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. Hi Unshaken family, this is Kristy, and Tony and I are together here. I want to talk about culture. The reason this is coming up is that over the last, it's going on like nine months or so now, Tony and I have combined our households. You guys know that before that, we've been happily married a long time, but just living in separate houses with separate kids situations and job situations, when we were able to consolidate and bring it together, we knew that we were going to have to kind of pick and choose from furniture and sort of the routines and calendar stuff. You know, are we going to use the Apple calendar? Like, what are we going to do that way? As we have done this, as we've continued to sort of blend over the months, what we have realized is that we've been combining cultures, we've been combining family cultures. A lot of the things that I think each of us thought were just normal were actually unique to each household. It's been a really interesting process, kind of a cool process, sort of identifying those things and being like, okay, wow, like we didn't realize because it was going to be a decision to be made. Like I said, we just kind of thought the stuff was gravity.

Tony 1:57

Every family has a culture. Culture is it's bigger than traditions. Culture is going to include a ton of different things, like how is conflict handled, how people celebrate things, how people leave for the day, how people come home, what happens when someone is hurting, what gets protected, what gets repeated. When you're thinking about the culture that your family has, sometimes the first step is simply just noticing what has been happening and shaping us all along. When you're living in it day by day, sometimes it is hard to notice because it just feels like gravity, you know, and it just feels normal to you inside the family because it's what you've always done. God holds culture very important as well, and He wants for our faith to be woven into our everyday lives as well. If we look at Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, it says, These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road or when you're down and when you get up. So basically, every day, no matter what you're doing, whether you're just lounging around, whether you're around the dinner table, whether you're driving to school or you're driving to some activity, no matter what it is you're doing, interweave these things, the commandments, but also talk about what you're reading in scripture. Talk about what you're learning, what God is showing you through what you're reading. Those things should be a part of the daily routine that it's it's as natural as breathing. When we think about our faith, it's not just a Sunday thing, it's something that is just interwoven into our everyday lives.

Kristy 3:59

I think what God is saying is let your religious traditions, your faith, your the practices, your faith practices, let all of that become part of your culture so that it is part of just your everyday lived experience. And and like Tony mentioned, that it becomes like gravity. We don't even notice it. We just, it's so much part of who we are and how we live. It almost seeps into everything. And so we are making decisions, Christian decisions, and and good, smart, Christ-honoring decisions just as part of everything that we do. When I think about culture, it's funny because I'm gonna say two words and I'm just laughing because they literally apply to my family, but also more of a bigger picture thing is kind of where I was initially going. Some cultures are louder than others. Some cultures have values or traditions. Some families sing, some families laugh, some families watch TV together. When I was growing up, we watched the wonderful world of Disney every Sunday night. There's stuff like that where there's noise to it, and it's part of its motion, it's part of the the chatter of life, and other cultures are quiet. You know, some homes have a really chill, quiet way of life, and there's nothing wrong with either. I know for us, my household is busy. We come and go, we laugh, we we're sort of obnoxious sometimes. I mean, we're annoying, we're a lot, but we have so much joy, and we really foundational to the way we live is that joy and the connection among us and the shared experiences and the memories that we're making. What I would add to that is reassurance. The kids and I, as they were growing up, and even still as they're adults, just reassurance that we're still here with each other, for each other, that things will continue, that this culture stands. All of that has really been important to us. But Tony's has been very different.

