometimes and say those ugly words. Just remembering that, I mean, like, we're dealing with people who feel it's not just about the logistics themselves.

When Logistics Become the Dictator

Tony 24:28

I think what you just said is so key. This is that the logistics become the dictator of of everything that goes on. So instead of a husband and wife, you now have co-managers of what's going on, and kids become transportation, homework, behavior, schedule assignments rather than these are our kids. You know, it's so easy to go from point to point on a calendar to check off things on that calendar and not actually live in the moments that those points on the calendar have created. There's so many things that instead of looking at it as these are my people, these are the people that that I love more than life itself. It's just soccer practice, dance, choir, and who's going to get who where and when. It becomes a machine rather than a family. And again, it it can quickly become a non-stop just through that airport of you're going this way, I'm going this way, and oh, by the way, I love you. And before you know it, it's been 10 days, and neither one of us has said those three words.

kristy 25:50

It's

Emotional Safety in a Busy Home

kristy 25:51

just a breeding ground for a lack of emotional safety. Tension becomes the baseline instead of love being the foundation. We read all the time, you know, in every article that gets pushed or social media or whatever about how constant overstimulation and stress, like it brings hormones, it's not good for our bodies. It's not good for anything. When it's the structure or the correction that comes as a consequence of a structure that's too inflexible, that outweighs warmth and outweighs seeing the person first. That's where things become problematic. Kids are so sensitive to the energy of what's around them. Even if you're not yelling, even if you're not raising your voice or whatever, like they know they feel that pressure because they sense it in us. Marriages become operations instead of relationships. Not for nothing. The adults feel it too. The adults feel that constant pressure, that constant the we're behind thing, or we're we're not there, we need to get this done. And those logistics really they can be really damaging, not just in the moment, but in the like in the bigger picture in the long run, when that stuff becomes the bedrock.

Tony 27:11

And you guys all know this. You guys know and have been around others where the tension was so thick, you could feel it, even if nothing was said or or nothing was done, you know, even if there's smiles and laughter, you still feel the tension that's between two people. So if you feel that, imagine what our kids are feeling when they're in that environment 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But again, I I want to be so very gentle here. Like, if you're in that season, this is not about hey, feel guilty. This is about like figure out a way to to relieve some of that pressure and figure out a better way forward. This is not condemning, we're not bashing the hammer on your head because you're in that tension season. We've all been there.

kristy 28:06

And I don't think we always realize it when we're there. If we knew it, if we saw ourselves acting horribly and saying mean things, we would stop doing it. It's just that it becomes routine, it becomes part of how we're living in that season. All those opportunities to fix it just pass by because we don't see it.

Tony 28:25

It comes in little bites and it just builds and builds and builds. And that's why we don't notice it because if it happens one day, you can get over one day. But then it happens again and again and again. You slowly get to a point where like, now we're both volcanoes, who's going to erupt first?

kristy 28:45

Right. Everybody's walking on eggshells, not knowing, you know, what is gonna be the thing that tips the balance, but at the same time, while we are expecting that from the other, we're doing it to the other. That's rough.

Finding a Way Back to Warmth

Tony 28:59

We need to look at how do we get back to homes that feel warm? How do we get back to homes that feel happy and joyful and can release the tension in whatever way is most helpful for you and your family. Sometimes it is me putting my arms around Kristy just for a moment, just to say, hey, I got you. It's okay. We're okay. Take a breath, let's start again. I think also the situation is also gonna dictate which one of those levers you're gonna pull in that moment.

kristy 29:41

So, as much as Tony uses himself as an example, I have to say that Tony is extraordinarily even-tempered. I am the hothead in this family, and I'm the one that is prone to these moments, you know, more than anything. Tony has always been a pretty chill dude, and I never kind of never knew how he got like that until I met his dad. And Tony's dad is the chillest guy you ever met in your life. But when Tony talks about being a kid with his dad, like it's clear where it came from.