Tony 6:12

I would describe my family culture as quieter. My family culture was more autonomous. We protected peace. We had a few very deeply meaningful traditions. Just one example, wanting people to begin the day well. I don't know, it just always has stuck with me. If your kid can start the day well, it just helps with everything that that they're going to be doing, you know, like learning in school and they're more productive. And and I think that applies to everyone, whether you're a kid or an adult. I think if if your day starts well, if your day starts, I don't want to say peaceful, because I I think for most people, mornings are hectic in in some way, shape, or form, but it can still be a good morning, even if it is kind of hectic. I just really tried to protect that for everyone, trying to make sure that as we start our days, I try to send everyone off with a smile on their face so that they start a day at a 10. As the day goes on, if anything happens, they go from a 10, hopefully down to an eight, versus starting the day at a five, and then something happens, and now you're at a three, and oh my gosh, you know, my day's ruined. It's just always been important to me, and things like rites of passage. Um, it was really important to me to take my family to a baseball game and to have that experience with my girls. Being able to sort of teach what baseball was, even if they didn't really care about it, just to kind of share that and just to share the sights and sounds of being at a live baseball game versus just watching it on TV. It it just had a lot of value to me. And so for my family, we just really valued peace, emotional steadiness, those really meaningful moments. You know, we didn't have to always do things together, being in the same house, being under the same roof, and knowing that everyone was happy and doing whatever they loved to do, whether that was playing a video game or drawing or coloring or listening to music, if you were home and you were safe and you were happy, that was enough. For me, it gave me a sense of peace because I just had my family with me, not necessarily in the same room, but just in the same sort of atmosphere, if you will. Some family cultures are built through celebration, some are built through protection. But I think a lot of family cultures, there's a little bit of everything when it comes to the culture that we build as a family. And I think a healthy home doesn't have to choose between joy or peace. I think there's a lot of good work in learning how to honor both sides of it and to have both sides of it as you go through life.

Kristy 9:39

I agree with you completely. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about sort of the little things that make our family culture. Some of it is just what we value as a family. I was thinking when you were talking about baseball, I was thinking that a value that our family holds is caring about what's important to the others. I guarantee that of the three kids, two of them went and they loved it because they saw how happy it made you. That is something that all of us have that we hold as important. We just really value what makes the others happy. Some of the things are big, like to me, that's kind of a bigger value. Some things are kind of dumb. Like for me and the girls, like as they were coming up, we had a rule in the house that if somebody wants ice cream, they get it. If we didn't have ice cream and somebody wanted it, we would go get it. Not because dessert is something sacred, but because it brought joy. It's a lever that we could always reach for when we wanted to celebrate something was you know happy or exciting, or if somebody was down or struggling, like, let's get ice cream. The kids and I, when we say goodbye to each other, like not just I'm going to work or to the grocery or whatever, like that, it's not like that. But if we're gonna be apart like a night, or when I leave Felicity, even now we have little goodbye rituals with E. We do kissing hands, and that comes from a book that both of my kids had read to them in kindergarten at school, and they came home and talked to me about it. And so a kissing hand is just putting a kiss in the palm of someone that you love, some in the palm of their hand, and it doesn't wash off and it doesn't go away. And if you need it a little bit later, you're missing your person, you put your palm on your cheek, and there it is. You've got a kiss on the cheek from your person. With both of my kids, that goodbye ritual has kissing hands, both hands for both people with felicity. Then we hold up pretend cameras and I say click and she says click, and at the same time we say click, like we're taking a picture of each other at the same time, and that's what we do with Eve. It's the kissing hands on both hands for both people, and then we put them on both of our cheeks and we just like smush them in, saying it out loud. It sounds so silly, but it matters so much to me and to the kids. I think it's one of those little rituals that just it allows you to sort of take a part of the other person with you. And for a group that values shared experience, like we do, for just knowing that your people are with you and you're loved and you're not by yourself, like that has a lot of value. We have safety rules in this house. So growing up, we always, my kids just as sassy as they could possibly be, I would say, wait, you guys have to get sunscreen, you have to let it dry. And that's a safety rule. And safety rules are, and they would both say, non-negotiable, because we agreed as a family that safety rules are non-negotiable. Like other things, absolutely up for debate, but not safety rules. And as we came into COVID, another safety rule that came to us is that whenever there's a risk of any type, we default to the comfort level of the most conservative person. So if two people said, let's go out for dinner, and the other person said, I don't feel good about that, it's dead in the water. It stops right there because we always want to respect somebody's concerns. We never want somebody to have to override a caution instinct to be part of what's going on. The way we apologize, the girls and I agreed early on that we do not accept what we call Swiss cheese apologies. Swiss cheese apologies are apologies that are full of holes. That's the I'm sorry that you felt that way, or I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. It's those ones that don't really repair anything. It's almost a like, I'm sorry, but you know, but it's your own fault some in some sort of way. And we just have never been cool with that. And underwriting this is that we value sincere apologies and we always want to do better. We value repair as part of our family culture. What that brings me to is language. Like we have our our little words, and I'm sure that you guys all do too. For us, Swiss cheese apology means something, kissing hands means something. That safety rules are non-negotiable, it means something. And when somebody wants a napkin in this family, we call it a Mackin. And it's a Mackin because when E was little, like two, and in her nativity scene, she went to a little Christian preschool and she was a cow in the nativity. At the end, Santa went up and gave everybody candy canes. And at the end of the presentation, and kids are still getting candy canes and whatever. She stands up at the edge of the stage and she says, Hey mom, mom, mom, I need a Mackin, my hands are sticky. This kid is gonna be 19 later this month, and we still say, I need a Mackin, my hands are sticky. I think language is part of it. You guys know that I teach sociology and in culture as part of society, language is a piece of it. Language, shared values, the food we eat, the clothes we wear. There's just so much to it. I think all of those are also components of a family culture.

Tony 15:19

When family cultures come together like ours has, there's a lot of different reasons for it. Some of the common ones are like marriage, blended families, adult children returning home, aging parents, and of course, when we get new members of the families, new babies. We need to be careful because when family cultures come together, the question's not whose culture wins. The question becomes, what do we want to keep as a family unit to carry forward together? It's usually going to be a combination of things from both families that have come together. When two of these cultures come together, the goal is not to erase where you came from or where they came from. The goal is to hopefully with a lot of prayer as a foundation, build what your home needs now going forward. You know, taking everyone that's a part of the home into consideration.

Kristy 16:25

I want to pop in because there's scripture that really makes sense to me here. Colossians 3, verses 12 to 14. That passage says, Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. What this says to me is that we choose what our family values will be. And it's these little ordinary practices that we've been talking about that communicate those values. And so as we're choosing which cultures will go forward, which we will carry forward, I think it's important to bear that in mind that we're choosing now the values that our family will hold and what's going to matter to us.

Tony 17:29

I completely agree. The small things that are part of our cultures, they're not small when they are consistently telling someone, hey, you belong here. Again, those things they're foundational to how a family is kind of knitted together. All of these little questions or these little traditions, rituals, or routines, all of these things matter. When you're bringing two families together, it's important that you decide as a family what's going to be carried forward. It can be things that shift season to season because we know that life changes as circumstances change. So again, you just have to decide as a family what's going to be important to us now going forward.

Kristy 18:23

Something that's happening for us right now. You guys know that my parents live nearby. We're maybe 10 minutes from them, tops, and they're aging, especially my mom. One of the things that's happening with us is that we are sort of recalibrating some things and establishing some traditions that we didn't really have before with the purpose of I guess making some memories, just really connecting. And I don't want to say like the last days because it's nothing like that, but like while we have the blessing of my mom and dad with us, we want to enjoy them. We want to hear what they have to say and share our days with them and give them the joy that I mean they love nothing more than when their kids are home. One of the things we do is at least once a week, we go over there and sit around. And a lot of times my brother and his wife or my sister and her husband will come. Most of the time, it's my brother and his wife, and we just sit there with them and and just talk about whatever. You know, when my kids are here, when Felicity's here from Orlando or when E's over from college in Tampa, they always go to Nana and Papa's and they just say their words. And nothing makes my parents happier. They feel like it's a privilege for them to just have us unload our days, you know. But that's something that we really have come to value because of that change, because of aging parents.