Tony 30:14

My

Listening as a Pressure Release

Tony 30:15

dad is always one that he wants to talk and he wants to listen. My dad was the best at listening. My dad would know when I was upset. I was emotional as a kid, so much that I didn't understand about my disability and about why things were the way they were, and as a kid, I was extremely emotional. And my dad was always so patient to say, talk to me, tell me what you're feeling, tell me about that. He and I would talk and he would let me vent and he would let me just get it out. One of the things that my dad and I always did, we would walk. He would say, Okay, let's go walk. He would do this a lot when I wasn't talking. When I didn't want to tell him what was going on, he'd say, Hey, let's go for a walk. And inevitably on that walk, I would start talking. When we would walk, we would walk long ways. So I needed to talk so that I could get through and not want to stop. I never wanted to say I needed to take a break. So talking to him helped me forget how far and how much we were walking. So that's what got me to talk. He was always so good about listening.

kristy 31:35

I think that pent-up, the everyday frustration that builds, that's what brings tension in a home. And I think the opportunity to talk it out or however you you know you let it go, whether it's that there's you know one person like your dad that you know that is the the release valve that just kind of sees it coming and and knows how to help to reduce that pressure on somebody. Probably a month or so ago, Tony set up Trello boards for stuff that he was working on, but he helped me set them up for myself. Having everything centralized like that, it's just kind of how his brain works, I guess. And it is it's the most soothing thing for somebody like me that's all over the place to have that. Maybe you are that in your home. I think at the end of the day, when somebody comes home, you know, when you're you're the first one home and your spouse comes through the door or the kids come in off the bus or whatever like that, I think being mindful of what they need, how are you gonna meet them? Especially if it's a situation where if they're coming off the bus, you know that you have 45 minutes to feed them something, get them changed, and get them to the next activity. How do we meet them at the door? And when we can do that in a way that models the peace that we want to go forward with, I think that's how we can impact that situation. And peace isn't necessarily quiet, right? It might be a playful, like we're gonna make a game of it. Could go any which way. One way out of this trap is to just have that mindfulness proactively about what our people are gonna need.

What Peace Looks Like at Home

Tony 33:13

Yeah, peace is not a personality type, it's not a volume level, it's not a certain way of style, or even like a perfectly clean house. That's not necessarily peace. Peace is wherever people can breathe, people can speak, repair, laugh, and be received without constantly bracing for the next confrontation or even the next like collision. And I think that if we can create those spaces, it doesn't have to be perfect, it's never going to be perfect, but if we can create that space in our home where people can breathe, they can be seen, they can speak and not worry about the next correction or you know, or bracing themselves for the next argument where they can just chill out and relax. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like for your family, that's what matters. Maybe it is a quiet room where people can chill out, but it's gonna be different for every family, and every family has to decide what peace is and looks like, you know, for you.

Protecting Space for Connection

kristy 34:27

With our big girl, she is so busy. It's just how she was made. Like God made that kid to be in constant motion. She's a super extroverted extrovert. She works, she just finished her MBA, she's planning a wedding, she's just got stuff constantly happening. She's a Disney kid, she has friends from all walks of life. You know, it's all good stuff, right? It's all stuff that she has chosen to put in her life, but it keeps her really busy. And I think one of the things that helps her, she initiates it herself, and I'm not even sure she realizes she's doing it or the reason that she's doing it, but she'll call me and just chat me up about some, thing potentially unrelated to all of it. It might be about her dog, or it might be some upcoming event, or something that's, you know, something cute that happened with one of her kids at work that day or whatever. I try to hold the space for her. When she calls me, I try to answer because for her, I think that's how she releases the steam. It's how she takes the pressure that comes from the paste that she keeps and transfers it into a connective minute, just a connection with her mama. That allows her to, you know, to go into her evening and make her dinner and do the grading she's got to do or whatever, and and come out the other side in the morning ready to go again. So maybe it's protecting space. Sometimes it's a stop and pray. For me, when the kids would come in, and I've told you guys this before, but they would come in from school and both of them, uh, starting with the big kid and and the littlest one that were here with me, they would come in and tell me about their day. But of all of it, I would say, so what was the best thing that happened? Like what was your favorite part of the day? And then I would ask, what was the worst thing? What was the hardest thing, the thing that stressed you the most? And I would ask, who did you have lunch with? Because I felt like if I could know they're high and if I could know they're low, you know, it's whatever works for your family, but it I think it's those grounding sort of like, tell me about it, tell me about your busy, tell me about all of the things that happened, and then let's go forward from here. What are we gonna do next? What's it gonna look like, you know, in the next hour, six hours, twelve hours? I think sometimes that's a way to get your hands around it all. I also think that everybody hasn't had the benefit of this, you know, maybe growing up or just circumstances have been particularly crazy, you know, in our lives. Um, I see this a lot with my college students, just kind of a non-traditional student group, a lot of young single parents, working, first generation college students, just a lot of things going on. I'm so grateful to get to teach, I teach freshmen and I teach classes around how to become a college student. Right now I'm teaching a class, it falls under social justice, but it's around you know how to interact in online environments and how to be a strong online student. And so much of this is time management. So much of this is it's being able to take the resources that you have and use them in a in a smart way, that whether it's time or a budget or a schedule kind of a thing. And they've not seen this. A lot of my students have just never had this in their lives before. And so if you are in that situation for whatever reason, start with something tiny. It could be one tiny change that you make, but when it feels intentional and it works for you, it's gonna empower you to try something else. You might look around and see, you know, when I was a kid and I was at so-and-so's house, I loved how I felt when I was there, or when I was at my auntie's house or my grandma's house, or just pick things. This family on TV does this thing, and I just always thought it was so cute and connective, or try stuff, try things and and see what works for you.