Tony 19:50

Different traditions come out of different circumstances. I'm gonna use Christmas as another example for my family. We do Christmas at midnight, and one of the things that that we do right before midnight is we turn on Mickey's Christmas Carol. We watch that in the 20 minutes or so that lead up to midnight, and I think my girls roll their eyes somewhat, but at the same time, like they get it, and they have fun with it, and I think we've all seen it so many times now that like we can say the lines from memory. But it's just something that has just stuck with me, and and that's just what we do. But I know when the girls were younger, Kristy and her girls, they would do Christmas in the in the afternoon, and that's mainly because of just different custody arrangements, and you learn what works for your family, and you end up doing the best you can.

Kristy 20:52

The custody arrangements that kind of shaped our ways, they allowed me to have to be with all of my family, not necessarily at the same time, but I got to be with everybody at Christmas. I would have the girls on Thanksgiving and we would all be together, all of the the you know, the three kids and whatever, whoever they were dating, or a friend over or whatever, like as many kids as we could get, but all of ours, my parents, like as many people as we could have together, we did. Um, but always the kids and always my parents. On Christmas Eve, they would be they would be with me for a while, they would go to their dads, and I would go to Tony and be with him and his kiddo for Christmas at midnight, going into Christmas morning. In the afternoon on Christmas Day, the kids, uh my kids would come home and Tony and I would be back and um do Christmas with them in the afternoon. And like it started as just a practical thing, but it has become something that we really value because when we're opening presents in the afternoon. Afternoon instead of on Christmas morning, we have the luxury of just all the time in the world. There's no like people aren't going to be hungry. We're not trying to get to Nana and Papa's or whatever. Like, it's just our time that has come to be really precious to us. Every family culture exists to do something. And it might have been a practical thing at first. It might be a practical thing forever. I guess I would say that family culture tends to reflect something that is important, something that the family wants to protect. Maybe it's joy or peace, a sense of adventure, stability. Some families have a lot of traditions around hospitality. Some families really value excellence and you know in all that they do. Like, and I think it doesn't matter. Not in the sense it doesn't matter to the family, because it's very important. One isn't better than another. And I think any combination of those things or or any other things can be fantastic. As our families grow and as we make changes, we can think through it. Like, what do we want to keep? What do we want to strengthen? What do we want to be weighted more heavily in our family's culture? Or, you know, what do we want to scrap? What doesn't fit us anymore? What new things do we want to build together? And that's the place where Tony and I have had a lot of it's just a luxury, right? To keep the best of what we individually have done with our kids. And, you know, on our separate sides of the state, we can pick and choose and and do what works for everybody. And it's funny because everything doesn't work for everybody. I think we still drive him a little bit nuts. We're very loud and we're constantly coming and going, you know, just with activities or working and shopping and all of those things. Tony tends to be a homebody, I think partly by nature of just kind of not driving and that sort of practicality, but I think also by nature, by choice. And so I have a feeling we drive him nuts, but he loves us. And so he encourages it and eggs it on, and you know, we do what we do. And it's just been really neat to just have those sort of blending things. One thing that Tony and I, weirdly enough, have in common, and it's something that is foundational to us culturally, is if we both really love to travel and we travel really well together. We like road trips. We are the people who, if somebody needs a bathroom, we stop. If somebody sees a billboard for the world's giant ball of string or whatever it might be, like if we want to stop, we stop. We stop at rest areas, we pick up rocks at every rest area so that we have a little piece of that state with us. Tony's the same way. Even when we fly, we we have the same values. We go early. We both would rather sit in the airport for hours over rushing to be there at the last minute. It's just one of the shared things that we have. And it's very important to us as we've had the luxury of sort of picking and choosing what we want. It's been really enlightening to notice cultural traditions and values that we've held without realizing it.