Start With One Small Reset

Tony 38:27

It's one thing. We're not asking you guys to like if you've never seen this or never done this, to create this whole big structure. It's can you ask one question? Can you make one apology? Can you offer one reset, one shared meal, one calm transition? Whether that be when everyone's coming home or a bedtime routine, or it's about just one little thing because when you do that one thing, it can start to just lead to more things that you're able to do. Just let it naturally build on each other.

Noticing Bids for Attention and Affection

kristy 39:07

Little things you can, you know, if if you can prepare ahead, if you can make your lunch at night, you know, all of those things that we know we should do on the days when you can do them, do them. And if it doesn't work out every night, that's okay. We do what we can do. One of the things that I think happens often, at least for me, and I would guess probably for you guys too, is that, you know, you get in a situation where things have been crazy for a while, and some member of the family makes like a little bid for attention or affection. They reach out. In those moments, if you can notice it and stop what you're doing and meet that person, I think that might be the biggest lever of all. It might just be a kid where you're buzzing around like crazy and the kid is like, mama, can I get a hug? And you're like, Are you kidding me? Like, I'm I'm going six directions here. What they're saying is, I see you, I feel your frantic pace, I feel something about that. Can you please stop for a minute and hug me? Let's connect because I feel weird about this crazy energy. And if we can take those things seriously, it might not even be a kid, it might be a spouse, it might be a parent, it could be anybody in your life, it could be a coworker that's making this bid to like pause the crazy. And I think if we can do that, that's just a huge win in that kind of situation.

Jesus Was Gentle Under Pressure

Tony 40:32

When I think about scripture and and I think about Jesus and how he never seemed hurried around people, he just was never in a hurry whenever he was interacting one-on-one with anyone. There was always a gentleness, especially when he was dealing with someone who had been treated badly by others. There was always peace under pressure. I think of when he was sleeping underneath the deck. All the disciples are like, How can you be sleeping? The storm is crazy, we're about to die. And he's like, Are you kidding me, guys? Like, do you not know who I am? And he then rebukes the wind and the storm, and everything's coming. And with him, like, there's compassion, there's no panic in that. Peter walking on the water towards him, and as long as he's focused on Jesus, he's walking and and he's fine. But as soon as he takes his eyes away, that's when he starts to sink. And Jesus, being the compassionate, loving man that he is, goes and grabs him and says, Why did you doubt? But again, there's no panic in that. He just went and scooped him up. There's also the firmness without being harsh. Jesus knew what he was here to do. In moments, you see him be very firm with some people, but he was never harsh. It was always this is what's coming, this is what it is, that's it. And he says over and over to us, my yoke is easy. Why? Because he knows the burdens that we're carrying, he knows the things that we're trying to do on our own. And he says, Come to me. My yoke is easy, my yoke is like that gentleness. Sometimes it's hard to receive when we are overwhelmed and when we are overstimulated, but he's still offering it to us. We just have to be willing to go to him, and it's important that we remember that.

kristy 42:41

The other thing that I see in this, the stories you've been mentioning here is that Jesus was super chill, but not passive. He's always a leader. Being chill, being calm under pressure, taking steps to reduce, you know, a stress burden, that kind of thing, it doesn't make us passive. It doesn't make us not a leader. I would argue that if it makes us a stronger leader, whether it's in the family or at work or anywhere else, to have the sense to be more like Jesus, to find that chill and to offload whatever it is, find a way to offload or to better manage whatever it is that takes us out of that place.

Tony 43:22

Absolutely.