Tony 25:17

A family culture, it's not just about preserving preferences, really, at its best, it's protecting what love and safety and faith and repair need in whatever season that you're in. Because I think those things are all the ingredients you need to feel connected. Some of you out there may have grown up with beautiful family cultures, some grew up in survival mode, some are trying to build a family culture that you wished for and that you longed for, but you never really experienced as you grew up. No matter where you are, there's no shame in any of this. This is not about having to create 20 traditions overnight. If your family story has pain in it, you're not disqualified from building something good starting today. Small, faithful beginnings still matter. What it brings to mind for me is a piece of scripture that has a lot of context in it that we won't get into today, but I'm thinking about Joshua, the 24th chapter, verse 15. It says this, but if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your ancestors that served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are currently living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. By saying these words, Joshua is giving them a choice. This is a moment in time, it's a single solitary moment. And he's saying, look, you can do what you want, but as for me and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord. To bring this into today's context, you don't have to decide everything all at once. Just make one solitary choice. Maybe it's a family phrase that everyone uses, maybe it's a prayer, maybe it's a goodbye ritual like Kristy and the girls have. Maybe it's one way of celebrating small victories. Maybe there's a specific way that you deal with and repair after conflict. Small repeated, you know, acts become part of your story, become part of your family's story as you go forward. And hopefully, again, you know, every family has to make this choice for themselves, but hopefully the bedrock of it is just the the faith that you and your family share in Christ. I would hope, and I think Kristy is with me on this, that like part of that foundation is just a foundation of prayer. Because I know how impactful that's been in our marriage and in our lives and in our family. I would hope that that would be uh something that would be foundational for you guys. But again, every family is different, and every family has to make those decisions for themselves. And so maybe now is the time to start taking those steps to building that new culture, and you don't have to become a whole nother family, you just simply have to have the opportunity to ask, what do we want people we love to know is true about belonging to this family? This is not about building like a family brand, or this is about building what it looks like to belong to family, what it looks like to have the safety and the joy and the ordinary faithfulness and just the things all around that, so that you know that this is what we do in this family. Just know that it could be completely different from the family, even that's your next door neighbor.

Kristy 29:47

Foundationally, culture is what makes you you as a family, it's what makes us us as a family, and whatever that looks like is valid. There isn't a way to do it wrong, because if you had cultural experiences in your family that don't feel good, that you don't want to take forward, then don't. You can change it. Um, it belongs to you. You hold it and shape it as you go. It will be dear to you and yours because it's it's what you made together. Certainly, parents steer on that kind of thing, but so much of culture comes from our kids too, and from you know, some of the cute things that they did or said, or things that they learned in school that really mattered to them. Like they're growing and changing too. They're gonna bring that to your culture. Family culture is a living, breathing thing. And I don't want to say that it's transitional necessarily because it does hold continuity, but it is absolutely what we make it, it's malleable. Again, would reiterate what Tony was saying that if it hasn't been what you want it to be, put some prayer and thought into what you want people to take away. Like when your kids are grown, what do you want them to remember about what it was like to grow up in your family? Or when your own parents are are talking about it, like what do you want them to talk about when they talk about what it's like to be in your home or or to have friends over? Like, how does that look? And and what do you want them to sense about your family and what makes you you?

Tony 31:30

As Joshua said to the people at the time, you have to decide what that looks like for your household. In the words of Joshua, as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Alright, let's pray, guys. Father, we come before you today. Uh, just so thankful that we do have your word and we do have the example that you gave us in Jesus to be able to know how to live this out and know that you're not calling us to create 20 different traditions overnight. You're calling us to take one faithful step forward each and every day. And so, Father, we ask that you would give us discernment. We ask that you would just keep us faithful as as we do navigate this as a family. Father, we would just ask that you would just be with us as we go forward to establish a culture that does, in fact, serve you and follow you for all of our days. We do thank you for Jesus and for the sacrifice that he made on that cross for us. Keep us pointing people to you as we live out our daily lives. And it's in your son's name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, guys. Hope you guys have a great day and a great rest of your week, and we'll see you next time.

Kristy 33:01

Bye, everybody.