Let Your Gentleness Be Evident

Tony 43:23

Could not have said that better. It says in Philippians chapter 4, verse 5, it says, Let your gentleness be evident to all, because look the Lord is near. It's important, just like Kristy has so well said here gentleness is not weakness, it's not being passive, it's actually strength under the tenderness that we find in the Lord, and we find in that place where we know that He is near and that He is with us. So we don't have to make the urgency and the fear or the control, the emotional ruler of the household, we can say, no, we're going to be gentle in our household because the Lord is near. We can have the strength and the confidence in that because he's giving that to us as we grow to become more like him.

What Do We Want Home to Feel Like?

kristy 44:24

I think at the end of the day, it's about how we want people to feel. If we have friends over, what do we want them to feel in our home? What do we want our kids to remember when they grow up and talk about how life was growing up? I would love for my kids to be able to say, it was crazy, but my mom was awesome. You know, she was chill. She was never grumpy. And that's what I would wish. It doesn't mean I can have it, but it means I can steer toward it. Identifying what I want that to look and feel like means that I can make choices every day, even now, even that my kids are big, I can make choices every day that lead Tony and me and my kids toward a place that I can feel better about, that we can all feel better in and we can all feel better about.

Busy Can Still Be Warm

Tony 45:08

There are times where your home is going to feel like an airport. If it does, that's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. How do the things that go around that manifest themselves? Is it still warm even if it is busy? Is it still loving and gentle with each other, even if it's a relay race to make sure that everybody gets out the door with everything that they need? Are we a team getting through the airport to all the different destinations that we've gotta go to that day, versus the family that is frantically running through the airport, cutting each other's heads off because oh my gosh, I gotta get through the airport. There can be hope and emotional safety in our homes, even in the seasons where it does look busy and where there is a lot of moving pieces. Let's still strive for homes that center on that hope and that emotional safety because we are grounded in gentleness and we're grounded because the Lord is near. Let that be the mark that is on us as we are moving through our days.

kristy 46:27

We can be mindful of what the activities bring, right? We don't have to cancel sports and dance. We don't have to quit jobs that necessarily require us to travel. Imagine that airport family in a situation where we've been able to kind of get our hands around keeping our cleats and our jersey in the basket by the front door. Maybe it's dad's gonna do drop off here and mom's gonna do pickup there. And wow, maybe we're carpooling with another family and things get a little easier because of that. Maybe it never gets easier. Maybe it is still crazy insanity to get everybody where they need to go, and but we're mindful of that. And we're joking about, oh my goodness, look at everything our family is gonna do today, but we're gonna get it done.

Rules Matter, but Relationships Matter More

Tony 47:13

So I hope that we can be intentional about being warmer with each other, showing each other grace, being intentional about letting the home be the place where everyone does feel able to breathe. And as we move through life and doing life together, because we are a family, and because we are able to flourish best when we do feel safe. You know, we know that the rules matter, but relationships matter too, and and I would argue that relationships matter more than the rules. And not to say the rules are are bad, they're not, but these are still people that we love, and that matters more. We don't need to feel perfect, we need to work towards having homes that feel peaceful, and that's what matters.

Structure With Softness

kristy 48:09

Structure with softness and even in the craziness, those tiny, tiny moments that shape that emotionality and and help us to create peaceful places where we can get through it, where we can do all of the hard things and and still come back and reconnect at the end of the day, and that are gonna give our kids the growing up that we want them to have. Just be a home where people look forward to coming home, being with the people that love them the most.

Tony 48:34

Years from now, people may not remember all the rules that we had growing up, but they will remember whether or not it felt safe to be loved and to be there from day to day.

kristy 48:47

Unshaken

Closing Prayer

kristy 48:48

Family, let's pray together. Hey God, uh, we come to you just so very grateful for our families and for the activities that keep our hearts full and that make our time productive. But also we ask you to keep us mindful of the connections among us that matter more than any of that busyness. Please help us to be good stewards of the time and the emotional bandwidth that you give us, to take care of our families, to do good work and to live as you mean for us to do in harmony and in care for each other. Please protect us, be with us in all of the activities that we pursue, as well as in our time together at home or out in the world as a family. Let the activities that we pursue bring us joy and meaning or growth, bring it all home together for us so that we can make you proud of the way that we live. We love you, God, and we ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Until Next Time

Tony 49:44

Amen. Thank you guys so much. Hope you guys have a great day and a great rest of your week, and we'll see you next time.

kristy 49:50

Bye, friends.